Good afternoon, Steemians!

Most of you won't know what Esperanto is, but some of you will have heard its name at least. It can be found on Google Translate and language learning websites such as Duolingo.

What is it?

Wikipedia says that "Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language. It is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. The Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, Unua Libro, in Warsaw on 26 July 1887. The name of Esperanto derives from Doktoro Esperanto ("Esperanto" translates as "one who hopes"), the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published Unua Libro.

Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote in Unua Libro:

1. "To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner."

2. "To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication."

3. "To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand."

I never had an idea of what it was, until now. (I think it's the coolest thing ever.) I watched a few YouTube videos about it, and decided it was worth my time (being a language teacher). Here are some of the first videos I watched:

Things I've learned so far:

1. The vowels are ALMOST exactly the same as in Spanish. A - ah like in 'father.' E - eh as in the word 'bet.' I is like a double 'e' in English or like the I in Spanish. O is like oh as in 'oatmeal,' and U is like 'oo' as in 'boot'.

2. Each letter only has one sound, no exceptions! Refer to the second video for this.

3. All nouns end in -O. How simple is that? Every single noun ends in O! Examples: domo = house, hundo = dog, kato = cat, etc.

4. All adjectives end in -A. Also very simple. The word for 'domestic' is like domo, but we just replace the o with an -a so it's 'doma'.

5. All adverbs end with -E. So 'rapide' is 'quickly' whereas 'rapida' is fast.

6. The dipthongs. To make certain sounds in English, we use dipthongs. These are just two letters (vowels) put together to make a certain sound. In Esperanto, we use -aj which sounds like the letter I in English, - ej which sounds like the letter A in English, -oj which sounds like oi mate!, -uj which sounds like oo-ee, -aŭ which sounds like "oww" in English and eŭ which sounds like ehh-oow. Example: aŭto = car

7. The incredibly simple grammar. To conjugate a verb, you just follow the same pattern for every verb. There are no exceptions and no irregular verbs. To conjugate the verb "to be" (esti) you just use this: Mi estas = I am; Vi estas = you are; Li estas = He is; ŝi estas (pronounced "she") = She is; Ni estas = We are; Vi estas (also you all are); ili estas = They are.

Notice that the conjugation doesn't change, just the subject pronouns.

I know a bit more, but this post is getting kind of long already. Anyway, I'm very excited to begin learning this new language as it's seriously SO EASY. Anyone who speaks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, or Polish will have an easy time with this language.

Check back in a bit and maybe I will do another post about the incredible language ESPERANTO!