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Esperanto

2023-11-08T08:03:14Z

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'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Language ==

=== Schools of Thought ===

==== Bonlingvismo ====

''Bonlingvismo''<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://bonalingvo.net|title=The Good Language|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=La Bona Lingvo}}</ref> is a pro-fundamento ideology developed by Claude Piron in the eponymous book ''La Bona Lingvo''.<ref>{{Citation|title=The Good Language|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=La Bona Lingvo|author=Claude Piron|title-url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/livres/bonalingvo.htm}}</ref> It encourges and emphasizes defending the Fundamental rules of Esperanto.

Bonlingvismo was developed in response to the increasing amount of foreign radicals being imported, which increases the difficulty of learning the language.

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric ===
This criticism is based on the notion that Esperanto is too European for non-Europeans, discouraging them from learning it or implying they don't belong.

Such fact cited by them is that, for example, a majority {{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kat'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kat''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about 3 gendered pronouns of Esperanto:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Esperanto

2023-11-08T07:50:58Z

Amicchan: Noted bonlingvismo.

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Language ==

=== Schools of Thought ===

==== Bonlingvismo ====

''Bonlingvismo''<ref>{{Web citation|url=bonalingvo.net|title=The Good Language|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=La Bona Lingvo}}</ref> is a pro-fundamento ideology developed by Claude Piron in the eponymous book ''La Bona Lingvo''.<ref>{{Citation|title=The Good Language|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=La Bona Lingvo|author=Claude Piron|title-url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/livres/bonalingvo.htm}}</ref> It encourges and emphasizes defending the Fundamental rules of Esperanto.

Bonlingvismo was developed in response to the increasing amount of foreign radicals being imported, which increases the difficulty of learning the language.

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric ===
This criticism is based on the notion that Esperanto is too European for non-Europeans, discouraging them from learning it or implying they don't belong.

Such fact cited by them is that, for example, a majority {{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kat'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kat''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about 3 gendered pronouns of Esperanto:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Esperanto

2023-10-15T04:50:54Z

Amicchan:

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric ===
This criticism is based on the notion that Esperanto is too European for non-Europeans, discouraging them from learning it or implying they don't belong.

Such fact cited by them is that, for example, a majority {{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kat'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kat''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about 3 gendered pronouns of Esperanto:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Esperanto

2023-10-14T23:04:20Z

Amicchan: /* Eurocentric vocabulary */ Generalize.

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric ===
This criticism is based on the notion that Esperanto is too European for non-Europeans, discouraging them from learning it or implying they don't belong.

Such fact cited by them is that, for example, a majority {{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kato'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kato''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about 3 gendered pronouns of Esperanto:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Esperanto

2023-10-14T22:52:42Z

Amicchan: /* Pronouns */

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric vocabulary ===
This criticism is based on the notion that an international language must have diverse etimology. Critics claim that a majority{{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kato'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kato''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about 3 gendered pronouns of Esperanto:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Esperanto

2023-10-14T22:42:01Z

Amicchan: /* Gendered vocabulary */ Highlight importance of fundamento.

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric vocabulary ===
This criticism is based on the notion that an international language must have diverse etimology. Critics claim that a majority{{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists (often [[liberal]]s) that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to form alternate terms formed from the Esperanto grammar: ''patr''' → ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''nask'it''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc. This is done by most speakers.

* Another traditional solution is to junction a root word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'kato'''/ ''Kat'in''' / ''Kato''') This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

However, this issue is controversial to the earlier mentioned esperantists (again often liberals), who instead have proposed to reform the language.

{{note|An important part of esperanto history is of defending against reforms; often because such reforms were reactionarily nationalist or not really international; and, in the case of Ido, would have butchered the language. Hence such discussion is controversial and most Esperantists defend the fundamento.

Additionally, [[historical materialism]] must be taken into account. Such proposals, even if done, would not materially benefit [[LGBT]] people.}}

* One of these proposals is of unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), moled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about the gendered pronouns of Esperanto. Esperanto includes three singular pronouns:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers (notably of the U.S) feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because it (to them) holds a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns.

However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it; and [[Chinese (language)|Chinese]] was similar in this regard until the 1920s as a result of imposition of western culture; hence such a taboo is not neccesarily universal.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some esperantists use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person.

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study claims that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Topic:X22tkdp6ehejw8ir

2023-09-29T00:13:21Z

Amicchan (talk | contribs) commented on "Unsure this page is relevant to ProleWiki" (With further thought and after further studying, I don't agree, think of how heavily used Psychiatry is by states (both bourgeois and pro...)

Esperanto

2023-08-30T18:22:15Z

Amicchan: Nask'ig'into -> Nask'int'o (proper term) and add Nask'it'o. Reorganize info and citations.

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====
[[File:Soviet Esperanto Zamenhof stamp 1927.jpg|thumb|142x142px|[[USSR Postage Stamp Catalogue|CPA]] Esperanto postage stamp, 1927]]
In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric vocabulary ===
This criticism is based on the notion that an international language must have diverse etimology. Critics claim that a majority{{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal. (However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.)

* The traditional solution is to used alternative terms formed in Esperanto: ''patr' → gener'int'o'' or ''nask'int'o'',<ref name="naskinto,naskito">{{Citation|year=1910|title=Proverbaro Esperanta|quote=Kia naskinto, tiaj naskitoj.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|year=1916|title=Malnova Testamento|quote=Grandan ĝojon havas patro de virtulo, Kaj naskinto de saĝulo ĝojos pro li.|author=L. L. Zamenhof}}</ref> ''fil' → id''' or ''naskit''',<ref name="naskinto,naskito" /> ''reĝ' → monarĥ''' etc.

However, this issue has been controversial to some Esperanto speakers, who voice a range of opinions on the subject: junctioning the gendered roots to the male default radicals (or root words) and using the familial radicals genderlessly; including the proposal of official reforms to the language, the de facto colloquial adoption of more gender-neutral language changes; and the insistence on keeping the language as-is.

* A solution is to junction a word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'patr''' / ''Patr'vir''' (father); ''patr'in''' / ''in'patr''' (mother); ''patr''' (parent)) This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.

* Additionally, an unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), modeled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about the gendered pronouns of Esperanto. Esperanto includes three singular pronouns:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because they hold a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as to them it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns. However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some people use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person,

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study notes that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Topic:Xkn62ppjrvriifqb

2023-07-07T02:09:37Z

Amicchan (talk | contribs) commented on "Reverted the blanking" (I don't see much point archiving this. *here*; that belongs to a dedicated archiving site.)

File:Diamat-illustrated.svg

2023-06-30T23:23:39Z

Amicchan: An illustration of dialectical materialism to easier remember and learn its principles.

== Summary ==
An illustration of dialectical materialism to easier remember and learn its principles.

Contradiction

2023-06-26T14:11:08Z

Amicchan: Added the yin-yang symbol, often used to illustrate contradiction.

[[File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg|thumb|128px|The modern [[Yin-yang]] is a illustration of contradiction.]]

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Identity_and_Struggle_of_the_Aspects_of_a_Contradiction|The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity….}}</ref>

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

== Identity ==

Identity refers to the ''material'' linked coexistence of both aspects in a contradiction and that the contradictory aspects conditionally transform into their opposites.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation--all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.}}</ref> Identity exists conditionally.<ref>{{Citation|author=V. I. [[Lenin]]|title=Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic, Collected Works Russian Edition|city=Moscow|year=1958|volume=XXXVIII|page=97-98|quote=Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another, why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

File:Yin and Yang symbol.svg

2023-06-26T14:04:58Z

Amicchan: Icon of the modern yin-yang.

== Summary ==
Icon of the modern [[yin-yang]].

Topic:Xjrn38uiz6sx7vvn

2023-06-10T10:20:36Z

Amicchan (talk | contribs) commented on "How many forces can be in a contradiction?" (I know that there must be at least 2 forces in a contradiction; but I am uncertain if the amount beyond that is limited or not. Although...)

Topic:Xii4e9uktn8g26n7

2023-05-21T02:01:43Z

Amicchan (talk | contribs) commented on "Date formatting" (For long dates, you could try the long form ISO 8609 format: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601. Also, could try a substitution tool on...)

Valve Corporation

2023-05-05T06:46:07Z

Amicchan:

{{stub}}
{{Infobox company
|name=Valve Corporation
|website=[https://valvesoftware.com valvesoftware.com]
|founder=[[Gabe Newell]]
|type=Private
}}

'''Valve Corporation''' is a [[Capitalism|capitalist]] video game company led by [[billionaire]]<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.forbes.com/profile/gabe-newell/?sh=2e5ff8077da0|title=Gabe Newell|newspaper=[[Forbes]]}}</ref> [[Gabe Newell]].

==Controversies==

Valve declined to respond on the presence of [[Neo-nazism|neo-nazi]]s on Steam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/|title=Steam has a hate group problem because Valve fails to enforce its own rules|date=-2018-08-13|author=Wes Fenlon}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Andy Chalk|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/us-senator-asks-gabe-newell-what-valve-is-doing-to-fight-nazis-on-steam/|title=US senator asks Gabe Newell what Valve is doing to fight Nazis on Steam|date=2022-12-16}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Companies based in the United States]]

Party for Socialism and Liberation

2023-04-29T12:10:05Z

Amicchan: /* Controversies */

{{Infobox political party|name=Party for Socialism and Liberation|logo=PSL.png|founded=June 2004|newspaper=''[[Liberation News]]''|political_orientation=[[Marxism–Leninism]] [[Anti-imperialism]]|website=https://pslweb.org}}{{Communist parties}}
The '''Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)''' is a [[Marxist-Leninist]] political party in the [[United States of America|United States]] founded in June 2004 after a split from the [[Workers World Party]]. Their platform is closely related to the broader [[The ANSWER Coalition|ANSWER Coalition]]. The PSL has funded numerous movements within [[the ANSWER Coalition]] including the movement to liberate [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] from [[United States imperialism|Statesian imperialism]].<ref>An article from the [https://www.answercoalition.org/actions_nationwide_to_demand_u_s_hands_off_cuba Answer Coalition] depicting their stance on Cuba, sponsored by the PSL</ref> The PSL held its first congress in February 2010 in Los Angeles, California.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ian Thompson|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=PSL’s First National Congress strengthens the struggle for socialism|date=2010-02-22|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/10-02-22-psls-first-national-congress-st-html/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190714145018/https://www.liberationnews.org/10-02-22-psls-first-national-congress-st-html/|archive-date=2019-07-14|retrieved=2022-08-08}}</ref>

== History ==
At its founding in 2004, the PSL held a two-part congress to establish publications and a party structure. Between 2004 and 2010, it held regular conventions that were open to all members to elect party leadership between conventions. In 2010, the party held its first delegated congress and adopted its constitution and program. The PSL held a second congress in 2013.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Building democratic centralism: stages of Party growth and internal development|date=2014-07-31|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/building-democratic-centralism-stages-party-growth-internal-development/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210116082555/https://www.liberationnews.org/building-democratic-centralism-stages-party-growth-internal-development/|archive-date=2021-01-16|retrieved=2022-12-25}}</ref>

== Program ==

=== Anti-imperialism ===
The PSL supports immediate independence and reparations for [[Puerto Rico]] with freedom of travel between Puerto Rico and the United States. It also supports self-determination and potential independence of [[American Samoa]], [[Guam]], the [[Virgin Islands of the United States|Virgin Islands]], the [[Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands|Mariana Islands]], and indigenous nations on the U.S. mainland.<ref name=":0">{{News citation|newspaper=Party for Socialism and Liberation|title=Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation|date=2010|url=https://pslweb.org/program/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220615034341/https://pslweb.org/program/|archive-date=2022-06-15|retrieved=2022-06-18}}</ref>

=== Social benefits ===
The PSL advocates for a 30-hour work week, up to two years of paid parental leave, a minimum of one month of paid vacation and 12 paid holidays. It also supports universal citizenship for everyone living in the United States, free education from preschool to college, and reducing housing costs to 10% of total income or less.<ref name=":0" />

== Chapters ==
Contact information of the following PSL chapters is available on the party website.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Party for Socialism and Liberation|title=Contact us|url=https://www2.pslweb.org/contact|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707094332/https://www2.pslweb.org/contact|archive-date=2022-07-07|retrieved=2022-07-28}}</ref> This list is organized by region of the United States.

=== Midwest ===

* Champaign–Urbana
* Chicago
* Cleveland
* Detroit
* Indianapolis
* Lexington
* Miami Valley
* Milwaukee
* Springfield

=== Northeast ===

* Albany
* Baltimore
* Boston
* Chester County, Pennsylvania
* Finger Lakes
* Lancaster
* New Haven
* New Paltz
* New York City
* Philadelphia
* Pittsburgh
* Southern New Hampshire
* Syracuse
* Washington, D.C.

=== Plains ===

* Albuquerque
* Dallas
* Denver
* Houston
* San Antonio

=== Southeast ===

* Asheville
* Atlanta
* Birmingham
* Central Gulf Coast
* Columbia
* Raleigh–Durham
* Sarasota
* Tampa

=== West ===

* Anchorage
* Boise/Pocatello
* Kennewick–Pasco–Richland
* Los Angeles
* Phoenix
* Portland
* Sacramento
* Salt Lake City
* San Diego
* San Francisco
* San Jose
* Seattle

== Publications ==
The party's main publication is the monthly paper ''[[Liberation News]]'',<ref>https://www.liberationnews.org</ref> which replaced a quarterly magazine, ''Socialism and Liberation''.<ref>[https://www.liberationnews.org/07-06-05-socialism-liberation-magazine-is-html/ "Socialism and Liberation magazine is changing"]. June 5, 2007. January 7, 2018.</ref> The PSL also publishes ''Breaking the Chains: A Socialist Perspective on Women's Liberation,'' a quarterly socialist and [[Feminism|feminist]] magazine,<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=|title=About Breaking the Chains|url=https://www.breakingthechainsmag.org/about/|newspaper=Breaking the Chains|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-03}}</ref> and ''Reds In Ed'', a monthly newsletter initiated by teachers who are members of the PSL.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=2020-03-13|title=Reds In Ed program|url=https://redsined.org/the-reds-in-ed-program/|newspaper=Reds in Ed|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-02}}</ref> Additionally, the PSL publishes ''Liberation School'', which publishes longer-form analysis, Party documents, interviews, and educational resources including study guides, curricula, and video and audio courses.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=2022-01-02|title=Our mission|url=https://liberationschool.org/about/|newspaper=Liberation School|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-02}}</ref>

== Controversies ==
Some controversies of the PSL have arisen in recent years as its prominence grows in the public eye<ref>[https://medium.com/@dotcommunism/psls-brian-becker-loud-clear-radio-and-right-wing-entryism-349cf6f29aa4 Medium Article surrounding the actions of Brian Becker (with its own citations)]</ref> and while no political organization is completely without fault, these controversies must also be viewed within the context that communist parties in the US are regularly targeted by intelligence agencies for sabotage, as demonstrated by the FBI's [[COINTELPRO]] operation.

The PSL has been accused of permitting sexual harassment<ref>[https://archive.is/yT5vp#selection-42.0-42.1 Writings of a PSL member who was allegedly abused by Steven Powers]</ref> and being cult-like.<ref>[https://medium.com/@jacobscb/documentation-of-corruption-institutional-bigotry-and-high-control-group-cult-like-behavior-in-6afa65b8072e Medium post that is a directory of various accounts of PSL's bad behavior.]</ref>

Some critics said that Brian Becker hosted a radio show with reactionaries.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://medium.com/@dotcommunism/psls-brian-becker-loud-clear-radio-and-right-wing-entryism-349cf6f29aa4|title=PSL’s Brian Becker, Loud & Clear Radio, and Right-Wing Entryism|author=dotcommunism|date=2018-01-05}}</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Communist parties]]
[[Category:Statesian communist parties]]

Valve Corporation

2023-04-28T06:54:18Z

Amicchan:

{{stub}}
{{Infobox company
|name=Valve Corporation
|website=[https://valvesoftware.com valvesoftware.com]
|founder=[[Gabe Newell]]
|type=Private
}}

Valve is a [[Capitalism|capitalist]] video game company led by Gabe Newell.

==Controversies==

Valve declined to respond on the presence of [[Neo-nazism|neo-nazi]]s on Steam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/|title=Steam has a hate group problem because Valve fails to enforce its own rules|date=-2018-08-13|author=Wes Fenlon}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Andy Chalk|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/us-senator-asks-gabe-newell-what-valve-is-doing-to-fight-nazis-on-steam/|title=US senator asks Gabe Newell what Valve is doing to fight Nazis on Steam|date=2022-12-16}}</ref>

International auxiliary language

2023-04-28T06:47:57Z

Amicchan: /* Emergence */ Added mention of early IALs.

{{stub}}
An '''international auxiliary language''' is an auxiliary [[language]] for communication between nations. A common example of an IAL is [[Esperanto]]; a more regional (or zonal) example is Interslavic.

The use and discussion of IALs have grown as a response to the controversial use of the [[English language]] and [[French language]] as auxiliary languages. These languages have colonial history and have been imposed on native populations. English also has a high diffuclty, on par with [[Mandarin]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/learning-english-hard/|title= Why Is English So Hard to Learn?}}</ref>

==History==

===Emergence===

IALs have formed since the 1500s, during the emergence of [[capitalism]]. The Philosophical language, for example, was developed in 1688.<ref>{{Citation|title=An Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language|title-url=https://archive.org/details/AnEssayTowardsARealCharacterAndAPhilosophicalLanguage/|author=John Wilkins|year=1668}}</ref>

IALs began to notably emerge during the 1870s, when [[imperialism]] began to develop. The first notable IAL to develop was [[Volapük]] as it had a vast community; however it split due to the creator's lack of criticism. It was eventually displaced by Esperanto.

===Socialist Use===

IALs began to be used by [[Socialism|socialists]] and [[communist]]s in the 1900s<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bibion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Internacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kongresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref> to be able to communicate among language barriers and better implement [[proletarian internationalism]].

In 1920 the [[Communist International (1919–1943)|Communist International]] created an [[Esperanto Section of the Communist International|Esperanto section]] and Ido section after some requests.

Some [[worker cooperative]]s, such as [[Interhelpo]], used IALs to ease communication with people who learned different national languages.

===Oppression===

IALs were banned in [[German Reich (1933–1945)|Nazi Germany]] after a June 6 1936 decree, targeting Esperanto, to defend [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref>

==References==
<references />

[[Category:International auxiliary languages]]

Esperanto

2023-04-28T06:05:44Z

Amicchan: /* Poland */ Pola Radio Esperanto broadcasts seem to have ended in July 2021.

'''Esperanto''' is an [[international auxiliary language]] (IAL) developed by [[Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof]] in 1887 through the ''Unua Libro''. It is the most popular IAL, with the estimated amount of speakers varying between 10,000 and 2,000,000 depending on the criteria of a speaker used. It is maintained by the <abbr title='Esperanto: Akademio de Esperanto; AdE'>Academy of Esperanto</abbr>.

[[Image:Flag of Esperanto.svg|thumb|200px|Flag of the Esperanto movement.]]

==History==

The ideals of Esperanto attracted interest from all over the political spectrum, particularly catching the interest of [[Pacifism|pacifists]] as well as some [[Nationalism#Proletarian nationalism/socialist patriotism|national liberation]] movements. Although [[idealism]] pervaded the original conception of Esperanto, many [[Left–right political spectrum|leftists]] were nonetheless attracted to the various goals of peace, internationalism, and neutrality that it represented, as well as in some cases the practicality of having an alternative means of international communication outside of national languages. For instance, in [[East Asia]], many Esperantists used Esperanto to bridge communication gaps between the [[Japanese language|Japanese]], [[Korean language|Korean]], and [[Chinese language|Chinese]] languages, particularly in the face of the imposition of [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese imperialism]].<ref name=":0" /> For example, in 1924, Korean Esperantists made a declaration in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper, declaring "Opposing Japan's linguistic imperialism, each nation should use its own natural language, and humanity should use Esperanto in common."<ref name=":6">[http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 “100세 한국에스페란토 협회, 온라인으로 큰 행사 펼쳐.”] Sisa-News.com, 2020.10.06. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220702233707/http://www.sisa-news.com/news/article.html?no=135950 Archived] 2022-07-23.</ref> While in China, Esperantists also participated in the anti-Japanese struggle in various ways, for example using Esperanto to communicate with anti-imperialist Japanese Esperantists, notably in the case of Japanese anti-fascist Verda Majo and her work with Chinese Esperantists and anti-imperialists.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":7" /><ref name=":8" /><ref name=":9" />

===Founding===

In 1887, Zamenhof published the ''Unua Libro'', a founding book that describes Esperanto. He published the ''Dua Libro'' the next year for translations and made only one correction in ''Aldono al la Dua Libro'': to replace the ''ian'' constructions with ''iam''<ref group=note>A term that refers to a time period.</ref> to distinguish from the accusative form of ''ia'' (''ia,n'').<ref>{{Citation|quote=2) La sola ŝanĝo, kiun mi trovas necesa fari mem, estas: anstataŭ "ian," "ĉian," "kian," "nenian," "tian"—devas esti: "iam," "ĉiam," "kiam," "neniam," "tiam" (por malegaligi la vortojn "ian" etc. kaj "ia,n" etc).|title=Addition to the Dua Libro|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Aldono al la Dua Libro|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1888}}</ref>

Author Christopher Gledhill summarizes the early aim of Esperanto being "to build a bridge between nations, to allow speakers of different languages to communicate on equal terms in a neutral, user-friendly second language." Gledhill notes that the original title of the project was ''Internacia lingvo'' (English: "International Language"), although part of Zamenhof's pseudonym, Doktoro Esperanto, became the commonly accepted name for the language. Gledhill states that among the hundreds of similar projects which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, Esperanto is the only one to have survived to the present day with a sizable number of speakers and a worldwide literature.<ref name=":10">Gledhill, Christopher. 1998b, 2000c. "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-based description." ([https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document PDF]). (Languages of the World / Materials 190). München : Lincom Europa. 150pp. ISBN 3-8958- 6961-9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404073248/https://hal-univ-paris.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01220008/document Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>

An 1891 poem written by Zamenhof called "La Espero" (English: "The Hope") expresses some of the ideals envisioned by the language's creator, who emphasized his hope that by creating an easy to learn language which could be studied for international communication without supplanting anyone's native language, it would create more peace and understanding in the world. Since its writing, the poem has been performed to music among Esperanto speakers and generally been adopted as an anthem of Esperanto. Some of the aims expressed in the song include "On a neutral language basis, understanding one another, the peoples will make in agreement one great family circle" and "our diligent set of colleagues in peaceful labor will never tire until the beautiful dream of humanity for eternal blessing is realized." The song refers to the "peaceful warriors" who gather to labor under the "sacred sign of hope."<ref>[https://lyricstranslate.com/en/esperanto-hymn-la-espero-himno-esperanto-hymn-hope-hymn.html “National Anthems & Patriotic Songs - La Espero Lyrics + English Translation.”] Lyricstranslate.com. </ref>

By 1905, Esperanto had spread to [[Africa]],<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1906_n11_nov/page/232/mode/2up|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1906|quote=Afriko. Algerio. S-ro M. Baissac enpre- sis la artikolojn pri ĝeneva kongreso en ga- zetoj: „La Republicain“ kaj „L“Independant-. La ĵurnalo „Alĝeria Stelo“ unuiĝis kun fran- ca ĵurnalo „Esperanto“. Madagaskaro. Kapi- tano Fortin en Ankadifotsy ageme propagan- das „Esperanto“ en tiu ĉi insulo. La loka gazeto „Le Courrier de Tananarive“ ekintere- siĝinta pri Esperanto enhavas kronikon kaj artikolojn pri disvastigado de Esperanto. En unu el la lastaj numeroj estis enpresita al- |voko de Madagaskaraj esperantistoj, en kiu ili petas ĉiujn aprobantojn viziti la senpagajn esper. kursojn. Laŭ sciigoj de tiu sama ga- zeto Esperanto havas sur Madagaskaro ĝis 1000 adeptoj.}}</ref> [[Asia]], [[Europe]], and the [[Americas]].

In 1905, Zamenhof published the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', which defines Esperanto. It was declared the sole foundational document of Esperanto by Zamenhof in the Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism;<ref name=:4 /> he recommended all Esperantists to follow this declaration to maintain unity; and established the Academy of Esperanto to manage the language. (A practice similar to [[democratic centralism]].)

====Reformist Factions====

Attempts to change the fundamentals of Esperanto have formed during it's life often manifesting through [[factionalism]] in the Esperanto movement.

Under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, Zamenhof created a Reformed Variant Esperanto of 1894; but it was heavily rejected by the Esperanto community, and Zamenhof himself came to hate attempt.

=====Ido=====
[[Ido]] formed from a hidden faction of reforming Esperantists. The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded by Louis Couturat to decide on the adoption of a particular IAL, after the rejection of the petition by the International Association of Academies. This delegation, in October 1907, had decided to select Esperanto. However, in practice they had chosen Ido<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' >{{Web citation|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|author=Emile BOIRAC|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|archive-date=2011-11-26}}</ref> which the committee claimed was made by an anonymous individual; but it was revealed later that the creators Ido (during the foundation of the Delegation) were the French representatives of Ido, Louis Couturat and Louis de Beaufront (then representative of the Academy of Esperanto).

The delegation undemocratically attempted to force acceptance on the AdE.<ref name='raporto lingva komitato' /> They sent a notice to the AdE demanding an agreement to acceptance of Ido in one month or otherwise the delegation would act independently and promote Ido.<ref>{{Citation|author=Emile BOIRAC|title-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111126055339/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Historio/raporto.LK.1908.html|title=Raporto de la Prezidanto de la Lingva Komitato al la Universala Kongreso de Esperanto|year=1908|quote= "Nothing has yet been decided about the name of the adopted language. If the Esperantists will accept it, it will be named "Esperanto without supersigns" or simply "Esperanto"; and the Committee will be hapy to recognize in this way that you are its first and main author and do justice to your beautiful work, which it admires. In the opposite case, it will be forced to give the language another name, "Auxiliaro" for example, and leave to non-partisan history the job of defining your part in its creation. But everything leads us to hope that agreement will be reached between the two organizations, on the basis defined jointly by the conclusions of our report and by the Ido project (which is neither by M. Leau nor by me)." (9) }}</ref> The AdE complained that one month was not enough time to reach this decision. In January 1908, the AdE held a vote on whether the the Delegation should be met. The vote consisted of 61 voters; 34 (55%) of them had voted to not negotiate with the Delegation committee and rejected their reform proposals.<ref>{{Citation|page=127|quote=Meanwhile, the Language Committee had been considering the proposals of the Delegation Committee, and January 1908 the votes were counted. On the matter of negotiation with the Delegation Committee, the 61 replies were divided as follows:
* 8 did not feel themselves well enough informed or did not ex-
press their opinion clearly;
* 8 approved entirely of the Delegation and its reforms;
* 11 wanted small changes, the product of mature consideration
by the Language Committee and made in agreement with the Delegation Committee;
* 34 did not wish to negotiate with the Delegation Committee and disapproved of all kinds of reform proposals.|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|title=The World Esperanto Movement}}</ref>

Idists named Ido "Esperanto" as they considered Ido to be Esperanto. Contrastingly, Esperantists rejected Ido; as part of Zamenhof's Declaration on the Essence of Esperantism. On January 1908, Zamenhof further defended the Esperantist's sovereignty on Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title=The World Esperanto Movement|title-url=https://literaturo.weebly.com/uploads/8/2/9/5/8295099/the_esperanto_movement_-_peter_g._forster__1982__-_with_bookmarks.pdf|author=Peter G. Forster|year=1982|page=126|quote=On the same day Zamenhof wrote and had published in some leading Esperanto journals a circular letter to all Esperantists, announcing the breaking off of negotiations. Only the Esperantists are entitled to make changes, argued Zamenhof; unity is essential; and the Delegation Committee presented its conclusions in an offensive way. The scientists who have done this will soon see their error, he continued, but until then we Esperantists will go peacefully on our way.}}</ref>

In 1908, the AdE broke off relations with the delegation and reformists were not reelected in the 1908 election eventually left the AdE and national Esperanto associations.

Some leading Esperantists defected from the Esperanto movement and joined the Ido movement.

However the Ido committee allowed for constant changes to the language until 1913 leading to disunifying factionalism, exacerbated by bourgeois nationalism emerging in imperialist countries during the [[First World War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#ido|title=How to Build a Language|author=Don Harlow}}</ref>

In the 1920s some Idists (speakers of Ido) had developed their own IALs and split from the Ido movement.

===Opposition===

[[Colonialism|Colonialist]] [[French Republic (1870–1940)|France]] opposed and vetoed the adoption of Esperanto by the [[League of Nations]] in a 1922 vote<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://www.loc.gov/item/2021670575/|title=International Conference Regarding the Use of Esperanto.}}</ref> to defend [[French language|French]] and [[English language|English]] hegemony.

====Oppression====

In 1922, France banned Esperanto in schools<ref name='imp 1'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-danger-of-esperanto.html|title=The Danger of Esperanto|date=2014-09-10|quote=The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that the teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country.

They contend that children will naturally take to an easy language such as Esperanto and in that time French and English would perish and that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national langue plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and point to Poland and Lorraine as examples.}}</ref><ref name='imp 2'>{{Web citation|url=https://impofthediverse.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-say-non-to-esperanto.html|title=The French Say “Non” to Esperanto|date=2014-07-16|quote=Esperanto has been barred from French universities. The language, favored by a great many French societies, chambers of commerce and similar organizations, has lost caste with leading French educators because, they declare, it is one of the favorite mediums for spreading Communistic propaganda.

Leon Berard, minister of education, says there is no place for an international artificial tongue in French educational institutions, which ought to devote themselves to teaching national cultural languages. Esperanto, he said in his dictum, placing a ban on it, "seeks to eliminate any reason for international culture and development of children’s minds, and has become an instrument of systematic internationalization of enemy languages and all original thought to express national development.}}</ref> for the reasons of [[anti-communism]] and that it would make the French and English languages go extinct.<ref name='imp 1' /><ref name='imp 2'/>

The [[Kingdom of Hungary]] restricted Esperanto in 1920 due to it's local association with the [[Bolsheviks]] and to uphold [[bourgeois]] [[nationalism]].

Bourgeois media and historians (prominently [[Liberalism|liberal]] Ulrich Lins) claim that the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|USSR]] oppressed Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|author=Ulrich Lins|title=Dangerous Language|trans-title=La Danĝera Lingvo|trans-lang=Esperanto|isbn=978-1-352-00019-1|year=2017}}</ref> However, there is not much evidence to support this claim, and the minority of Esperantists that were persecuted were often persecuted for being class enemies of the Soviet Union.

=====Fascist=====
[[Image:World Map of Esperanto oppression by territory (WWII).svg|thumb|400px|Map of territorial oppression of Esperanto by fascists during WWII.]]

Esperanto was oppressed by fascists ([[Nazi Germany]]<ref>[https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/cb4ef98e-0e0a-4fc6-bb11-af8e86a9baaa/ The decree of 6 June 1936, signed on Himmler’s behalf by Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich’s deputy: Bundesarchiv, R 58/7421, fol. 204–5.]</ref> in Europe and [[Empire of Japan|Imperial Japan]] in Asia) during the 1930s and [[Second World War|WWII]], to defend bourgeois nationalism and also due to Esperanto's association with [[communism]], [[anti-imperialism]], and national liberation.

The Nazis also oppressed Esperanto due to [[Antisemitism]], as Zamenhof was [[Judaism|jewish]]. Esperantists, particularly Zamenhof's family, were targeted during the [[Holocaust]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://dirkdeklein.net/2017/11/11/esperanto-the-forgotten-holocaust/|title=Esperanto- the forgotten Holocaust.}}</ref><ref>G. Silfer + Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), La dudeksepa de januaro: du publikaj deklaroj, Heroldo de Esperanto 2281 (2:2018), p. 2</ref>

===Socialism and Communism===

As early as April 1905; [[Socialism|socialist]]s were reported to consider using Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n01_apr_djvu.txt|page=44|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|year=1905|quote=Hollando. Profesoro Domela Nieuwen- huis, partopreninta en Romo en socialisto kongreso, konvinkiĝis pri neceseco de neŭtrala lingvo por internacia popola partio. Estroj de loka Sociala pario jam komencis trarigarda- don kaj komparadon de ĉiuj ekzistantaj siste- moj de arta lingvo, por enksnduki la plejbonan en la komunan uzadon. Ortedoksa kristana partio ĉn sia ĵurnalo: „Mondbatalo“, elranta en Pur- merendo kaj predikanta vegetariecon kaj bi- bion, aminde cedis unu koloneton por ĉiama enpresado de esperanta teksto,}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|page=139|chapter=INTER SOCIALISTOJ|quote=21—8 Junio de nuna jarcrestis sendita en 1 n- ternacian Socialistan Oficejon (Bu- reau Socialiste Internationale) en Bruxelles (Belgique) la sekvanta letero „La subskribintoj, aliĝintaj al Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, petas de la Inter- nacia Socialista Oficejo en Bruselo alprenon de iniernacia lingvo Esperanto, kiel oficiala lingvo de Internacia Federacio de Laboristoj, kaj uzadon de tiu ĉi lingvo por ĉiuj internaciaj cirkuleroj, sciigoj kaj kon- gresoj“|title=Ruslanda Esperantisto|title-url=https://archive.org/details/RuslandaEsperantisto_1905_n06_dec/page/138/mode/2up|year=1905}}</ref>

====USSR====

In the 1920s, the early Soviet Republic offered support for Esperanto in public schools.<ref>{{Citation|title-url=https://osupublicationarchives.osu.edu/?a=d&d=LTN19200721-01.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------|title=Use of Esperanto Spreading Rapidly Throughout World|publisher=The Lantern|date=1920-07-21|chapter=Favored by Soviet|quote="Most significant of all is the word recently received from Russia via the Bolshevik newspaper, [[Pravda]], which announces: Theoretical dispute as to an artificial language in the national ! commission of the section for public instruction has ended most favorably for the Esperanto language. On January 5 the commission in charge of public instruction gave its approval with regard to school teaching of an international language, to Esperanto. . . . . The commission proceeded to a practical solution of the task of introducing Esperanto into every school of the Soviet Republic. " 'First, it introduced the Esperanto language into every school of the Soviet Republic in [[Moscow]], [[Petrograd]], Tver, Orel, and Smolensk as an obligatory department of instruction. " 'All private courses of the Esperanto language are aided by the Soviet Government, and Esperanto clubs are being founded according to the instructions of Lunasharski, commissary (minister) of public instruction. }}</ref>

[[Leon Trotsky]] claimed that [[Joseph Stalin]] had studied Esperanto while in exile, but also that he never learned a foreign language.<ref>{{Citation|author=[[Leon Trotsky]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/stalin/ch04.htm|title=Stalin – An Appraisal of the Man and his Influence|chapter=Chapter IV: The Period of Reaction|year=1940|quote=In the Baku prison he began to study Esperanto as “the language of the future”. That touch most instructively exposes the quality of Koba’s intellectual equipment, which in the sphere of learning always sought the line of least resistance. Although he spent eight years in prison and exile, he never managed to learn a single foreign language, not excluding his ill-starred Esperanto.}}</ref> [[Grover Furr]] had disproved the accusation that Stalin has never learnt a foreign language; but still claimed that Stalin had learned Esperanto.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Stalin did study foreign languages: Latin, in school, German when he was abroad, and Esperanto. He was also well read in Marxism and European classical literature in Russian translation. B.S. Ilizarov. "Stalin. Shtriki k portretu na fone ego biblioteki i arkhiva.” Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 3,4 (2000),|isbn=978-0578284996|title=[[Library:The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”|The Fraud of the “Testament of Lenin”]]|year=2022|page=193|publisher=Erythros Press and Media|author=[[Grover Furr]]}}</ref>

Soviet Esperantists in the [[Red Army]] fought in the anti-fascist war against [[Nazi Germany]].<ref>{{Citation|title=Soviet Esperantists, which battled against the Nazis in the second world war|trans-title=Esperantistoj de Sovetunio, kiuj batalis kontraŭ nazioj en la 2-a mondmilito|trans-lang=Esperanto|title-url=https://reu.ru/prenu/ili_batalis_kontrau_nazioj_en_la_2a_mondmilito.pdf|year=2022|author=Anatolo Sidorov|publisher=Russian Esperantist Union}}</ref>

====China====

{{quote|If Esperanto is taken as a form and enshrined in the way of true internationalism and the way of true revolution, then Esperanto can be learned and should be learned.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Esperanto, China’s Surprisingly Prominent Linguistic Subculture is Slowly Dying Out|url=https://glocal.soas.ac.uk/chinese-esperanto/}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=27}}</ref>|[[Mao Zedong]]|Letter|Yan'an Esperanto Association, October 1939}}
[[File:7th Esperanto Week of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan.png|thumb|Photos of the 7th "Esperanto Week" of the elementary school Baiyangshujie in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China in 2019.<ref name=":19">Zhang Hui. [http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm “Okazis La 7-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie En Taiyuan.”] ''Espero.com.cn'', 2019, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210223142816/http://www.espero.com.cn/2019-12/27/content_75555532.htm Archived] 2021-02-23.</ref>]]

Esperanto is supported by the [[Communist Party of China]] and the Chinese people. They supported it during the [[Anti-Japanese Resistance]] and the [[Chinese Civil War]].

