Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto (Dr. Hopeful), the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the language in 1887. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy-to-learn and flexible language as a universal second language to foster international understanding.
Although Esperanto is not official in any country or at the United Nations, it has, since its publication, enjoyed continuous usage by a small but growing community. Today Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction and radio broadcasting. There are even a thousand or so native Esperanto speakers.
Wikipedia in Esperanto (Vikipedio) has 99,000 articles as of
May 24, 2008, a remarkable count for a planned-language Wikipedia version, and will likely exceed 100,000 articles shortly in June 2008.
