Photo Credit: Beppie K
The Esperanto language is considered the world's most widely spoken made up language (aren't all languages made up?) and is now announcing its 150 years of existance. Imagine a world that was filled with people that could all understand each other. From Africa to North America, to Asia, one uniform language that could be spoken, read, and written by all. That was just the vision that was had by Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof.
This man grew up in a small town in the Russian Empire and noticed a big barrier in the daily activities of both the town natives and the people that were traveling in and out. There were tons of different languages spoken all throughout this little town and it made it hard to get anything done. With a mission and a background in in grammar, Ludovic published not only a dictionary but a language guide book that soon became popular if by nothing else but its pure novelty.
Although this language has not yet been adopted by international leaders and military establishments (the fear is that their culture would be degraded or changed), Esperanto still remains the top learned made up language in all of the world. There are as many as 2 million Esperantist's from around the globe, and this number is slowly growing. Although it was much more popular in the nineties, maybe this anniversary will mark the beginning of a revival in the Esperanto Language, and Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof will achieve his dream... even if it is only witnessed by his great great grandchildren. Gadling put together a detailed review on how this language was established and how the 150 year anniversary of the Esperanto language is being observed.