The Propaganda Department of the Bureau of the CPC hosted an Esperanto school in [[Chongqing]] in 1938.<ref>{{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]|page=97}}</ref>

The [[China Esperanto League]] along with it's Esperanto journal ''El Popola Ĉinio'' were established in 1951.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2013-05/10/content_28783064.htm|title=Ĉina Esperanto-Ligo|date=2013-05-10}}</ref> [[China Radio International]] supported Esperanto starting from 1964.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2004/12/08/Zt21@18131.htm|title=China Radio International}}</ref>

The 89th Universal Congress of Esperanto happened in [[Beijing]], China in 2004. The 71st congress was held in Beijing in 1986.

One can take a virtual tour of the Esperanto Museum (Esperanto: ''Esperanto Muzeo''; Chinese: 世界语博物馆) of [[Zaozhuang College]], located in [[Zaozhuang City]], [[Shandong Province]], via 720yun.com,<ref>[https://www.720yun.com/t/c18jvzyavy8?scene_id=20209431 世界语博物馆VR全景. VR Panorama of Esperanto Museum.] 720yun.com.</ref> as well as visit their website to see news and descriptions of the museum's collections and activities.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/ Esperanto Muzeo]. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082633/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/?WebShieldDRSessionVerify=TD0ZEtlrpd90KXVULeyZ Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

The elementary school Baiyangshujie in Shanxi Province holds "Esperanto Week" events. Since 2008, Esperanto has become a special course at the school. Since 2013, Esperanto Week has been held every year at the school. The 7th such event in 2019, with the theme "Chinese spirit, world view" was attended by more than 1,500 people including students, teachers, and parents. Professor Li Weilun of the Beijing Language and Culture University was invited to participate in the school's event and decided to donate 40,000 yuan every year as a Weilun scholarship to support Esperanto learning and activities at the school. In addition, there were lectures given by Professor Gong Xiaofeng (Arko) from Nanchang University and Mrs. Yu Jianchao, president of the Beijing Esperanto Association. The lectures attracted around 700 parents and teachers, which helped them get to know the language better.<ref name=":19" /><ref>[http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm “Verdas Poploj Esperante: La 5-a Esperanto-Semajno de La Elementa Lernejo Baiyangshujie.]” ''China.org.cn. 2018-01-11.'' Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407061731/http://esperanto.china.org.cn/2018-01/11/content_50215440.htm Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2022, Zaozhuang College hosted the Esperanto International Proficiency Test based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Esperanto: ''Komuna Eŭropa Referenckadro'', KER) on November 26. Since 2013, Zaozhuang College has undertaken 5 Esperanto international proficiency exams. A total of 3 teachers in the school have passed the B1 and 3 passed the B2 proficiency exams.<ref>[http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671 2022年世界语国际水平考试在枣庄学院举行.] [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403082930/http://e-muzeo.uzz.edu.cn/shown.asp?id=671&WebShieldDRSessionVerify=qbOx8Zj0cl2ws32Y6Gk5 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref>

===== Verda Majo =====
{{main article|Teru Hasegawa}}
During the 1930s, an [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]], [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Japan|Japanese]] Esperantist originally named Hasegawa Teru, who went by the Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May"), left Japan and went to China, and ended up taking part in helping the Chinese resistance against the [[Empire of Japan (1868–1947)|Japanese Empire]].<ref name=":9">[https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 “绿川英子_百度百科.”] 百度百科. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230402185310/https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%BF%E5%B7%9D%E8%8B%B1%E5%AD%90/9472788 Archive].</ref><ref name=":8">[https://www.baike.com/wikiid/1219825415803732660?view_id=3kh1q57hps2000 “绿川英子 - 快懂百科.”] Baike.com.</ref>

While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating proletarian Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine La Mondo (The World) in Shanghai at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying a Chinese Esperantist. While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35. [[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

====Vietnam====

[[Ho Chi Minh]] learned Esperanto between 1914 and 1917 and supported Esperanto during the [[Vietnamese Liberation War]].<ref name=:1>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]}}</ref> He suggested to the director of [[Voice of Vietnam]] to utilize Esperanto in the Declaration of Independence. He allowed the translation of his written diary ''Tagkajero en Prizono.''<ref name=:1 />

Voice of Vietnam supported Esperanto from september 1945 until december 1946, when French colonialists invaded Vietnam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=http://esperanto.cri.cn/1/2006/12/27/1@51427.htm|title=Ho Chi Minh kaj Esperanto|date=2006-12-27T14:53:21Z+08:00|newspaper=[[China Radio International]]|quote=La ĉiutaga radio-elsendo en Esperanto daŭris de septembro 1945 ĝis la eksplodo de la agresmilito fare de la francaj koloniistoj en Vjetnamio en decembro 1946.}}</ref>

The 97th Universal Congress of Esperanto occurred in [[Hanoi]], Vietnam in 2012.<ref>{{Web citation|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120910054839/http://www.97uk-hanojo.com/index.aspx|archive-date=2012-09-10T05:48:39|title=La 97a UK|newspaper=[[Vietnamese Esperanto Association]]}}</ref>

====Cuba====
The first Cuban Esperanto Society was founded in 1908, in [[Santiago de Cuba]]. In 1910 the Cuban Society for the propagation of Esperanto was founded in Havana. Other attempts arose throughout the twentieth century, and in the 1970s conditions were created both at an institutional level, under the backing of the Cuban state, and at an organizational level, with a nucleus of organized Esperantists, to found the current [[Cuban Esperanto Association]] (KEA) on June 16, 1979. It was linked to the [[Cuban Academy of Sciences]], which later passed to the [[Cuban Ministry of Culture|Ministry of Culture]] as a relations body. Since 1983, the Cuban Esperanto Association has affiliated with the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA), having representation on the International Committee of UEA based in [[Rotterdam]], Netherlands.<ref name=":16">Maite González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio “Asociación Cubana de Esperanto Celebra Su Aniversario 43 Con Nuevos Desafíos (+ Audio).”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. June 16, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220707125503/https://www.radiohc.cu/especiales/exclusivas/290860-asociacion-cubana-de-esperanto-celebra-su-aniversario-43-con-nuevos-desafios-audio Archived] 2022-07-07.</ref>

The coordinated work of KEA and state bodies enabled the publication of some titles such as ''La Historia Absolvos Min'' (English: [[Library:History Will Absolve Me|''History Will Absolve Me'']]) of Fidel Castro; ''Kuba Ŝtata Organizo'' (English: ''The State Organization in Cuba'') by [[Domingo García Cárdenas]], and several of the stories from ''La Edad de Oro'' by [[José Martí]].<ref name=":16" /> The Cuban Esperanto Association participates in Cuba's yearly international book fair to show Esperanto works, with the aim of informing about the language and attracting interested parties.<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. 2023. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo “Librofoiro Internacia de Havano 2023 Estas Spaco Ankaŭ Por Esperanto-Lingvo.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. February 11, 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406042857/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/noticias/cultura/313473-librofoiro-internacia-de-havano-2023-estas-spaco-ankau-por-esperanto-lingvo Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

The broadcast of [[Radio Havana Cuba]] (Esperanto: ''Radio Havano Kubo'', RHK), which is meant to spread information about the [[Cuban Revolution|Cuban revolution]] to an international audience, is available in Esperanto, officially beginning as a weekly broadcast on September 11, 1988.<ref name=":16" /> RHK noted in a 2022 article that "RHK is the only broadcast station that continues to be heard on short waves in Esperanto", and that for Cuba, short wave still essential to reach important and remote regions. Describing the early days of RHK's Esperanto broadcast, the article states: "In August of 1988 it was decided to make an experimental 20-minute broadcast [...] the first broadcasts were 20 minutes long, but the avalanche of letters from all over the world convinced the radio station staff that it would be worth broadcasting a thirty minute program, always once a week, on Sundays. In this way, officially the first broadcast in Esperanto took place on September 11, 1988."<ref>Maritza Gutiérrez González. [https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas “Esperanto-Disaŭdigoj En Radio Havano Kubo Jubileas.”] Radiohc.cu. Radio Habana Cuba. September 9, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221205052310/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/especiales/exclusivas/298788-esperanto-disaudigoj-en-radio-havano-kubo-jubileas Archived] 2022-12-05.</ref> Today RHK includes audio broadcasts available online as well as written articles on their website.<ref>[https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos “Frontpaĝo| Radio Havano Kubo|Internacia Radiostacio.”] Radiohc.cu. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230307071312/https://www.radiohc.cu/eo/quienes-somos Archived] 2023-03-07.</ref> It also has an Esperanto language YouTube channel.<ref>@CanalEsperantoCuba. [https://www.youtube.com/@CanalEsperantoCuba/about “Canal Esperanto.”] ''YouTube''.</ref>

[[Fidel Castro]] supported Esperantists in the 1990 UEA Congress to [[Havana]], [[Cuba]].<ref>{{YouTube citation|channel=Emilio Cid|url=https://youtube.com/watch?v=drl2jh8UGk0|title=Fidel Castro & Esperanto|date=2009-01-18}}</ref> This 75th World Congress of Esperanto (Esperanto: ''Universala Kongreso de Esperanto'') which was attended both by President Fidel Castro as well as then Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, was also attended by over 1,500 Esperantists from some 60 countries.<ref name=":16" />

The 95th Universal Esperanto Congress was held in Havana, Cuba in 2010.

In 2016, a 30-minute documentary called "Across the Florida Straits" (Esperanto: ''Trans La Florida Markolo'') was produced. It follows the first legal visit of U.S. Esperantists to Cuba after 54 years of prohibition, where they meet up at a congress of the Cuban Esperanto Association and share their experiences.<ref>Viajante Inteligente. 2016. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE “Esperanto Film: Trans La Florida Markolo.”] ''YouTube''. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230317191316/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UP9xNdkDsE Archived] 2023-03-17.</ref><ref>[https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1GU4y147BB/ "Trans La Florida Markolo (Esperanto) 跨越佛罗里达海峡（世界语.)"] Bilibili.com.</ref>

====Yugoslavia====

[[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Socialist Yugoslavia]] held the 38th World Esperanto Congress in 1953 at [[Zagreb]].

[[Josip Broz Tito]] had mentioned in 1953, that he learned and supported Esperanto while in a prison.<ref>{{Citation|author=Isaj Dratwer|trans-title=Pri Internacia Lingvo dum Jarcentoj|trans-lang=Esperanto|title=About International Language during Centuries|city=Tel Avivo|year=1970 & 1977|page=215}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|title=[From Esperanto: Our Treasure: Josip Broz Tito]|author=Zlatko Tišljar|url=https://sezonoj.ru/2013/08/tito/|newspaper=Ondo de Esperanto|date=2013-08-31}}</ref> He said that Esperanto was an easy language to learn.

==== Korea ====
In [[Korea]], the organization Chosun Esperanto (Korean: 조선에스페란토) was formed in the 1920s.<ref name=":6" />

The [[Korean Artist Proletarian Federation]] (Esperanto: ''Korea Artisto Proleta Federacio'', abbreviated KAPF) was a [[Socialism|socialist]] literary organization that formed in 1925, and put forth "armed class consciousness" as its program, and had branches in [[Tokyo]], [[Pyongyang]], [[Suwon]], and [[Kaesong]].<ref name=":3">[https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 “조선프롤레타리아예술동맹(朝鮮─藝術同盟).”] ("Korea Proletarian Arts Alliance.") Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Aks.ac.kr. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230403045441/https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0052252 Archived] 2023-04-03.</ref><ref name=":2">[https://hichy.tistory.com/entry/%EC%B9%B4%ED%94%84%EC%97%90%EC%8A%A4%ED%8E%98%EB%9E%80%ED%86%A0-Korea-Artista-Proleta-Federacio “카프(에스페란토: Korea Artista Proleta Federacio).”] 히키의 상상 공간. May 16, 2017.</ref> Artists from KAPF created literary works containing patriotism and optimism for the future in Korean society, and developed folk dances and folk songs containing national forms. Lim Hwa and Kim Nam-cheon of KAPF insisted on "Bolshevikization of the art movement" and reorganized KAPF for the purpose of "eradicating [[Petty bourgeoisie|petty-bourgeois]] bias", a direction taken by KAPF in 1930. KAPF members began facing arrest by Japanese imperialist authorities for their activities in 1931. In the face of this, some of them continued their activities underground for the following years, while others split ideologically from KAPF.<ref name=":3" /> The General Federation of North Korean Literature and Arts (Korean: 북조선문학예술총동맹), which was formed in October 1946, was led by people from KAPF. Ahn Mak-i, one of the leading theorists of KAPF, served as the vice-chairman of the North Korean Federation of Literature and Arts. Han Seol-ya, also involved with KAPF, served as the Minister of Education and Culture in the Cabinet and vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People's Assembly.<ref>[https://615tv.net/20 <nowiki>“[북한은 왜?] 해방 이후 북한에서 친일파를 어떻게 청산했는가? ④.”</nowiki>] ("[In North Korea, Why...?] How did the pro-Japanese factions in North Korea be eliminated after liberation? ④") 주권방송. February 25, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221002032452/https://615tv.net/20 Archived] 2022-10-01.</ref>

In 1959, a north Korean Esperanto Association was formed. Its president was Song Bong Uk, who was the finance minister at that time.<ref name=":12">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ "Esperantistoj plu ekzistas en Norda Koreio."] 2008-09-11. Libera Folio. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230318202115/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2008/nordkoreio/ Archived] 2023-03-18.</ref><ref name=":13">François Lo Jacomo. "Esperanto en Nord-Koreio." Revuo Esperanto, n-ro 7/8, julio-aŭgusto 2017. [https://uea.org/revuoj/esperanto/2017?enhavo=Julia17Reta.pdf Enhavo-listo] ([https://uea.org/l/?prenu=eo_jan17 PDF] available via entering a corresponding numeral of an Esperanto number word, e.g. if prompt says "tri" type in "3").</ref> According to an article by Wu Guojiang in ''Esperanto'' magazine, more than 650 people participated in the first two Esperanto courses.<ref name=":14" />

In 1964, a 350-page Korean-Esperanto dictionary was released in [[Pyongyang]]. According to the preface of the dictionary, the "Esperanto movement is progressing under the wise guidance of the Labor Party and the government". The dictionary, whose author was Kim Hyungro, contained a section with Esperanto names for the various institutions of the government, political parties and social organizations of DPRK.<ref name=":12" /><ref name=":13" />

In 1989, a delegation from The World Esperanto Youth Organization (Esperanto: ''Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo,'' TEJO) took part in the [[13th World Festival of Youth and Students|World Youth Festival]] in Pyongyang. However, they did not manage to get information about Esperanto in DPRK at that time.<ref name=":13" />

In the early to mid 2000s, the [[Korean Friendship Association]] (KFA) website was available in Esperanto, and on their contact page included a specific email address for Esperanto communication with KFA.<ref>"Kontaktoj: Asocio pro Amikeco kun Koreio." (Contact: Korean Friendship Association.) [https://web.archive.org/web/20081201102550/http://www.korea-dpr.com/users/esperanto/kontaktoj.html Archived URL].</ref>

A 2008 article in ''Libera Folio'' notes that Liu Jianguo and a group of Esperantists active in [[Dandong]], China were mentioned as having Esperanto contacts in DPRK.<ref name=":12" />

In 2017, a group of Esperantists, the Esperanto Committee of the France-Korea Friendship Association (Esperanto: ''Esperanto-Komitato de Asocio pri Franckorea Amikeco'') visited DPRK. According to the group's report published in ''Esperanto'' magazine, "We twice met the famous linguist Jong Sun-gi, who doesn't speak Esperanto himself but remembers well the Esperantists of that time. Mainly due to the disappearance of leaders and lack of contacts abroad, the movement died out, but it does not seem persecuted: for example, a volunteer who would come for a few months to teach Esperanto would very likely be well received." They also stated "as for our proposal to reintroduce Esperanto, it aroused real interest" and the report mentions that they taught a brief impromptu lesson to some 15 year old students, and that their guide began learning the language and wanted to continue. They conclude their report saying that on their return toward [[Beijing]], they stopped near the border, in the Chinese city Dandong, where they met up with a group of several other Esperantists.<ref name=":13" />

Since 2018, a group of Esperanto speakers from China has made visits to [[Democratic People's Republic of Korea|DPRK]], referred to as ''Esperanto-karavanoj'' ("Esperanto caravans"). Their first visit occurred from June 4 to June 7, 2018, with 18 members in the caravan. The second occurred soon after, from June 29 to July 2 of 2018.<ref name=":14">Wu Guojiang. [https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio “Novaj Esperantistoj Naskiĝas En Norda Koreio | Revuo Esperanto.”] Revuoesperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220916075247/https://revuoesperanto.org/norda_koreio Archived] 2022-09-16.</ref> The third such caravan visited from August 20-24 of 2019, consisting of 13 Esperantists from China.<ref name=":15">Zhangwei. [https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ “Tria Karavano de Esperanto al Norda Koreio.”] Uea.facila. uea.facila. Facilaj Artikoloj en Esperanto. September 28, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125134134/https://uea.facila.org/artikoloj/kongresoj-kaj-kunvenoj/tria-karavano-de-esperanto-al-norda-koreio/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref> In an article about their 2019 visit, they write that Esperantists Wang Yanjing and Zhangwei taught Esperanto to three tour guides during the trip, and that after one or two lessons, the tour guides were able to converse in Esperanto with the Chinese Esperantists using easy phrases.<ref name=":15" />

==== Poland ====
The daily broadcasts of Pola Radio in Esperanto began in 1959 and ended in July 2021,<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo|title=Polskie Radio|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200702035715/https://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/|archive-date=2020-07-02T03:57:15}}</ref> during the time of the [[Polish People's Republic (1947–1989)|Polish People's Republic]] (PPR), broadcasted from [[Warsaw]]. In it, one heard not only about the Esperanto movement, but also about general topics, such as politics, economy, science, culture, and Polish and Esperanto literature. ''Libera Folio'' notes that in the pre-internet era, the broadcasts of Pola Radio were one of the few ways to immediately find out about important developments in the Esperanto movement, and one of the few opportunities for isolated Esperantists to hear the language, and notes that "almost all the important figures of the Esperanto movement in fifty years have been interviewed at least once by Pola Radio".<ref name=":23">Redakcio. [https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ “La Ĉefa Voĉo de Esperantujo Rememoras — Libera Folio.”] ''Liberafolio.org'', 2016, Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408092759/https://www.liberafolio.org/arkivo/www.liberafolio.org/2011/la-cefa-voco-de-esperantujo-rememoras/ Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref>

In an interview, long-time broadcaster Barbara Pietrzak, who worked in the Esperanto department of Pola Radio from 1968-2011, was asked whether the Esperanto editorial office saw any censorship during the era of the PPR. She replied that the Esperanto office, like the other foreign language offices, reported the normal program of the central editorial office, which inevitably included political interviews and commentary of the era, and explains that the Esperanto office otherwise had the freedom to choose from program items, such as discussions, reports on social issues, cultural events, and authored many programs themselves. She states, "I myself do not remember a disgruntled reaction to any specific broadcast. In spite of claims that have appeared here and there, that the work of the editorial office was subject to censorship, this does not correspond to the truth." She notes that although their work was reviewed and edited before broadcast, it was just for items such as erroneous geographical names and personal names.<ref name=":23" />

== Demography ==

The estimated amount of Esperanto speakers varies on the Estimation method used. Estimates are complicated by how to define someone as an "Esperanto speaker" and how to estimate their numbers without official census data available in most locations.<ref name=":17">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ “Nova Takso: 60.000 Parolas Esperanton.”] Libera Folio. February 13, 2017. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406045258/https://www.liberafolio.org/2017/02/13/nova-takso-60-000-parolas-esperanton/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In 1956, David Wolff estimated the amount of Esperanto speakers to be 1 million,<ref name=wolff-estimate /> then 2 million in october 1988.<ref name="wolff-estimate">{{Web citation|url=https://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html|title=Number of Esperantists (methods)|author=David Wolff|date=1989-10-24}}</ref>

Calculations based on a model created by Svend Vendelbo Nielsen in 2016 suggest that the number of Esperanto speakers in the world (considered by Neilsen's model as those who would indicate that they speak Esperanto on a census if the option were available) may be, at minimum, a little over 30,000, while the maximum may be a little over 180,000.<ref name=":17" /><ref>[https://svendvnielsen.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ “Frekvencoj de Esperantistoj En Ĉiuj Landoj.”] Kalkulinda. December 18, 2016. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221201204703/https://kalkulinda.com/2016/12/18/la-frekvenco-de-esperantistoj-en-ciuj-landoj/ Archived] 2022-12-01.</ref>

According to Christopher Gledhill (writing in the year 2000), 40,000 speakers is "a very conservative estimate" which is "based on the average collective memberships of national organizations affliated to the main Esperantist body Universala Esperanto Asocio (this figure is an average taken from 1986 to 1996: UEA, Veuthey 1996)." Gledhill asserts this is a "safe" estimate because UEA membership "is thought to be composed of fluent speakers." However, he notes that the figures do not take into account local activists who are not members of the national associations, and cannot account for the many thousands of speakers who were known to be exposed to Esperanto through the education systems of China and Eastern Europe." Additionally, on the topic of the assertion of there being "too few" Esperanto speakers (a criticism sometimes given in response to the concept of Esperanto being used as an IAL), Christopher Gledhill notes: "Critics who claim that there are 'too few' speakers should bear in mind that speakers of Esperanto certainly outnumber those of rival projects, and for that matter, many endangered and minority regional languages."<ref name=":10" />

Amri Wandel has put forth an estimate of approximately 2 million speakers of Esperanto, in a 2014 paper,<ref name=":18">Amri Wandel. [http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf "How Many People Speak Esperanto? Or: Esperanto on the Web."] 2014. DOI: 10.7906/indecs.13.2.9. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230204022936/http://indecs.eu/2015/indecs2015-pp318-321.pdf Archived] 2023-02-04.</ref> basing the estimate on online community memberships, particularly on [[Meta Platforms, Inc.|Facebook]]. The author addresses the potential inaccuracies of the self-reporting of language in Facebook by comparing the Esperanto statistics with other languages, including natural languages as well as another constructed language: <blockquote>The most serious criticism of such an estimate is, as mentioned above, that supposedly not all people who indicate that they speak Esperanto are really Esperanto speakers – though they probably do have some knowledge of Esperanto. One way to assess the credibility of the number of Facebook users who claim to speak Esperanto is to test similar data for other languages; in other words, to attempt this method in order to find out how many people speak other languages than Esperanto, which do have established statistics. If the results obtained for those languages make sense, then the result for Esperanto is probably valid as well. For example, for French the Facebook number is 42 million out of an estimated number of 190 million speakers worldwide, while for German it is 23 million out of some 200 million. As a representative of small languages we may consider Hebrew; here the Facebook number is 1,3 million, about 15 % of the number of estimated speakers in the world (9 million). From these data it seems that the number of speakers of any language on Facebook is about 10-20 % of the actual worldwide number of speakers. Hence 300 000 Esperanto speakers in Facebook out of 2-3 million Esperanto speakers worldwide is consistent with the percentage appropriate for other languages. However, taking a very different case – the fictitious Klingon language (a constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe) gives a number of 250 000 Facebook users who claim they speak it. This figure could probably be associated with the numbers of Star-Trek fans rather than with speakers of the Klingon language.<ref name=":18" /></blockquote>An estimation of Esperanto native speakers (Esperanto: ''denaskuloj'') was made in 2019 by comparing various proposed estimates of the amount of native speakers. The author of the comparison wrote in a blog post that, "according to this information, we can be sure that there are currently several hundred children in the whole world who grew up in a family that uses/used Esperanto as one of the home languages, and probably no more than 2,000. They are between <1% and 4.5% of the Esperanto-speaking population." The author explains that for this project, they "aimed to count all the posts, scientific articles, books and web pages" that addressed the question of how many native speakers of Esperanto there are (via searching online in French, English and Esperanto), and "tried as often as possible to read the primary sources but that was not an easy task, because many articles are not accessible online." Included in the blog post is a table of the sources and numbers they found.<ref>Nelly. [https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ “Kiom Da Denaskuloj Estas En La Tuta Mondo?”] Denaskuloj - paroli Esperanton kiel denaskan lingvon. March 15, 2019. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230406064141/https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/ Archived] 2023-04-06.</ref>

In terms of the anecdotal, self-perceived range of Esperanto speakers among the community itself, an informal estimate was presented in 1996 by Professor Jouko Lindstedt, which, although deemed as "very imprecise" by Lindstedt, was "found to be realistic by many" according to a 2017 Libera Folio article.<ref name=":17" /> Lindstedt's 1996 anecdotal suggestion was the following: 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language, 10,000 speak Esperanto as though they were native, 100,000 are able to use it for "effective communication", and 1,000,000 know the basics.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060924124158/http://www.rano.org/nombro.html "La nombro de esperantistoj en la mondo."] 1996.</ref>

== Criticism ==
Since its inception, the language of Esperanto itself as well as the related Esperanto movement have undergone various criticisms. The primary criticisms of Esperanto are the primarily [[Europe|European]] origin of its vocabulary, supposed [[Patriarchy|patriarchal]] [[gender]] conventions in certain word roots, and idealism and [[dogmatism]] in the Esperanto movement. Much of the criticism of Esperanto is in light of Esperanto's original intended function as an international auxiliary language. A significant portion of Esperanto speakers today do not consider themselves ideologically devoted to this original goal nor consider themselves part of the original movement for its popularization, and may also be critics of the original movement.<ref>[https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ “Esperanto: De Idealismo al Realismo.”] Global Voices En Esperanto. August 14, 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221024194924/https://eo.globalvoices.org/2022/08/13307/ Archived] 2022-10-24.</ref> Meanwhile, certain other criticisms of Esperanto, its history, and its community of speakers are made both from inside and outside of the community, regardless of Esperanto's intended use as an IAL.

=== Eurocentric vocabulary ===
This criticism is based on the notion that an international language must have diverse etimology. Critics claim that a majority{{Helper|helper-text=quantity?|hover-text=Verify the amount of words.}} of word roots in Esperanto are derived from European languages. As Esperanto was originally intended for worldwide international communication on a neutral and fair basis, this is seen to be contrary to the original aims of Esperanto. The European majority in the vocabulary supposedly creates more difficulty for native speakers of non-European languages to learn Esperanto than those who already speak European languages which share more roots with Esperanto.{{Helper}}

Counterarguments are that Esperanto has many Asian and African characteristics of Asian and African languages than of European characteristics;<ref name=":11">{{Web citation|title=Esperanto: european or asiatic language?|author=Claude Piron|url=http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm}}</ref> and that some words have alternatives formed with junctions. For example:

* For the complex word ''manĝ'baston''' (chopstick), the radical ''haŝi''' is used by Asian Esperantists and allowed in common Esperanto dictionaries. ''ha''' originate from Japanese (Kanji: ''箸'', Romanized: ''Hashi'').
* For the radical ''astronomi''' (astronomy), the complex word ''stel'scienc''' (star + science) is used by Chinese Esperantists.
Linguist Christopher Gledhill notes that Esperanto is usually considered to be an agglutinating language (such as Hungarian, Turkish or Japanese) with a largely Romance vocabulary. However, different classifications of Esperanto have been advanced, largely because Esperanto's morphological system does not behave in the same way as typical agglutinating and Latin-based languages. The argument that Esperanto is like Kiswahili or Turkish is based on the fact that Esperanto's morphemes are used consistently for the same grammatical features, a difference that distinguishes Esperanto from the Romance language family. In addition, Gledhill states that the obligatory signaling of grammatical word class for lexical items (nominal, adjectival, verbal) in Esperanto is more akin to some Amerindian and African languages where classifiers and other particles are used for this function. Gledhill states it "might even be argued that the 'morpheme effect' may be a morphological feature that Esperanto shares with a incorporating languages (including Polynesian or Amerindian languages)." Ghledhill also notes that Claude Piron's analysis considers several non-agglutinating aspects of the language, including the freedom of word derivation and monomorphism that are reminiscent of isolating languages such as Chinese or Vietnamese.<ref name=":10" /><ref name=":11" />

Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China states that "lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century."<ref name=":5" />

A related criticism is that many of the phonemes and consonant clusters of Esperanto are difficult for speakers of some languages to pronounce. Since early on in the creation of the language, Esperantists have tended to encourage speakers to maintain their native accent, altering it only to the extent needed to be generally understood and upholding a fairly wide range of acceptable variations in pronunciation. However, this does not completely eliminate pronunciation difficulties for some speakers. Though this issue is to be expected and is present in all languages.

==== Analysis of lexicon ====
An analysis based on the 1000 most frequent words from a corpus size of one and a half million words (1,563,500 running words with 156 texts used) calculated that 70% of the 1000 most common words were Latinate in origin, 12% were unique to Esperanto, 10% were Germanic in origin, 5% were deemed Indo-European in origin, <2% were Greek in origin and <1% were Slavic in origin.<ref name=":10" />

The analysis was published in "The Grammar of Esperanto. A Corpus-Based Description" by Christopher Gledhill, in the year 2000. Overall, words of Latinate origin were found to be dominant in the analysis. However, the author of the analysis points out that despite originating from one or another language, the majority of words were modified and accommodated into a more neutral form that does not always closely resemble the source language, and that the basic morphological rules of Esperanto inevitably lead to word forms that are unique to Esperanto. Some of these include compound words which, although they may be ultimately derived from European languages, represent combinations unique to Esperanto. The author further explains that compound words in the study were more frequent than Germanic words in the most frequent 1000 words, and they begin to "catch up" with Latinate words if the most frequent 10,000 words were to be considered. Outside of a group of 25 frequent compounds which appeared in the most frequent 1000 of the corpus, these forms are usually ''hapax legomena'' (one-off constructs) and rarely find their way into standard dictionaries.

Gledhill points out that an earlier analysis from 1994 conducted by Pierre Janton, which was an analysis of dictionary head-words in Esperanto, calculated their origin to be 80% Romance (Latin/French), 10% Anglo-German, 5% Greek, and 5% Slavic. Gledhill states that in the corpus analysis, speakers of Esperanto used a somewhat smaller distribution of Latinate words than suggested by Janton, and the situation is complicated by a larger number of Germanic forms and by very frequent use of words derived from Esperanto's own morphological system, which, as described above, lead to word forms unique to Esperanto due to Esperanto's morphological rules.

