Esperanto provides a medium for easy, democratic, neutral communication in between peoples. This is a certain path to increased tolerance in the world.

It has been proven that kids who learn Esperanto not only enhance their brain capacity to learn new things (by up to 40% in case of school subjects), but also present a much higher interest in other cultures and other points of view. Using Esperanto, they talk to their friends in different countries, they ask about what their ways are... they get really interested. Kids who learn Esperanto become more tolerant of differences, because Esperanto provides them with an incentive and a way to meet different kids, from different places.

This is the world we want to live in. A world without barriers. A world where everyone is given the same opportunities. A world where everyone can have access to the world´s knowledge (and this is not possible today, due to language difficulties), and where everyone can talk to anyone else without language barriers. Where you could go to China and be understood by a school-age kid, or travel to Moroco and talk to a vendor who would never have had the money to pay for 7 to 10 years of english course.

Domination by a national language translates into cultural domination. That´s what is happening to english. Thousands of smaller national languages throughout history have disappeared because of dominant ones, and with them, many cultures ceased to exist.

As it is today, english dominates. But domination is a strong word and a strong practice. English takes 7 to 10 years of hard learning to master. And it puts native english speakers in an unfair advantage in conversation. It puts the english culture up and above all others. The common sensation when foreigners talk to americans is that of inferiority - because they will never be able to express themselves fully in the other´s national language.

This doesn´t happen in Esperanto, because everyone had to learn it. Everyone went through the same process. Everyone had to make an effort. In Esperanto congresses, everyone is treated as an equal - and sometimes we even forget we´re from different countries.

There are now about 10 million speakers of Esperanto in the world, thousands of books, hundreds of newspapers and magazines written in many different countries, a lot of music, global music, music that speaks to every culture, all in one language.

Join us on our discussions and learn with us!

1- Every word has an emphasis on the second-to-last syllable! (So beginners find no trouble pronouncing words correctly!)
Example: sa-LU-ton (Hi)
BO-nan TA-gon (Good day)
sa-BA-to (Saturday)

2- Every letter has only one sound. Every sound corresponds to only one letter. (Very different from english, where there are 12 different sounds to the letter A)

3- 60% of the words come from latin-based languages (spanish, french, italian, portuguese, etc), 20% from Anglo-saxon languages (english, german, etc), 10% from slavic languages and 10% from other languages. (so, vocabulary always sounds familiar)

4- Grammar is logical. That means, no exceptions to rules. There are only about 14 grammar rules in the language. All of them very logical.

5- Vocabulary is built like a puzzle. There are prefixes and sufixes you can add to form different words. So that, every time you learn a new word, you end up learning about 50 different words.

Learn Esperanto at www.lernu.net !