Happy Zamenhof Day!

Even though this post is about Zamenhof Day, a holiday of Esperantists, I'm going to write this post in English, so as to reach the non-Esperantists who have subscribed to my blog.

The Esperanto movement is symbolized by the Green Star, „La Verda Stelo‟. (Image by Gabriel Ehrnst Grundin)

Feliĉan Zamenhofan Tagon! That's Esperanto for "Happy Zamenhof Day!" If you have never heard of Zamenhof Day, Zamenhof himself, or even the language Esperanto, don't worry. You're not alone. Esperanto is a constructed language, made in 1887 by Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, designed to ease communication between people of different language backgrounds. Since its creation, Esperanto has gained at least a million speakers, though that number is subject to debate. Perhaps it hasn't reached it's original goal.

Today, on December 15th, we celebrate Zamenhof Day, the anniversary of Zamenhof's birth. Zamenhof Day is the day Esperantists celebrate our language and our culture. Now is a great time to learn about the language. One of the best resources to do this is Lernu.net, an active community of Esperantists online. The tutorials are available in many languages, so even if English isn't your native tongue, you will be able to learn Esperanto though your mother language. You can talk with Esperantists there from around the world, and learn about different cultures and people.

Esperanto is a simple language, made to be as regular as possible. All nouns, for instance, end in the letter -o. So if you see words like knabo, tago, hundo, or amo, you can know that they are nouns. If you want to take that last word, amo, meaning "love", and make it the verb "to love", just change the -o to an -i. If you want to make it into an adjective, change the -o to an -a. And so on.

Esperanto is a great way to meet new people, learn about other places, and gain a greater understanding of language. Learning Esperanto can make it easier for you to learn other languages; because of its simplicity, you learn to think in a new way, but without having to memorize many irregularities. If you choose to learn another language, you already have the structure and understanding in place, now you just need to memorize the language's idiosyncrasies and thought-process.

So try Esperanto out! It's a nice language, and you'll undoubtedly meet many awesome people through it. Feliĉa lernado! Happy learning!