==== Neutrality in IAL design principles ====
In the paper "Neutrality of International Languages" by Haitao Liu of the Communication University of China, published in the Journal of Universal Language, the concept of "neutrality" in the creation and use of planned languages (including Esperanto) is discussed in depth. Liu notes that "neutrality" may be defined in different ways, with some definitions centering on lexical neutrality in regard to the origin of words, while other definitions may center more on the political neutrality of a language. In addition the paper discusses the challenges surrounding the selection of design principles of languages intended for neutral international communication, explaining that while planned languages that do not derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as more "neutral" lexically, they tend to require more effort to learn; while languages which do derive vocabulary from national languages tend to be evaluated as less "neutral" lexically, they may be learned with less effort by a wider amount of people. This issue of balancing "facility maximization" with concerns of lexical neutrality are a high concern for planned international language projects.<ref name=":5">Liu, Haitao. [https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 “Neutrality of International Languages.”] ''Journal of Universal Language.'' 2006, vol.7, no.2, pp. 37-64. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054827/https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART001032018 Archived] 2023-04-04.</ref>
In Liu's analysis, a neutral language for international communication can only be a planned language. Liu distinguishes between "communicative neutrality" and "linguistic neutrality" in the paper, writing: "All planned languages are communicatively neutral, but their linguistic neutrality varies, reflecting the diversity of language design principles. Communicative neutrality involves all users having to learn the language in order to be able to use it as a means of communication; linguistic neutrality has to do with maximizing equality of access for the learners with different mother tongues." Liu concludes:<blockquote>Evidently, it is not an easy task to construct a language linguistically equidistant from all the languages of the world. In practice, absolute linguistic neutrality is neither practicable nor a fair representation of our task, because our goal is to create a language for humankind, which involves taking language universals on board. In this perspective, constructing a language based on some control languages coupled with systematic attention to linguistic universals is perhaps a rational procedure, if the control languages are selected from the set of languages that are in international use.<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu states that "the history of planned languages shows that the task of interlinguists is to find a balancing point between a-priori and a-posteriori" in lexicon, and later writes: "the selection of lexical material is only one aspect of making a language easy to learn; a language designer also needs to consider the other components of a language. Linguistic neutrality cannot involve only lexical neutrality, but must also include other aspects of linguistic structure." Liu goes on to discuss whether assuring the "absolute neutrality" of a planned international language (such as a lexicon chosen by the statistical proportions of source language's worldwide prevalence) is a worthwhile pursuit at all in terms of its practicality for international language projects. Liu quotes philologist Detlev Blanke as writing, "A kind of absolute internationality would be reached, if in the vocabulary of a planned language all language of the world (proportional to its number of speakers) were represented. Such internationality would not be useful to anybody. The vocabulary would be extraordinarily heterogeneous and would be helpful for nobody." Following this quote, Liu writes: "Given that we cannot construct a viable language representing all linguistic properties drawn from the whole world on a meaningful basis, it is a rational decision to select some languages as one’s control languages."<ref name=":5" />

Speaking further on the subject of linguistic neutrality, Liu evaluates Esperanto by various qualities such as lexicon, morphology, and syntax, presenting it as an example of a language that is a "mixed" language "with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure" which Liu presents as the apparent rational result of the varying considerations of planned international language design, noting that "linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept":<blockquote>In summary, it is clear that linguistic neutrality is not an absolute concept. A language built on the basis of some purely formal absolute neutrality principle would not work as a language for humankind, because it would also have to fall in line with the known universals in human languages. It would appear to be rational to create or evaluate a planned language based on (a) some control languages selected on the basis of the international standing of the relevant languages and (b) linguistic universals. Such a procedure leads to a system that is a mixed language, with distinct internationality profiles on different planes of linguistic structure. For instance, lexically, Esperanto can be considered mainly a Romance language. Morphologically, it is an agglutinating language with a strong similarity to isolating languages. At the levels of syntax and style, it exhibits a significant degree of Slavic influence. Functionally, it has served as an interlanguage for more than a century (Janton 1973, 1993; Piron 1981; Wells 1989). Nuessel gives Esperanto the following properties: “a planned, a posteriori language, an amalgamation of the linguistic elements of the various ethnic languages including Yiddish, Germanic, and Slavic tongues that were a part of Zamenhof’s socially rancorous environment. The language also contained grammatical features of certain Romance languages with which Zamenhof was familiar” (Nuessel 2000: 41).<ref name=":5" /></blockquote>Liu also touches on the topic of "deneutralization" of languages, summarized as the process in which (for example) a lingua franca develops into the native language of some, with the consequence that once again neutrality would be lost and the whole process of designing a neutral language may be deemed to be in need of being relaunched. Liu states that the process of planned language development can be compared with the creolization of pidgins, in that when a pidgin has enough native speakers, it is creolizated, and may also be termed as "deneutralized". Liu states that the emergence of native speakers is an important milestone in the evolution of a planned language. While Esperanto has reached the milestone of having native speakers, in Liu's analysis, it has not yet reached a state of creolization or deneutralization.

Overall, Liu's paper focuses on the "neutrality" of international languages, exploring the concept of "neutrality" itself by varying definitions, exploring the practical concerns of IAL design, as well as using Esperanto (among other languages) as example cases for certain analyses in the paper, stating "Given that absolute linguistic neutrality unattainable, it becomes reasonable to construct a language based on certain control languages plus linguistic universals" and analyzing Esperanto as an example of a language which appears to be the result of such a construction process, and further demonstrates that although Esperanto now also has native speakers, this does not yet seem to have significantly impacted it in the fashion of creolization or what Liu terms "deneutralization".

=== Gendered vocabulary ===
This criticism is based mainly on the assertion by some Esperantists that certain words in Esperanto are masculine by default, and only inflected into an explicitly feminine or gender neutral form by the use of affixes. The majority of such words are among the family terms of Esperanto, such as root words like "father" (''patr''') and "brother" (''frat''') serving as root forms, while additions are needed to transform them into meaning the "mother" and "sister." They interpret this assertion as patriarchal.

However, there are also root words considered to be female-default such as: ''dam','' ''matron','' ''primadon','' ''furi','' ''amazon','' ''gorgon','' ''nimf','' ''sukub','' ''meger','' ''alme','' ''putin','' ''meretric','' ''hetajr','' ''gejŝ','' etc. which often do not receive the same complaint.

This issue has been controversial to some Esperanto speakers, who voice a range of opinions on the subject: junctioning the gendered roots to the male default radicals (or root words) and using the familial radicals genderlessly; including the proposal of official reforms to the language, the de facto colloquial adoption of more gender-neutral language changes; and the insistence on keeping the language as-is.

* A solution commonly used is to junction a word with the male and female radicals (Esperanto: ''vir''' and ''in''' respectively) to specify the gender and to genderlessly use the root word.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html#i-gvi|title=Seksaj afiksoj|author=Bertilow}}</ref> (Example: ''Vir'patr''' / ''Patr'vir''' (father); ''patr'in''' / ''in'patr''' (mother); ''patr''' (parent)) This approach is common with animals and stays within the grammar and rules of Esperanto. It was adopted by Zamenhof when specifying sex for Animals.
* Another solution is to use an alternative term formed in Esperanto: ''patr' → generinto'' or ''naskiginto'', ''fil' → id''', ''reĝ' → monarĥ'''
* Additionally, an unofficial affix (Esperanto: ''-iĉ-''), modeled on the feminine root word (Esperanto: ''in'''), has come into somewhat common use among certain speakers which is used to make a word explicitly masculine, with the implication that the root word itself is neutral; though in practice it is seen as redundant by some Esperantists as the root word ''vir'' can be junctioned to accomplish the same task as ''-iĉ-''.

Don Harlow said that Zamenhof had never intentioned ''in''' to be lesser; and that this criticism of linguistic sexism mostly originates from English speakers:

{{quote|'''-in-''' is used to create the female version of a word whose root is taken to represent a male being, or one of unspecified sex. This has led in recent decades to charges of linguistic sexism from some quarters; why should the root word be male and the less basic version female? In fact, Zamenhof simply invented (or borrowed) the '''-in-''' suffix as a means of cutting the number of words to be memorized in half, and obviously intended no offense to the female half of the human race; after all, it was a woman who paid for publication of the first Esperanto textbook, and one of Zamenhof's own major translations into Esperanto was Orzeszko's novel ''Marta'', an early Central European contribution to the genre of feminist literature. Furthermore, the suffix is generally used only in situations where a knowledge of the sex of the person involved is considered important -- not, for instance, in occupations. In other situations, the basic root is often considered neuter, not male; hence the more recent evolution of vir- as a prefix to show a masculized creature… '''Finally, I should add that such criticisms have popped up only in the last few years, and geographically have been confined to non-Esperantists belonging to a relatively small group of cultures, most notably that of the United States.'''|Don Harlow|{{Web citation|url=http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/EBook/chap05.html|title=The Esperanto Book: 5}}}}

==== Pronouns ====
A related criticism is about the gendered pronouns of Esperanto. Esperanto includes three singular pronouns:

* ''li'' ("he")
* ''ŝi'' ("she")
* ''ĝi'' (pronoun for beings and objects)

''ĝi'' in Esperanto officially carries no specific dehumanizing stigma and may be used for humans. However, some Esperanto speakers feel reluctant to use it as a gender neutral pronoun for human beings; because they hold a taboo of describing humans (sometimes including babies) with a pronoun for objects, as to them it implies dehumanization. These speakers often import this taboo from their native lingual cultures that have separate pronouns for genders and/or genderless human pronouns. However, not all languages have these distinctions; for example, [[Mongolian (language)|Mongolian]] doesn't specify gender in third person pronouns; it uses ''тэр'' (English: that) for he/she/it.

In Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', he responded to this kind of criticism:

{{quote|[You wrote that, when talking about a child, you use "he" instead of "it", because you do not approve of "the English custom of putting children on the same level as animals and objects". There is nothing against the use of "he" in such cases; but the reason why we (and also the English language) use "it" in such cases is not what you think. Neither the English language nor Esperanto had any intention of lowering the dignity of children (both languages are indeed so polite that they say "you" not only to children, but even to animals and objects). The cause is a completely natural consequence of the construction of the two aforementioned languages. In every language every word has a (not at all logically) defined gender, and therefore, when using a pronoun for it, we take the one that corresponds to the grammatical gender of the word (that's why the French say "il" about a child, the German says " es”); but in English and Esperanto the words have only natural gender, and therefore, when talking about children, animals and objects whose natural gender we do not know, we willy-nilly (without any offensive intention) use a pronoun intermediate between "he ” and “she” – the word “it”. In the same way we also talk about "person". Moreover, when talking about a child that we know is not a girl (or at least do not know that it is a girl), we can use the word "he".]|Zamenhof|La Esperantisto, 1893, p. 16.}}

Later in August 1907, Zamenhof said that when speaking of humans without showing their sex, it would be regular and grammatically correct to use the pronoun ''ĝi'', which is done for example when speaking of children. However, Zamenhof adds, "because the word 'it' [''ĝi''] (used especially for 'animals' or 'inanimate things') contains something lowering (and also uncustomary) and for the idea of 'human' [''homo''] it would be a bit disagreeable, therefore I would advise you to do as it is done in the other languages, and to use the pronoun 'he' [''li''] for 'human'." He clarifies that he makes this recommendation because "every time we talk non-specifically about the feminine gender, we can use the masculine form for both genders [...] by that very fact we also agreed that the pronoun 'he' we can use for a person in every case, when his gender is indifferent to us."<ref>{{Citation|author=L. L. Zamenhof|year=1990 (7th edition)|title=Lingvaj Respondoj|title-url=https://tekstaro.com/pl/prenitutantekston.pl?nomo=lingvaj-respondoj|chapter=91. Pri la pronomo por “homo”. Respondo 23, La Revuo, 1901, Aŭgusto|quote=Kiam ni parolas pri homo, ne montrante la sekson, tiam estus regule uzi la pronomon “ĝi” (kiel ni faras ekzemple kun la vorto “infano”), kaj se vi tiel agos, vi estos gramatike tute prava. Sed ĉar la vorto “ĝi” (uzata speciale por “bestoj” aŭ “senvivaĵoj”) enhavas en si ion malaltigan (kaj ankaŭ kontraŭkutiman) kaj por la ideo de “homo” ĝi estus iom malagrabla, tial mi konsilus al vi fari tiel, kiel oni faras en la aliaj lingvoj, kaj uzi por “homo” la pronomon “li”. Nomi tion ĉi kontraŭgramatika ni ne povas; ĉar, se ni ĉiam farus diferencon inter “homo” kaj “homino”, tiam ni devus por la unua uzi “li” kaj por la dua “ŝi”; sed ĉar ni silente interkonsentis, ke ĉiun fojon, kiam ni parolas ne speciale pri sekso virina, ni povas uzi la viran formon por ambaŭ seksoj (ekzemple “homo” = homo aŭ homino, “riĉulo” = riĉulo aŭ riĉulino k.t.p.), per tio mem ni ankaŭ interkonsentis, ke la pronomon “li” ni povas uzi por homo en ĉiu okazo, kiam lia sekso estas por ni indiferenta. Se ni volus esti pedante gramatikaj, tiam ni devus uzi la vorton “ĝi” ne sole por “homo”, sed ankaŭ por ĉiu alia analogia vorto; ekzemple ni devus diri: “riĉulo pensas, ke ĉio devas servi al ĝi” (ĉar ni parolas ja ne sole pri riĉaj viroj, sed ankaŭ pri riĉaj virinoj).|publisher=Eldonejo Ludovikito}}</ref> This advise by Zamenhof contributed to the common use of the word ''li'' ("he") for making gender-neutral third person statements becoming a frequent choice among Esperanto speakers. Markos Kramer of the Academy of Esperanto notes that "such use of 'he' is Fundamental, Zamenhofian and until the 1960s was practiced without hesitation by almost all Esperantists."<ref name=":20" />

Some people use ''tiu'' ("that") when referring to individuals in the third person,

===== Riism(o) =====

An alternative unofficial pronoun for persons with no recognized gender in Esperanto is ''ri''; considered to be controversial as it is not in the fundamento. It is understood by a minority of Esperanto speakers.

Riism was proposed in the 1970s and has minor popularity since that time.<ref>[http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf "Sekso kaj Egaleco."] (PDF). October 1979. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220104135313/http://www.gazetoteko.com/ske/ske00.pdf Archived] 2022-01-04.</ref><ref>Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ “Esperanto Kaj Sekso – Lingva Kritiko.”] Lingvakritiko.com. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221211044915/https://lingvakritiko.com/2014/10/16/esperanto-kaj-sekso/ Archived] 2022-12-11.</ref>

Among riists, there are factional disputes over it's meaning:

* Some use it to substitute for gendered pronouns ''li'' and ''ŝi''.
* Some use it for a person which does not have a known gender.

Bertilo Wennergren, member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html “Akademio de Esperanto: Oficialaj Informoj 37 - 2022 03 02.”] ''Akademio-De-Esperanto.org.'' Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230408044550/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/oficialaj_informoj/oficialaj_informoj_37_2022.html Archived] 2023-04-08.</ref> writes in In the 2022 edition of ''Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko'' (PMEG, English: Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar) about pronoun use among Esperanto speakers, commenting on traditional pronoun usage, perceptions of sexism, proposals of neo-pronouns, and perceptions of the acceptability of using "it" for humans, demonstrating a variety of opinions and practices among Esperanto speakers over time. He states that "When talking about a person whose gender is not known, or when talking in general about a person of any gender, one traditionally uses ''li''." Following this, Wennergren states: "This kind of use of 'he' can be seen as gender discrimination," and explains that it can also cause some ambiguities and be inconvenient in some cases; therefore, he states, "that is why various proposals of a new gender-neutral pronoun for a person appeared. The only such proposal that is actually used is ''ri''°. This new word, however, is not part of the official and normal Esperanto, and not all Esperantists know it. Others use ''ĝi'' in this sense, so also for a person." Commenting on this use of ''ĝi'', he states that "since the 2010s, some have tried systematically to use ''ĝi'' and ''ĝia'' as gender-neutral pronouns for a person, not just for a small child. This can be called 'ĝiism.'" Wennergren states that although this usage is supported in Zamenhof's ''Lingvaj Respondoj'', "The practical use, however, did not follow those answers at all, but reserved its use to animals and things [...] and to (small) children". He notes that to some, this usage "can come across as objectifying and offensive" and again mentions the unofficial ''ri'' in light of this, particularly in the case of nonbinary people. He notes that ''ri'' and ''ria'' are unofficial words, and not all Esperantists know them, adding that "'riismo' is, however, already quite widespread, especially among young people, and many who themselves never use ''ri'' or ''ria'', nevertheless understand the new words." He notes that on the other hand, some strongly oppose the new pronouns, being of the opinion that such use is an unacceptable reform of the language.<ref>Bertilo Wennergren. [https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html "Tria Persono."] PMEG 2022. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083822/https://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/pronomoj/tria.html Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

In 2019, Markos Kramer, a member of the Academy of Esperanto,<ref name=":22" /> conducted a survey about the use of gender-neutral pronouns in Esperanto, in light of the "remarkable growth" seen in the last 10 years in the use of gender neutral terms, especially of the neo-pronoun ''ri'' as well as the use of the traditional pronoun ''ĝi'', which Kramer notes was less common for Esperanto speakers to use for humans over ten years ago. Describing the survey, Kramer wrote that he conducted an empirical study in which 287 Esperanto speakers of all age groups, from teenagers to over 80-year-olds, participated, contacted through many different online forums to ensure as balanced as possible a sample of Esperantists who can be contacted online. The participants answered various questions about their own oral language use and about the oral language use they heard from other Esperantists. Kramer noted there were limitations to the study because of the general difficulty of gaining a representative sample of the Esperanto community without knowing what the overall composition of that community is. Kramer therefore limited the study to the goal of creating "as representative a sample as possible of Esperantists who can be contacted online." The groups contacted are listed in his report of the study.<ref name=":20">Kramer, Markos. [https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ “La Efektiva Uzado de Seksneŭtralaj Pronomoj Laŭ Empiria Esplorstudo – Lingva Kritiko.”] ''Lingvakritiko.com'', 2020. Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20230407083623/https://lingvakritiko.com/2020/05/12/la-efektiva-uzado-de-seksneutralaj-pronomoj-lau-empiria-esplorstudo/ Archived] 2023-04-07.</ref>

According to Kramer's report:<blockquote>In the use of ''ri'' the difference between young people and the elderly is statistically very significant (p<0,00001), and the difference between the middle-aged and the elderly is also very significant (p=0,0019), while the difference between young people and middle-aged people is not statistically significant (p=0,124). When using ''li'' and ''li aŭ ŝi,'' the difference between young and old was statistically significant without being very significant (p=0,029 and p=0,018 respectively), while the other comparisons between age groups do not give statistically significant results when using of ''li'' and of ''li aŭ ŝi''. In the use of ''tiu'' and of ''ĝi,'' no difference between age classes is statistically significant.<ref name=":20" /></blockquote>According to the results, Kramer states that "''ri'' is already very widely understood, namely by 81% of the participants" and that it was the most common manner used for speaking about nonbinary people, with 38% of participants using ''ri'' for nonbinary people and 10% using ''ĝi''. The understanding of ''ri'' was higher among participants under the age of 50 than among the older participants. For example, among the youngest age group in the study, familiarity with ''ri'' was at 90%, while among the eldest, it was at 70% familiarity. A ''Libera Folio'' article commenting on the study notes that Kramer found that the word ''ri'' is "known to most Esperantists, but much more popular among young people than among the elderly", with older participants preferring the use of ''li''.<ref name=":20" /><ref name=":21">[https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ “Riismo Konkeras La Junan Generacion.”] ''Libera Folio'', 22 May 2020, Accessed 7 Apr. 2023. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221125124451/https://www.liberafolio.org/2020/05/22/riismo-konkeras-la-junan-generacion/ Archived] 2022-11-25.</ref>

Other than referring to nonbinary people, Kramer found that for non-specific speech about people, many different pronoun uses are currently in use, among others the traditional use of ''li'', the use of ''tiu'' instead of a personal pronoun, the use of the dual form ''li aŭ ŝi'' (English: "he or she"), the use of ''ri'' and the use of ''ĝi''. Kramer noted that the quantitative differences between these different pronoun uses for non-specific speech about people are not very large. Kramer remarks that until the 1960s, ''li'' had been the typical choice for speaking about a non-specific third person, while in this study, only 15% of participants reported exclusive use of ''li'' for this purpose. However, 36% reported using ''li'' in addition to another option. ''Tiu'' was the most commonly chosen option for this purpose and did not have a remarkable age difference in its usage. The use of ''ĝi'' also did not have a large age difference, but was chosen less than ''tiu''.<ref name=":21" /><ref name=":20" />

===== Miscellaneous =====

Another solution is the use of the unofficial word "ŝli" which is similar conceptually to using "s/he" in English as it combines the masculine and feminine pronouns.

=== Idealism ===

=== Dogmatism ===
The criticism of dogmatism that is sometimes made of the Esperanto movement and/or community stems largely from an early guiding principle in the Esperanto movement, commonly referred to in Esperanto as ''fundamentismo'' (English: fundamentalism) which continues to influence discourse among Esperantists today. The term can carry some connotation of strictness, for example the dictionary Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto lists one of its definitions of ''fundamentisto'' as "an Esperantist who strictly obeys and defends the Foundation."<ref>[https://vortaro.net/#fundamentisto_kd “Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto.”] PIV 2020. Vortaro.net.</ref>

This trend comes from a 1905 book called ''Fundamento de Esperanto'', in which L. L. Zamenhof states in the preface that, for the unity of Esperanto, "the foundation of our language must remain forever intact" and only be expanded, never altered, by an institutional central authority of the Esperanto language, and that any expansions outside of the foundation must be regarded only as recommendations rather than as obligatory.<ref name=":4">[https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html “Fundamento de Esperanto: Antaŭparolo.”] Akademio-De-Esperanto.org. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221109040356/https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/antauparolo.html Archived] 2022-11-09.</ref><ref>[http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto “Bretaro.net - Fundamento de Esperanto.”] Ikso.net. [https://web.archive.org/web/20221006004932/http://bretaro.ikso.net/verkoj/56-fundamento-de-esperanto Archived] 2022-10-06.</ref>

Zamenhof explains in the preface of the ''Fundamento'' the reasoning behind these stipulations is for unity within the movement and so that Esperanto speakers can always use the ''Fundamento'' as a reference and that it must remain the same even including its faults, clarifying that it is not to prevent the language's development:<blockquote>I said that the foundation of our language must be absolutely inviolable, if it even seemed to us that this or that point was undoubtedly wrong. This could give birth to the thought that our language will always remain rigid and will never develop... Oh, no! Despite the severe inviolability of the foundation, our language will have the full potential not only to constantly enrich itself, but even to constantly improve and perfect itself; the inviolability of the foundation will only guarantee us permanently that this perfection will be done not by arbitrary, infighting and destructive breaking and changing, not by canceling or making our literature useless until now, but by a natural, unconfused and harmless path. [...] If any authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it will not have to remove or change the said form, but it will be able to propose a new form, which it will recommend to be used in parallel with the old form. Over time, the new form will gradually push out the old form, which will become archaism, as we see this in every natural language.<ref name=":4" /></blockquote>These documents formed a guiding principle in the early development of the Esperanto language and the Esperanto movement, and various strains of this principle still remain among the Esperanto speaking community today, with varying degrees of strictness or looseness of their interpretation and application of it. There are also many Esperanto speakers who do not particularly adhere to this guiding principle. Arguments in favor of this principle typically center around preserving the regularity and intelligibility of the language over time, and ensuring that new learners receive relatively consistent and uniform information about the foundation of the language, so as to be able to quickly integrate and understand the language without facing regionalisms or irregularities. As this guiding principle has been present with the Esperanto movement since its early development and held influence over the language's evolution, reform proposals to the language are typically discussed in this framework, with people arguing for varying degrees of strict or lose fundamentalism, versus full-on reformism. These discussions are also complicated by various usage trends and natural shifts which have occurred in Esperanto's community of speakers outside of what is considered to be official recommendations.

=== Other criticism ===

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|title-url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|publisher=[[New Star]]}}

===Language===

* {{Citation|title=Fundamento de Esperanto|title-url=https://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/index.html|author=L. L. Zamenhof|publisher=Hachette|year=1905}}

==See also==
* [[Ido]]

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=note />

[[Category:Esperanto]]

Contradiction

2023-04-27T02:48:20Z

Amicchan:

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Identity_and_Struggle_of_the_Aspects_of_a_Contradiction|The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity….}}</ref>

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

== Identity ==

Identity refers to the ''material'' linked coexistence of both aspects in a contradiction and that the contradictory aspects conditionally transform into their opposites.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation--all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.}}</ref> Identity exists conditionally.<ref>{{Citation|author=V. I. [[Lenin]]|title=Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic, Collected Works Russian Edition|city=Moscow|year=1958|volume=XXXVIII|page=97-98|quote=Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another, why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Contradiction

2023-04-27T02:27:56Z

Amicchan:

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Identity_and_Struggle_of_the_Aspects_of_a_Contradiction|The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity….}}</ref>

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

[[Mao Zedong]] talked at length about contradictions and is a good starting place for theory.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

== Identity ==

Identity refers to the ''material'' linked coexistence of both aspects in a contradiction and that the contradictory aspects conditionally transform into their opposites.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation--all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.}}</ref> Identity exists conditionally.<ref>{{Citation|author=V. I. [[Lenin]]|title=Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic, Collected Works Russian Edition|city=Moscow|year=1958|volume=XXXVIII|page=97-98|quote=Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another, why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Library:On contradiction

2023-04-27T02:24:57Z

Amicchan: /* The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction */

{{transcript|https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm}}

== Foreword ==
The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of [[Materialism|materialist]] [[dialectics]]. [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]] said, "Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of [[contradiction]] in ''the very essence of objects."'' [1] Lenin often called this law the essence of dialectics; he also called it the kernel of dialectics. [2] In studying this law, therefore, we cannot but touch upon a variety of questions, upon a number of philosophical problems. If we can become clear on all these problems, we shall arrive at a fundamental understanding of materialist dialectics. The problems are: the two world outlooks, the universality of contradiction, the particularity of contradiction, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction, the identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction, and the place of antagonism in contradiction.

The criticism to which the idealism of the [[Deborin school]] has been subjected in Soviet philosophical circles in recent years has aroused great interest among us. Deborin's idealism has exerted a very bad influence in the Chinese Communist Party, and it cannot be said that the dogmatist thinking in our Party is unrelated to the approach of that school. Our present study of philosophy should therefore have the eradication of dogmatist thinking as its main objective.

== The Two World Outlooks ==
Throughout the history of human knowledge, there have been two conceptions concerning the law of development of the universe, the metaphysical conception and the dialectical conception, which form two opposing world outlooks. Lenin said:

* The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, ''and'' development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation). [3]

Here Lenin was referring to these two different world outlooks.

In China another name for metaphysics is ''hsuan-hsueh.'' For a long period in history whether in China or in Europe, this way of thinking, which is part and parcel of the idealist world outlook, occupied a dominant position in human thought. In Europe, the materialism of the bourgeoisie in its early days was also metaphysical. As the social economy of many European countries advanced to the stage of highly developed capitalism, as the forces of production, the class struggle and the sciences developed to a level unprecedented in history, and as the industrial proletariat became the greatest motive force in historical development, there arose the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics. Then, in addition to open and barefaced reactionary idealism, vulgar evolutionism emerged among the bourgeoisie to oppose materialist dialectics.

The metaphysical or vulgar evolutionist world outlook sees things as isolated, static and one-sided. It regards all things in the universe, their forms and their species, as eternally isolated from one another and immutable. Such change as there is can only be an increase or decrease in quantity or a change of place. Moreover, the cause of such an increase or decrease or change of place is not inside things but outside them, that is, the motive force is external. Meta physicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything different. In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing. Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another. In Europe, this mode of thinking existed as mechanical materialism in the 17th and 18th centuries and as vulgar evolutionism at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In China, there was the metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying "Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not", [4] and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from Europe in the last hundred years, are supported by the bourgeoisie.

As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes. Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another. As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions. Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes. Countries with almost the same geographical and climatic conditions display great diversity and unevenness in their development. Moreover, great social changes may take place in one and the same country although its geography and climate remain unchanged. Imperialist Russia changed into the socialist Soviet Union, and feudal Japan, which had locked its doors against the world, changed into imperialist Japan, although no change occurred in the geography and climate of either country. Long dominated by feudalism, China has undergone great changes in the last hundred years and is now changing in the direction of a new China, liberated and-free, and yet no change has occurred in her geography and climate. Changes do take place in the geography and climate of the earth as a whole and in every part of it, but they are insignificant when compared with changes in society; geographical and climatic changes manifest themselves in terms of tens of thousands of years, while social changes manifest themselves in thousands, hundreds or tens of years, and even in a few years or months in times of revolution. According to materialist dialectics, changes in nature are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in nature. Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new. Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. There is constant interaction between the peoples of different countries. In the era of capitalism, and especially in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the interaction and mutual impact of different countries in the political, economic and cultural spheres are extremely great. The October Socialist Revolution ushered in a new epoch in world history as well as in Russian history. It exerted influence on internal changes in the other countries in the world and, similarly and in a particularly profound way, on internal changes in China. These changes, however, were effected through the inner laws of development of these countries, China included. In battle, one army is victorious and the other is defeated, both the victory and the defeat are determined by internal causes. The one is victorious either because it is strong or because of its competent generalship, the other is vanquished either because it is weak or because of its incompetent generalship; it is through internal causes that external causes become operative. In China in 1927, the defeat of the proletariat by the big bourgeoisie came about through the opportunism then to be found within the Chinese proletariat itself (inside the Chinese Communist Party). When we liquidated this opportunism, the Chinese revolution resumed its advance. Later, the Chinese revolution again suffered severe setbacks at the hands of the enemy, because adventurism had risen within our Party. When we liquidated this adventurism, our cause advanced once again. Thus it can be seen that to lead the revolution to victory, a political party must depend on the correctness of its own political line and the solidity of its own organization.

The dialectical world outlook emerged in ancient times both in China and in Europe. Ancient dialectics, however, had a somewhat spontaneous and naive character; in the social and historical conditions then prevailing, it was not yet able to form a theoretical system, hence it could not fully explain the world and was supplanted by metaphysics. The famous German philosopher Hegel, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made most important contributions to dialectics, but his dialectics was idealist. It was not until Marx and Engels, the great protagonists of the proletarian movement, had synthesized the positive achievements in the history of human knowledge and, in particular, critically absorbed the rational elements of Hegelian dialectics and created the great theory of dialectical and historical materialism that an unprecedented revolution occurred in the history of human knowledge. This theory was further developed by Lenin and Stalin. As soon as it spread to China, it wrought tremendous changes in the world of Chinese thought.

This dialectical world outlook teaches us primarily how to observe and analyze the movement of opposites in different things and, on the basis of such analysis, to indicate the methods for resolving contradictions. It is therefore most important for us to understand the law of contradiction in things in a concrete way.

== The Universality of Contradiction ==
For convenience of exposition, I shall deal first with the universality of contradiction and then proceed to the particularity of contradiction. The reason is that the universality of contradiction can be explained more briefly, for it has been widely recognized ever since the materialist-dialectical world outlook was discovered and materialist dialectics applied with outstanding success to analyzing many aspects of human history and natural history and to changing many aspects of society and nature (as in the Soviet Union) by the great creators and continuers of Marxism--Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin; whereas the particularity of contradiction is still not dearly understood by many comrades, and especially by the dogmatists. They do not understand that it is precisely in the particularity of contradiction that the universality of contradiction resides. Nor do they understand how important is the study of the particularity of contradiction in the concrete things confronting us for guiding the course of revolutionary practice. Therefore, it is necessary to stress the study of the particularity of contradiction and to explain it at adequate length. For this reason, in our analysis of the law of contradiction in things, we shall first analyze the universality of contradiction, then place special stress on analyzing the particularity of contradiction, and finally return to the universality of contradiction.

The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.

Engels said, "Motion itself is a contradiction." [5] Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as "the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, ''mutually exclusive,'' opposite tendencies in ''all'' phenomena and processes of nature ''(including'' mind and society)". [6] Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.

Contradiction is the basis of the simple forms of motion (for instance, mechanical motion) and still more so of the complex forms of motion.

Engels explained the universality of contradiction as follows:

* If simple mechanical change of place contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. ... life consists precisely and primarily in this--that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could not escape contradictions, and that for example the contradiction between man's inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is--at least practically, for us--an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.

* ... one of the basic principles of higher mathematics is the contradiction that in certain circumstances straight lines and curves may be the same....

* But even lower mathematics teems with contradictions. [7]

Lenin illustrated the universality of contradiction as follows:

* In mathematics: + and - . Differential and integral.

In mechanics: action and reaction.

In physics: positive and negative electricity.

In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms.

In social science: the class struggle. [8]

In war, offense and defense, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.

Every difference in men's concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man's thinking.

Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party's life would come to an end.

Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena. But does contradiction also exist at the initial stage of each process?

Is there a movement of opposites from beginning to end in the process of development of every single thing?

As can be seen from the articles written by Soviet philosophers criticizing it, the Deborin school maintains that contradiction appears not at the inception of a process but only when it has developed to a certain stage. If this were the case, then the cause of the development of the process before that stage would be external and not internal. Deborin thus reverts to the metaphysical theories of external causality and of mechanism. Applying this view in the analysis of concrete problems, the Deborin school sees only differences but not contradictions between the kulaks and the peasants in general under existing conditions in the Soviet Union, thus entirely agreeing with Bukharin. In analyzing the French Revolution, it holds that before the Revolution there were likewise only differences but not contradictions within the Third Estate, which was composed of the workers, the peasants and the bourgeoisie. These views of the Deborin school are anti-Marxist. This school does not understand that each and every difference already contains contradiction and that difference itself is contradiction. Labor and capital have been in contradiction ever since the two classes came into being, only at first the contradiction had not yet become intense. Even under the social conditions existing in the Soviet Union, there is a difference between workers and peasants and this very difference is a contradiction, although, unlike the contradiction between labor and capital, it will not become intensified into antagonism or assume the form of class struggle; the workers and the peasants have established a firm alliance in the course of socialist construction and are gradually resolving this contradiction in the course of the advance from socialism to communism. The question is one of different kinds of contradiction, not of the presence or absence of contradiction. Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.

What is meant by the emergence of a new process? The old unity with its constituent opposites yields to a new unity with its constituent opposites, whereupon a new process emerges to replace the old. The old process ends and the new one begins. The new process contains new contradictions and begins its own history of the development of contradictions.

As Lenin pointed out, Marx in his ''Capital'' gave a model analysis of this movement of opposites which runs through the process of development of things from beginning to end. This is the method that must be employed in studying the development of all things. Lenin, too, employed this method correctly and adhered to it in all his writings.

In his ''Capital,'' Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday ''relation'' of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz. the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this "cell" of bourgeois society) analysis reveals ''all'' the contradictions (or the germs of ''all'' the contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development ''(both'' growth ''and'' movement) of these contradictions and of this society in the [summation] of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end.

Lenin added, "Such must also be the method of exposition (or study) of dialectics in general." [9]

Chinese Communists must learn this method; only then will they be able correctly to analyze the history and the present state of the Chinese revolution and infer its future.

== The Particularity of Contradiction ==
Contradiction is present in the process of development of all things; it permeates the process of development of each thing from beginning to end. This is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction which we have discussed above. Now let us discuss the particularity and relativity of contradiction.

This problem should be studied on several levels.

First, the contradiction in each form of motion of matter has its particularity. Man's knowledge of matter is knowledge of its forms of motion, because there is nothing in this world except matter in motion and this motion must assume certain forms. In considering each form of motion of matter, we must observe the points which it has in common with other forms of motion. But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. There are many forms of motion in nature, mechanical motion, sound, light, heat, electricity, dissociation, combination, and so on. All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.

The sciences are differentiated precisely on the basis of the particular contradictions inherent in their respective objects of study. Thus the contradiction peculiar to a certain field of phenomena constitutes the object of study for a specific branch of science. For example, positive and negative numbers in mathematics; action and reaction in mechanics; positive and negative electricity in physics; dissociation and combination in chemistry; forces of production and relations of production, classes and class struggle, in social science; offense and defense in military science; idealism and materialism, the metaphysical outlook and the dialectical outlook, in philosophy; and so on--all these are the objects of study of different branches of science precisely because each branch has its own particular contradiction and particular essence. Of course, unless we understand the universality of contradiction, we have no way of discovering the universal cause or universal basis for the movement or development of things; however, unless we study the particularity of contradiction, we have no way of determining the particular essence of a thing which differentiates it from other things, no way of discovering the particular cause or particular basis for the movement or development of a thing, and no way of distinguishing one thing from another or of demarcating the fields of science.

As regards the sequence in the movement of man's knowledge, there is always a gradual growth from the knowledge of individual and particular things to the knowledge of things in general. Only after man knows the particular essence of many different things can he proceed to generalization and know the common essence of things.

