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Esperanto is probably the most widely spoken (est. 100,000 people) artificial language in the world. It was invented in 1887 by Ludwig L. Zamenhof, a Polish physician.
Esperanto owes its relative success to the enthusiastic support by its speakers. There are more than 50 national Esperanto associations, and tens of thousands of books have been published in Esperanto. It is also a co-official language in several professional associations.
Spelling, grammar, and word endings are completely regular and follow simple rules. In sentences, the direct object is told from the subject by the "-n" ending (a remnant of the accusative case), rather than by word order. Word composition and an extensive collection of prefixes and suffixes make it possible to express almost any imaginable concept in Esperanto.
Vocabulary was borrowed largely from Romance languages and other European languages, but following no consistent procedure. Hence, while it is very easy to understand for people who already speak several European languages, even monolingual Europeans may require some training so as to get familiar with its vocabulary.
On the other hand, its using diacritics for certain letters may be an obstacle to its success in the Information Era. To type in Esperanto on your computer, you need to install a special keyboard layout. Some users use the postfix "x" instead of a diacritic to overcome this problem.
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