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UsefulNotes / Esperanto, the Universal Language

En la mondon venis nova sento,

tra la mondo iras forta voko;

per flugiloj de facila vento

Esperanto is a Conlang made by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 designed to be an easy-to-learn language that would help with communication between countries of different languages and maybe even create world peace. The vast majority of the vocabulary is based on European roots, about 2/3 being Latinate derivations from French and about 1/3 being Germanic derivations from English and German, with only a handful of derivations from other sources; whether this makes it appreciably more difficult for non-Europeans to learn is a topic of much discussion among fluent Esperantists, many of whom have non-European mother tongues. Sadly, it has yet to achieve the full extent of Zamenhof's ambitions, thus spawning occasional mockery in modern media^note and murderous rage on the part of those who oppose movements that attempt to bridge social gaps; as mentioned below, the Nazis outlawed Esperanto and even sent some of its speakers, including Zamenhof's children, to the death camps. Even then, it's still a thriving language within its own media, and there are a few people around the world who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language.^note in addition to a natural language, obviously. Some stories set in The Future use Esperanto as if it has become the main language. It's also occasionally used As Long as It Sounds Foreign.

Esperanto has the advantage of being more regular than naturally-evolved languages. It has only 16 grammatical rules at base (though it also has other folds and wrinkles at higher levels), and it never deviates from those rules; also, each letter is pronounced one way and one way only, each word is spelled exactly as it's pronounced, and there are no silent letters. By contrast, English (like all natural languages) is full of irregularity, such as all kinds of weird, inconsistent spelling and grammar rules that make it much harder to learn than it should be. In addition, Esperanto words are much more easily creatable, using prefixes and suffixes around the root word to handily morph words in any way necessary, thus making sentences more concise and language more literal. (Opinions vary on the subject of how colorful language equivalents have solidly found their way into the language, morphable like any other word.) Written Esperanto presents a bit of a problem in the digital age, since 6 letters of the Esperanto alphabet — ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ — don't appear in the standard ASCII/ANSI character set; many authors choose to simply write the letter without the hat on it and put an x afterward, like so: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.^note Eventually, even Zamenhof decided that these funny-looking letters were a bad idea, and unsuccessfully tried to get rid of them. However, with the widespread adoption of Unicode in digital environments today, this difficulty is much reduced; Esperanto diacritics are included in that character set.

Some informative sites about Esperanto (in English) are at Wikipedia, Esperanto-USA, and Esperanto.net.

Despite its status as the best known artificial language, not everybody agrees with all parts of it, (as you can read here) and thus it has spawned other languages that have tried to correct perceived flaws. These projects are collectively known as Esperantidoj; they include Ido, and Novial. For one reason or other, these languages have not been as successful as Esperanto.

A few TV Tropes pages are available in Esperanto translations, including this very page. To see the index, go here.

For those who want to learn it, there is a free E-mail course, a virtually identical postal course (U.S. only, free except for postage costs), Lernu.net and Duolingo's free Esperanto course. More options here.

Incidentally, "Esperanto" is of course itself an Esperanto word (or name, to be precise; it comes from Zamenhof's pen name, Doktoro Esperanto, and translates literally, ‘one who hopes’), hence is pronounced "ess-pear-AHNT-o", not "ess-per-rant-o".

    open/close all folders 

    Anime and Manga 

• In RahXephon the TERRA organization's name is an acronym for "Tereno Empireo Rapidmova Reakcii Armeo", which is supposed to be Esperanto for "Earth Empire Rapid Response Army". Except "Tereno" means "terrain", "Empireo" is nonsense, "Rapidmova" means "rapidly-moving", and "Reakcii" means "to react". (They got "Armeo" right, though.) In proper Esperanto, the name should be "Rapid-responda Armeo de la Tera Imperio"... which, unfortunately, kills the acronym.
  • Not to mention that in the first episode, Ayato and Mamoru greet each other with "Ĝis!" which is supposed to be used as a goodbye. Further amusement can be had from the fact that the dubbing team didn't seem to understand this and translated it as "Cheese!"
• ARIA has the scene in Origination when Alice performs a canzone, of which the first couple of verses are in Esperanto.
• The vocal theme of Patema Inverted, "Patema Inverse" by Estelle Micheau, is entirely in Esperanto.
• Esperanto is mentioned in episode 8 of HaruChika. Naoko's aunt used to be involved with a man named Benjant who liked to call her "Pura Stelo" (esperanto for pure star) and liked to call himself "Venganto" ("avenger").