When man attains the knowledge of this common essence, he uses it as a guide and proceeds to study various concrete things which have not yet been studied, or studied thoroughly, and to discover the particular essence of each; only thus is he able to supplement, enrich and develop his knowledge of their common essence and prevent such knowledge from withering or petrifying. These are the two processes of cognition: one, from the particular to the general, and the other, from the general to the particular. Thus cognition always moves in cycles and (so long as scientific method is strictly adhered to) each cycle advances human knowledge a step higher and so makes it more and more profound. Where our dogmatists err on this question is that, on the one hand, they do not understand that we have to study the particularity of contradiction and know the particular essence of individual things before we can adequately know the universality of contradiction and the common essence of things, and that, on the other hand, they do not understand that after knowing the common essence of things, we must go further and study the concrete things that have not yet been thoroughly studied or have only just emerged. Our dogmatists are lazy-bones. They refuse to undertake any painstaking study of concrete things, they regard general truths as emerging out of the void, they turn them into purely abstract unfathomable formulas, and thereby completely deny and reverse the normal sequence by which man comes to know truth. Nor do they understand the interconnection of the two processes in cognition-- from the particular to the general and then from the general to the particular. They understand nothing of the Marxist theory of knowledge.

It is necessary not only to study the particular contradiction and the essence determined thereby of every great system of the forms of motion of matter, but also to study the particular contradiction and the essence of each process in the long course of development of each form of motion of matter. In every form of motion, each process of development which is real (and not imaginary) is qualitatively different. Our study must emphasize and start from this point.

Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods. For instance, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is resolved by the method of socialist revolution; the contradiction between the great masses of the people and the feudal system is resolved by the method of democratic revolution; the contradiction between the colonies and imperialism is resolved by the method of national revolutionary war; the contradiction between the working class and the peasant class in socialist society is resolved by the method of collectivization and mechanization in agriculture; contradiction within the Communist Party is resolved by the method of criticism and self-criticism; the contradiction between society and nature is resolved by the method of developing the productive forces. Processes change, old processes and old contradictions disappear, new processes and new contradictions emerge, and the methods of resolving contradictions differ accordingly. In Russia, there was a fundamental difference between the contradiction resolved by the February Revolution and the contradiction resolved by the October Revolution, as well as between the methods used to resolve them. The principle of using different methods to resolve different contradictions is one which Marxist-Leninists must strictly observe. The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done.

In order to reveal the particularity of the contradictions in any process in the development of a thing, in their totality or interconnections, that is, in order to reveal the essence of the process, it is necessary to reveal the particularity of the two aspects of each of the contradictions in that process; otherwise it will be impossible to discover the essence of the process. This likewise requires the utmost attention in our study.

There are many contradictions in the course of development of any major thing. For instance, in the course of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution, where the conditions are exceedingly complex, there exist the contradiction between all the oppressed classes in Chinese society and imperialism, the contradiction between the great masses of the people and feudalism, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the contradiction between the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie on the one hand and the bourgeoisie on the other, the contradiction between the various reactionary ruling groups, and so on. These contradictions cannot be treated in the same way since each has its own particularity; moreover, the two aspects of each contradiction cannot be treated in the same way since each aspect has its own characteristics. We who are engages in the Chinese revolution should not only understand the particularity of these contradictions in their totality, that is, in their interconnections, but should also study the two aspects of each contradiction as the only means of understanding the totality. When we speak of understanding each aspect of a contradiction, we mean understanding what specific position each aspect occupies, what concrete forms it assumes in its interdependence and in its contradiction with its opposite, and what concrete methods are employed in the struggle with its opposite, when the two are both interdependent and in contradiction, and also after the interdependence breaks down. It is of great importance to study these problems. Lenin meant just this when he said that the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. [10] Our dogmatists have violated Lenin's teachings; they never use their brains to analyze anything concretely, and in their writings and speeches they always use stereotypes devoid of content, thereby creating a very bad style of work in our Party.

In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. To be subjective means not to look at problems objectively, that is, not to use the materialist viewpoint in looking at problems. I have discussed this in my essay "On Practice". To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly, for example, to understand only China but not Japan, only the Communist Party but not the Kuomintang, only the proletariat but not the bourgeoisie, only the peasants but not the landlords, only the favorable conditions but not the difficult ones, only the past but not the future, only individual parts but not the whole, only the defects but not the achievements, only the plaintiff's case but not the defendant's, only underground revolutionary work but not open revolutionary work, and so on. In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly. When Sun Wu Tzu said in discussing military science, "Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat", [11] he was referring to the two sides in a battle. Wei Chengi [12] of the Tang Dynasty also understood the error of one-sidedness when he said, "Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened, heed only one side and you will be benighted." But our comrades often look at problems one-sidedly, and so they often run into snags. In the novel ''Shui Hu Chuan,'' Sung Chiang thrice attacked Chu Village. [13] Twice he was defeated because he was ignorant of the local conditions and used the wrong method. Later he changed his method; first he investigated the situation, and he familiarized himself with the maze of roads, then he broke up the alliance between the Li, Hu and Chu Villages and sent his men in disguise into the enemy camp to lie in wait, using a stratagem similar to that of the Trojan Horse in the foreign story. And on the third occasion he won. There are many examples of materialist dialectics in ''Shui Hu Chuan,'' of which the episode of the three attacks on Chu Village is one of the best. Lenin said:

* ... in order really to know an object we must embrace, study, all its sides, all connections and "mediations." We shall never achieve this completely, but the demand for all-sidedness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. [14]

We should remember his words. To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). This way of doing things is bound to lead to trouble. The reason the dogmatist and empiricist comrades in China have made mistakes lies precisely in their subjectivist, one-sided and superficial way of looking at things. To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.

Not only does the whole process of the movement of opposites in the development of a thing, both in their interconnections and in each of the aspects, have particular features to ''which'' we must give attention, but each stage in the process has its particular features to which we must give attention too.

The fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a thing and the essence of the process determined by this fundamental contradiction will not disappear until the process is completed; but in a lengthy process the conditions usually differ at each stage. The reason is that, although the nature of the fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a thing and the essence of the process remain unchanged, the fundamental contradiction becomes more and more intensified as it passes from one stage to another in the lengthy process. In addition, among the numerous major and minor contradictions which are determined or influenced by the fundamental contradiction, some become intensified, some are temporarily or partially resolved or mitigated, and some new ones emerge; hence the process is marked by stages. If people do not pay attention to the stages in the process of development of a thing, they cannot deal with its contradictions properly.

For instance, when the capitalism of the era of free competition developed into imperialism, there was no change in the class nature of the two classes in fundamental contradiction, namely, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, or in the capitalist essence of society; however, the contradiction between these two classes became intensified, the contradiction between monopoly and non-monopoly capital emerged, the contradiction between the colonial powers and the colonies became intensified, the contradiction among the capitalist countries resulting from their uneven development manifested itself with particular sharpness, and thus there arose the special stage of capitalism, the stage of imperialism. Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution precisely because Lenin and Stalin have correctly explained these contradictions and correctly formulated the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution for their resolution.

Take the process of China's bourgeois-democratic revolution, which began with the Revolution of 1911; it, too, has several distinct stages. In particular, the revolution in its period of bourgeois leadership and the revolution in its period of proletarian leadership represent two vastly different historical stages. In other words, proletarian leadership has fundamentally changed the whole face of the revolution, has brought about a new alignment of classes, given rise to a tremendous upsurge in the peasant revolution, imparted thoroughness to the revolution against imperialism and feudalism, created the possibility of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution, and so on. None of these was possible in the period when the revolution was under bourgeois leadership. Although no change has taken place in the nature of the fundamental contradiction in the process as a whole, ''i.e.,'' in the anti-imperialist, anti- feudal, democratic-revolutionary nature of the process (the opposite of which is its semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature), nonetheless this process has passed through several stages of development in the course of more than twenty years; during this time many great events have taken place-- the failure of the Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the regime of the Northern warlords, the formation of the first national united front and the revolution of 1924-27, the break-up of the united front and the desertion of the bourgeoisie to the side of the counterrevolution, the wars among the new warlords, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the establishment of the second national united front and the War of Resistance Against Japan. These stages are marked by particular features such as the intensification of certain contradictions ''(e.g.,'' the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the Japanese invasion of the four northeastern provinces), the partial or temporary resolution of other contradictions ''(e.g.,'' the destruction of the Northern warlords and our confiscation of the land of the landlords), and the emergence of yet other contradictions ''(e.g.,'' the conflicts among the new warlords, and the landlords' recapture of the land after the loss of our revolutionary base areas in the south).

In studying the particularities of the contradictions at each stage in the process of development of a thing, we must not only observe them in their interconnections or their totality, we must also examine the two aspects of each contradiction.

For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen's Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big bourgeoisie. After the Sian Incident in December 1936, it began another change in the direction of ending the civil war and co-operating with the Communist Party for joint opposition to Japanese imperialism. Such have been the particular features of the Kuomintang in the three stages. Of course, these features have arisen from a variety of causes. Now take the other aspect, the Chinese Communist Party. In the period of the first united front, the Chinese Communist Party was in its infancy; it courageously led the revolution of 1924-27 but revealed its immaturity in its understanding of the character, the tasks and the methods of the revolution, and consequently it became possible for [[Chen Tu-hsiuism]], which appeared during the latter part of this revolution, to assert itself and bring about the defeat of the revolution. After 1927, the Communist Party courageously led the Agrarian Revolutionary War and created the revolutionary army and revolutionary base areas; however, it committed adventurist errors which brought about very great losses both to the army and to the base areas. Since 1935 the Party has corrected these errors and has been leading the new united front for resistance to Japan; this great struggle is now developing. At the present stage, the Communist Party is a Party that has gone through the test of two revolutions and acquired a wealth of experience. Such have been the particular features of the Chinese Communist Party in the three stages. These features, too, have arisen from a variety of causes. Without studying both these sets of features we cannot understand the particular relations between the two parties during the various stages of their development, namely, the establishment of a united front, the break-up of the united front, and the establishment of another united front. What is even more fundamental for the study of the particular features of the two parties is the examination of the class basis of the two parties and the resultant contradictions which have arisen between each party and other forces at different periods. For instance, in the period of its first cooperation with the Communist Party, the Kuomintang stood in contradiction to foreign imperialism and was therefore anti-imperialist; on the other hand, it stood in contradiction to the great masses of the people within the country--although in words it promised many benefits to the working people, in fact it gave them little or nothing. In the period when it carried on the anti-Communist war, the Kuomintang collaborated with imperialism and feudalism against the great masses of the people and wiped out all the gains they had won in the revolution, and thereby intensified its contradictions with them. In the present period of the anti-Japanese war, the Kuomintang stands in contradiction to Japanese imperialism and wants co-operation with the Communist Party, without however relaxing its struggle against the Communist Party and the people or its oppression of them. As for the Communist Party, it has always, in every period, stood with the great masses of the people against imperialism and feudalism, but in the present period of the anti-Japanese war, it has adopted a moderate policy towards the Kuomintang and the domestic feudal forces because the Kuomintang has pressed itself in favor of resisting Japan. The above circumstances have resulted now in alliance between the two parties and now in struggle between them, and even during the periods of alliance there has been a complicated state of simultaneous alliance and struggle. If we do not study the particular features of both aspects of the contradiction, we shall fail to understand not only the relations of each party with the other forces, but also the relations between the two parties.

It can thus be seen that in studying the particularity of any kind of contradiction--the contradiction in each form of motion of matter, the contradiction in each of its processes of development, the two aspects of the contradiction in each process, the contradiction at each stage of a process, and the two aspects of the contradiction at each stage--in studying the particularity of all these contradictions, we must not be subjective and arbitrary but must analyze it concretely. Without concrete analysis there can be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction. We must always remember Lenin's words, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

Marx and Engels were the first to provide us with excellent models of such concrete analysis.

When Marx and Engels applied the law of contradiction in things to the study of the socio-historical process, they discovered the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, they discovered the contradiction between the exploiting and exploited classes and also the resultant contradiction between the economic base and its superstructure (politics, ideology, etc.), and they discovered how these contradictions inevitably lead to different kinds of social revolution in different kinds of class society.

When Marx applied this law to the study of the economic structure of capitalist society, he discovered that the basic contradiction of this society is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of ownership. This contradiction manifests itself in the contradiction between the organized character of production in individual enterprises and the anarchic character of production in society as a whole. In terms of class relations, it manifests itself in the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Because the range of things is vast and there is no limit to their development, what is universal in one context becomes particular in another. Conversely, what is particular in one context becomes universal in another. The contradiction in the capitalist system between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production is common to all countries where capitalism exists and develops; as far as capitalism is concerned, this constitutes the universality of contradiction. But this contradiction of capitalism belongs only to a certain historical stage in the general development of class society; as far as the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production in class society as a whole is concerned, it constitutes the particularity of contradiction. However, in the course of dissecting the particularity of all these contradictions in capitalist society, Marx gave a still more profound, more adequate and more complete elucidation of the universality of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production in class society in general.

Since the particular is united with the universal and since the universality as well as the particularity of contradiction is inherent in everything, universality residing in particularity, we should, when studying an object, try to discover both the particular and the universal and their interconnection, to discover both particularity and universality and also their interconnection within the object itself, and to discover the interconnections of this object with the many objects outside it. When Stalin explained the historical roots of Leninism in his famous work, ''The Foundations of Leninism,'' he analyzed the international situation in which Leninism arose, analyzed those contradictions of capitalism which reached their culmination under imperialism, and showed how these contradictions made proletarian revolution a matter for immediate action and created favorable conditions for a direct onslaught on capitalism. What is more, he analyzed the reasons why Russia became the cradle of Leninism, why tsarist Russia became the focus of all the contradictions of imperialism, and why it was possible for the Russian proletariat to become the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat. Thus, Stalin analyzed the universality of contradiction in imperialism, showing why Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and at the same time analyzed the particularity of tsarist Russian imperialism within this general contradiction, showing why Russia became the birthplace of the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution and how the universality of contradiction is contained in this particularity. Stalin's analysis provides us with a model for understanding the particularity and the universality of contradiction and their interconnection.

On the question of using dialectics in the study of objective phenomena, Marx and Engels, and likewise Lenin and Stalin, always enjoin people not to be in any way subjective and arbitrary but, from the concrete conditions in the actual objective movement of these phenomena, to discover their concrete contradictions, the concrete position of each aspect of every contradiction and the concrete interrelations of the contradictions. Our dogmatists do not have this attitude in study and therefore can never get anything right. We must take warning from their failure and learn to acquire this attitude, which is the only correct one in study.

The relationship between the universality and the particularity of contradiction is the relationship between the general character and the individual character of contradiction. By the former we mean that contradiction exists in and runs through all processes from beginning to end; motion, things, processes, thinking--all are contradictions. To deny contradiction is to deny everything. This is a universal truth for all times and all countries, which admits of no exception. Hence the general character, the absoluteness of contradiction. But this general character is contained in every individual character; without individual character there can be no general character. If all individual character were removed, what general character would remain? It is because each contradiction is particular that individual character arises. All individual character exists conditionally and temporarily, and hence is relative.

This truth concerning general and individual character, concerning absoluteness and relativity, is the quintessence of the problem of contradiction in things; failure to understand it is tantamount to abandoning dialectics.

== The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction ==
There are still two points in the problem of the particularity of contradiction which must be singled out for analysis, namely, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction.

There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.

For instance, in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie ant the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.

In a semi-colonial country such as China, the relationship between the principal contradiction and the non-principal contradictions presents a complicated picture.

When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position. So it was in China in the Opium War of 1840, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and the Yi Ho Tuan War of 1900, and so it is now in the present Sino-Japanese War.

But in another situation, the contradictions change position. When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war, but by milder means--political, economic and cultural--the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people. At such a time, the masses often resort to civil war against the alliance of imperialism and the feudal classes, while imperialism often employs indirect methods rather than direct action in helping the reactionaries in the semi-colonial countries to oppress the people, and thus the internal contradictions become particularly sharp. This is what happened in China in the Revolutionary War of 1911, the Revolutionary War of 1924-27, and the ten years of Agrarian Revolutionary War after 1927. Wars among the various reactionary ruling groups in the semi-colonial countries, e.g., the wars among the warlords in China, fall into the same category.

When a revolutionary civil war develops to the point of threatening the very existence of imperialism and its running dogs, the domestic reactionaries, imperialism often adopts other methods in order to maintain its rule; it either tries to split the revolutionary front from within or sends armed forces to help the domestic reactionaries directly. At such a time, foreign imperialism and domestic reaction stand quite openly at one pole while the masses of the people stand at the other pole, thus forming the principal contradiction which determines or influences the development of the other contradictions. The assistance given by various capitalist countries to the Russian reactionaries after the October Revolution is an example of armed intervention. Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal in 1927 is an example of splitting the revolutionary front.

But whatever happens, there is no doubt at all that at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.

Hence, if in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. This is the method Marx taught us in his study of capitalist society. Likewise Lenin and Stalin taught us this method when they studied imperialism and the general crisis of capitalism and when they studied the Soviet economy. There are thousands of scholars and men of action who do not understand it, and the result is that, lost in a fog, they are unable to get to the heart of a problem and naturally cannot find a way to resolve its contradictions.

As we have said, one must not treat all the contradictions in a process as being equal but must distinguish between the principal and the secondary contradictions, and pay special attention to grasping the principal one. But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.

But this situation is not static; the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.

We often speak of "the new superseding the old". The supersession of the old by the new is a general, eternal and inviolable law of the universe. The transformation of one thing into another, through leaps of different forms in accordance with its essence and external conditions--this is the process of the new superseding the old. In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out. And the moment the new aspect gains dominance over the old, the old thing changes qualitatively into a new thing. It can thus be seen that the nature of a thing is mainly determined by the principal aspect of the contradiction, the aspect which has gained predominance. When the principal aspect which has gained predominance changes, the nature of a thing changes accordingly.

In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out. The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

Look at China, for instance. Imperialism occupies the principal position in the contradiction in which China has been reduced to a semi-colony, it oppresses the Chinese people, and China has been changed from an independent country into a semi-colonial one. But this state of affairs will inevitably change; in the struggle between the two sides, the power of the Chinese people which is growing under the leadership of the proletariat will inevitably change China from a semi-colony into an independent country, whereas imperialism will be overthrown and old China will inevitably change into New China.

The change of old China into New China also involves a change in the relation between the old feudal forces and the new popular forces within the country. The old feudal landlord class will be overthrown, and from being the ruler it will change into being the ruled; and this class, too, will gradually die out. From being the ruled the people, led by the proletariat, will become the rulers. Thereupon, the nature of Chinese society will change and the old, semi-colonial and semi-feudal society will change into a new democratic society.

Instances of such reciprocal transformation are found in our past experience. The Ching Dynasty which ruled China for nearly three hundred years was overthrown in the Revolution of 1911, and the revolutionary ''Tung Meng Hui'' under Sun Yat-sen's leadership was victorious for a time. In the Revolutionary War of 1924-27, the revolutionary forces of the Communist-Kuomintang alliance in the south changed from being weak to being strong and won victory in the Northern Expedition, while the Northern warlords who once ruled the roost were overthrown. In 1927, the people's forces led by the Communist Party were greatly reduced numerically under the attacks of Kuomintang reaction, but with the elimination of opportunism within their ranks they gradually grew again. In the revolutionary base areas under Communist leadership, the peasants have been transformed from being the ruled to being the rulers, while the landlords have undergone a reverse transformation. It is always so in the world, the new displacing the old, the old being superseded by the new, the old being eliminated to make way for the new, and the new emerging out of the old.

At certain times in the revolutionary struggle, the difficulties outweigh the favorable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction and the favorable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favorable new situation; thus a difficult situation yields place to a favorable one. This- is what happened after the failure of the revolution in China in 1927 and during the Long March of the Chinese Red Army. In the present Sino-Japanese War, China is again in a difficult position, but we can change this and fundamentally transform the situation as between China and Japan. Conversely, favorable conditions can be transformed into difficulty if the revolutionaries make mistakes. Thus the victory of the revolution of 1924-27 turned into defeat. The revolutionary base areas which grew up in the southern provinces after 1927 had all suffered defeat by 1934.

When we engage in study, the same holds good for the contradiction in the passage from ignorance to knowledge. At the very beginning of our study of Marxism, our ignorance of or scanty acquaintance with Marxism stands in contradiction to knowledge of Marxism. But by assiduous study, ignorance can be transformed into knowledge, scanty knowledge into substantial knowledge, and blindness in the application of Marxism into mastery of its application.

Some people think that this is not true of certain contradictions. For instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role. The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." [15] When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy. When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive. Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also--and indeed must--recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.

In studying the particularity of contradiction, unless we examine these two facets--the principal and the non-principal contradictions in a process, and the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction--that is, unless we examine the distinctive character of these two facets of contradiction, we shall get bogged down in abstractions, be unable to understand contradiction concretely and consequently be unable to find the correct method of resolving it. The distinctive character or particularity of these two facets of contradiction represents the unevenness of the forces that are in contradiction. Nothing in this world develops absolutely evenly; we must oppose the theory of even development or the theory of equilibrium. Moreover, it is these concrete features of a contradiction and the changes in the principal and non-principal aspects of a contradiction in the course of its development that manifest the force of the new superseding the old. The study of the various states of unevenness in contradictions, of the principal and non-principal contradictions and of the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction constitutes an essential method by which a revolutionary political party correctly determines its strategic and tactical policies both in political and in military affairs. All Communists must give it attention.

== The Identity and Struggle of the Aspects of a Contradiction ==
When we understand the universality and the particularity of contradiction, we must proceed to study the problem of the identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction.

Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, inter permeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation--all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.

Lenin said:

* ''Dialectics is'' the teaching which shows how ''opposites'' can be and how they happen to be (how they become) ''identical--''under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another,--why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another. [16]

What does this passage mean?

The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.

That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.

This being so, there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?

The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without "above", there would be no "below" without "below", there would be no "above". Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semi colonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, inter permeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies "how ''opposites'' can be ... ''identical".'' How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

Why is there identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?

The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party's policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity.

Our agrarian revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having, acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides. Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration.

To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites are at the same time complementary.

War and peace, as everybody knows, transform themselves into each other. War is transformed into peace; for instance, the First World War was transformed into the post-war peace, and the civil war in China has now stopped, giving place to internal peace. Peace is transformed into war; for instance, the Kuomintang-Communist co-operation was transformed into war in 1927, and today's situation of world peace may be transformed into a second world war. Why is this so? Because in class society such contradictory things as war and peace have an identity in given conditions.

All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed "how they happen to be (how they become) ''identical--''under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another".

Why is it that "the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another"? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite. Reflected in man's thinking, this becomes the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics. It is only the reactionary ruling classes of the past and present and the meta physicians in their service who regard opposites not as living, conditional, mobile and transforming themselves into one another, but as dead and rigid, and they propagate this fallacy everywhere to delude the masses of the people, thus seeking to perpetuate their rule. The task of Communists is to expose the fallacies of the reactionaries and meta physicians, to propagate the dialectics inherent in things, and so accelerate the transformation of things and achieve the goal of revolution.

In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another. There are innumerable transformations in mythology, for instance, Kua Fu's race with the sun in ''Shan Hai Ching,'' [17] Yi's shooting down of nine suns in ''Huai Nan Tzu'', [18] the Monkey King's seventy-two metamorphoses in ''Hsi Yu Chi,'' [19] the numerous episodes of ghosts and foxes metamorphosed into human beings in the ''Strange Tales of Liao Chai,'' [20] etc. But these legendary transformations of opposites are not concrete changes reflecting concrete contradictions. They are naive, imaginary, subjectively conceived transformations conjured up in men's minds by innumerable real and complex transformations of opposites into one another. Marx said, "All mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery over the forces of nature." [21] The myriads of changes in mythology (and also in nursery tales) delight people because they imaginatively picture man's conquest of the forces of nature, and the best myths possess "eternal charm", as Marx put it; but myths are not built out of the concrete contradictions existing in given conditions and therefore are not a scientific reflection of reality. That is to say, in myths or nursery tales the aspects constituting a contradiction have only an imaginary identity, not a concrete identity. The scientific reflection of the identity in real transformations is Marxist dialectics.

Why can an egg but not a stone be transformed into a chicken? Why is there identity between war and peace and none between war and a stone? Why can human beings give birth only to human beings and not to anything else? The sole reason is that the identity of opposites exists only in necessary given conditions. Without these necessary given conditions there can be no identity whatsoever.

Why is it that in Russia in 1917 the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution was directly linked with the proletarian socialist October Revolution, while in France the bourgeois revolution was not directly linked with a socialist revolution and the Paris Commune of 1871 ended in failure? Why is it, on the other hand, that the nomadic system of Mongolia and Central Asia has been directly linked with socialism? Why is it that the Chinese revolution can avoid a capitalist future and be directly linked with socialism without taking the old historical road of the Western countries, without passing through a period of bourgeois dictatorship? The sole reason is the concrete conditions of the time. When certain necessary conditions are present, certain contradictions arise in the process of development of things and, moreover, the opposites contained in them are interdependent and become transformed into one another; otherwise none of this would be possible.

Such is the problem of identity. What then is struggle? And what is the relation between identity and struggle?

Lenin said:

* The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute. [22]

What does this passage mean?

All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute.

There are two states of motion in all things, that of relative rest and that of conspicuous change. Both are caused by the struggle between the two contradictory elements contained in a thing. When the thing is in the first state of motion, it is undergoing only quantitative and not qualitative change and consequently presents the outward appearance of being at rest. When the thing is in the second state of motion, the quantitative change of the first state has already reached a culminating point and gives rise to the dissolution of the thing as an entity and thereupon a qualitative change ensues, hence the appearance of a conspicuous change. Such unity, solidarity, combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity, attraction, etc., as we see in daily life, are all the appearances of things in the state of quantitative change. On the other hand, the dissolution of unity, that is, the destruction of this solidarity, combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity and attraction, and the change of each into its opposite are all the appearances of things in the state of qualitative change, the transformation of one process into another. Things are constantly transforming themselves from the first into the second state of motion; the struggle of opposites goes on in both states but the contradiction is resolved through the second state. That is why we say that the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and relative, while the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute.

When we said above that two opposite things can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other because there is identity between them, we were speaking of conditionality, that is to say, in given conditions two contradictory things can be united and can transform themselves into each other, but in the absence of these conditions, they cannot constitute a contradiction, cannot coexist in the same entity and cannot transform themselves into one another. It is because the identity of opposites obtains only in given conditions that we have said identity is conditional and relative. We may add that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.

The combination of conditional, relative identity and unconditional, absolute struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things.

We Chinese often say, "Things that oppose each other also complement each other." [23] That is, things opposed to each other have identity. This saying is dialectical and contrary to metaphysics. "Oppose each other" refers to the mutual exclusion or the struggle of two contradictory aspects. "Complement each other" means that in given conditions the two contradictory aspects unite and achieve identity. Yet struggle is inherent in identity and without struggle there can be no identity.

In identity there is struggle, in particularity there is universality, and in individuality there is generality. To quote Lenin, ". . . there is an absolute in the relative." [24]

== The Place of Antagonism in Contradiction ==
The question of the struggle of opposites includes the question of what is antagonism. Our answer is that antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites.

In human history, antagonism between classes exists as a particular manifestation of the struggle of opposites. Consider the contradiction between the exploiting and the exploited classes. Such contradictory classes coexist for a long time in the same society, be it slave society, feudal society or capitalist society, and they struggle with each other; but it is not until the contradiction between the two classes develops to a certain stage that it assumes the form of open antagonism and develops into revolution. The same holds for the transformation of peace into war in class society.

Before it explodes, a bomb is a single entity in which opposites coexist in given conditions. The explosion takes place only when a new condition, ignition, is present. An analogous situation arises in all those natural phenomena which finally assume the form of open conflict to resolve old contradictions and produce new things.

It is highly important to grasp this fact. It enables us to understand that revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society and that without them, it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. Communists must expose the deceitful propaganda of the reactionaries, such as the assertion that social revolution is unnecessary and impossible. They must firmly uphold the Marxist-Leninist theory of social revolution and enable the people to understand that social revolution is not only entirely necessary but also entirely practicable, and that the whole history of mankind and the triumph of the Soviet Union have confirmed this scientific truth.

However, we must make a concrete study of the circumstances of each specific struggle of opposites and should not arbitrarily apply the formula discussed above to everything. Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute, but the methods of resolving contradictions, that is, the forms of struggle, differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. In accordance with the concrete development of things, some contradictions which were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones.

As already mentioned, so long as classes exist, contradictions between correct and incorrect ideas in the Communist Party are reflections within the Party of class contradictions. At first, with regard to certain issues, such contradictions may not manifest themselves as antagonistic. But with the development of the class struggle, they may grow and become antagonistic. The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shows us that the contradictions between the correct thinking of Lenin and Stalin and the fallacious thinking of Trotsky, Bukharin and others did not at first manifest themselves in an antagonistic form, but that later they did develop into antagonism. There are similar cases in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. At first the contradictions between the correct thinking of many of our Party comrades and the fallacious thinking of Chen Tu-hsiu, Chang Kuo-tao and others also did not manifest themselves in an antagonistic form, but later they did develop into antagonism. At present the contradiction between correct and incorrect thinking in our Party does not manifest itself in an antagonistic form, and if comrades who have committed mistakes can correct them, it will not develop into antagonism. Therefore, the Party must on the one hand wage a serious struggle against erroneous thinking, and on the other give the comrades who have committed errors ample opportunity to wake up. This being the case, excessive struggle is obviously inappropriate. But if the people who have committed errors persist in them and aggravate them, there is the possibility that this contradiction will develop into antagonism.

Economically, the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomintang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big comprador bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our revolutionary base areas, this antagonistic contradiction has changed into one that is non-antagonistic; and when communist society is reached it will be abolished.

Lenin said, "Antagonism and contradiction are not at all one and the same. Under socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain." [25] That is to say, antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites; the formula of antagonism cannot be arbitrarily applied everywhere.

== Conclusion ==
We may now say a few words to sum up. The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. In studying the particularity and relativity of contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the principal contradiction and the non-principal contradictions and to the distinction between the principal aspect and the non-principal aspect of a contradiction; in studying the universality of contradiction and the struggle of opposites in contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the different forms of struggle. Otherwise we shall make mistakes. If, through study, we achieve a real understanding of the essentials explained above, we shall be able to demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause, and our comrades with practical experience will be able to organize their experience into principles and avoid repeating empiricist errors. These are a few simple conclusions from our study of the law of contradiction.

== Notes ==
<references group="note" />
1. V. I. Lenin, "Conspectus of Hegel's ''Lectures on the History of Philosophy" Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 249.

2. In his essay "On the Question of Dialectics", Lenin said, "The splitting in two of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts (see the quotation from Philo on Heraclitus at the beginning of Section 3 'On Cognition' in Lassalle's book on Heraclitus) is the ''essence'' (one of the 'essentials', one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics." ''(Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 357.) In his "Conspectus of Hegel's ''The Science of Logic",'' he said, "In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This grasps the kernel of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development." (Ibid., p. 215.)

3. V. I. Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", ''Collected Works, Russ.'' ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

4. A saying of Tung Chung-shu (179-104 B.C.), a well-known exponent of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty.

5. Frederick Engels, "Dialectics. Quantity and Quality", ''Anti-Duhring,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1959, p. 166.

6. V. I. Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", ''Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 357-58.

7. Frederick Engels, ''op. cit.'', pp. 166-67.

8. V. I. Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", ''Collected Works,'' Russ''.'' ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 357.

9. ''Ibid''., pp. 358-59.

10. See "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War", Note 10, p. 251 of this volume.

11. See ''ibid.,'' Note :, p. 249 of this volume.

12. Wei Cheng (A.D. 580-643) was a statesman and historian of the Tang Dynasty.

13. ''Shui Hu Chuan'' (''Heroes of the Marshes''), a famous 14th century Chinese novel, describes a peasant war towards the end of the Northern Sung Dynasty. Chu Village was in the vicinity of Liangshanpo, where Sung Chiang, leader of the peasant uprising and hero of the novel, established his base. Chu Chao-feng, the head of this village, was a despotic landlord.

14. V. I. Lenin, "Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin", ''Selected Works,'' Eng. ed., International Publishers, New York, 1943, Vol. IX, p. 66.

15. V. I. Lenin, "What Is to Be Done?", ''Collected Works,'' Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.

16. V. I. Lenin, "Conspectus of Hegel's ''The Science of Logic", Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 97-98.

17. ''Shan Hai Chug'' (''Book of Mountains and Seas'') was written in the era of the Warring States (403-221 B.C.). In one of its fables Kua Fu, a superman, pursued and overtook the sun. But he died of thirst, whereupon his staff was transformed into the forest of Teng.

18. Yi is one of the legendary heroes of ancient China, famous for his archery. According to a legend in ''Huai Nan Tzu,'' compiled in the 2nd century B.C., there were ten suns in the sky in the days of Emperor Yao. To put an end to the damage to vegetation caused by these scorching suns, Emperor Yao ordered Yi to shoot them down. In another legend recorded by Wang Yi (2nd century A.D.), the archer is said to have shot down nine of the ten suns.

19. Hsi Yu Chi (Pilgrimage to the West) is a 16th century novel, the hero of which is the monkey god Sun Wu-kung. He could miraculously change at will into seventy-two different shapes, such as a bird, a tree and a stone.

20. The ''Strange Tales of Liao Chai,'' written by Pu Sung-ling in the 17th century, is a well-known collection of 431 tales, mostly about ghosts and fox spirits.

21. Karl Marx, "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy", ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,'' Eng. ed., Chicago, 1904, pp. 310-11.

22. V. I. Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", ''Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

23. The saying "Things that oppose each other also complement each other" first appeared in the ''History of the Earlier Han Dynasty'' by Pan Ku, a celebrated historian in the 1st century A.D. It has long been a popular saying.

24. V. I. Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", ''Collected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

25. V. I. Lenin, "Remarks on N. I. Bukharin's ''Economics of the Transitional Period" Selected Works,'' Russ. ed., Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, Vol. XI, p. 357.
[[Category:Library works by Mao Zedong]]

Contradiction

2023-04-27T02:23:59Z

Amicchan: /* Identity */

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. THE IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE ASPECTS OF A CONTRADICTION|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity….}}</ref>

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

[[Mao Zedong]] talked at length about contradictions and is a good starting place for theory.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

== Identity ==

Identity refers to the ''material'' linked coexistence of both aspects in a contradiction and that the contradictory aspects conditionally transform into their opposites.<ref>{{Citation|quote=Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation--all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.}}</ref> Identity exists conditionally.<ref>{{Citation|author=V. I. [[Lenin]]|title=Conspectus of Hegel's The Science of Logic, Collected Works Russian Edition|city=Moscow|year=1958|volume=XXXVIII|page=97-98|quote=Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another, why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Contradiction

2023-04-27T01:35:10Z

Amicchan: Don't define identity into just coexistence of aspects of contradiction.

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. THE IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE ASPECTS OF A CONTRADICTION|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity….}}</ref>

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

[[Mao Zedong]] talked at length about contradictions and is a good starting place for theory.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Contradiction

2023-04-27T01:32:14Z

Amicchan: Added reference for elaboration on the first point.

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# They cannot exist without the other.<ref>{{citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=V. THE IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE ASPECTS OF A CONTRADICTION|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]|quote=…the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity…. This is the meaning of identity.}}</ref> (Referred to as Identity by Mao Zedong.)

