Esperanto Esperanto was invented a【1】philologist, Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof. Esperanto means "【2】". The vocabulary comes m

Presenter: Good morning everybody and welcome to our lecture. It’s a good pleasure for me to welcome Professor Nesbit of the University of Edinburgh, He is going to give us a lecture about a world language. Professor Nesbit, Please.
   Professor: Today I’m going to talk about languages, or more specially about a world language. What would the world be like if everyone spoke the same language? Would we understand each other better and be more sympathetic to each other’s causes? I’m not talking about everyone sharing the same first language, but sharing the same second language, and I’m not talking about English, but Esperanto. That’s spelled E-S-P-E-R-A-N-T-O. This is an artificial language.
   What are the facts about Esperanto? Well, it was invented in 1887 by Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish philologist. The vocabulary comes mainly from Western European languages, and the grammar is similar m Slavic languages. It sounds like Italian. Esperanto means "hopeful", and it was Zamenhof’s hope that a common language would promote a friendship and an understanding amongst all people of the world. His inspiration is summed up by the Esperanto term interna idea which means central idea, and it is an idea of human peace and justice. I think Esperanto will become the world language in the future.
   Esperanto is taught in many schools in Yugoslavia and Hungary. China is very interested. About 400,000 people have learned Esperanto in China. It is spoken all over the world by approximately ten million people, and there are many who would like Esperanto to be the official second language of the world. It has such internal logic that it could become the international computer language.
   From the learner’s point of view, it has the advantage that there are no exceptions to rules. The advantages of the world being able to talk freely to each other about business, politics, culture, sport, hobbies... well... are obvious. The costs of translation at any international conference are staggering. About 55 percent of the EEC’s budget in Strasbourg is taken up by translation costs. The main advantage, as I see, is that Esperanto is a neutral language. It doesn’t have the national, political and cultural bias that all others of course have, If everybody has to learn a second language, then everybody is equal. Well. I’ll stop here for questions.
Student: Excuse me. I’d like to ask a question. Why should people have to learn another language? Why not English as the world language? I mean there are already so many people who speak English throughout the world.
Professor: I think English is one of those languages which for many seems easy in the beginning, but then the bridge between basic knowledge and mastery takes a long time to cross, and many people give up. Why should people have to learn English? For many it’s a waste of time of spelling, of the large number of exceptions to any rule, it is very idiomatic and the prepositions are terrible. On the contrary, Esperanto is a very easy language to learn. The tense system has none of the complications of English, and the grammar is based on just sixteen rules which have no exceptions. There are five vowel sounds in Esperanto, but twenty vowel sounds in English. The most remarkable thing is that after a very short time learners find that they can express quite sophisticated ideas, the same sort of things that they would want to say in their own language.
Presenter: Professor Nesbit, thank you very much.