What is Esperanto?

Esperanto was created by L. L. Zamenhof, an eye doctor in the Russian Empire, who published his first book on it in 1887 under the pen name 'Doktoro Esperanto', meaning 'one who hopes'. He hoped a shared neutral language would reduce misunderstanding between peoples. Its grammar is highly regular, with just 16 basic rules and no irregular verbs, and much of its vocabulary comes from Romance and Germanic languages. Estimates of speakers vary widely, from tens of thousands to a couple of million. A small number of people, known as denaskuloj, have grown up speaking Esperanto as a native language.