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

[[Mao Zedong]] talked at length about contradictions and is a good starting place for theory.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Party for Socialism and Liberation

2023-04-27T01:12:46Z

Amicchan: /* Controversies */

{{Infobox political party|name=Party for Socialism and Liberation|logo=PSL.png|founded=June 2004|newspaper=''[[Liberation News]]''|political_orientation=[[Marxism–Leninism]] [[Anti-imperialism]]|website=https://pslweb.org}}{{Communist parties}}
The '''Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)''' is a [[Marxist-Leninist]] political party in the [[United States of America|United States]] founded in June 2004 after a split from the [[Workers World Party]]. Their platform is closely related to the broader [[The ANSWER Coalition|ANSWER Coalition]]. The PSL has funded numerous movements within [[the ANSWER Coalition]] including the movement to liberate [[Republic of Cuba|Cuba]] from [[United States imperialism|Statesian imperialism]].<ref>An article from the [https://www.answercoalition.org/actions_nationwide_to_demand_u_s_hands_off_cuba Answer Coalition] depicting their stance on Cuba, sponsored by the PSL</ref> The PSL held its first congress in February 2010 in Los Angeles, California.<ref>{{Web citation|author=Ian Thompson|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=PSL’s First National Congress strengthens the struggle for socialism|date=2010-02-22|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/10-02-22-psls-first-national-congress-st-html/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190714145018/https://www.liberationnews.org/10-02-22-psls-first-national-congress-st-html/|archive-date=2019-07-14|retrieved=2022-08-08}}</ref>

== History ==
At its founding in 2004, the PSL held a two-part congress to establish publications and a party structure. Between 2004 and 2010, it held regular conventions that were open to all members to elect party leadership between conventions. In 2010, the party held its first delegated congress and adopted its constitution and program. The PSL held a second congress in 2013.<ref>{{Web citation|newspaper=[[Liberation News]]|title=Building democratic centralism: stages of Party growth and internal development|date=2014-07-31|url=https://www.liberationnews.org/building-democratic-centralism-stages-party-growth-internal-development/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210116082555/https://www.liberationnews.org/building-democratic-centralism-stages-party-growth-internal-development/|archive-date=2021-01-16|retrieved=2022-12-25}}</ref>

== Program ==

=== Anti-imperialism ===
The PSL supports immediate independence and reparations for [[Puerto Rico]] with freedom of travel between Puerto Rico and the United States. It also supports self-determination and potential independence of [[American Samoa]], [[Guam]], the [[Virgin Islands of the United States|Virgin Islands]], the [[Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands|Mariana Islands]], and indigenous nations on the U.S. mainland.<ref name=":0">{{News citation|newspaper=Party for Socialism and Liberation|title=Program of the Party for Socialism and Liberation|date=2010|url=https://pslweb.org/program/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220615034341/https://pslweb.org/program/|archive-date=2022-06-15|retrieved=2022-06-18}}</ref>

=== Social benefits ===
The PSL advocates for a 30-hour work week, up to two years of paid parental leave, a minimum of one month of paid vacation and 12 paid holidays. It also supports universal citizenship for everyone living in the United States, free education from preschool to college, and reducing housing costs to 10% of total income or less.<ref name=":0" />

== Chapters ==
Contact information of the following PSL chapters is available on the party website.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=Party for Socialism and Liberation|title=Contact us|url=https://www2.pslweb.org/contact|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220707094332/https://www2.pslweb.org/contact|archive-date=2022-07-07|retrieved=2022-07-28}}</ref> This list is organized by region of the United States.

=== Midwest ===

* Champaign–Urbana
* Chicago
* Cleveland
* Detroit
* Indianapolis
* Lexington
* Miami Valley
* Milwaukee
* Springfield

=== Northeast ===

* Albany
* Baltimore
* Boston
* Chester County, Pennsylvania
* Finger Lakes
* Lancaster
* New Haven
* New Paltz
* New York City
* Philadelphia
* Pittsburgh
* Southern New Hampshire
* Syracuse
* Washington, D.C.

=== Plains ===

* Albuquerque
* Dallas
* Denver
* Houston
* San Antonio

=== Southeast ===

* Asheville
* Atlanta
* Birmingham
* Central Gulf Coast
* Columbia
* Raleigh–Durham
* Sarasota
* Tampa

=== West ===

* Anchorage
* Boise/Pocatello
* Kennewick–Pasco–Richland
* Los Angeles
* Phoenix
* Portland
* Sacramento
* Salt Lake City
* San Diego
* San Francisco
* San Jose
* Seattle

== Publications ==
The party's main publication is the monthly paper ''[[Liberation News]]'',<ref>https://www.liberationnews.org</ref> which replaced a quarterly magazine, ''Socialism and Liberation''.<ref>[https://www.liberationnews.org/07-06-05-socialism-liberation-magazine-is-html/ "Socialism and Liberation magazine is changing"]. June 5, 2007. January 7, 2018.</ref> The PSL also publishes ''Breaking the Chains: A Socialist Perspective on Women's Liberation,'' a quarterly socialist and [[Feminism|feminist]] magazine,<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=|title=About Breaking the Chains|url=https://www.breakingthechainsmag.org/about/|newspaper=Breaking the Chains|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-03}}</ref> and ''Reds In Ed'', a monthly newsletter initiated by teachers who are members of the PSL.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=2020-03-13|title=Reds In Ed program|url=https://redsined.org/the-reds-in-ed-program/|newspaper=Reds in Ed|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-02}}</ref> Additionally, the PSL publishes ''Liberation School'', which publishes longer-form analysis, Party documents, interviews, and educational resources including study guides, curricula, and video and audio courses.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=|date=2022-01-02|title=Our mission|url=https://liberationschool.org/about/|newspaper=Liberation School|archive-url=|archive-date=|retrieved=2022-01-02}}</ref>

== Controversies ==
Some controversies of the PSL have arisen in recent years as its prominence grows in the public eye<ref>[https://medium.com/@dotcommunism/psls-brian-becker-loud-clear-radio-and-right-wing-entryism-349cf6f29aa4 Medium Article surrounding the actions of Brian Becker (with its own citations)]</ref> and while no political organization is completely without fault, these controversies must also be viewed within the context that communist parties in the US are regularly targeted by intelligence agencies for sabotage, as demonstrated by the FBI's [[COINTELPRO]] operation.

The PSL has been accused of permitting sexual harassment<ref>[https://archive.is/yT5vp#selection-42.0-42.1 Writings of a PSL member who was allegedly abused by Steven Powers]</ref> and being cult-like.<ref>[https://medium.com/@jacobscb/documentation-of-corruption-institutional-bigotry-and-high-control-group-cult-like-behavior-in-6afa65b8072e Medium post that is a directory of various accounts of PSL's bad behavior.]</ref>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:Communist parties]]
[[Category:Statesian communist parties]]

Apple Inc.

2023-04-23T23:37:51Z

Amicchan: Created page with "{{stub}} {{Infobox corporation |name=Apple Inc.}} Apple Inc. is a capitalist corporation. Category:Big tech"

{{stub}}
{{Infobox corporation
|name=Apple Inc.}}

[[Apple Inc.]] is a capitalist corporation.

[[Category:Big tech]]

Valve Corporation

2023-04-23T23:28:52Z

Amicchan:

{{stub}}
{{Infobox company
|name=Valve Corporation
|website=[https://valvesoftware.com valvesoftware.com]
}}

Valve is a video game company led by [[Capitalism|capitalist]] Gabe Newell.

Valve declined to respond on the presence of [[Neo-nazism|neo-nazi]]s on Steam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/|title=Steam has a hate group problem because Valve fails to enforce its own rules|date=-2018-08-13|author=Wes Fenlon}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Andy Chalk|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/us-senator-asks-gabe-newell-what-valve-is-doing-to-fight-nazis-on-steam/|title=US senator asks Gabe Newell what Valve is doing to fight Nazis on Steam|date=2022-12-16}}</ref>

Valve Corporation

2023-04-23T23:28:00Z

Amicchan: Created page with "{{stub}} {{Infobox company |name=Valve Corporation |website=[https://valvesoftware.com valvesoftware.com] }} Valve is a video game company led by capitalist Gabe Newell. Valve declined to respond on the presence of Neo-nazis on Steam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/|title=Steam has a hate group problem because Valve fails to enforce its own rules|date=-2018-08..."

{{stub}}
{{Infobox company
|name=Valve Corporation
|website=[https://valvesoftware.com valvesoftware.com]
}}

Valve is a video game company led by [[Capitalism|capitalist]] Gabe Newell.

Valve declined to respond on the presence of [[Neo-nazi]]s on Steam.<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-a-hate-group-problem-because-valve-fails-to-enforce-its-own-rules/|title=Steam has a hate group problem because Valve fails to enforce its own rules|date=-2018-08-13|author=Wes Fenlon}}</ref><ref>{{Web citation|author=Andy Chalk|url=https://www.pcgamer.com/us-senator-asks-gabe-newell-what-valve-is-doing-to-fight-nazis-on-steam/|title=US senator asks Gabe Newell what Valve is doing to fight Nazis on Steam|date=2022-12-16}}</ref>

DOS

2023-04-23T23:07:47Z

Amicchan:

DOS can refer to:
* The [[United States Department of State]]
* [[Disk Operating System]], a group of operating systems developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
** [[Microsoft Disk Operating System]], a DOS created by [[Microsoft]].

DOS

2023-04-23T23:07:16Z

Amicchan: Removed redirect to United States Department of State

DOS can refer to:
* REDIRECT [[United States Department of State]]
* [[Disk Operating System]], a group of operating systems developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
** [[Microsoft Disk Operating System]], a DOS created by [[Microsoft]].

National Socialist German Workers' Party

2023-04-23T01:05:05Z

Amicchan:

{{Infobox political party|name=National Socialist German Workers' Party|native_name=Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei|logo=Parteiadler Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (1933–1945).svg|caption=Emblem of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)|abbreviation=NSDAP|leader1_title=Führer|leader1_name=[[Adolf Hitler]] (1921-1945)|founded={{birth date|1920|2|24}}|dissolved={{death date and age|1945|10|10|1920|2|24}}|successor=[[Organization of Former SS Members]] (Nazi exiles in [[Argentina]])<ref>https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=665D772908F3FD8FD21CFCA64DE28A26 refname=Hunting Evil : The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice</ref>|newspaper=Völkischer Beobachter|youth_wing=Hitler Youth|political_orientation=[[Fascism]] [[National socialism|Nazism]]
|flag=File:Flag of the NSDAP (1920–1945).svg}}
The '''National Socialist German Workers' Party''', commonly known as the '''Nazi Party''', was a [[Far-right|extreme-right]] [[Fascism|fascist]] [[political party]] which led the counter-revolutionary reaction against the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Soviet Union]], officially causing the [[Second World War]].

The rise of the Nazi Party was supported by the British Royal Family and their state intelligence services as a bulwark against [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Soviet]] [[communism]].<ref>{{News citation|journalist=Graham Hughes|title=Anglo-Nazi Pact in the 1930’s?|url=https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Anglo-Nazi-Pact/|newspaper=Historic UK|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210414013454/https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Anglo-Nazi-Pact/}}</ref>

==History==
Wealthy oligarchs in the United States such as George Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush helped to finance the rise of the Nazi party up until as late as 1942.<ref>{{News citation|journalist=Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell|date=2004-09-25|title=How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref>

The NSDAP was originally known as the German Workers’ Party or DAP, a merging of Anton Drexler’s Committee of Independent Workmen and Karl Harrer’s Political Workers’ Circle in January 1919. Drexler was a petit-bourgeois locksmith while Harrer was a newspaper reporter. Drexler’s original goal was to build an ultranationalist political party based on the masses of the working class,<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=William Shirer|chapter=Birth of the Nazi Party|title=The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/B-001-014-606|city=New York|publisher=Simon and Schuster, Inc.|year=1960|lccn=60-6729|page=36–7}}</ref> hence most of its original members were workers from Drexler’s railway yards, but membership was few in number. The [[Thule Society]], a largely petit-bourgeois organization of which Harrer was a member, cofounded the DAP and acted as its original protector and financial sponsor. Its goal was to popularize ultranationalism among the German working class, a for which Harrer deemed Drexler best suited. Nevertheless, the Thule Society’s financial contributions to the DAP were quite modest and the party met together in poor conditions.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=James & Suzanne Pool|year=1997|title=Who Financed Hitler|title-url=https://archive.org/stream/WhoFinancedHitler|chapter=A Mysterious Beginning|page=6–11|isbn=0-8037-8941-6}}</ref>

On February 20, 1920, the DAP renamed itself to the more euphemistic National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Initially, Adolf Hitler disliked the addition of the term ‘Socialist’ but acquiesced because the executive committee thought that it might help attract workers from the left-wing.<ref>{{safesubst:citation|author=Samuel W. Mitcham|title=Why Hitler?: The Genesis of the Nazi Reich|title-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YiNoAAAAMAAJ|publisher=Praeger|year=1996|page=68|ISBN=9780275954857}}</ref> Some members, on the other hand, may have sincerely consider themselves ‘socialists’, but only due to their frustration with their corporate competitors,<ref>{{safesubst:web citation|journalist=Leon Trotsky|title=What Is National Socialism?|url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm}}</ref> whom they were more interested in reforming than abolishing.

== See also ==

* [[National Fascist Party]]
* [[FET y de las JONS]]
* [[British Union of Fascists]]

== Reference ==

[[Category:National Socialism]]
[[Category:Fascist Parties]]

Pan-Africanism

2023-04-23T01:02:49Z

Amicchan:

'''Pan-Africanism''' is an [[Anti-colonialism|anti-colonial]] movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diaspora ethnic groups of African descent. Based on a common goal dating back to the [[Atlantic slave trade]], the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the [[African diaspora in the Americas]] and [[Afro-European|Europe]].<ref>{{Citation|author=David Austin|title=All Roads Led to Montreal: Black Power, the Caribbean and the Black Radical Tradition in Canada|journal=Journal of African American History|date=Fall 2007|volume=92|issue=4|pages=516–539|doi=10.1086/JAAHv92n4p516|s2cid=140509880}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|author=Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju|title=Pan Africanism, Myth and History in African and Caribbean Drama|publisher=[[Journal of Pan African Studies]]|volume=5|number=8|date=December 2012|pages=190 ff|url=https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-316072934/pan-africanism-myth-and-history-in-african-and-caribbean}}</ref> Pan-Africanism advocates for the unification of Africa under a [[Socialism|socialist]] government against [[colonialism]] and [[neocolonialism]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=[[All African People's Revolutionary Party]]|newspaper=[[Black Agenda Report]]|title=What is Nkrumahism-Touréism?|date=2022-09-28|url=https://blackagendareport.com/what-nkrumahism-toureism|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220928170700/https://blackagendareport.com/what-nkrumahism-toureism|archive-date=2022-09-28|retrieved=2022-09-29}}</ref>

Pan-Africanism can be said to have its origins in the struggles of the African people against enslavement and colonization<ref>[[Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem|Abdul-Raheem, Tajudeen]], ''Pan Africanism: Politics, Economy and Social Change in the Twenty-first Century''.</ref> and this struggle may be traced back to the first resistance on slave ships—rebellions and suicides—through the constant plantation and colonial uprisings and the [[Back-to-Africa movement|"Back to Africa" movements]] of the 19th century. Based on the belief that unity is vital to economic, social and political progress and aims to "unify and uplift" people of African descent.<ref>Frick, Janari, et al. (2006), [https://books.google.com/books?id=_UA27TyBO0kC&pg=PA235 ''History: Learner's Book''], p. 235, South Africa: New Africa Books.</ref>

At its core, Pan-Africanism is a belief that "African people, both on the continent and in the [[African Diaspora|diaspora]], share not merely a common history, but a common destiny".<ref>Makalani, Minkah (2011), [http://exhibitions.nypl.org/africanaage/essay-pan-africanism.html "Pan-Africanism"]. ''Africana Age''.</ref> Pan-Africanist intellectual, cultural and political movements tend to view all Africans and descendants of Africans as belonging to a single "race" and sharing cultural unity. Pan-Africanism posits a sense of a shared historical fate for Africans in America, West Indies and on the continent itself centered on the Atlantic trade in slaves, African slavery and European imperialism.<ref>{{Citation|title=New Dictionary of the History of Ideas|publisher=The Gale Group, Inc.|year=2005}}</ref>

The [[Organization of African Unity]] (now the [[African Union]]) was established in 1963 to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its Member States and to promote global relations within the framework of the [[United Nations]].<ref>[http://www.au.int/en/about/nutshell About the African Union] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110129055921/http://www.au.int/en/about/nutshell|date=January 29, 2011}}.</ref> The [[African Union Commission]] has its seat in Addis Ababa and the [[Pan-African Parliament]] has its seat in Johannesburg and Midrand.<ref>{{Web citation|title=Pan-Africanism|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pan-Africanism|newspaper=Encyclopedia Britannica|language=en|access-date=May 24, 2020}}</ref>

== See also ==

* [[Black nationalism]]
* [[Kwame Nkrumah]]

== References ==

Russian Empire (1721–1917)

2023-04-22T08:50:28Z

Amicchan:

{{Infobox country|name=Russian Empire|native_name=Россійская Имперія|year_start=1721|year_end=1917|population_census=125,640,021|population_census_year=1897|capital=Saint Petersburg|largest_city=Saint Petersburg|image_map=Russian Empire.png|map_width=290|official_languages=Russian|mode_of_production=[[Feudalism]]|government_type=Absolute monarchy|area_km2=22,800,000|image_flag=Flag of Russia.svg|leader_title1=First emperor|leader_name1=Peter Alexeyevich|leader_title2=Last emperor|leader_name2=Nikolai Aleksandrovich|image_flag2=Russian Imperial flag.png|flag_caption=Left: 1883–1917 Right: 1858–1883}}
The '''Russian Empire''' was a [[semi-feudal]] monarchy that was founded by [[Peter Alexeyevich Romanov|Peter Alexeyevich]] in 1721 and overthrown in the [[February Revolution]] of 1917. Throughout its entire existence, it was ruled by the Romanov dynasty. The Russian Empire included the area of modern-day [[Russian Federation|Russia]], the other [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Soviet]] republics, [[Republic of Finland|Finland]], [[State of Alaska|Alaska]], and [[Republic of Poland|Poland]]. Most of the empire's territory later became part of the USSR, but Finland and Poland became independent after the revolution and Alaska was sold to the [[United States of America|United States of America]] in 1867.

== History ==

=== Expansion ===
In 1721, [[Swedish Empire (1611–1721)|Sweden]] ceded [[Estonia]] and northern [[Latvia]] to Russia after being defeated in the [[Great Northern War]]. [[Catherine the Great]] annexed southern Latvia and [[Lithuania]] in the 1790s after defeating [[Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1569–1795))|Poland]]. Russia defeated the [[Kingdom of Sweden (1772–1809)|Swedish]] again in 1809 and took [[Finland]] from Swedish control.<ref name=":0">{{Citation|author=W. P., Zelda K. Coates|year=1940|title=Russia, Finland and the Baltic|chapter=Russia, Finland and the Baltic States|pdf=https://ia600104.us.archive.org/2/items/RussiaFinlandBalticsCoates/Russia%20Finland%20Baltics%20Coates.pdf|city=London, [[England]]|publisher=Lawrence & Wishart Ltd.|page=14–16}}</ref>

The Russian Empire killed over a million civilians in the [[Caucasus]] during the Circassian genocide.<ref>{{Citation|author=Austin Murphy|year=2000|title=The Triumph of Evil|chapter=Introduction|page=51|quote=Czarist Russia slaughtered over a million people in a purge of Circassians from its Caucasus provinces.|pdf=https://mltheory.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil.pdf|city=Fucecchio, [[Italy]]|publisher=European Academic Publishing Press|isbn=8883980026}}</ref>

=== Abolition of serfdom ===
Tsar [[Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov|Alexander Nikolayevich]] abolished [[serfdom]] in 1861 following Russia's defeat in the [[Crimean War]] and [[Peasantry|peasant]] revolts. [[Landlord|Landlords]] enclosed peasant land and continued to exploit the peasants, demanding half of their harvests and charging them high rent.<ref name=":1">{{Citation|author=[[Joseph Stalin]]|year=1939|title=History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)|chapter=The Struggle for the Creation of a Social-Democratic Labour Party in Russia|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/ch01.htm|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/index.htm}}</ref>

== Education ==
The male literacy rate was 1–12% for rural areas and 20–25% for urban areas.<ref>{{Citation|author=Boris N. Mironov|year=1991|title=The Development of Literacy in Russia and the USSR from the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries|chapter=|section=|page=234|quote=|pdf=|city=|publisher=History of Education Quarterly|isbn=|doi=10.2307/368437|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref> The literacy rate for women was even lower and girls could not go to school.<ref>{{Citation|author=Nicholas V. Riasanovsky|year=2005|title=Russian Identities: A Historical Survey|chapter=|section=|page=112–18|quote=|pdf=|city=|publisher=|isbn=|doi=|lg=|mia=|title-url=|chapter-url=|trans-title=|trans-lang=}}</ref>

== Living standards ==

=== Health ===
The first hospitals in Russia were established by Peter Alexeyevich in Moscow in 1706 and Saint Petersburg in 1715 and were staffed by foreign doctors. Russia began training its own doctors in 1724 at the Academy of Science. Healthcare was not initially available to serfs and industrial workers.

In 1884, with the introduction of the [[zemstvo]] system, health care became available in rural areas, but much of the population still received no medical care. In some areas, there was only one doctor per 40,000 people.<ref>{{News citation|author=Carlos Rule|newspaper=[[Stalin Society]]|title=Health in the USSR|date=2017-01-18|url=https://stalinsocietygb.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/health-in-the-ussr/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220216095354/https://stalinsocietygb.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/health-in-the-ussr/|archive-date=2022-02-16|retrieved=2022-06-27}}</ref>

=== Housing ===
In Saint Petersburg in 1908, 60% of textile workers did not have their own rooms and slept in crowded barracks. The average proletarian family had only three square meters of floor space. In 1913, 58% of workers lived in company-owned accommodations with bunk beds.

In 1912, there were 24,500 small apartments in Moscow that housed a total of 325,000 people, or more than 13 people per apartment. The nobility and bourgeoisie lived in large mansions and villas, often with hundreds of square meters of space per resident.

Only 3% of houses were connected to sewage systems and only 5% of urban homes had electricity.<ref>{{News citation|newspaper=[[Stalin Society]]|title=Housing in the USSR|date=2017-01-13|url=https://stalinsocietygb.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/housing-in-the-ussr/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220330020740/https://stalinsocietygb.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/housing-in-the-ussr/|archive-date=2022-03-30|retrieved=2022-05-20}}</ref>

=== Working conditions ===
The average work day in the 1880s was over 12 hours and up to 15 hours in the textile industry. Women and children worked the same hours as men but were paid less. Many workers died or were injured in factory accidents. In 1897, following a strike of 30,000 textile workers, the Tsar limited the work day to 11.5 hours.<ref name=":1" />

== Antisemitism ==
Russia confined [[Judaism|Jews]] to [[Poland]], [[Ukraine]], [[Belarus]], and the [[Baltics|Baltic states]] (the Pale). The monarchy frequently blamed them for economic and political problems and sponsored violent pogroms, leading many to flee to the [[United States of America|USA]] before the revolution.<ref name=":032">{{Citation|author=Albert Szymanski|year=1984|title=Human Rights in the Soviet Union|chapter=The European Nationalities in the USSR|page=88|pdf=https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/bafykbzaceazdmtb2y3qq27fve5ib3gk7uv2unt6ae2xss74xmfpur7k5uhl5m?filename=Albert%20Szymanski%20-%20Human%20Rights%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union_%20Including%20Comparisons%20with%20the%20U.S.A.-Zed%20Books%20Ltd.%20%281984%29.pdf|city=London|publisher=Zed Books Ltd.|isbn=0862320186|lg=https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=C597B1232D9EA6B0F3DCB438D7E15A81}}</ref>

== References ==
[[Category:Countries]]
[[Category:European countries]]
[[Category:Asian countries]]

Chinese Soviet Republic (1931–1937)

2023-04-22T04:45:23Z

Amicchan:

{{stub}}
{{Infobox country
| common_name =
| name = Chinese Soviet Republic
| native_name = 中華蘇維埃共和國 Zhōnghuá Sūwéi'āi Gònghéguó ([[Pinyin]]) Chunghwa Suwei'ai Kunghokuo ([[Wade–Giles]])
| government_type = [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] one-party [[soviet (governmental body)|soviet]] [[Socialism|socialist]] provisional government
| title_leader = Chairman of the Central Executive Committee
| leader1 = [[Mao Zedong]]
| year_leader1 = 1931–1937
| title_deputy = [[Premier of the People's Republic of China|Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars]]
| deputy1 = Mao Zedong
| year_deputy1 = 1931–1934
| deputy2 = [[Zhang Wentian]]
| year_deputy2 = 1934–1937
| title_representative = Chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Committee
| representative1 = [[Zhu De]]
| year_representative1 = 1931–1937
| legislature = National Congress of the Chinese Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies
| era = [[Interwar period]]
| date_start = 7 November
| date_end = 22 September
| event_start = Independence proclaimed from the [[Republic of China]]
| year_start = 1931
| event1 = Start of the [[Long March]]
| date_event1 = 7 October 1934
| event2 = [[Fifth encirclement campaign against the Jiangxi Soviet|Fall of Juikin]]
| date_event2 = 10 November 1934
| event3 = Arrival at [[Shaanxi|Shensi]]
| date_event3 = 22 October 1935
| year_end = 1937
| event_end = [[Second Sino-Japanese War|Disintegration]] of the Soviet Republic
| image_map = Map of the Long March 1934-1935-en.svg
| image_map_caption = Map of the various [[Soviet (governmental body)|Soviets]] comprising the Chinese Soviet Republic and the route of the Long March
| image_flag = Flag of Chinese Soviet Republic.svg
| flag_type = Flag
| image_coat = Emblem of the Chinese Soviet Republic.svg
| symbol_type = Emblem
| symbol_type_article = National Emblem of the Peoples' Republic of China
| p1 = Communist-controlled China (1927–1949){{!}}Soviet Zone
| flag_p1 = Flag of the Communist Party of China (Pre-1996).svg
| s1 = Communist-controlled China (1927–1949){{!}}Soviet Zone
| flag_s1 = Flag of the Communist Party of China (Pre-1996).svg
| s2 = Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region
| flag_s2 = Second War Flag of Chinese Soviet Republic.svg
| capital =
* [[Ruijin|Juikin]] (1931–1934)
* [[Bao'an Subdistrict, Zhidan County|Bao'an Subdistrict]] (1936–1937)
* [[Yan'an]] (1937)
| largest_city = [[Ruijin|Juikin]]
| national_anthem = 國際歌<ref>{{Web citation|title=中國國歌百年演變史話 |url = http://cpc.people.com.cn/BIG5/64162/64172/85037/85040/6653698.html |newspaper = [[Communist Party of China News]]|access-date = 21 May 2012}}</ref> Guójìgē "[[The Internationale in Chinese|The Internationale]]" [[File:Internationale-cmn (英特纳雄耐尔).ogg]]
| national_motto = 全世界無產階級和被壓迫的民族聯合起來！ Quánshìjiè wúchǎnjiējí hé bèi yāpò de mínzú liánhé qǐlai! "[[Workers of the world, unite!|Proletariats and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!]]"
| official_languages = [[Standard Chinese]]
| currency = [[Chinese Soviet Republic National Bank|Chinese Soviet yuan]]
| today = [[China]]  '''∟''' [[Anhui]]  '''∟''' [[Fujian]]  '''∟''' [[Gansu]]  '''∟''' [[Guangdong]]  '''∟''' [[Henan]]  '''∟''' [[Hubei]]  '''∟''' [[Hunan]]  '''∟''' [[Inner Mongolia]]  '''∟''' [[Jiangxi]]  '''∟''' [[Ningxia]]  '''∟''' [[Shaanxi]]  '''∟''' [[Sichuan]]  '''∟''' [[Zhejiang]]
}}

The '''Chinese Soviet Republic''' was a country run by the [[Communist Party of China]].

==Dissolution==

In December 1937, the Chinese Soviet Republic was renamed to the [[Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region]].

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Chinese Soviet Republic]]

League of Nations

2023-04-21T21:30:50Z

Amicchan:

{{stub}}
{{Infobox organization
|name=League of Nations
|native_name=Société des Nations
|native_name_lang=French
|founded={{birth date|1920|1|10}}
|dissolved={{death date and age|1946|4|20|1920|1|10}}}}

The '''League of Nations''' was an international organization founded on January 10th 1920 during the [[Paris Peace Conference]]. The LoN's claimed mission was to maintain world peace.

In 6 October 1932, the [[Chinese Soviet Republic]] had distributed a telegram to the workers that the LoN were a league of imperialists robbers.<ref>{{Citation|title=THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS IS A LEAGUE OF ROBBERS!|author=[[Chinese Soviet Republic]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_15.htm|year=1932}}</ref>

On December 14 1939, the Council of the League expelled the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]] from the LoN during the [[Winter War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/619549|title=USSR joins the League of Nations}}</ref>

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Intergovernmental organizations]]

League of Nations

2023-04-21T21:30:36Z

Amicchan: Added CSR telegram.

{{stub}}
{{Infobox organization
|name=League of Nations
|native_name=Société des Nations
|founded={{birth date|1920|1|10}}
|dissolved={{death date and age|1946|4|20|1920|1|10}}}}

The '''League of Nations''' was an international organization founded on January 10th 1920 during the [[Paris Peace Conference]]. The LoN's claimed mission was to maintain world peace.

In 6 October 1932, the [[Chinese Soviet Republic]] had distributed a telegram to the workers that the LoN were a league of imperialists robbers.<ref>{{Citation|title=THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS IS A LEAGUE OF ROBBERS!|author=[[Chinese Soviet Republic]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-6/mswv6_15.htm|year=1932}}</ref>

On December 14 1939, the Council of the League expelled the [[Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (1922–1991)|Union of Soviet Socialist Republics]] from the LoN during the [[Winter War]].<ref>{{Web citation|url=https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/619549|title=USSR joins the League of Nations}}</ref>

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Intergovernmental organizations]]

Library:Free Software, Free Society

2023-04-21T00:08:18Z

Amicchan: /* Editor's Note */

This book is currently under the process of being transcribed.

== Editor's Note ==
The waning days of the 20th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and enduser license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms—including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works. This collection of essays and speeches by [[Richard M. Stallman]] addresses many of these issues. Above all, Stallman discusses the philosophy underlying the free software movement. This movement combats the oppression of federal laws and evil end-user license agreements in hopes of spreading the idea of software freedom.

With the force of hundreds of thousands of developers working to create GNU software and the GNU/Linux operating system, free software has secured a spot on the servers that control the Internet, and—as it moves into the desktop computer market—is a threat to Microsoft and other proprietary software companies.

These essays cater to a wide audience; you do not need a computer science background to understand the philosophy and ideas herein. However, there is a “Note on Software,” to help the less technically inclined reader become familiar with some common computer science jargon and concepts, as well as footnotes throughout.

Many of these essays have been updated and revised from their originally published version. Each essay carries permission to redistribute verbatim copies.

The ordering of the essays is fairly arbitrary, in that there is no required order to read the essays in, for they were written independently of each other over a period of 18 years. The first section, “The GNU Project and Free Software,” is intended to familiarize you with the history and philosophy of free software and the GNU project. Furthermore, it provides a road map for developers, educators, and business people to pragmatically incorporate free software into society, business, and life. The second section, “Copyright, Copyleft, and Patents,” discusses the philosophical and political groundings of the copyright and patent system and how it has changed over the past couple of hundred years. Also, it discusses how the current laws and regulations for patents and copyrights are not in the best interest of the consumer and end user of software, music, movies, and other media. Instead, this section discusses how laws are geared towards helping business and government crush your freedoms. The third section, “Freedom, Society, and Software” continues the discussion of freedom and rights, and how they are being threatened by proprietary software, copyright law, globalization, “trusted computing,” and other socially harmful rules, regulations, and policies. One way that industry and government are attempting to persuade people to give up certain rights and freedoms is by using terminology that implies that sharing information, ideas, and software is bad; therefore, we have included an essay explaining certain words that are confusing and should probably be avoided. The fourth section, “The Licenses,” contains the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the GNU Free Documentation License; the cornerstones of the GNU project.

If you wish to purchase this book for yourself, for classroom use, or for distribution, please write to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) at sales@fsf.org or visit <nowiki>http://order.fsf.org/</nowiki>. If you wish to help further the cause of software freedom, please considering donating to the FSF by visiting <nowiki>http://donate.fsf.org</nowiki> (or write to donations@fsf.org for more details). You can also contact the FSF by phone at +1-617-542-5942.

There are perhaps thousands of people who should be thanked for their contributions to the GNU Project; however, their names will never fit on any single list. Therefore, I wish to extend my thanks to all of those nameless hackers, as well as people who have helped promote, create, and spread free software around the world.

For helping make this book possible, I would like to thank:

Julie Sussman, P.P.A., for editing multiple copies at various stages of development, for writing the “Topic Guide,” and for giving her insights into everything from commas to the ordering of the chapters;

Lisa (Opus) Goldstein and Bradley M. Kuhn for their help in organizing, proofreading, and generally making this collection possible;

Claire H. Avitabile, Richard Buckman, Tom Chenelle, and (especially) Stephen Compall for their careful proofreading of the entire collection;

Karl Berry, Bob Chassell, Michael Mounteney, and M. Ramakrishnan for their expertise in the helping to format and edit this collection in TEXinfo, (<nowiki>http://www.texinfo.org</nowiki>);

Mats Bengtsson for his help in formatting the Free Software Song in Lilypond (<nowiki>http://www.gnu.org/software/lilypond/</nowiki>);

Etienne Suvasa for the images that begin each section, and for all the art he has contributed to the Free Software Foundation over the years;

and Melanie Flanagan and Jason Polan for making helpful suggestions for the everyday reader. A special thanks to Bob Tocchio, from Paul’s Transmission Repair, for his insight on automobile transmissions.

Also, I wish to thank my mother and father, Wayne and Jo-Ann Gay, for teaching me that one should live by the ideals that one stands for, and for introducing me, my two brothers, and three sisters to the importance of sharing.

Lastly and most importantly, I would like to extend my gratitude to Richard M. Stallman for the GNU philosophy, the wonderful software, and the literature that he has shared with the world.

Joshua Gay

josh@gnu.org

== A Note on Software ==
This section is intended for people who have little or no knowledge of the technical aspects of computer science. It is not necessary to read this section to understand the essays and speeches presented in this book; however, it may be helpful to those readers not familar with some of the jargon that comes with programming and computer science.

A computer ''programmer'' writes software, or computer programs. A program is more or less a recipe with ''commands'' to tell the computer what to do in order to carry out certain tasks. You are more than likely familiar with many different programs: your Web browser, your word processor, your email client, and the like.