    Comic Books 

• 25th century DC Comics character Booster Gold speaks Esperanto as his first language.
• In Grant Morrison's Seaguy, the universal language is Esperanto, but it's only revealed that everyone has been talking the language in the third, final, book of the first limited series. This is probably done to throw the reader off and make them see Seaguy's world as even more bizarre. It's mentioned again in the second book of the second limited series.
• 10 Jarojn Poste, an independently published science fiction comic book from 1984, is written almost entirely in Esperanto.
• The Gold Key Comics Star Trek: The Original Series comics of The '70s for some reason explained away the "English" on new planets as the natives speaking Esperanto, rather than the Universal Translator from the TV show.
• The "Blue language" spoken by the people of Wreath in Saga is actually badly translated Esperanto.
• A Captain America antagonist, Flag Smasher, was described as being fluent in multiple languages including Esperanto, having grown up the son of a career diplomat posted in numerous countries.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants comic book saga "Showdown at the Shady Shoals" features the City of Urbo, where everyone speaks Esperanto. (Indeed, "urbo" is the Esperanto word for "city".)

    Fan Works 

    Films — Animation 

    Films — Live-Action 

• The Great Dictator: While the Ger... Tomanians spoke As Long as It Sounds Foreign Gratuitous German, the population of the Ghetto had all their signs written in Esperanto. This is oddly fitting, since the language was invented by a Polish Jew.
• The company Esperanto Filmoj is credited as producer of several films involving director Alfonso Cuarón, including Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee Gravity.
• The Street Fighter (1994) movie has the fictional country of Shadaloo that speaks Esperanto.
• Two movies from The '60s were filmed with dialogue entirely in Esperanto:
  • The nearly-lost 1966 Religious Horror film Incubus starred William Shatner and was produced by most of the first season The Outer Limits (1963) production team. Rather infamously, it was filmed entirely in (poorly written and pronounced) Esperanto to sound more exotic, as well as to supposedly appeal to a broad market given Esperanto's international reach, only for it to tank as not enough people in any general population speak it. Amusingly, Gene Roddenberry became a fan of Esperanto partly due to Shatner's attachment to the film, and had briefly considered filming Star Trek in the language — lord knows how well that would've gone over.
  • The other film was the French-made thriller Angoroj.
• Esperanto is the second language of the unnamed city in the Blade Trilogy movies. Incubus can be seen playing on a television at one point.
• In Murnau's The Last Laugh, all the signs are in Esperanto.
• Though all of the main characters of Gattaca speak English, the announcements on the Gattaca Corporation's public address system are all in Esperanto. The Esperanto Society of North America is thanked in the credits. Which could mean that the characters are actually speaking Esperanto.
• Gerda Malaperis ("Gerda Disappeared") is a film completely filmed in the language.
• The original stage version of Idiot's Delight is set in Italy and involves a war that starts when Italy attacks France. To avoid offending Fascist Italy when the play was adapted for film in 1939, the setting was changed to a non-specific location, and all the local characters speak Esperanto.
• Most of the films making up Christopher R. Mihm's Mihmiverse have an Esperanto dub track.

