I’ve recently become enthusiastic about studying another language—and that language is Esperanto. Learning a completely new language usually takes a lot of time and effort, but Esperanto is famously easy to pick up. So I thought, why not study it?
Esperanto is a language that was deliberately created to be easy to learn and politically neutral, meant to foster international communication. It was invented in 1887 by a Polish doctor named L. L. Zamenhof, who hoped that a shared second language could help promote peace and understanding between people of different native tongues.
The language draws much of its vocabulary from European languages, especially Latin-based ones, and its grammar is extremely regular—there are no irregular verbs, and spelling always matches pronunciation. Although it’s not widely used as a native language, a passionate global community speaks it fluently, and it’s still taught, written, and even used in international meetings today.
I hope that one day I’ll be able to teach it privately as well. Since there aren’t many Esperanto teachers out there, the competition is pretty low, which makes the idea even more appealing.
Right now, I’m learning from a digital version of an old grammar book. I study the grammar while translating and completing exercises. I also looked into Esperanto courses at university. There used to be one at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, but unfortunately, it was discontinued several years ago. I’m curious why it stopped.
For those who want to become Esperanto teachers, there is an International Languages program in Kraków. Interestingly, my second qualification is in language and speech education, so that could entitle me to teach Esperanto in an official setting—assuming the opportunity arises.
The only problem is that there are currently no official university programs for Esperanto. So, we’ll see how far I get on this journey.