A program usually starts out as ''source code''. This higher-level set of commands is written in a ''programming language'' such as C or Java. After that, a tool known as a ''compiler'' translates this to a lower-level language known as ''assembly language''. Another tool known as an ''assembler'' breaks the assembly code down to the final stage of machine language—the lowest level—which the computer understands natively.
[[File:Software Production Line.png|alt=An image showing the general outline of how software is made. Source code goes trough a compiler, then trough an assembler, and becomes computer-executable machine code.|thumb|Assembly line of computer code.]]
For example, consider the “hello world” program, a common first program for people learning C, which (when compiled and executed) prints “Hello World!” on the screen. [1]<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
int main(){
printf("Hello World!");
return 0;
}
</syntaxhighlight>In the Java programming language the same program would be written like this:<syntaxhighlight lang="java">
public class hello {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println(’’Hello World!’’);
}
}
</syntaxhighlight>However, in machine language, a small section of it may look similar to this:<syntaxhighlight>
1100011110111010100101001001001010101110
0110101010011000001111001011010101111101
0100111111111110010110110000000010100100
0100100001100101011011000110110001101111
0010000001010111011011110111001001101100
0110010000100001010000100110111101101111
</syntaxhighlight>The above form of machine language is the most basic representation known as binary. All data in computers is made up of a series of 0-or-1 values, but a person would have much difficulty understanding the data. To make a simple change to the binary, one would have to have an intimate knowledge of how a particular computer interprets the machine language. This could be feasible for small programs like the above examples, but any interesting program would involve an exhausting effort to make simple changes.

As an example, imagine that we wanted to make a change to our “Hello World” program written in C so that instead of printing “Hello World” in English it prints it in French. The change would be simple; here is the new program:<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
int main() {
printf("Bonjour, monde!");
return 0;
}
</syntaxhighlight>It is safe to say that one can easily infer how to change the program written in the Java programming language in the same way. However, even many programmers would not know where to begin if they wanted to change the binary representation. When we say “source code,” we do not mean machine language that only computers can understand—we are speaking of higher-level languages such as C and Java. A few other popular programming languages are C++, Perl, and Python. Some are harder than others to understand and program in, but they are all much easier to work with compared to the intricate machine language they get turned into after the programs are compiled and assembled.

Another important concept is understanding what an operating system is. An operating system is the software that handles input and output, memory allocation, and task scheduling. Generally one considers common or useful programs such as the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be a part of the operating system. The GNU/Linux operating system contains a both GNU and non-GNU software, and a kernel called Linux. The kernel handles low-level tasks that applications depend upon such as input/output and task scheduling. The GNU software comprises much of the rest of the operating system, including GCC, a general-purpose compiler for many languages; GNU Emacs, an extensible text editor with many, many features; GNOME, the GNU desktop; GNU libc, a library that all programs other than the kernel must use in order to communicate with the kernel; and Bash, the GNU command interpreter that reads your command lines. Many of these programs were pioneered by Richard Stallman early on in the GNU Project and come with any modern GNU/Linux operating system.

It is important to understand that even if you cannot change the source code for a given program, or directly use all these tools, it is relatively easy to find someone who can. Therefore, by having the source code to a program you are usually given the power to change, fix, customize, and learn about a program—this is a power that you do not have if you are not given the source code. Source code is one of the requirements that makes a piece of software free. The other requirements will be found along with the philosophy and ideas behind them in this collection. Enjoy!

''Richard E. Buckman''

''Joshua Gay''

=== Section Footnotes ===
'''[1]''' In other programming languages, such as Scheme, the ''Hello World'' program is usually not your first program. In Scheme you often start with a program like this:<syntaxhighlight lang="scheme">
(define (factorial n)
(if (= n 0)
1
(* n (factorial (- n 1)))))
</syntaxhighlight>This computes the factorial of a number; that is, running <code>(factorial 5)</code> would output 120, which is computed by doing 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 * 1.

== Topic Guide ==
Since the essays and speeches in this book were addressed to different audiences at different times, there is a considerable amount of overlap, with some issues being discussed in more than one place. Because of this, and because we did not have the opportunity to make an index for this book, it could be hard to go back to something you read about unless its location is obvious from a chapter title.

We hope that this short guide, though sketchy and incomplete (it does not cover all topics or all discussions of a given topic), will help you find some of the ideas and explanations you are interested in.

''–Julie Sussman, P.P.A.''

'''Overview'''

Chapter 1 gives an overview of just about all the software-related topics in this book. Chapter 20 is also an overview.

For the non-software topics, see Privacy and Personal Freedom, Intellectual Property, and Copyright, below.

'''GNU Project'''

For the history of the GNU project, see Chapters 1 and 20

For a delightful explanation of the origin and pronunciation of the recursive acronym GNU (GNU’s Not Unix, pronounced guh-NEW), see Chapter 20.

The “manifesto” that launched the GNU Project is included here as Chapter 2. See also the Linux, GNU/Linux topic below.

'''Free Software Foundation'''

You can read about the history and function of the Free Software Foundation in Chapters 1 and 20, and under “Funding Free Software” in Chapter 18.

'''Free software'''

We will not attempt to direct you to all discussions of free software in this book, since every chapter ''except'' 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, and 19 deals with free software. For a history of free software—from free software to proprietary software and back again—see Chapter 1.

Free Software is defined, and the definition discussed, in Chapter 3. The definition is repeated in several other chapters.

For a discussion of the ambiguity of the word “free” and why we still use it to mean “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer,” see “Free as in Freedom” in Chapter 1 and “Ambiguity” in chapter 6.

See also Source Code, Open Source, and Copyleft, below. ''Free software'' is translated into 21 languages in Chapter 21.

'''Source Code, Source'''

''Source code'' is mentioned throughout the discussions of free software. If you’re not sure what that is, read “A Note on Software.”

'''Linux, GNU/Linux'''

For the origin of Linux, and the distinction between Linux (the operating-system kernel) and GNU/Linux (a full operating system), see the short mention under “Linux and GNU/Linux” in Chapter 1 and the full story in Chapter 20/

For reasons to say GNU/Linux when referring to that operating system rather than abbreviating it to Linux see Chapters 5 and 20.

'''Privacy and Personal Freedom'''

For some warnings about the loss of personal freedom, privacy, and access to written material that we have long taken for granted, see Chapters 11, 13, and 17. All of these are geared to a general audience.

'''Open Source'''

For the difference between the Open Source movement and the Free Software movement, see Chapter 6. This is also discussed in Chapter 1 (under “Open Source”) and Chapter 20.

'''Intellectual Property'''

For an explanation of why the term “intellectual property” is both misleading and a barrier to addressing so-called “intellectual property” issues, see Chapter 21 and the beginning of Chapter 16.

For particular types of “intellectual property” see the Copyright and Patents topics, below.

'''Copyright'''

Note: Most of these copyright references are ''not'' about software.

For the history, purpose, implementation, and effects of copyright, as well as recommendations for copyright policy, see Chapters 12 and 19. Topics critical in our digital age, such as e-books and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), are addressed here.

For the difference between patents and copyrights, see Chapter 16.

For the use of copyright in promoting free software and free documentation, see Copyleft, just below.

'''Copyleft'''

For an explanation of copyleft and how it uses the copyright system to promote free software, see Chapter 1 (under “Copyleft and the GNU GPL”), Chapter 14, and Chapter 20. See also Licenses, below.

For an argument that copyleft is practical and effective as well as idealistic, see Chapter 15.

Chapter 9 argues for free manuals to accompany free software.

'''Licenses'''

The GNU licenses, which can be used to copyleft software or manuals, are introduced in Chapter 14 and given in full in Section Four.

'''Patents'''

See Chapter 16 for the difference between patents and copyrights and for arguments against patenting software and why it is different from other patentable things. Software-patent policy in other countries is also discussed.

'''Hacker''' versus '''Cracker'''

For the proper use of these terms see the beginning of Chapter 1.

== Introduction ==
Every generation has its philosopher—a writer or an artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before the connection is made real. But recognized or not, a time gets marked by the people who speak its ideals, whether in the whisper of a poem, or the blast of a political movement.

Our generation has a philosopher. He is not an artist, or a professional writer. He is a programmer. Richard Stallman began his work in the labs of MIT, as a programmer and architect building operating system software. He has built his career on a stage of public life, as a programmer and an architect founding a movement for freedom in a world increasingly defined by “code.”

“Code” is the technology that makes computers run. Whether inscribed in software or burned in hardware, it is the collection of instructions, first written in words, that directs the functionality of machines. These machines—computers— increasingly define and control our life. They determine how phones connect, and what runs on TV. They decide whether video can be streamed across a broadband link to a computer. They control what a computer reports back to its manufacturer. These machines run us. Code runs these machines.

What control should we have over this code? What understanding? What freedom should there be to match the control it enables? What power?

These questions have been the challenge of Stallman’s life. Through his works and his words, he has pushed us to see the importance of keeping code “free.” Not free in the sense that code writers don’t get paid, but free in the sense that the control coders build be transparent to all, and that anyone have the right to take that control, and modify it as he or she sees fit. This is “free software”; “free software” is one answer to a world built in code.

“Free.” Stallman laments the ambiguity in his own term. There’s nothing to lament. Puzzles force people to think, and this term “free” does this puzzling work quite well. To modern American ears, “free software” sounds utopian, impossible. Nothing, not even lunch, is free. How could the most important words running the most critical machines running the world be “free.” How could a sane society aspire to such an ideal?

Yet the odd clink of the word “free” is a function of us, not of the term. “Free” has different senses, only one of which refers to “price.” A much more fundamental sense of “free” is the “free,” Stallman says, in the term “free speech,” or perhaps better in the term “free labor.” Not free as in costless, but free as in limited in its control by others. Free software is control that is transparent, and open to change, just as free laws, or the laws of a “free society,” are free when they make their control knowable, and open to change. The aim of Stallman’s “free software movement” is to make as much code as it can transparent, and subject to change, by rendering it “free.”

The mechanism of this rendering is an extraordinarily clever device called “copyleft” implemented through a license called GPL. Using the power of copyright law, “free software” not only assures that it remains open, and subject to change, but that other software that takes and uses “free software” (and that technically counts as a “derivative work”) must also itself be free. If you use and adapt a free software program, and then release that adapted version to the public, the released version must be as free as the version it was adapted from. It must, or the law of copyright will be violated.

“Free software,” like free societies, has its enemies. Microsoft has waged a war against the GPL, warning whoever will listen that the GPL is a “dangerous” license. The dangers it names, however, are largely illusory. Others object to the “coercion” in GPL’s insistence that modified versions are also free. But a condition is not coercion. If it is not coercion for Microsoft to refuse to permit users to distribute modified versions of its product Office without paying it (presumably) millions, then it is not coercion when the GPL insists that modified versions of free software be free too.

And then there are those who call Stallman’s message too extreme. But extreme it is not. Indeed, in an obvious sense, Stallman’s work is a simple translation of the freedoms that our tradition crafted in the world before code. “Free software” would assure that the world governed by code is as “free” as our tradition that built the world before code.

For example: A “free society” is regulated by law. But there are limits that any free society places on this regulation through law: No society that kept its laws secret could ever be called free. No government that hid its regulations from the regulated could ever stand in our tradition. Law controls. But it does so justly only when visibly. And law is visible only when its terms are knowable and controllable by those it regulates, or by the agents of those it regulates (lawyers, legislatures).

This condition on law extends beyond the work of a legislature. Think about the practice of law in American courts. Lawyers are hired by their clients to advance their clients’ interests. Sometimes that interest is advanced through litigation. In the course of this litigation, lawyers write briefs. These briefs in turn affect opinions written by judges. These opinions decide who wins a particular case, or whether a certain law can stand consistently with a constitution.

All the material in this process is free in the sense that Stallman means. Legal briefs are open and free for others to use. The arguments are transparent (which is different from saying they are good) and the reasoning can be taken without the permission of the original lawyers. The opinions they produce can be quoted in later briefs. They can be copied and integrated into another brief or opinion. The “source code” for American law is by design, and by principle, open and free for anyone to take. And take lawyers do—for it is a measure of a great brief that it achieves its creativity through the reuse of what happened before. The source is free; creativity and an economy is built upon it.

This economy of free code (and here I mean free legal code) doesn’t starve lawyers. Law firms have enough incentive to produce great briefs even though the stuff they build can be taken and copied by anyone else. The lawyer is a craftsman; his or her product is public. Yet the crafting is not charity. Lawyers get paid; the public doesn’t demand such work without price. Instead this economy flourishes, with later work added to the earlier.

We could imagine a legal practice that was different—briefs and arguments that were kept secret; rulings that announced a result but not the reasoning. Laws that were kept by the police but published to no one else. Regulation that operated without explaining its rule.

We could imagine this society, but we could not imagine calling it “free.” Whether or not the incentives in such a society would be better or more efficiently allocated, such a society could not be known as free. The ideals of freedom, of life within a free society, demand more than efficient application. Instead, openness and transparency are the constraints within which a legal system gets built, not options to be added if convenient to the leaders. Life governed by software code should be no less.

Code writing is not litigation. It is better, richer, more productive. But the law is an obvious instance of how creativity and incentives do not depend upon perfect control over the products created. Like jazz, or novels, or architecture, the law gets built upon the work that went before. This adding and changing is what creativity always is. And a free society is one that assures that its most important resources remain free in just this sense.

For the first time, this book collects the writing and lectures of Richard Stallman in a manner that will make their subtlety and power clear. The essays span a wide range, from copyright to the history of the free software movement. They include many arguments not well known, and among these, an especially insightful account of the changed circumstances that render copyright in the digital world suspect. They will serve as a resource for those who seek to understand the thought of this most powerful man—powerful in his ideas, his passion, and his integrity, even if powerless in every other way. They will inspire others who would take these ideas, and build upon them.

I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both.

Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code— when it finally sees that code, like laws, or like government, must be transparent to be free—then we will look back at this uncompromising and persistent programmer and recognize the vision he has fought to make real: the vision of a world where freedom and knowledge survives the compiler. And we will come to see that no man, through his deeds or words, has done as much to make possible the freedom that this next society could have.

We have not earned that freedom yet. We may well fail in securing it. But whether we succeed or fail, in these essays is a picture of what that freedom could be. And in the life that produced these words and works, there is inspiration for anyone who would, like Stallman, fight to create this freedom.

''Lawrence Lessig''

''Professor of Law, Stanford Law School.''

== Section One: The GNU Project and Free Software ==
[[File:Screenshot from 2023-01-01 13-23-47.png|alt=A satirical image, a knight riding an angry Gnu (the animal).|thumb|Satirical image: A knight riding a Gnu.]]

=== The First Software-Sharing Community ===
When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking. But we did it more than most.

The AI Lab used a timesharing operating system called ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) that the lab’s staff hackers had designed and written in assembler language for the Digital PDP-10, one of the large computers of the era. As a member of this community, an AI lab staff system hacker, my job was to improve this system.

We did not call our software “free software,” because that term did not yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.

The use of “hacker” to mean “security breaker” is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean, “Someone who loves to program and enjoys being clever about it.”[1]

=== The Collapse of the Community ===
The situation changed drastically in the early 1980s, with the collapse of the AI Lab hacker community followed by the discontinuation of the PDP-10 computer.

In 1981, the spin-off company [[Symbolics, Inc.|Symbolics]] hired away nearly all of the hackers from the AI Lab, and the depopulated community was unable to maintain itself. (The book Hackers, by Steven Levy, describes these events, as well as giving a clear picture of this community in its prime.) When the AI Lab bought a new PDP10 in 1982, its administrators decided to use Digital’s non-free timesharing system instead of ITS on the new machine.

Not long afterwards, Digital discontinued the PDP-10 series. Its architecture, elegant and powerful in the 60s, could not extend naturally to the larger address spaces that were becoming feasible in the 80s. This meant that nearly all of the programs composing ITS were obsolete. That put the last nail in the coffin of ITS; 15 years of work went up in smoke.

The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy.

This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule made by the owners of proprietary software was, “If you share with your neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make them.”

The idea that the proprietary-software social system—the system that says you are not allowed to share or change software—is antisocial, that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the idea surprising may have taken this proprietary-software social system as given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietarysoftware businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince people that there is only one way to look at the issue.

When software publishers talk about “enforcing” their “rights” or “stopping piracy,” what they actually “say” is secondary. The real message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take for granted; the public is supposed to accept them uncritically. So let’s examine them.

One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users’ natural right to copy.

Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about software is what jobs it allows you to do—that we computer users should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.

A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption may have seemed plausible before the free software movement demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting chains on it.

If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society.

=== A Stark Moral Choice ===
With my community gone, to continue as before was impossible. Instead, I faced a stark moral choice.

The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker. Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people to betray their fellows too.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI Lab the source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else.

Another choice, straightforward but unpleasant, was to leave the computer field. That way my skills would not be misused, but they would still be wasted. I would not be culpable for dividing and restricting computer users, but it would happen nonetheless.

So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could write, so as to make a community possible once again?

The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system. That is the crucial software for starting to use a computer. With an operating system, you can do many things; without one, you cannot run the computer at all. With a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers—and invite anyone to join. And anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by conspiring to deprive his or her friends.

As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it. The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix.”

An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system would include them too.

Later I heard these words, attributed to Hillel:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

The decision to start the GNU project was based on a similar spirit.

As an atheist, I don’t follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.

The term “free software” is sometimes misunderstood—it has nothing to do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition of free software: a program is free software, for you, a particular user, if:

* You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
* You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
* You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
* You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.

Since “free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program that people are not free to include on these collections is not free software.

Because of the ambiguity of “free,” people have long looked for alternatives, but no one has found a suitable alternative. The English Language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a simple, unambiguous word that means “free,” as in freedom—“unfettered” being the word that comes closest in meaning. Such alternatives as “liberated,” “freedom,” and “open” have either the wrong meaning or some other disadvantage.

=== GNU Software and the GNU System ===
Developing a whole system is a very large project. To bring it into reach, I decided to adapt and use existing pieces of free software wherever that was possible. For example, I decided at the very beginning to use TeX as the principal text formatter; a few years later, I decided to use the X Window System rather than writing another window system for GNU.

Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but that we can use because they are free software.

=== Commencing the Project ===
In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software. Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff, MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new software-sharing community.

However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly invited me to keep using the lab’s facilities.

=== The First Steps ===
Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for “free” is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for “free” is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.

He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but the compiler was not. I therefore decided that my first program for the GNU project would be a multi-language, multi-platform compiler.

Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained the source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multi-platform compiler developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was written in, an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a system-programming language. I added a C front end, and began porting it to the Motorola 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I discovered that the compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, and the available 68000 Unix system would only allow 64k.

I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the entire input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree into a chain of “instructions,” and then generating the whole output file, without ever freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I would have to write a new compiler from scratch. That new compiler is now known as GCC; none of the Pastel compiler is used in it, but I managed to adapt and use the C front end that I had written. But that was some years later; first, I worked on GNU Emacs.

=== GNU Emacs ===
I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done my editing on other kinds of machines until then.

At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer, prep.ai.mit.edu, thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site; when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the question was, what would I say to them?

I could have said, “Find a friend who is on the net and who will make a copy for you.” Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10 Emacs: tell them, “Mail me a tape and a SASE, and I will mail it back with Emacs on it.” But I had no job and I was looking for ways to make money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems.

=== Is a program free for every user? ===
If a program is free software when it leaves the hands of its author, this does not necessarily mean it will be free software for everyone who has a copy of it. For example, public domain software (software that is not copyrighted) is free software; but anyone can make a proprietary modified version of it. Likewise, many free programs are copyrighted but distributed under simple permissive licenses that allow proprietary modified versions.

The paradigmatic example of this problem is the X Window System. Developed at MIT, and released as free software with a permissive license, it was soon adopted by various computer companies. They added X to their proprietary Unix systems, in binary form only, and covered by the same nondisclosure agreement. These copies of X were no more free software than Unix was.

The developers of the X Window System did not consider this a problem—they expected and intended this to happen. Their goal was not freedom, just “success,” defined as “having many users.” They did not care whether these users had freedom, only that they should be numerous.

This lead to a paradoxical situation where two different ways of counting the amount of freedom gave different answers to the question, “Is this program free?” If you judged based on the freedom provided by the distribution terms of the MIT release, you would say that X was free software. But if you measured the freedom of the average user of X, you would have to say it was proprietary software. Most X users were running the proprietary versions that came with Unix systems, not the free version.

=== Copyleft and the GNU GPL ===
The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is called ''copyleft''.

Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it becomes a means of keeping software free.

The central idea of copyleft is that we give everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute modified versions— but not permission to add restrictions of their own. Thus, the crucial freedoms that define “free software” are guaranteed to everyone who has a copy; they become inalienable rights.

For an effective copyleft, modified versions must also be free. This ensures that work based on ours becomes available to our community if it is published. When programmers who have jobs as programmers volunteer to improve GNU software, it is copyleft that prevents their employers from saying, “You can’t share those changes, because we are going to use them to make our proprietary version of the program.”

The requirement that changes must be free is essential if we want to ensure freedom for every user of the program. The companies that privatized the X Window System usually made some changes to port it to their systems and hardware. These changes were small compared with the great extent of X, but they were not trivial. If making changes were an excuse to deny the users freedom, it would be easy for anyone to take advantage of the excuse.

A related issue concerns combining a free program with non-free code. Such a combination would inevitably be non-free; whichever freedoms are lacking for the non-free part would be lacking for the whole as well. To permit such combinations would open a hole big enough to sink a ship. Therefore, a crucial requirement for copyleft is to plug this hole: anything added to or combined with a copylefted program must be such that the larger combined version is also free and copylefted.

The specific implementation of copyleft that we use for most GNU software is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. We have other kinds of copyleft that are used in specific circumstances. GNU manuals are copylefted also, but use a much simpler kind of copyleft, because the complexity of the GNU GPL is not necessary for manuals.

In 1984 or 1985, Don Hopkins (a very imaginative fellow) mailed me a letter. On the envelope he had written several amusing sayings, including this one: “Copyleft—all rights reversed.” I used the word “copyleft” to name the distribution concept I was developing at the time.

=== The Free Software Foundation ===
As interest in using Emacs was growing, other people became involved in the GNU project, and we decided that it was time to seek funding once again. So in 1985 we created the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity for free software development. The FSF also took over the Emacs tape distribution business; later it extended this by adding other free software (both GNU and non-GNU) to the tape, and by selling free manuals as well.

The FSF accepts donations, but most of its income has always come from sales— of copies of free software, and of other related services. Today it sells CD-ROMs of source code, CD-ROMs with binaries, nicely printed manuals (all with freedom to redistribute and modify), and Deluxe Distributions (where we build the whole collection of software for your choice of platform).

Free Software Foundation employees have written and maintained a number of GNU software packages. Two notable ones are the C library and the shell. The GNU C library is what every program running on a GNU/Linux system uses to communicate with Linux. It was developed by a member of the Free Software Foundation staff, Roland McGrath. The shell used on most GNU/Linux systems is BASH, the Bourne Again Shell, which was developed by FSF employee Brian Fox.

We funded development of these programs because the GNU project was not just about tools or a development environment. Our goal was a complete operating system, and these programs were needed for that goal.

“Bourne again Shell” is a joke on the name “Bourne Shell,” which was the usual shell on Unix.

=== Free Software Support ===
The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business practice, but it is not against business. When businesses respect the users’ freedom, we wish them success.

Selling copies of Emacs demonstrates one kind of free software business. When the FSF took over that business, I needed another way to make a living. I found it in selling services relating to the free software I had developed. This included teaching, for subjects such as how to program GNU Emacs and how to customize GCC, and software development, mostly porting GCC to new platforms.

Today each of these kinds of free software business is practiced by a number of corporations. Some distribute free software collections on CD-ROM; others sell support at various levels ranging from answering user questions, to fixing bugs, to adding major new features. We are even beginning to see free software companies based on launching new free software products.

Watch out, though—a number of companies that associate themselves with the term “open source” actually base their business on non-free software that works with free software. These are not free software companies, they are proprietary software companies whose products tempt users away from freedom. They call these “value added,” which reflects the values they would like us to adopt: convenience above freedom. If we value freedom more, we should call them “freedom subtracted” products.

=== Technical goals ===
The principal goal of GNU was to be free software. Even if GNU had no technical advantage over Unix, it would have a social advantage, allowing users to cooperate, and an ethical advantage, respecting the user’s freedom.

But it was natural to apply the known standards of good practice to the work—for example, dynamically allocating data structures to avoid arbitrary fixed size limits, and handling all the possible 8-bit codes wherever that made sense.

In addition, we rejected the Unix focus on small memory size, by deciding not to support 16-bit machines (it was clear that 32-bit machines would be the norm by the time the GNU system was finished), and to make no effort to reduce memory usage unless it exceeded a megabyte. In programs for which handling very large files was not crucial, we encouraged programmers to read an entire input file into core, then scan its contents without having to worry about I/O.

These decisions enabled many GNU programs to surpass their Unix counterparts in reliability and speed.

=== Donated Computers ===
As the GNU project’s reputation grew, people began offering to donate machines running Unix to the project. These were very useful, because the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a Unix system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of Unix at all.

Unix was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU project’s philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But, applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing a free replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.

But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine’s operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.

=== The GNU Task List ===
As the GNU project proceeded, and increasing numbers of system components were found or developed, eventually it became useful to make a list of the remaining gaps. We used it to recruit developers to write the missing pieces. This list became known as the GNU task list. In addition to missing Unix components, we listed various other useful software and documentation projects that, we thought, a truly complete system ought to have.

Today, hardly any Unix components are left in the GNU task list—those jobs have been done, aside from a few inessential ones. But the list is full of projects that some might call “applications.” Any program that appeals to more than a narrow class of users would be a useful thing to add to an operating system.

Even games are included in the task list—and have been since the beginning. Unix included games, so naturally GNU should too. But compatibility was not an issue for games, so we did not follow the list of games that Unix had. Instead, we listed a spectrum of different kinds of games that users might like.

=== The GNU Library GPL ===
The GNU C library uses a special kind of copyleft called the GNU Library General Public License, which gives permission to link proprietary software with the library. Why make this exception?

It is not a matter of principle; there is no principle that says proprietary software products are entitled to include our code. (Why contribute to a project predicated on refusing to share with us?) Using the LGPL for the C library, or for any library, is a matter of strategy.

The C library does a generic job; every proprietary system or compiler comes with a C library. Therefore, to make our C library available only to free software would not have given free software any advantage—it would only have discouraged use of our library.

One system is an exception to this: on the GNU system (and this includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the only C library. So the distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is possible to compile a proprietary program for the GNU system. There is no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the GNU system, but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to discourage use of the GNU system than to encourage development of free applications.

That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C library. For other libraries, the strategic decision needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. When a library does a special job that can help write certain kinds of programs, then releasing it under the GPL, limiting it to free programs only, is a way of helping other free software developers, giving them an advantage against proprietary software.

Consider GNU Readline[2] a library that was developed to provide commandline editing for BASH. Readline is released under the ordinary GNU GPL, not the Library GPL. This probably does reduce the amount Readline is used, but that is no loss for us. Meanwhile, at least one useful application has been made free software specifically so it could use Readline, and that is a real gain for the community.

Proprietary software developers have the advantages money provides; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. I hope some day we will have a large collection of GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, providing useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free software, and adding up to a major advantage for further free software development.

=== Scratching an itch? ===
Eric Raymond says that “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.” Maybe that happens sometimes, but many essential pieces of GNU software were developed in order to have a complete free operating system. They come from a vision and a plan, not from impulse.

For example, we developed the GNU C library because a Unix-like system needs a C library, the Bourne Again Shell (BASH) because a Unix-like system needs a shell, and GNU tar because a Unix-like system needs a tar program. The same is true for my own programs—the GNU C compiler, GNU Emacs, GDB and GNU Make.

Some GNU programs were developed to cope with specific threats to our freedom. Thus, we developed gzip to replace the Compress program, which had been lost to the community because of the LZW[3] patents. We found people to develop LessTif, and more recently started GNOME and Harmony, to address the problems caused by certain proprietary libraries (see “Non-Free Libraries” below). We are developing the GNU Privacy Guard to replace popular non-free encryption software, because users should not have to choose between privacy and freedom.

Of course, the people writing these programs became interested in the work, and many features were added to them by various people for the sake of their own needs and interests. But that is not why the programs exist.

=== Unexpected Developments ===
At the beginning of the GNU project, I imagined that we would develop the whole GNU system, then release it as a whole. That is not how it happened. Since each component of the GNU system was implemented on a Unix system, each component could run on Unix systems, long before a complete GNU system existed. Some of these programs became popular, and users began extending them and porting them—to the various incompatible versions of Unix, and sometimes to other systems as well.

The process made these programs much more powerful, and attracted both funds and contributors to the GNU project. But it probably also delayed completion of a minimal working system by several years, as GNU developers’ time was put into maintaining these ports and adding features to the existing components, rather than moving on to write one missing component after another.

=== The GNU Hurd ===
By 1990, the GNU system was almost complete; the only major missing component was the kernel. We had decided to implement our kernel as a collection of server processes running on top of Mach. Mach is a microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University and then at the University of Utah; the GNU Hurd is a collection of servers (or “herd of gnus”) that run on top of Mach, and do the various jobs of the Unix kernel. The start of development was delayed as we waited for Mach to be released as free software, as had been promised.

One reason for choosing this design was to avoid what seemed to be the hardest part of the job: debugging a kernel program without a source-level debugger to do it with. This part of the job had been done already, in Mach, and we expected to debug the Hurd servers as user programs, with GDB. But it took a long time to make that possible, and the multi-threaded servers that send messages to each other have turned out to be very hard to debug. Making the Hurd work solidly has stretched on for many years.

=== Alix ===
The GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the Hurd. Its original name was Alix—named after the woman who was my sweetheart at the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a joke, she told her friends, “Someone should name a kernel after me.” I said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.

It did not stay that way. Michael Bushnell (now Thomas), the main developer of the kernel, preferred the name Hurd, and redefined Alix to refer to a certain part of the kernel—the part that would trap system calls and handle them by sending messages to Hurd servers.

Ultimately, Alix and I broke up, and she changed her name; independently, the Hurd design was changed so that the C library would send messages directly to servers, and this made the Alix component disappear from the design.

But before these things happened, a friend of hers came across the name Alix in the Hurd source code, and mentioned the name to her. So the name did its job.

=== Linux and GNU/Linux ===
The GNU Hurd is not ready for production use. Fortunately, another kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself, of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of the GNU system today.

We call this system version GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.

=== Challenges in Our Future ===
We have proved our ability to develop a broad spectrum of free software. This does not mean we are invincible and unstoppable. Several challenges make the future of free software uncertain; meeting them will require steadfast effort and endurance, sometimes lasting for years. It will require the kind of determination that people display when they value their freedom and will not let anyone take it away.

The following four sections discuss these challenges.

=== Secret Hardware ===
Hardware manufactures increasingly tend to keep hardware specifications secret. This makes it difficult to write free drivers so that Linux and XFree86[4] can support new hardware. We have complete free systems today, but we will not have them tomorrow if we cannot support tomorrow’s computers.

There are two ways to cope with this problem. Programmers can do reverse engineering to figure out how to support the hardware. The rest of us can choose the hardware that is supported by free software; as our numbers increase, secrecy of specifications will become a self-defeating policy.

Reverse engineering is a big job; will we have programmers with sufficient determination to undertake it? Yes—if we have built up a strong feeling that free software is a matter of principle, and non-free drivers are intolerable. And will large numbers of us spend extra money, or even a little extra time, so we can use free drivers? Yes, if the determination to have freedom is widespread.

=== Non-Free Libraries ===
A non-free library that runs on free operating systems acts as a trap for free software developers. The library’s attractive features are the bait; if you use the library, you fall into the trap, because your program cannot usefully be part of a free operating system. (Strictly speaking, we could include your program, but it won’t run with the library missing.) Even worse, if a program that uses the proprietary library becomes popular, it can lure other unsuspecting programmers into the trap.

The first instance of this problem was the Motif[5] toolkit, back in the 80s. Although there were as yet no free operating systems, it was clear what problem Motif would cause for them later on. The GNU Project responded in two ways: by asking individual free software projects to support the free X toolkit widgets as well as Motif, and by asking for someone to write a free replacement for Motif. The job took many years; LessTif, developed by the Hungry Programmers, became powerful enough to support most Motif applications only in 1997.

Between 1996 and 1998, another non-free Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkit library, called Qt, was used in a substantial collection of free software, the desktop KDE.

Free GNU/Linux systems were unable to use KDE, because we could not use the library. However, some commercial distributors of GNU/Linux systems who were not strict about sticking with free software added KDE to their systems— producing a system with more capabilities, but less freedom. The KDE group was actively encouraging more programmers to use Qt, and millions of new “Linux users” had never been exposed to the idea that there was a problem in this. The situation appeared grim.

The free software community responded to the problem in two ways: GNOME and Harmony.

GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is GNU’s desktop project. Started in 1997 by Miguel de Icaza, and developed with the support of Red Hat Software, GNOME set out to provide similar desktop facilities, but using free software exclusively. It has technical advantages as well, such as supporting a variety of languages, not just C++. But its main purpose was freedom: not to require the use of any non-free software.

Harmony is a compatible replacement library, designed to make it possible to run KDE software without using Qt

In November 1998, the developers of Qt announced a change of license which, when carried out, should make Qt free software. There is no way to be sure, but I think that this was partly due to the community’s firm response to the problem that Qt posed when it was non-free. (The new license is inconvenient and inequitable, so it remains desirable to avoid using Qt.)[6]

How will we respond to the next tempting non-free library? Will the whole community understand the need to stay out of the trap? Or will many of us give up freedom for convenience, and produce a major problem? Our future depends on our philosophy.

=== Software Patents ===
The worst threat we face comes from software patents, which can put algorithms and features off limits to free software for up to twenty years. The LZW compression algorithm patents were applied for in 1983, and we still cannot release free software to produce proper compressed GIFs. In 1998, a free program to produce MP3 compressed audio was removed from distribution under threat of a patent suit.

There are ways to cope with patents: we can search for evidence that a patent is invalid, and we can look for alternative ways to do a job. But each of these methods works only sometimes; when both fail, a patent may force all free software to lack some feature that users want. What will we do when this happens?

Those of us who value free software for freedom’s sake will stay with free software anyway. We will manage to get work done without the patented features. But those who value free software because they expect it to be techically superior are likely to call it a failure when a patent holds it back. Thus, while it is useful to talk about the practical effectiveness of the “cathedral” model of development,[7] and the reliability and power of some free software, we must not stop there. We must talk about freedom and principle.

=== Free Documentation ===
The biggest deficiency in our free operating systems is not in the software—it is the lack of good free manuals that we can include in our systems. Documentation is an essential part of any software package; when an important free software package does not come with a good free manual, that is a major gap. We have many such gaps today.

Free documentation, like free software, is a matter of freedom, not price. The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software: it is a matter of giving all users certain freedoms. Redistribution (including commercial sale) must be permitted, on-line and on paper, so that the manual can accompany every copy of the program.

Permission for modification is crucial too. As a general rule, I don’t believe that it is essential for people to have permission to modify all sorts of articles and books. For example, I don’t think you or I are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our views.