    Literature 

• James Joyce included references to Esperanto and lines written in the language in his novel Ulysses.
• In Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat books, all the characters are understood to be speaking Esperanto. Esperanto is the universal second language in his Deathworld series. Harrison was a notable Esperanto buff himself, so it's quite understandable.
  • Although in The Stainless Steel Rat for President he subverts this in having the inhabitants of a Spanish-speaking planet being completely unable to understand what Jim DiGriz is saying to his wife in Esperanto. ^note While many Esperanto words have a Latin origin, there are enough differences to make spoken Esperanto and Spanish mostly mutually unintelligible. Esperanto phonetics are closer to Polish or Russian than Spanish; the grammar was influenced by early speakers who mostly spoke Polish, Russia, German, or French; many common Esperanto words are made by adding Esperanto prefixes and/or suffixes to a Latin-based root; etc. Using Google Translate to translate Esperanto into Spanish will occasionally produce amusingly inaccurate results. Even moreso if setting your Esperanto phrase as Spanish then translating to English.
• The Riverworld books, in which the language is deliberately spread by a post-resurrection religion so that they can proselytize more easily.
• Damon Knight's story "You're Another" had a dictator in the far future speaking with an Esperanto accent, with occasional words and phrases in Esperanto.
• In Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits, the character Clara frequently mentions her belief that Esperanto is the ideal language and ought to be taught in schools.
• The Mortal Engines series of four features a language called "Airsperanto," supposedly the language of those who fare the skies. It doesn't get too much prominence in the series, though.
• In The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon, our hero lives in the Hotel Zamenhof. "When the hotel was built 50 years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices, and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperanto."
• Polar Star (the sequel to Gorky Park). An American sailor who learns Esperanto as a hobby mentions a meeting his group organised between two famous practitioners of the language. "It took us five minutes to realise they couldn't understand what each other was saying. One's asking for the wine, the other's telling her the time."
• The Shadow novel Malmordo has the title villain's name coming from bad Esperanto, and his international gang speaks the language. The Shadow, of course, is fluent in Esperanto (and Romani, the other non-English language important in the story.)
• Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, "Homo Sol", about humanity being inducted into a galactic federation. The welcome message from their diplomats is delivered in Esperanto.
• In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler claims that when The All-Powerful Jewish Conspiracy Of Doom takes over, a universal language will be instituted, and suggested it will be Esperanto. This led to Esperanto speakers being persecuted during World War II and Zamenhof's family in particular being singled out. All three of Zamenhof's children died in The Holocaust, and Esperanto became legally forbidden in 1935 (in Germany).
• Magic 2.0: In Off to Be the Wizard, all spells used by the "wizards" are activated with phrases in a bastardized version of Esperanto. Basically, they know the words but not the grammar, substituting English grammar instead. When asked by Martin why they don't use Latin, like most stories about magic, Phillip explains that a good number of locals (in 12th century England) understand at least some Latin. The most commonly used spell is "flugi" ("fly"), which does exactly what you'd expect.
• Dream Park: In The Moon Maze Game, the Multinational Team of terrorists-for-hire speak Esperanto to obscure their national affiliations.
• Marooned on Mars by Lester Del Ray. The protagonist is from the Moon, where Esperanto is the common language because its citizens are from all parts of Earth. Ironically this only helps foster a sense of nationalism there.
• The Catholic end-times novel Lord of the World claims that, after Marxists take over the world, they’ll destroy the heritages of the nations by replacing their languages with Esperanto. Despite this, everyone still speaks English, and this isn’t just because of Translation Convention. The book was written a few years after the Esperantist community suffered a major schism (leading to the creation of Ido) that scuttled any hopes of an international language actually being adopted worldwide, but no one could have predicted that at the time. Though the author was a Catholic priest, so his objection seems to have actually been that a perfectly good language with no native speakers had been used for international communication for centuries: Latin.

    Live Action TV 

• Red Dwarf is set on a bilingual mining ship; signs are written in English and Esperanto (for instance, each floor is labeled with "Level" and "Nivelo" next to the floor number). Rimmer is occasionally seen working on his Esperanto, as part of his efforts to become upwardly mobile. (He's not very good at it; apart from struggling to translate sentences, he refers to Esperanto speakers as a distinct group, the "Esperantinos". Esperantino in Esperanto actually means "a woman who is hoping"; the proper term in Esperanto would be "Esperantisto", and the plural would be "Esperantistoj".) This was dropped after the first couple of seasons when Grant Naylor decided it was just silly. (The novel adaptation has everything in English, French and three dialects of Chinese).
• On Frasier the gang meets a sleazy lounge singer who hits on Roz. She doesn't speak Spanish, but he is sure that she is "schooled in the international language." Frasier is unimpressed, quipping "Yes, Roz. Say something amusing in Esperanto!"
• A flashack episode of The Drew Carey Show revealed that Lewis took Esperanto in high school, assuming it would actually be useful in the future.
• Referred to in QI in the "Future" episode, where Stephen Fry says, as an example phrase: "Mia kusenventurilo estas plena de angiloj." (My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels)

    Music 

• The credits to Elvis Costello's Blood & Chocolate album are in Esperanto, although some of the words are misspelled (it's "gitaro", not "guitaro").
• Legendary free jazz/underground rock label ESP-Disk, best known for signing The Fugs, was originally intended to specialize in Esperanto music; its first release was a collection of folk songs in the language titled Ni Kantu En Esperanto (Let's Sing in Esperanto).
• From the They Might Be Giants song "Alienation's for the Rich": "And the TV's in Esperanto/You know that that's a bitch".
• The opening track in Maaya Sakamoto's album Kazeyomi, "Vento" ("Wind"), is in Esperanto.
• SYR3: Invito Al Ĉielo (Invitation to the Sky or Invitation to Heaven) by Sonic Youth has all its song titles, credits, and even the full title of the EP written in Esperanto.
• The artwork for Radiohead's OK Computer album (or, if you prefer, Bone Komputilo) includes a few phrases in Esperanto, including "danĝera najbaro" (dangerous neighbor/hood).

