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Could a Universal Language Be the Answer to World Peace?
How one language came closer than any others
It has been said that language can be one of the great dividers in the world. While it can bring two people together, it can also create invisible barriers between entire communities, regions, or countries.
L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist, sought to alleviate the division that language barriers can bring by creating his own constructed language called Esperanto. Even though he was a doctor by trade, Zamenhof fervently studied languages, specifically Western ones. While he was still in medical school, he began to construct his own artificial language in 1873, devoting over a decade to its creation. In 1887, he first introduced Esperanto when he published his first book called “Unua Libro,” which literally translates to “First Book.”
The roots of Esperanto were constructed by using a combination of Romance languages, like Spanish, French, and Latin, as well as Polish, English, Russian, and German. There are no irregular verbs, gendered nouns, or grammatical exceptions. In fact, the language was created with the intention to learn with as much ease as possible. As a result, it only requires about a tenth as much time to learn compared to most other Western languages.