But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the software, and add or change its features, if they are conscientious they will change the manual too—so they can provide accurate and usable documentation with the modified program. A manual that does not allow programmers to be conscientious and finish the job does not fill our community’s needs.

Some kinds of limits on how modifications are done pose no problem. For example, requirements to preserve the original author’s copyright notice, the distribution terms, or the list of authors, are ok. It is also no problem to require modified versions to include notice that they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be deleted or changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical topics. These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because they don’t stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit the modified program. In other words, they don’t block the free software community from making full use of the manual.

However, it must be possible to modify all the “technical” content of the manual, and then distribute the result in all the usual media, through all the usual channels; otherwise, the restrictions do obstruct the community, the manual is not free, and we need another manual.

Will free software developers have the awareness and determination to produce a full spectrum of free manuals? Once again, our future depends on philosophy

=== We Must Talk About Freedom ===
Estimates today are that there are ten million users of GNU/Linux systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat Linux. Free software has developed such practical advantages that users are flocking to it for purely practical reasons.

The good consequences of this are evident: more interest in developing free software, more customers for free software businesses, and more ability to encourage companies to develop commercial free software instead of proprietary software products.

But interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the philosophy it is based on, and this leads to trouble. Our ability to meet the challenges and threats described above depends on the will to stand firm for freedom. To make sure our community has this will, we need to spread the idea to the new users as they come into the community

But we are failing to do so: the efforts to attract new users into our community are far outstripping the efforts to teach them the civics of our community. We need to do both, and we need to keep the two efforts in balance.

=== "Open Source" ===
Teaching new users about freedom became more difficult in 1998, when a part of the community decided to stop using the term “free software” and say “open source software” instead.

Some who favored this term aimed to avoid the confusion of “free” with “gratis”—a valid goal. Others, however, aimed to set aside the spirit of principle that had motivated the free software movement and the GNU project, and to appeal instead to executives and business users, many of whom hold an ideology that places profit above freedom, above community, above principle. Thus, the rhetoric of “open source” focuses on the potential to make high-quality, powerful software, but shuns the ideas of freedom, community, and principle.

The “Linux” magazines are a clear example of this—they are filled with advertisements for proprietary software that works with GNU/Linux. When the next Motif or Qt appears, will these magazines warn programmers to stay away from it, or will they run ads for it?

The support of business can contribute to the community in many ways; all else being equal, it is useful. But winning their support by speaking even less about freedom and principle can be disastrous; it makes the previous imbalance between outreach and civics education even worse.

“Free software” and “open source” describe the same category of software, more or less, but say different things about the software, and about values. The GNU Project continues to use the term “free software,” to express the idea that freedom, not just technology, is important.

=== Try! ===
Yoda’s philosophy (“There is no ‘try”’) sounds neat, but it doesn’t work for me. I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes succeeded.

Sometimes I failed; some of my cities have fallen. Then I found another threatened city, and got ready for another battle. Over time, I’ve learned to look for threats and put myself between them and my city, calling on other hackers to come and join me.

Nowadays, often I’m not the only one. It is a relief and a joy when I see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize, this city may survive— for now. But the dangers are greater each year, and now Microsoft has explicitly targeted our community. We can’t take the future of freedom for granted. Don’t take it for granted! If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.

=== Chapter Footnotes ===
'''[1]''' It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what most “hacks” have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have “hack value.” You can help correct the misunderstanding simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking—by using the term “cracking” for security breaking. The people who do it are “crackers.” Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not (“On Hacking,” RMS; 2002).

'''[2]''' The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in.

'''[3]''' The Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm is used for compressing data.

'''[4]''' XFree86 is a program that provides a desktop environment that interfaces with your display hardware (mouse, keyboard, etc). It runs on many different platforms.

'''[5]''' Motif is a graphical interface and window manager that runs on top of X Windows.

'''[6]''' In September 2000, Qt was rereleased under the GNU GPL, which essentially solved this problem.

'''[7]''' I probably meant to write “of the ‘bazaar’ model,” since that was the alternative that was new and initially controversial.

Richard Stallman

2023-04-21T00:07:33Z

Amicchan:

{{Infobox philosopher|name=Richard Matthew Stallman|image=Richard_Stallman.jpeg|birth_date=March 16, 1953|known=[[Free and open-source software|Free software movement]]|alma_mater=Harvard University|nationality=Statesian|birth_place=[[Manhattan]], [[New York]], [[United States of America|United States]]}}

'''Richard Matthew Stallman''' (born March 16, 1953), often called '''Stallman''' or referred to by his initials '''RMS''', is a Statesian computer scientist and founder of the Free Software Foundation. He was forced to resign from the FSF for defending pedophile [[Jeffrey Epstein]].<ref>{{Web citation|author=William L. Hosch|newspaper=Britannica|title=Richard Stallman|url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Stallman}}</ref>

Stallman commented on the [[rape]] of a 14-year-old by an adult woman, stating: “I wish an attractive woman had ‘abused’ me that way when I was 14.”<ref>{{Web citation|author=Richard Stallman|title=Pedophilia|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210325014110/https://stallman.org/archives/2015-mar-jun.html#5_June_2015_(Law_being_an_ass)}}</ref>

==Discrimination==

===Ableism===

In 2016, Stallman had published a statement dehumanizing children with [[Down Syndrome]] to pets, saying: “If you'd like to love and care for a pet that doesn't have normal human mental capacity, don't create a handicapped human being to be your pet. Get a dog or a parrot. It will appreciate your love, and it will never feel bad for being less capable than normal humans.”<ref name='down syndrome'>{{Web citation|author=Richard Stallman|title=Down's Syndrome|date={{birth date|2016|10|31}}|archive-date=2016-11-07|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107050933/https://stallman.org/archives/2016-jul-oct.html#31_October_2016_(Down's_syndrome)|url=https://stallman.org/archives/2016-jul-oct.html#31_October_2016_(Down's_syndrome)}}</ref> Stallman later edited the statement to support already born persons with Down Syndrome; but support abortion of fetuses with Down Syndrome, saying: "According to Wikipedia, Down's syndrome is a combination of many kinds of medical misfortune. Thus, when carrying a fetus that is likely to have Down's syndrome, I think the right course of action for the woman is to terminate the pregnancy.

That choice does right by the potential children that would otherwise likely be born with grave medical problems and disabilities. As humans, they are entitled to the capacity that is normal for human beings. I don't advocate making rules about the matter, but I think that doing right by your children includes not intentionally starting them out with less than that.

When children with Down's syndrome are born, that's a different situation. They are human beings and I think they deserve the best possible care."<ref name='down syndrome' />

== References ==
<references />

[[Category:Ableists]]
[[Category:Child pornography defenders]]

Library:Free Software, Free Society

2023-04-21T00:04:42Z

Amicchan: /* The Collapse of the Community */

This book is currently under the process of being transcribed.

== Editor's Note ==
The waning days of the 20th century seemed like an Orwellian nightmare: laws preventing publication of scientific research on software; laws preventing sharing software; an overabundance of software patents preventing development; and enduser license agreements that strip the user of all freedoms—including ownership, privacy, sharing, and understanding how their software works. This collection of essays and speeches by Richard M. Stallman addresses many of these issues. Above all, Stallman discusses the philosophy underlying the free software movement. This movement combats the oppression of federal laws and evil end-user license agreements in hopes of spreading the idea of software freedom.

With the force of hundreds of thousands of developers working to create GNU software and the GNU/Linux operating system, free software has secured a spot on the servers that control the Internet, and—as it moves into the desktop computer market—is a threat to Microsoft and other proprietary software companies.

These essays cater to a wide audience; you do not need a computer science background to understand the philosophy and ideas herein. However, there is a “Note on Software,” to help the less technically inclined reader become familiar with some common computer science jargon and concepts, as well as footnotes throughout.

Many of these essays have been updated and revised from their originally published version. Each essay carries permission to redistribute verbatim copies.

The ordering of the essays is fairly arbitrary, in that there is no required order to read the essays in, for they were written independently of each other over a period of 18 years. The first section, “The GNU Project and Free Software,” is intended to familiarize you with the history and philosophy of free software and the GNU project. Furthermore, it provides a road map for developers, educators, and business people to pragmatically incorporate free software into society, business, and life. The second section, “Copyright, Copyleft, and Patents,” discusses the philosophical and political groundings of the copyright and patent system and how it has changed over the past couple of hundred years. Also, it discusses how the current laws and regulations for patents and copyrights are not in the best interest of the consumer and end user of software, music, movies, and other media. Instead, this section discusses how laws are geared towards helping business and government crush your freedoms. The third section, “Freedom, Society, and Software” continues the discussion of freedom and rights, and how they are being threatened by proprietary software, copyright law, globalization, “trusted computing,” and other socially harmful rules, regulations, and policies. One way that industry and government are attempting to persuade people to give up certain rights and freedoms is by using terminology that implies that sharing information, ideas, and software is bad; therefore, we have included an essay explaining certain words that are confusing and should probably be avoided. The fourth section, “The Licenses,” contains the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser General Public License, and the GNU Free Documentation License; the cornerstones of the GNU project.

If you wish to purchase this book for yourself, for classroom use, or for distribution, please write to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) at sales@fsf.org or visit <nowiki>http://order.fsf.org/</nowiki>. If you wish to help further the cause of software freedom, please considering donating to the FSF by visiting <nowiki>http://donate.fsf.org</nowiki> (or write to donations@fsf.org for more details). You can also contact the FSF by phone at +1-617-542-5942.

There are perhaps thousands of people who should be thanked for their contributions to the GNU Project; however, their names will never fit on any single list. Therefore, I wish to extend my thanks to all of those nameless hackers, as well as people who have helped promote, create, and spread free software around the world.

For helping make this book possible, I would like to thank:

Julie Sussman, P.P.A., for editing multiple copies at various stages of development, for writing the “Topic Guide,” and for giving her insights into everything from commas to the ordering of the chapters;

Lisa (Opus) Goldstein and Bradley M. Kuhn for their help in organizing, proofreading, and generally making this collection possible;

Claire H. Avitabile, Richard Buckman, Tom Chenelle, and (especially) Stephen Compall for their careful proofreading of the entire collection;

Karl Berry, Bob Chassell, Michael Mounteney, and M. Ramakrishnan for their expertise in the helping to format and edit this collection in TEXinfo, (<nowiki>http://www.texinfo.org</nowiki>);

Mats Bengtsson for his help in formatting the Free Software Song in Lilypond (<nowiki>http://www.gnu.org/software/lilypond/</nowiki>);

Etienne Suvasa for the images that begin each section, and for all the art he has contributed to the Free Software Foundation over the years;

and Melanie Flanagan and Jason Polan for making helpful suggestions for the everyday reader. A special thanks to Bob Tocchio, from Paul’s Transmission Repair, for his insight on automobile transmissions.

Also, I wish to thank my mother and father, Wayne and Jo-Ann Gay, for teaching me that one should live by the ideals that one stands for, and for introducing me, my two brothers, and three sisters to the importance of sharing.

Lastly and most importantly, I would like to extend my gratitude to Richard M. Stallman for the GNU philosophy, the wonderful software, and the literature that he has shared with the world.

Joshua Gay

josh@gnu.org

== A Note on Software ==
This section is intended for people who have little or no knowledge of the technical aspects of computer science. It is not necessary to read this section to understand the essays and speeches presented in this book; however, it may be helpful to those readers not familar with some of the jargon that comes with programming and computer science.

A computer ''programmer'' writes software, or computer programs. A program is more or less a recipe with ''commands'' to tell the computer what to do in order to carry out certain tasks. You are more than likely familiar with many different programs: your Web browser, your word processor, your email client, and the like.

A program usually starts out as ''source code''. This higher-level set of commands is written in a ''programming language'' such as C or Java. After that, a tool known as a ''compiler'' translates this to a lower-level language known as ''assembly language''. Another tool known as an ''assembler'' breaks the assembly code down to the final stage of machine language—the lowest level—which the computer understands natively.
[[File:Software Production Line.png|alt=An image showing the general outline of how software is made. Source code goes trough a compiler, then trough an assembler, and becomes computer-executable machine code.|thumb|Assembly line of computer code.]]
For example, consider the “hello world” program, a common first program for people learning C, which (when compiled and executed) prints “Hello World!” on the screen. [1]<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
int main(){
printf("Hello World!");
return 0;
}
</syntaxhighlight>In the Java programming language the same program would be written like this:<syntaxhighlight lang="java">
public class hello {
public static void main(String args[]) {
System.out.println(’’Hello World!’’);
}
}
</syntaxhighlight>However, in machine language, a small section of it may look similar to this:<syntaxhighlight>
1100011110111010100101001001001010101110
0110101010011000001111001011010101111101
0100111111111110010110110000000010100100
0100100001100101011011000110110001101111
0010000001010111011011110111001001101100
0110010000100001010000100110111101101111
</syntaxhighlight>The above form of machine language is the most basic representation known as binary. All data in computers is made up of a series of 0-or-1 values, but a person would have much difficulty understanding the data. To make a simple change to the binary, one would have to have an intimate knowledge of how a particular computer interprets the machine language. This could be feasible for small programs like the above examples, but any interesting program would involve an exhausting effort to make simple changes.

As an example, imagine that we wanted to make a change to our “Hello World” program written in C so that instead of printing “Hello World” in English it prints it in French. The change would be simple; here is the new program:<syntaxhighlight lang="c">
int main() {
printf("Bonjour, monde!");
return 0;
}
</syntaxhighlight>It is safe to say that one can easily infer how to change the program written in the Java programming language in the same way. However, even many programmers would not know where to begin if they wanted to change the binary representation. When we say “source code,” we do not mean machine language that only computers can understand—we are speaking of higher-level languages such as C and Java. A few other popular programming languages are C++, Perl, and Python. Some are harder than others to understand and program in, but they are all much easier to work with compared to the intricate machine language they get turned into after the programs are compiled and assembled.

Another important concept is understanding what an operating system is. An operating system is the software that handles input and output, memory allocation, and task scheduling. Generally one considers common or useful programs such as the Graphical User Interface (GUI) to be a part of the operating system. The GNU/Linux operating system contains a both GNU and non-GNU software, and a kernel called Linux. The kernel handles low-level tasks that applications depend upon such as input/output and task scheduling. The GNU software comprises much of the rest of the operating system, including GCC, a general-purpose compiler for many languages; GNU Emacs, an extensible text editor with many, many features; GNOME, the GNU desktop; GNU libc, a library that all programs other than the kernel must use in order to communicate with the kernel; and Bash, the GNU command interpreter that reads your command lines. Many of these programs were pioneered by Richard Stallman early on in the GNU Project and come with any modern GNU/Linux operating system.

It is important to understand that even if you cannot change the source code for a given program, or directly use all these tools, it is relatively easy to find someone who can. Therefore, by having the source code to a program you are usually given the power to change, fix, customize, and learn about a program—this is a power that you do not have if you are not given the source code. Source code is one of the requirements that makes a piece of software free. The other requirements will be found along with the philosophy and ideas behind them in this collection. Enjoy!

''Richard E. Buckman''

''Joshua Gay''

=== Section Footnotes ===
'''[1]''' In other programming languages, such as Scheme, the ''Hello World'' program is usually not your first program. In Scheme you often start with a program like this:<syntaxhighlight lang="scheme">
(define (factorial n)
(if (= n 0)
1
(* n (factorial (- n 1)))))
</syntaxhighlight>This computes the factorial of a number; that is, running <code>(factorial 5)</code> would output 120, which is computed by doing 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 * 1.

== Topic Guide ==
Since the essays and speeches in this book were addressed to different audiences at different times, there is a considerable amount of overlap, with some issues being discussed in more than one place. Because of this, and because we did not have the opportunity to make an index for this book, it could be hard to go back to something you read about unless its location is obvious from a chapter title.

We hope that this short guide, though sketchy and incomplete (it does not cover all topics or all discussions of a given topic), will help you find some of the ideas and explanations you are interested in.

''–Julie Sussman, P.P.A.''

'''Overview'''

Chapter 1 gives an overview of just about all the software-related topics in this book. Chapter 20 is also an overview.

For the non-software topics, see Privacy and Personal Freedom, Intellectual Property, and Copyright, below.

'''GNU Project'''

For the history of the GNU project, see Chapters 1 and 20

For a delightful explanation of the origin and pronunciation of the recursive acronym GNU (GNU’s Not Unix, pronounced guh-NEW), see Chapter 20.

The “manifesto” that launched the GNU Project is included here as Chapter 2. See also the Linux, GNU/Linux topic below.

'''Free Software Foundation'''

You can read about the history and function of the Free Software Foundation in Chapters 1 and 20, and under “Funding Free Software” in Chapter 18.

'''Free software'''

We will not attempt to direct you to all discussions of free software in this book, since every chapter ''except'' 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, and 19 deals with free software. For a history of free software—from free software to proprietary software and back again—see Chapter 1.

Free Software is defined, and the definition discussed, in Chapter 3. The definition is repeated in several other chapters.

For a discussion of the ambiguity of the word “free” and why we still use it to mean “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer,” see “Free as in Freedom” in Chapter 1 and “Ambiguity” in chapter 6.

See also Source Code, Open Source, and Copyleft, below. ''Free software'' is translated into 21 languages in Chapter 21.

'''Source Code, Source'''

''Source code'' is mentioned throughout the discussions of free software. If you’re not sure what that is, read “A Note on Software.”

'''Linux, GNU/Linux'''

For the origin of Linux, and the distinction between Linux (the operating-system kernel) and GNU/Linux (a full operating system), see the short mention under “Linux and GNU/Linux” in Chapter 1 and the full story in Chapter 20/

For reasons to say GNU/Linux when referring to that operating system rather than abbreviating it to Linux see Chapters 5 and 20.

'''Privacy and Personal Freedom'''

For some warnings about the loss of personal freedom, privacy, and access to written material that we have long taken for granted, see Chapters 11, 13, and 17. All of these are geared to a general audience.

'''Open Source'''

For the difference between the Open Source movement and the Free Software movement, see Chapter 6. This is also discussed in Chapter 1 (under “Open Source”) and Chapter 20.

'''Intellectual Property'''

For an explanation of why the term “intellectual property” is both misleading and a barrier to addressing so-called “intellectual property” issues, see Chapter 21 and the beginning of Chapter 16.

For particular types of “intellectual property” see the Copyright and Patents topics, below.

'''Copyright'''

Note: Most of these copyright references are ''not'' about software.

For the history, purpose, implementation, and effects of copyright, as well as recommendations for copyright policy, see Chapters 12 and 19. Topics critical in our digital age, such as e-books and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), are addressed here.

For the difference between patents and copyrights, see Chapter 16.

For the use of copyright in promoting free software and free documentation, see Copyleft, just below.

'''Copyleft'''

For an explanation of copyleft and how it uses the copyright system to promote free software, see Chapter 1 (under “Copyleft and the GNU GPL”), Chapter 14, and Chapter 20. See also Licenses, below.

For an argument that copyleft is practical and effective as well as idealistic, see Chapter 15.

Chapter 9 argues for free manuals to accompany free software.

'''Licenses'''

The GNU licenses, which can be used to copyleft software or manuals, are introduced in Chapter 14 and given in full in Section Four.

'''Patents'''

See Chapter 16 for the difference between patents and copyrights and for arguments against patenting software and why it is different from other patentable things. Software-patent policy in other countries is also discussed.

'''Hacker''' versus '''Cracker'''

For the proper use of these terms see the beginning of Chapter 1.

== Introduction ==
Every generation has its philosopher—a writer or an artist who captures the imagination of a time. Sometimes these philosophers are recognized as such; often it takes generations before the connection is made real. But recognized or not, a time gets marked by the people who speak its ideals, whether in the whisper of a poem, or the blast of a political movement.

Our generation has a philosopher. He is not an artist, or a professional writer. He is a programmer. Richard Stallman began his work in the labs of MIT, as a programmer and architect building operating system software. He has built his career on a stage of public life, as a programmer and an architect founding a movement for freedom in a world increasingly defined by “code.”

“Code” is the technology that makes computers run. Whether inscribed in software or burned in hardware, it is the collection of instructions, first written in words, that directs the functionality of machines. These machines—computers— increasingly define and control our life. They determine how phones connect, and what runs on TV. They decide whether video can be streamed across a broadband link to a computer. They control what a computer reports back to its manufacturer. These machines run us. Code runs these machines.

What control should we have over this code? What understanding? What freedom should there be to match the control it enables? What power?

These questions have been the challenge of Stallman’s life. Through his works and his words, he has pushed us to see the importance of keeping code “free.” Not free in the sense that code writers don’t get paid, but free in the sense that the control coders build be transparent to all, and that anyone have the right to take that control, and modify it as he or she sees fit. This is “free software”; “free software” is one answer to a world built in code.

“Free.” Stallman laments the ambiguity in his own term. There’s nothing to lament. Puzzles force people to think, and this term “free” does this puzzling work quite well. To modern American ears, “free software” sounds utopian, impossible. Nothing, not even lunch, is free. How could the most important words running the most critical machines running the world be “free.” How could a sane society aspire to such an ideal?

Yet the odd clink of the word “free” is a function of us, not of the term. “Free” has different senses, only one of which refers to “price.” A much more fundamental sense of “free” is the “free,” Stallman says, in the term “free speech,” or perhaps better in the term “free labor.” Not free as in costless, but free as in limited in its control by others. Free software is control that is transparent, and open to change, just as free laws, or the laws of a “free society,” are free when they make their control knowable, and open to change. The aim of Stallman’s “free software movement” is to make as much code as it can transparent, and subject to change, by rendering it “free.”

The mechanism of this rendering is an extraordinarily clever device called “copyleft” implemented through a license called GPL. Using the power of copyright law, “free software” not only assures that it remains open, and subject to change, but that other software that takes and uses “free software” (and that technically counts as a “derivative work”) must also itself be free. If you use and adapt a free software program, and then release that adapted version to the public, the released version must be as free as the version it was adapted from. It must, or the law of copyright will be violated.

“Free software,” like free societies, has its enemies. Microsoft has waged a war against the GPL, warning whoever will listen that the GPL is a “dangerous” license. The dangers it names, however, are largely illusory. Others object to the “coercion” in GPL’s insistence that modified versions are also free. But a condition is not coercion. If it is not coercion for Microsoft to refuse to permit users to distribute modified versions of its product Office without paying it (presumably) millions, then it is not coercion when the GPL insists that modified versions of free software be free too.

And then there are those who call Stallman’s message too extreme. But extreme it is not. Indeed, in an obvious sense, Stallman’s work is a simple translation of the freedoms that our tradition crafted in the world before code. “Free software” would assure that the world governed by code is as “free” as our tradition that built the world before code.

For example: A “free society” is regulated by law. But there are limits that any free society places on this regulation through law: No society that kept its laws secret could ever be called free. No government that hid its regulations from the regulated could ever stand in our tradition. Law controls. But it does so justly only when visibly. And law is visible only when its terms are knowable and controllable by those it regulates, or by the agents of those it regulates (lawyers, legislatures).

This condition on law extends beyond the work of a legislature. Think about the practice of law in American courts. Lawyers are hired by their clients to advance their clients’ interests. Sometimes that interest is advanced through litigation. In the course of this litigation, lawyers write briefs. These briefs in turn affect opinions written by judges. These opinions decide who wins a particular case, or whether a certain law can stand consistently with a constitution.

All the material in this process is free in the sense that Stallman means. Legal briefs are open and free for others to use. The arguments are transparent (which is different from saying they are good) and the reasoning can be taken without the permission of the original lawyers. The opinions they produce can be quoted in later briefs. They can be copied and integrated into another brief or opinion. The “source code” for American law is by design, and by principle, open and free for anyone to take. And take lawyers do—for it is a measure of a great brief that it achieves its creativity through the reuse of what happened before. The source is free; creativity and an economy is built upon it.

This economy of free code (and here I mean free legal code) doesn’t starve lawyers. Law firms have enough incentive to produce great briefs even though the stuff they build can be taken and copied by anyone else. The lawyer is a craftsman; his or her product is public. Yet the crafting is not charity. Lawyers get paid; the public doesn’t demand such work without price. Instead this economy flourishes, with later work added to the earlier.

We could imagine a legal practice that was different—briefs and arguments that were kept secret; rulings that announced a result but not the reasoning. Laws that were kept by the police but published to no one else. Regulation that operated without explaining its rule.

We could imagine this society, but we could not imagine calling it “free.” Whether or not the incentives in such a society would be better or more efficiently allocated, such a society could not be known as free. The ideals of freedom, of life within a free society, demand more than efficient application. Instead, openness and transparency are the constraints within which a legal system gets built, not options to be added if convenient to the leaders. Life governed by software code should be no less.

Code writing is not litigation. It is better, richer, more productive. But the law is an obvious instance of how creativity and incentives do not depend upon perfect control over the products created. Like jazz, or novels, or architecture, the law gets built upon the work that went before. This adding and changing is what creativity always is. And a free society is one that assures that its most important resources remain free in just this sense.

For the first time, this book collects the writing and lectures of Richard Stallman in a manner that will make their subtlety and power clear. The essays span a wide range, from copyright to the history of the free software movement. They include many arguments not well known, and among these, an especially insightful account of the changed circumstances that render copyright in the digital world suspect. They will serve as a resource for those who seek to understand the thought of this most powerful man—powerful in his ideas, his passion, and his integrity, even if powerless in every other way. They will inspire others who would take these ideas, and build upon them.

I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe. He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both.

Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code— when it finally sees that code, like laws, or like government, must be transparent to be free—then we will look back at this uncompromising and persistent programmer and recognize the vision he has fought to make real: the vision of a world where freedom and knowledge survives the compiler. And we will come to see that no man, through his deeds or words, has done as much to make possible the freedom that this next society could have.

We have not earned that freedom yet. We may well fail in securing it. But whether we succeed or fail, in these essays is a picture of what that freedom could be. And in the life that produced these words and works, there is inspiration for anyone who would, like Stallman, fight to create this freedom.

''Lawrence Lessig''

''Professor of Law, Stanford Law School.''

== Section One: The GNU Project and Free Software ==
[[File:Screenshot from 2023-01-01 13-23-47.png|alt=A satirical image, a knight riding an angry Gnu (the animal).|thumb|Satirical image: A knight riding a Gnu.]]

=== The First Software-Sharing Community ===
When I started working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971, I became part of a software-sharing community that had existed for many years. Sharing of software was not limited to our particular community; it is as old as computers, just as sharing of recipes is as old as cooking. But we did it more than most.

The AI Lab used a timesharing operating system called ITS (the Incompatible Timesharing System) that the lab’s staff hackers had designed and written in assembler language for the Digital PDP-10, one of the large computers of the era. As a member of this community, an AI lab staff system hacker, my job was to improve this system.

We did not call our software “free software,” because that term did not yet exist; but that is what it was. Whenever people from another university or a company wanted to port and use a program, we gladly let them. If you saw someone using an unfamiliar and interesting program, you could always ask to see the source code, so that you could read it, change it, or cannibalize parts of it to make a new program.

The use of “hacker” to mean “security breaker” is a confusion on the part of the mass media. We hackers refuse to recognize that meaning, and continue using the word to mean, “Someone who loves to program and enjoys being clever about it.”[1]

=== The Collapse of the Community ===
The situation changed drastically in the early 1980s, with the collapse of the AI Lab hacker community followed by the discontinuation of the PDP-10 computer.

In 1981, the spin-off company [[Symbolics, Inc.|Symbolics]] hired away nearly all of the hackers from the AI Lab, and the depopulated community was unable to maintain itself. (The book Hackers, by Steven Levy, describes these events, as well as giving a clear picture of this community in its prime.) When the AI Lab bought a new PDP10 in 1982, its administrators decided to use Digital’s non-free timesharing system instead of ITS on the new machine.

Not long afterwards, Digital discontinued the PDP-10 series. Its architecture, elegant and powerful in the 60s, could not extend naturally to the larger address spaces that were becoming feasible in the 80s. This meant that nearly all of the programs composing ITS were obsolete. That put the last nail in the coffin of ITS; 15 years of work went up in smoke.

The modern computers of the era, such as the VAX or the 68020, had their own operating systems, but none of them were free software: you had to sign a nondisclosure agreement even to get an executable copy.

This meant that the first step in using a computer was to promise not to help your neighbor. A cooperating community was forbidden. The rule made by the owners of proprietary software was, “If you share with your neighbor, you are a pirate. If you want any changes, beg us to make them.”

The idea that the proprietary-software social system—the system that says you are not allowed to share or change software—is antisocial, that it is unethical, that it is simply wrong, may come as a surprise to some readers. But what else could we say about a system based on dividing the public and keeping users helpless? Readers who find the idea surprising may have taken this proprietary-software social system as given, or judged it on the terms suggested by proprietarysoftware businesses. Software publishers have worked long and hard to convince people that there is only one way to look at the issue.

When software publishers talk about “enforcing” their “rights” or “stopping piracy,” what they actually “say” is secondary. The real message of these statements is in the unstated assumptions they take for granted; the public is supposed to accept them uncritically. So let’s examine them.

One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users’ natural right to copy.

Another unstated assumption is that the only important thing about software is what jobs it allows you to do—that we computer users should not care what kind of society we are allowed to have.

A third assumption is that we would have no usable software (or would never have a program to do this or that particular job) if we did not offer a company power over the users of the program. This assumption may have seemed plausible before the free software movement demonstrated that we can make plenty of useful software without putting chains on it.

If we decline to accept these assumptions, and judge these issues based on ordinary common-sense morality while placing the users first, we arrive at very different conclusions. Computer users should be free to modify programs to fit their needs, and free to share software, because helping other people is the basis of society.

=== A Stark Moral Choice ===
With my community gone, to continue as before was impossible. Instead, I faced a stark moral choice.

The easy choice was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker. Most likely I would also be developing software that was released under nondisclosure agreements, thus adding to the pressure on other people to betray their fellows too.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

I had already experienced being on the receiving end of a nondisclosure agreement, when someone refused to give me and the MIT AI Lab the source code for the control program for our printer. (The lack of certain features in this program made use of the printer extremely frustrating.) So I could not tell myself that nondisclosure agreements were innocent. I was very angry when he refused to share with us; I could not turn around and do the same thing to everyone else.

Another choice, straightforward but unpleasant, was to leave the computer field. That way my skills would not be misused, but they would still be wasted. I would not be culpable for dividing and restricting computer users, but it would happen nonetheless.

So I looked for a way that a programmer could do something for the good. I asked myself, was there a program or programs that I could write, so as to make a community possible once again?

The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system. That is the crucial software for starting to use a computer. With an operating system, you can do many things; without one, you cannot run the computer at all. With a free operating system, we could again have a community of cooperating hackers—and invite anyone to join. And anyone would be able to use a computer without starting out by conspiring to deprive his or her friends.

As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it. The name GNU was chosen following a hacker tradition, as a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix.”

An operating system does not mean just a kernel, barely enough to run other programs. In the 1970s, every operating system worthy of the name included command processors, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, debuggers, text editors, mailers, and much more. ITS had them, Multics had them, VMS had them, and Unix had them. The GNU operating system would include them too.

Later I heard these words, attributed to Hillel:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?”

The decision to start the GNU project was based on a similar spirit.

As an atheist, I don’t follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.

The term “free software” is sometimes misunderstood—it has nothing to do with price. It is about freedom. Here, therefore, is the definition of free software: a program is free software, for you, a particular user, if:

* You have the freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
* You have the freedom to modify the program to suit your needs. (To make this freedom effective in practice, you must have access to the source code, since making changes in a program without having the source code is exceedingly difficult.)
* You have the freedom to redistribute copies, either gratis or for a fee.
* You have the freedom to distribute modified versions of the program, so that the community can benefit from your improvements.

Since “free” refers to freedom, not to price, there is no contradiction between selling copies and free software. In fact, the freedom to sell copies is crucial: collections of free software sold on CD-ROMs are important for the community, and selling them is an important way to raise funds for free software development. Therefore, a program that people are not free to include on these collections is not free software.

Because of the ambiguity of “free,” people have long looked for alternatives, but no one has found a suitable alternative. The English Language has more words and nuances than any other, but it lacks a simple, unambiguous word that means “free,” as in freedom—“unfettered” being the word that comes closest in meaning. Such alternatives as “liberated,” “freedom,” and “open” have either the wrong meaning or some other disadvantage.

=== GNU Software and the GNU System ===
Developing a whole system is a very large project. To bring it into reach, I decided to adapt and use existing pieces of free software wherever that was possible. For example, I decided at the very beginning to use TeX as the principal text formatter; a few years later, I decided to use the X Window System rather than writing another window system for GNU.

Because of this decision, the GNU system is not the same as the collection of all GNU software. The GNU system includes programs that are not GNU software, programs that were developed by other people and projects for their own purposes, but that we can use because they are free software.

=== Commencing the Project ===
In January 1984 I quit my job at MIT and began writing GNU software. Leaving MIT was necessary so that MIT would not be able to interfere with distributing GNU as free software. If I had remained on the staff, MIT could have claimed to own the work, and could have imposed their own distribution terms, or even turned the work into a proprietary software package. I had no intention of doing a large amount of work only to see it become useless for its intended purpose: creating a new software-sharing community.

However, Professor Winston, then the head of the MIT AI Lab, kindly invited me to keep using the lab’s facilities.

=== The First Steps ===
Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for “free” is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.Shortly before beginning the GNU project, I heard about the Free University Compiler Kit, also known as VUCK. (The Dutch word for “free” is written with a V.) This was a compiler designed to handle multiple languages, including C and Pascal, and to support multiple target machines. I wrote to its author asking if GNU could use it.

He responded derisively, stating that the university was free but the compiler was not. I therefore decided that my first program for the GNU project would be a multi-language, multi-platform compiler.

Hoping to avoid the need to write the whole compiler myself, I obtained the source code for the Pastel compiler, which was a multi-platform compiler developed at Lawrence Livermore Lab. It supported, and was written in, an extended version of Pascal, designed to be a system-programming language. I added a C front end, and began porting it to the Motorola 68000 computer. But I had to give that up when I discovered that the compiler needed many megabytes of stack space, and the available 68000 Unix system would only allow 64k.

I then realized that the Pastel compiler functioned by parsing the entire input file into a syntax tree, converting the whole syntax tree into a chain of “instructions,” and then generating the whole output file, without ever freeing any storage. At this point, I concluded I would have to write a new compiler from scratch. That new compiler is now known as GCC; none of the Pastel compiler is used in it, but I managed to adapt and use the C front end that I had written. But that was some years later; first, I worked on GNU Emacs.

=== GNU Emacs ===
I began work on GNU Emacs in September 1984, and in early 1985 it was beginning to be usable. This enabled me to begin using Unix systems to do editing; having no interest in learning to use vi or ed, I had done my editing on other kinds of machines until then.

At this point, people began wanting to use GNU Emacs, which raised the question of how to distribute it. Of course, I put it on the anonymous ftp server on the MIT computer that I used. (This computer, prep.ai.mit.edu, thus became the principal GNU ftp distribution site; when it was decommissioned a few years later, we transferred the name to our new ftp server.) But at that time, many of the interested people were not on the Internet and could not get a copy by ftp. So the question was, what would I say to them?