    Mythology and Religion 

• The Oomoto sect of Shinto, which believes in universal peace and brotherhood, has helped popularize Esperanto since the 1920s.

    Tabletop Games 

• Champions features Danar Nicole, a former European Parliament member embittered by his failures to unify Europe into a singular state, who reinvents himself as the super-terrorist "Fiacho" ("Very Bad") now convinced the only way to create the European superstate he dreams of is to force it to unify under his iron fist. The obvious symbolism of the language and word chosen are explicitly noted by the sourcebook to encapsulate his character.
• In Crimestrikers, Esperanto shows up in a few places. The two major Hydreran characters, Donacina ("little gift") and Rasavanto ("racial savior"), both have Portmanteau names derived from the language. It's also used for some location names, such as the nation Alta Montejo ("high mountain"), the space station Stelamiko ("star friend"), the casino Bona Fortuno ("good fortune"), and the two deserts, Senfina ("endless") and Ora Morto ("golden death").

    Video Games 

• Blazing Dragons contains a throwaway gag by the caretaker for the Cave of Dillema where he offers to teach Flicker Esperanto.
• "Memoro de la Ŝtono" ("Memory of the Stone") from Final Fantasy XI is sung in Esperanto.
• Guilty Gear: All of Ramlethal Valentine's move names are in Esperanto, including her infamous "Mortobato" Overdrive.
• In I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Congruence teaches in her Humanities class that Esperanto is the primary language of the Vertumna Group, which was invented to bring them together as they prepared to leave Earth for Vertumna. The language is being taught to the protagonist's generation of colonists, although everyone speaks English for the player's convenience.
• The title of Metaphor: ReFantazio is Esperanto for "Fantasy", and its soundtrack often features Esperanto in the vein of Ominous Latin Chanting.
• One of the songs in Mega Man Zero 4's soundtrack is literally called "Esperanto".
• The ingame Morrowind book N'Gasta! Kvata! Kvakis! is in Esperanto, with some letters swapped out to act as the language of the Sload.
• In the Telltale Sam & Max: Freelance Police games, an Esperanto bookstore is one of the businesses on their home block. Like most enterprises by the corner of Straight and narrow, it's closed.
• In Tidal Tribe, the signs made by the villagers are in Esperanto.
• Touhou Project. As shown in Marisa B's Good Ending in Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, some of Patchouli's books are written in Esperanto.
• In Wandering Hamster, the bubble-mage James is a member of the Esperanto League of Flanat (ELF). Bob the Hamster completely misunderstands both the acronym and the conversations that James has with the local guildmaster (he assumes that the two are talking mean about him). It's hilarious for the player, not so much for Bob.
• The scenes before and after one mission in We Love Katamari have the King of All Cosmos working on his Esperanto.
  • Only in the localization, as the original Japanese version had him practicing his English.

    Visual Novels 

    Webcomics 

• In Cwynhild's Loom, Esperanto is the official language of Mars and is found on signs throughout the comic as well as on any type of computer output.
• The name of Homestuck's Kankri Vantas is derived from the plural form of the Esperanto word for "crayfish," in keeping with the crustacean theme of his descendant/ancestor, Karkat.
• Pepper&Carrot has a full translation into Esperanto, titled Pipro kaj Karoĉjo, available on its website.

    Web Original 

    Western Animation 

• The Jetsons took a long trip across the solar system to see a circus. There, the owner of a trained-flea act sold them his fleas [?]. George Jetson picked the fleas up and heard them making some noises. He knew they were trying to talk to him, but he couldn't understand what they were saying. George turned to his son, Elroy, and said, "You're the one taking Esperanto lessons? You talk to them!" Elroy was able to translate for the fleas!
• The ghost Wulf in Danny Phantom talks in broken Esperanto, and only Tucker can understand it at first. Danny and later Sam take Esperanto lessons.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation astonishingly has a joke about Esperanto, which is found in the quotes page.
• Mocked by an alien in The Tick: "Actually, Tick, I've taught myself to speak all your Earth languages. Except Esperanto. *chuckles* You could see that one was going nowhere."
• Cikatro Vizago is a minor character in Star Wars Rebels. He's a smuggler whose name is Esperanto for "scar face".

    Real Life 

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