Esperanto

Esperanto is a constructed (or 'artificial') language created by L.L. Zamenhof in the 1870s and 1880s. Zamenhof envisaged Esperanto as an artificial lingua franca that would facilitate easier global communication. Despite this, he chose to derive much of its vocabulary from Romance, Germanic and other European languages. Today, the users of the languages number at least in the tens of thousands, of whom a few have been identified as native speakers. However, the dominance of several natural languages in the world, especially English, has meant that Esperanto is yet to emerge as a true global tongue.