Why does learning languages have to be so complicated? It takes years to be advanced enough in a language to reap the benefits. These could include communicating with more people, embracing a community, or just improving your cognitive health, but only a fraction of language learners become conversational in their language. This is due, in part, to the dedication, effort, and time required to learn a foreign language, and language barriers are still very prevalent in our society today.

That’s why Esperanto was created. L.L. Zamenhof invented Esperanto in 1887 to serve as a universal means of communication. It was originally meant to be an International Auxiliary Language, meaning everyone would learn it as a second language instead of replacing someone’s native language. L.L. Zamenhof had hopes of Esperanto promoting international understanding and cooperation. 

Esperanto started to take off in popularity in the early 1900s with the first Esperanto conference being held in 1905. More people started to learn Esperanto and communicating with it. Esperanto was intentionally created to be a mix of other languages, mainly Latin with influences of English, German, Russian, and Polish. Thus, speakers of those languages or of Romance languages based on Latin could vaguely understand parts of the language. 

After Esperanto’s peak, it started to decrease in popularity. There was a movement from the League of Nations in 1920 to select Esperanto as a language of the League, but was rejected.

Speaking Esperanto was banned in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Francoist Spain. Esperanto didn’t die but lost much of its momentum after the second World War. Later, the newly created United Nations General Assembly anounced English, French, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish as official languages, notably excluding Esperanto. 

That brings us to today where there are no commonly used International Auxiliary Languages, except English. English is commonly thought of as a global language. Pop culture, the internet, science, and trade reasons could all be pointed to as the reason for English becoming a truly global language. The embrace of using English for international communication has only proven the need for a widely adopted international auxiliary language. 

Often, in countries where English is not the main language spoken, children are expected to learn English in schools. Travelers and tourists are expected to know English. In the corporate world, knowing English is a valued skill.

There is just one problem with that: English is not an easy language to learn. The combination of pronunciation variations, spelling inconsistencies, complex grammar rules, vast vocabulary and endless synonyms make English and extremely complex language to learn later in life. We cannot keep expecting that foreigners dedicate so much time and effort solely to conform with another culture’s expectations.

Thus, part of the reason Esperanto took off in the first place was that it was specifically designed to be easy to learn. Esperanto only has 16 grammar rules and no exceptions. Letters in Esperanto only make one sound, making it simple to read and write. Esperanto is highly regarded as one of the easiest languages to learn because it was made to learn. 

While there are many positive sides to Esperanto, it is not the best an International Auxiliary Language could be, as it is often criticized for being influenced greatly by European languages. If it is supposed to be an International language, someone speaking Norwegian as their first language should not have a more difficult time learning than someone speaking Mandarin as their first language. 

So if using English as a basic language worldwide is problematic and so is using Esperanto, what is the solution? There is no clear answer to whether there should be another international auxiliary language used worldwide. Even so, creating the language is not the hard part, making it popular is. There is no real life use case to learn one of these constructed languages until more people start to learn, and once more people learn it, governments may take notice and start to implement this in curriculums but the difficulty lies in getting the ball rolling. 

There is already a growing community of people creating new languages for fun or for their job. Toki Pona is a constructed language made by Sonja Lang with only 120 words to try and simplify communication. You may have heard of Klingon, a fictional language created for the Klingons in the Star Trek Universe. Constructed languages like these, as well as International Auxiliary Languages could likely become more accessible with the growing popularity of online language learning platforms like Duolingo. In theory anyone could create a constructed language that might just so happen to be the next world language.