I could have said, “Find a friend who is on the net and who will make a copy for you.” Or I could have done what I did with the original PDP-10 Emacs: tell them, “Mail me a tape and a SASE, and I will mail it back with Emacs on it.” But I had no job and I was looking for ways to make money from free software. So I announced that I would mail a tape to whoever wanted one, for a fee of $150. In this way, I started a free software distribution business, the precursor of the companies that today distribute entire Linux-based GNU systems.

=== Is a program free for every user? ===
If a program is free software when it leaves the hands of its author, this does not necessarily mean it will be free software for everyone who has a copy of it. For example, public domain software (software that is not copyrighted) is free software; but anyone can make a proprietary modified version of it. Likewise, many free programs are copyrighted but distributed under simple permissive licenses that allow proprietary modified versions.

The paradigmatic example of this problem is the X Window System. Developed at MIT, and released as free software with a permissive license, it was soon adopted by various computer companies. They added X to their proprietary Unix systems, in binary form only, and covered by the same nondisclosure agreement. These copies of X were no more free software than Unix was.

The developers of the X Window System did not consider this a problem—they expected and intended this to happen. Their goal was not freedom, just “success,” defined as “having many users.” They did not care whether these users had freedom, only that they should be numerous.

This lead to a paradoxical situation where two different ways of counting the amount of freedom gave different answers to the question, “Is this program free?” If you judged based on the freedom provided by the distribution terms of the MIT release, you would say that X was free software. But if you measured the freedom of the average user of X, you would have to say it was proprietary software. Most X users were running the proprietary versions that came with Unix systems, not the free version.

=== Copyleft and the GNU GPL ===
The goal of GNU was to give users freedom, not just to be popular. So we needed to use distribution terms that would prevent GNU software from being turned into proprietary software. The method we use is called ''copyleft''.

Copyleft uses copyright law, but flips it over to serve the opposite of its usual purpose: instead of a means of privatizing software, it becomes a means of keeping software free.

The central idea of copyleft is that we give everyone permission to run the program, copy the program, modify the program, and distribute modified versions— but not permission to add restrictions of their own. Thus, the crucial freedoms that define “free software” are guaranteed to everyone who has a copy; they become inalienable rights.

For an effective copyleft, modified versions must also be free. This ensures that work based on ours becomes available to our community if it is published. When programmers who have jobs as programmers volunteer to improve GNU software, it is copyleft that prevents their employers from saying, “You can’t share those changes, because we are going to use them to make our proprietary version of the program.”

The requirement that changes must be free is essential if we want to ensure freedom for every user of the program. The companies that privatized the X Window System usually made some changes to port it to their systems and hardware. These changes were small compared with the great extent of X, but they were not trivial. If making changes were an excuse to deny the users freedom, it would be easy for anyone to take advantage of the excuse.

A related issue concerns combining a free program with non-free code. Such a combination would inevitably be non-free; whichever freedoms are lacking for the non-free part would be lacking for the whole as well. To permit such combinations would open a hole big enough to sink a ship. Therefore, a crucial requirement for copyleft is to plug this hole: anything added to or combined with a copylefted program must be such that the larger combined version is also free and copylefted.

The specific implementation of copyleft that we use for most GNU software is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. We have other kinds of copyleft that are used in specific circumstances. GNU manuals are copylefted also, but use a much simpler kind of copyleft, because the complexity of the GNU GPL is not necessary for manuals.

In 1984 or 1985, Don Hopkins (a very imaginative fellow) mailed me a letter. On the envelope he had written several amusing sayings, including this one: “Copyleft—all rights reversed.” I used the word “copyleft” to name the distribution concept I was developing at the time.

=== The Free Software Foundation ===
As interest in using Emacs was growing, other people became involved in the GNU project, and we decided that it was time to seek funding once again. So in 1985 we created the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity for free software development. The FSF also took over the Emacs tape distribution business; later it extended this by adding other free software (both GNU and non-GNU) to the tape, and by selling free manuals as well.

The FSF accepts donations, but most of its income has always come from sales— of copies of free software, and of other related services. Today it sells CD-ROMs of source code, CD-ROMs with binaries, nicely printed manuals (all with freedom to redistribute and modify), and Deluxe Distributions (where we build the whole collection of software for your choice of platform).

Free Software Foundation employees have written and maintained a number of GNU software packages. Two notable ones are the C library and the shell. The GNU C library is what every program running on a GNU/Linux system uses to communicate with Linux. It was developed by a member of the Free Software Foundation staff, Roland McGrath. The shell used on most GNU/Linux systems is BASH, the Bourne Again Shell, which was developed by FSF employee Brian Fox.

We funded development of these programs because the GNU project was not just about tools or a development environment. Our goal was a complete operating system, and these programs were needed for that goal.

“Bourne again Shell” is a joke on the name “Bourne Shell,” which was the usual shell on Unix.

=== Free Software Support ===
The free software philosophy rejects a specific widespread business practice, but it is not against business. When businesses respect the users’ freedom, we wish them success.

Selling copies of Emacs demonstrates one kind of free software business. When the FSF took over that business, I needed another way to make a living. I found it in selling services relating to the free software I had developed. This included teaching, for subjects such as how to program GNU Emacs and how to customize GCC, and software development, mostly porting GCC to new platforms.

Today each of these kinds of free software business is practiced by a number of corporations. Some distribute free software collections on CD-ROM; others sell support at various levels ranging from answering user questions, to fixing bugs, to adding major new features. We are even beginning to see free software companies based on launching new free software products.

Watch out, though—a number of companies that associate themselves with the term “open source” actually base their business on non-free software that works with free software. These are not free software companies, they are proprietary software companies whose products tempt users away from freedom. They call these “value added,” which reflects the values they would like us to adopt: convenience above freedom. If we value freedom more, we should call them “freedom subtracted” products.

=== Technical goals ===
The principal goal of GNU was to be free software. Even if GNU had no technical advantage over Unix, it would have a social advantage, allowing users to cooperate, and an ethical advantage, respecting the user’s freedom.

But it was natural to apply the known standards of good practice to the work—for example, dynamically allocating data structures to avoid arbitrary fixed size limits, and handling all the possible 8-bit codes wherever that made sense.

In addition, we rejected the Unix focus on small memory size, by deciding not to support 16-bit machines (it was clear that 32-bit machines would be the norm by the time the GNU system was finished), and to make no effort to reduce memory usage unless it exceeded a megabyte. In programs for which handling very large files was not crucial, we encouraged programmers to read an entire input file into core, then scan its contents without having to worry about I/O.

These decisions enabled many GNU programs to surpass their Unix counterparts in reliability and speed.

=== Donated Computers ===
As the GNU project’s reputation grew, people began offering to donate machines running Unix to the project. These were very useful, because the easiest way to develop components of GNU was to do it on a Unix system, and replace the components of that system one by one. But they raised an ethical issue: whether it was right for us to have a copy of Unix at all.

Unix was (and is) proprietary software, and the GNU project’s philosophy said that we should not use proprietary software. But, applying the same reasoning that leads to the conclusion that violence in self defense is justified, I concluded that it was legitimate to use a proprietary package when that was crucial for developing a free replacement that would help others stop using the proprietary package.

But, even if this was a justifiable evil, it was still an evil. Today we no longer have any copies of Unix, because we have replaced them with free operating systems. If we could not replace a machine’s operating system with a free one, we replaced the machine instead.

=== The GNU Task List ===
As the GNU project proceeded, and increasing numbers of system components were found or developed, eventually it became useful to make a list of the remaining gaps. We used it to recruit developers to write the missing pieces. This list became known as the GNU task list. In addition to missing Unix components, we listed various other useful software and documentation projects that, we thought, a truly complete system ought to have.

Today, hardly any Unix components are left in the GNU task list—those jobs have been done, aside from a few inessential ones. But the list is full of projects that some might call “applications.” Any program that appeals to more than a narrow class of users would be a useful thing to add to an operating system.

Even games are included in the task list—and have been since the beginning. Unix included games, so naturally GNU should too. But compatibility was not an issue for games, so we did not follow the list of games that Unix had. Instead, we listed a spectrum of different kinds of games that users might like.

=== The GNU Library GPL ===
The GNU C library uses a special kind of copyleft called the GNU Library General Public License, which gives permission to link proprietary software with the library. Why make this exception?

It is not a matter of principle; there is no principle that says proprietary software products are entitled to include our code. (Why contribute to a project predicated on refusing to share with us?) Using the LGPL for the C library, or for any library, is a matter of strategy.

The C library does a generic job; every proprietary system or compiler comes with a C library. Therefore, to make our C library available only to free software would not have given free software any advantage—it would only have discouraged use of our library.

One system is an exception to this: on the GNU system (and this includes GNU/Linux), the GNU C library is the only C library. So the distribution terms of the GNU C library determine whether it is possible to compile a proprietary program for the GNU system. There is no ethical reason to allow proprietary applications on the GNU system, but strategically it seems that disallowing them would do more to discourage use of the GNU system than to encourage development of free applications.

That is why using the Library GPL is a good strategy for the C library. For other libraries, the strategic decision needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. When a library does a special job that can help write certain kinds of programs, then releasing it under the GPL, limiting it to free programs only, is a way of helping other free software developers, giving them an advantage against proprietary software.

Consider GNU Readline[2] a library that was developed to provide commandline editing for BASH. Readline is released under the ordinary GNU GPL, not the Library GPL. This probably does reduce the amount Readline is used, but that is no loss for us. Meanwhile, at least one useful application has been made free software specifically so it could use Readline, and that is a real gain for the community.

Proprietary software developers have the advantages money provides; free software developers need to make advantages for each other. I hope some day we will have a large collection of GPL-covered libraries that have no parallel available to proprietary software, providing useful modules to serve as building blocks in new free software, and adding up to a major advantage for further free software development.

=== Scratching an itch? ===
Eric Raymond says that “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch.” Maybe that happens sometimes, but many essential pieces of GNU software were developed in order to have a complete free operating system. They come from a vision and a plan, not from impulse.

For example, we developed the GNU C library because a Unix-like system needs a C library, the Bourne Again Shell (BASH) because a Unix-like system needs a shell, and GNU tar because a Unix-like system needs a tar program. The same is true for my own programs—the GNU C compiler, GNU Emacs, GDB and GNU Make.

Some GNU programs were developed to cope with specific threats to our freedom. Thus, we developed gzip to replace the Compress program, which had been lost to the community because of the LZW[3] patents. We found people to develop LessTif, and more recently started GNOME and Harmony, to address the problems caused by certain proprietary libraries (see “Non-Free Libraries” below). We are developing the GNU Privacy Guard to replace popular non-free encryption software, because users should not have to choose between privacy and freedom.

Of course, the people writing these programs became interested in the work, and many features were added to them by various people for the sake of their own needs and interests. But that is not why the programs exist.

=== Unexpected Developments ===
At the beginning of the GNU project, I imagined that we would develop the whole GNU system, then release it as a whole. That is not how it happened. Since each component of the GNU system was implemented on a Unix system, each component could run on Unix systems, long before a complete GNU system existed. Some of these programs became popular, and users began extending them and porting them—to the various incompatible versions of Unix, and sometimes to other systems as well.

The process made these programs much more powerful, and attracted both funds and contributors to the GNU project. But it probably also delayed completion of a minimal working system by several years, as GNU developers’ time was put into maintaining these ports and adding features to the existing components, rather than moving on to write one missing component after another.

=== The GNU Hurd ===
By 1990, the GNU system was almost complete; the only major missing component was the kernel. We had decided to implement our kernel as a collection of server processes running on top of Mach. Mach is a microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University and then at the University of Utah; the GNU Hurd is a collection of servers (or “herd of gnus”) that run on top of Mach, and do the various jobs of the Unix kernel. The start of development was delayed as we waited for Mach to be released as free software, as had been promised.

One reason for choosing this design was to avoid what seemed to be the hardest part of the job: debugging a kernel program without a source-level debugger to do it with. This part of the job had been done already, in Mach, and we expected to debug the Hurd servers as user programs, with GDB. But it took a long time to make that possible, and the multi-threaded servers that send messages to each other have turned out to be very hard to debug. Making the Hurd work solidly has stretched on for many years.

=== Alix ===
The GNU kernel was not originally supposed to be called the Hurd. Its original name was Alix—named after the woman who was my sweetheart at the time. She, a Unix system administrator, had pointed out how her name would fit a common naming pattern for Unix system versions; as a joke, she told her friends, “Someone should name a kernel after me.” I said nothing, but decided to surprise her with a kernel named Alix.

It did not stay that way. Michael Bushnell (now Thomas), the main developer of the kernel, preferred the name Hurd, and redefined Alix to refer to a certain part of the kernel—the part that would trap system calls and handle them by sending messages to Hurd servers.

Ultimately, Alix and I broke up, and she changed her name; independently, the Hurd design was changed so that the C library would send messages directly to servers, and this made the Alix component disappear from the design.

But before these things happened, a friend of hers came across the name Alix in the Hurd source code, and mentioned the name to her. So the name did its job.

=== Linux and GNU/Linux ===
The GNU Hurd is not ready for production use. Fortunately, another kernel is available. In 1991, Linus Torvalds developed a Unix-compatible kernel and called it Linux. Around 1992, combining Linux with the not-quite-complete GNU system resulted in a complete free operating system. (Combining them was a substantial job in itself, of course.) It is due to Linux that we can actually run a version of the GNU system today.

We call this system version GNU/Linux, to express its composition as a combination of the GNU system with Linux as the kernel.

=== Challenges in Our Future ===
We have proved our ability to develop a broad spectrum of free software. This does not mean we are invincible and unstoppable. Several challenges make the future of free software uncertain; meeting them will require steadfast effort and endurance, sometimes lasting for years. It will require the kind of determination that people display when they value their freedom and will not let anyone take it away.

The following four sections discuss these challenges.

=== Secret Hardware ===
Hardware manufactures increasingly tend to keep hardware specifications secret. This makes it difficult to write free drivers so that Linux and XFree86[4] can support new hardware. We have complete free systems today, but we will not have them tomorrow if we cannot support tomorrow’s computers.

There are two ways to cope with this problem. Programmers can do reverse engineering to figure out how to support the hardware. The rest of us can choose the hardware that is supported by free software; as our numbers increase, secrecy of specifications will become a self-defeating policy.

Reverse engineering is a big job; will we have programmers with sufficient determination to undertake it? Yes—if we have built up a strong feeling that free software is a matter of principle, and non-free drivers are intolerable. And will large numbers of us spend extra money, or even a little extra time, so we can use free drivers? Yes, if the determination to have freedom is widespread.

=== Non-Free Libraries ===
A non-free library that runs on free operating systems acts as a trap for free software developers. The library’s attractive features are the bait; if you use the library, you fall into the trap, because your program cannot usefully be part of a free operating system. (Strictly speaking, we could include your program, but it won’t run with the library missing.) Even worse, if a program that uses the proprietary library becomes popular, it can lure other unsuspecting programmers into the trap.

The first instance of this problem was the Motif[5] toolkit, back in the 80s. Although there were as yet no free operating systems, it was clear what problem Motif would cause for them later on. The GNU Project responded in two ways: by asking individual free software projects to support the free X toolkit widgets as well as Motif, and by asking for someone to write a free replacement for Motif. The job took many years; LessTif, developed by the Hungry Programmers, became powerful enough to support most Motif applications only in 1997.

Between 1996 and 1998, another non-free Graphical User Interface (GUI) toolkit library, called Qt, was used in a substantial collection of free software, the desktop KDE.

Free GNU/Linux systems were unable to use KDE, because we could not use the library. However, some commercial distributors of GNU/Linux systems who were not strict about sticking with free software added KDE to their systems— producing a system with more capabilities, but less freedom. The KDE group was actively encouraging more programmers to use Qt, and millions of new “Linux users” had never been exposed to the idea that there was a problem in this. The situation appeared grim.

The free software community responded to the problem in two ways: GNOME and Harmony.

GNOME, the GNU Network Object Model Environment, is GNU’s desktop project. Started in 1997 by Miguel de Icaza, and developed with the support of Red Hat Software, GNOME set out to provide similar desktop facilities, but using free software exclusively. It has technical advantages as well, such as supporting a variety of languages, not just C++. But its main purpose was freedom: not to require the use of any non-free software.

Harmony is a compatible replacement library, designed to make it possible to run KDE software without using Qt

In November 1998, the developers of Qt announced a change of license which, when carried out, should make Qt free software. There is no way to be sure, but I think that this was partly due to the community’s firm response to the problem that Qt posed when it was non-free. (The new license is inconvenient and inequitable, so it remains desirable to avoid using Qt.)[6]

How will we respond to the next tempting non-free library? Will the whole community understand the need to stay out of the trap? Or will many of us give up freedom for convenience, and produce a major problem? Our future depends on our philosophy.

=== Software Patents ===
The worst threat we face comes from software patents, which can put algorithms and features off limits to free software for up to twenty years. The LZW compression algorithm patents were applied for in 1983, and we still cannot release free software to produce proper compressed GIFs. In 1998, a free program to produce MP3 compressed audio was removed from distribution under threat of a patent suit.

There are ways to cope with patents: we can search for evidence that a patent is invalid, and we can look for alternative ways to do a job. But each of these methods works only sometimes; when both fail, a patent may force all free software to lack some feature that users want. What will we do when this happens?

Those of us who value free software for freedom’s sake will stay with free software anyway. We will manage to get work done without the patented features. But those who value free software because they expect it to be techically superior are likely to call it a failure when a patent holds it back. Thus, while it is useful to talk about the practical effectiveness of the “cathedral” model of development,[7] and the reliability and power of some free software, we must not stop there. We must talk about freedom and principle.

=== Free Documentation ===
The biggest deficiency in our free operating systems is not in the software—it is the lack of good free manuals that we can include in our systems. Documentation is an essential part of any software package; when an important free software package does not come with a good free manual, that is a major gap. We have many such gaps today.

Free documentation, like free software, is a matter of freedom, not price. The criterion for a free manual is pretty much the same as for free software: it is a matter of giving all users certain freedoms. Redistribution (including commercial sale) must be permitted, on-line and on paper, so that the manual can accompany every copy of the program.

Permission for modification is crucial too. As a general rule, I don’t believe that it is essential for people to have permission to modify all sorts of articles and books. For example, I don’t think you or I are obliged to give permission to modify articles like this one, which describe our actions and our views.

But there is a particular reason why the freedom to modify is crucial for documentation for free software. When people exercise their right to modify the software, and add or change its features, if they are conscientious they will change the manual too—so they can provide accurate and usable documentation with the modified program. A manual that does not allow programmers to be conscientious and finish the job does not fill our community’s needs.

Some kinds of limits on how modifications are done pose no problem. For example, requirements to preserve the original author’s copyright notice, the distribution terms, or the list of authors, are ok. It is also no problem to require modified versions to include notice that they were modified, even to have entire sections that may not be deleted or changed, as long as these sections deal with nontechnical topics. These kinds of restrictions are not a problem because they don’t stop the conscientious programmer from adapting the manual to fit the modified program. In other words, they don’t block the free software community from making full use of the manual.

However, it must be possible to modify all the “technical” content of the manual, and then distribute the result in all the usual media, through all the usual channels; otherwise, the restrictions do obstruct the community, the manual is not free, and we need another manual.

Will free software developers have the awareness and determination to produce a full spectrum of free manuals? Once again, our future depends on philosophy

=== We Must Talk About Freedom ===
Estimates today are that there are ten million users of GNU/Linux systems such as Debian GNU/Linux and Red Hat Linux. Free software has developed such practical advantages that users are flocking to it for purely practical reasons.

The good consequences of this are evident: more interest in developing free software, more customers for free software businesses, and more ability to encourage companies to develop commercial free software instead of proprietary software products.

But interest in the software is growing faster than awareness of the philosophy it is based on, and this leads to trouble. Our ability to meet the challenges and threats described above depends on the will to stand firm for freedom. To make sure our community has this will, we need to spread the idea to the new users as they come into the community

But we are failing to do so: the efforts to attract new users into our community are far outstripping the efforts to teach them the civics of our community. We need to do both, and we need to keep the two efforts in balance.

=== "Open Source" ===
Teaching new users about freedom became more difficult in 1998, when a part of the community decided to stop using the term “free software” and say “open source software” instead.

Some who favored this term aimed to avoid the confusion of “free” with “gratis”—a valid goal. Others, however, aimed to set aside the spirit of principle that had motivated the free software movement and the GNU project, and to appeal instead to executives and business users, many of whom hold an ideology that places profit above freedom, above community, above principle. Thus, the rhetoric of “open source” focuses on the potential to make high-quality, powerful software, but shuns the ideas of freedom, community, and principle.

The “Linux” magazines are a clear example of this—they are filled with advertisements for proprietary software that works with GNU/Linux. When the next Motif or Qt appears, will these magazines warn programmers to stay away from it, or will they run ads for it?

The support of business can contribute to the community in many ways; all else being equal, it is useful. But winning their support by speaking even less about freedom and principle can be disastrous; it makes the previous imbalance between outreach and civics education even worse.

“Free software” and “open source” describe the same category of software, more or less, but say different things about the software, and about values. The GNU Project continues to use the term “free software,” to express the idea that freedom, not just technology, is important.

=== Try! ===
Yoda’s philosophy (“There is no ‘try”’) sounds neat, but it doesn’t work for me. I have done most of my work while anxious about whether I could do the job, and unsure that it would be enough to achieve the goal if I did. But I tried anyway, because there was no one but me between the enemy and my city. Surprising myself, I have sometimes succeeded.

Sometimes I failed; some of my cities have fallen. Then I found another threatened city, and got ready for another battle. Over time, I’ve learned to look for threats and put myself between them and my city, calling on other hackers to come and join me.

Nowadays, often I’m not the only one. It is a relief and a joy when I see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize, this city may survive— for now. But the dangers are greater each year, and now Microsoft has explicitly targeted our community. We can’t take the future of freedom for granted. Don’t take it for granted! If you want to keep your freedom, you must be prepared to defend it.

=== Chapter Footnotes ===
'''[1]''' It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what most “hacks” have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have “hack value.” You can help correct the misunderstanding simply by making a distinction between security breaking and hacking—by using the term “cracking” for security breaking. The people who do it are “crackers.” Some of them may also be hackers, just as some of them may be chess players or golfers; most of them are not (“On Hacking,” RMS; 2002).

'''[2]''' The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in.

'''[3]''' The Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm is used for compressing data.

'''[4]''' XFree86 is a program that provides a desktop environment that interfaces with your display hardware (mouse, keyboard, etc). It runs on many different platforms.

'''[5]''' Motif is a graphical interface and window manager that runs on top of X Windows.

'''[6]''' In September 2000, Qt was rereleased under the GNU GPL, which essentially solved this problem.

'''[7]''' I probably meant to write “of the ‘bazaar’ model,” since that was the alternative that was new and initially controversial.

Revisionism

2023-04-20T23:59:41Z

Amicchan: /* Further Reading */ Use {{citation}} instead of reference.

{{Distinguish|[[Historical revisionism]]}}

'''Revisionism''' is a fundamental alteration of a theory, essentially usurping (though taking elements of) the former theory and replacing it with a new one. While the attributes of a theory are subject to change in accordance to changing historic circumstances, changing the fundamental basis of that theory is to nullify it in place of a new one.

Revisionist theory, politics and praxis are only so when examined through the lens of [[dialectical materialism]] and found incorrect in one of two ways: either contradicting past successes, such as the [[vanguard party]], which was proven successful with the [[Bolsheviks]], [[Communist_Party_of_Vietnam|Communist Party of Vietnam]], and the [[Communist Party of China]], or by pushing errors with a history of failure and incoherence. The [[Narodniks]] were unable to cohesively grasp that the [[Feudalism|feudal]] [[landlord]] and [[Peasantry|peasant]] ends with the capital production of agriculture.

[[Eduard Bernstein|Eduard Berstein]], infamously noted in [[Vladimir Lenin|Lenin]]'s "What is to be done", was a leading theoretician of the German [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|Social Democratic Party]] who originated the revisionist theory of [[evolutionary socialism]]. He rejected Marxist concepts of [[class struggle]] and world revolution, liquidating [[Marxism]] and removing its revolutionary elements to focus entirely on [[reformism]].

== Left & Right Deviation ==
[[Trotskyism]] and [[Maoism]] are often described within [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxism Leninism]] circles as [[Ultra-leftism|left deviations]] that do not engage in sufficient [[Criticism|criticism and self-criticism]] and thus fall off the path of [[scientific socialism]]. In parallel, reformism is a right deviation that cedes one of the fundamental aims of [[Marxism]]: the abolition of and replacement by [[Dictatorship of the proletariat|proletarian structures]] regarding the [[Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie|bourgeois control]] over the [[means of production]].

== Further Reading ==
* {{Citation|author=Liu Shaoqi|year=1939|title=How to Be a Good Communist|title-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/index.htm|chapter=IX Attitudes Towards Wrong Ideology in the Party and Towards Inner-Party Struggle|chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/liu-shaoqi/1939/how-to-be/}}

==See Also==

*[[Anti-Revisionism|Anti-revisionism]]
*[[Reformism]]

== References ==
[[Category:Marxist terminology]]

Contradiction

2023-04-20T23:20:45Z

Amicchan: /* Principality */

In [[dialectical materialism]], a '''contradiction''' is a coexistent diametrical<ref group=lower-alpha>''Diametrical'' opposition does not necessarily mean the ''literal'' opposite. Diametrical means the ''complete'' opposite, at both extremes.

For example, the [[bourgeoisie]] and [[proletariat]] are diametrically opposed (both existing at one extreme end: the bourgeoisie that controls industry and the proletariat that must work this industry), but they are not an antonym to one another.</ref> link between (usually two) forces. Contradictions are formed when two requirements are met:

# Two forces must be diametrically opposed
# And one cannot exist without the other

For examples:

* Saturation and starvation form a contradiction; saturation is diametrically opposed to starvation, as one cannot be saturated and starved at the same time. Starvation also must coexist with saturation, otherwise it would be impossible to starve without the need for saturation.
* In warfare, attack and defence form a contradiction; defence is the diametrical opposite of the attack (rule 1) and there is no need for defence if there is no attack (rule 2).
* Life and death form a contradiction. Life is diametrically opposed to death and death cannot exist without life.
* Void versus phenomena. This plays out in several ways. Darkness and light. Heat and cold. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of heat.

Contradictions exist everywhere in the world and in many different domains, and it is the solving of contradictions (which makes new ones appear) that drive change in the general sense of the term, thus [[dialectics]] happen.

All things are made of contradictions.

[[Mao Zedong]] talked at length about contradictions and is a good starting place for theory.

== Primary and secondary contradictions ==
Contradictions are separated into primary and secondary categories. Secondary contradictions are dependent on primary ones for their existence or rather, primary contradictions drive secondary contradictions.

Whether one should solve the primary or secondary contradiction first is still a point of debate.

Some think that solving class contradictions for example (moving into communism, a classless society) will also inherently solve several secondary contradictions attached such as racism, homophobia, sexism, selfishness, etc.

For others, it is impossible to solve the primary contradiction without addressing the secondary contradictions. They argue it is simply impossible, for example, to solve class contradictions if sexism and homophobia are not addressed first.

== Solving contradictions ==
A contradiction is solved when it stops existing; i.e. when both rules stop being applicable.

Thus the proletariat will stop existing as a class when the bourgeoisie stops existing. However, in that scenario, one of two things may happen:

# Another contradiction takes its place
# The contradiction is solved for good

In this example, it means that the proletariat may be replaced by another class -- but inevitably, so will the bourgeoisie (much like how serfs and nobles were replaced by capitalist [[Social class|social classes]]). Thus another contradiction would take place between these two classes. Or classes could stop existing at all, which would usher in a classless era and solve class contradictions for good (since there are no more classes).

==Universality==

{{quote|Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.|[[Mao Zedong]]|[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|[[Library:On_contradiction#The_Universality_of_Contradiction|The Universality of Contradiction]]}}

===Particularity===

The particularity of contradictions refer to a contradiction that forms the distinct essence of a thing. Mao noted that it is important to study the particular contradictions of a thing to qualitatively distinguish it from other things.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction. This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. … All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.}}</ref> Humans study the particular contradiction of an essence to distinguish it from other essences. This leads to common knowledge of a set of essences, which in turn aids in the study of particularities.

Mao and Lenin warned against viewing only part of a contradiction (or one-sidedness), as this leads to misunderstanding the contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin|Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Buhkarin]]|author=[[Vladimir Lenin]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/25.htm|year=1921|quote=Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and “mediacies”. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.}}</ref><ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|year=1937|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. … To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly… . In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction. This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly.}}</ref> Mao also warned against superficiality, which is not viewing both the totality and the individuality of a contradiction.<ref name=superficial>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation). … }}</ref> The result of applying both superficiality and one-sidedness is subjectivity.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|chapter=III. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Particularity_of_Contradiction|The Particularity of Contradiction]]|year=1937|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|quote=To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.}}</ref>

== Principality ==

A principal contradiction is the sole contradiction in a thing that determines the existence and development of other contradictions.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.}}</ref>

A principal force (or aspect) is the dominant force in a contradiction.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.}}</ref> The principality of forces in a contradiction can change.<ref>{{Citation|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|author=Mao Zedong|chapter=IV. [[Library:On_contradiction#The_Principal_Contradiction_and_the_Principal_Aspect_of_a_Contradiction|The Principal Contradiction and the Principal Aspect of a Contradiction]]|year=1937|quote=…the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed--a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.}}</ref>

==Further Reading==

* {{Citation|author=Mao Zedong|mia=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm|title=[[Library:On contradiction|On contradiction]]|year=1937|city=[[Yan'an]]}}
* {{Citation|author=Friedrich Engels|year=1883|title=Dialectics of nature|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/index.htm}}
* {{Citation|author=[[Nikolai Bukharin]]|year=1925|title=Historical Materialism|mia=https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1921/histmat/index.htm}}

==References==
<references />

===Notes===
<references group=lower-alpha />

[[Category:Marxist theory]][[Category:Marxist terminology]][[Category:Dialectical materialism]]

Contradiction

2023-04-19T22:40:03Z

Amicchan: Contradictions are made of forces, not things. lol

Teru Hasegawa

2023-04-19T21:24:55Z

Amicchan: Add places in infobox.

{{stub}}
{{infobox person
|name=Teru Hasegawa Verda Majo
|native_name=長谷川テル
|image=Teru Hasegawa.jpg
|birth_date={{birth date|1912|3|7}}
|birth_place=[[Tokyo]], [[Japan]]
|death_date={{death date and age|1947|1|10|1912|3|7}}<ref>{{Citation|url=https://www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/qfy-content/uploads/2021/06/0e15c8e2a6aa2ce5fa3e4508df10c403.pdf|title=Concise History of the Chinese Esperanto Movement|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=Konciza Historio de la Ĉina Esperanto-movado|page=60}}</ref>
|death_place=[[Republic of China]]
}}
[[Teru Hasegawa]] (Japanese: ''長谷川テル'', ''Hasegawa Teru'') was a Japanese [[Anti-fascism|anti-fascist]] [[Feminism|feminist]] [[Esperanto|Esperantist]]. She was also known by her Esperanto name ''Verda Majo'' ("Green May").

==History==

===Esperanto===
While in Japan, Majo had become acquainted with Esperantist circles. There was a close symbiosis at the time between a part of the Japanese Esperanto-movement and the movement for proletarian literature. In 1932 she was briefly taken into custody, being suspected of having "leftist sympathies", and was thereupon expelled from college. Thus, she returned to [[Tokyo]], where she started to learn typewriting and fully committed herself to propagating [[Proletariat|proletarian]] Esperantist literature, especially amongst women.<ref name=":0">Gotelind Müller (2013). [http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf "Hasegawa Teru Alias Verda Majo (1912-1947): A Japanese woman esperantist in the Chinese anti-Japanese war of resistance"] (PDF). University of Heidelberg.</ref>

===Escape to China===

Via these activities she came into contact with the editor of the Chinese Esperanto magazine ''La Mondo'' (''The World'') in [[Shanghai]] at that time, which was looking among the Japanese Esperantists for someone to write an article about the situation of Japanese women. Majo published an article in the March/April issue 1935 focusing on the Japanese Women’s Movement and the question of labour and the suppression of the women's movement by Japanese [[fascism]].

Eventually, Majo went to China after marrying [[Liu Ren]], a Chinese Esperantist. She followed him and was helped by Liu's frends. As a result, one of his friends was arrested by the japanese police under the accusation of “having helped a representative of the Japanese Esperantists participate in an all-Chinese Esperanto congress, directed by the [[Communist International (1919–1943)|Comintern]]”.<ref>{{Citation|url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Verda_Majo_-_Verkoj_de_Verda_Majo%2C_1982.pdf|title=In China Battling|trans-lang=Esperanto|trans-title=En Ĉinio batalanta|chapter=Sub Verda Stelo|series=Works by Verda Majo|year=|page=42|quote=Oni pretekstis, ke ili klopodis por sendi reprezentantondejapanaj esperantistoj al “Tutĉinia Esperantista Kongreso okazigita sub indiko de Kominterno** en Moskvo”, tio estas la supredirita jubileo.}}</ref>

While in China she worked with other Chinese Esperantists, and eventually she became a Japanese language broadcaster with the Central Radio Station, broadcasting programs aimed at dividing the Japanese army. In July 1940, the Anti-war Revolution League of Japanese in China was founded and Majo was elected as one of its leaders. Majo died of an illness on January 10, 1947 at the age of 35.

==Legacy==

[[Zhou Enlai]] once said of Majo that she was "a sincere comrade-in-arms of the Chinese people."<ref name=":7">[http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm “Verda Majo – a Sincere Friend Dedicated to China.”] 2023. China.org.cn. [https://web.archive.org/web/20211007194659/http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm Archived] 2021-10-07.</ref><ref name=":0" />

==See also==

* [[Esperanto]]
* [[Japanese Proletarian Esperantist Union]]

==Further Reading==

* {{Web citation|url=http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/149180.htm|title= Verda Majo – A Sincere Friend Dedicated to China |date=2005-11-18}}
* {{Citation|url=https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf|title=Hasegawa Teru alias Verda Majo (1912-1947) A Japanese woman Esperantist in the Chinese Anti-Japanese WAR OF Resistance|author=Gotelind Müller|city=Heidelberg|year=2013|trans-title=Hasegawa Teru alias Verda Majo (1912-1947). Eine japanische Esperantistin im chinesischen anti-japanischen Widerstand|trans-lang=German|pdf=https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/15424/1/Hasegawa%20englisch.pdf}} (Anti-communist.)

==Works==

* {{Citation|title=Works of Verda Majo|author=Verda Majo|trans-title=Verkoj de Verda Majo|trans-lang=Esperanto|year=1982|publisher=Ĉina Esperanto-Eldonejo|pdf=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Verda_Majo_-_Verkoj_de_Verda_Majo%2C_1982.pdf}}

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Esperantists]]