Zamenhof wanted to make an easy language to increase international understanding. He wanted Esperanto to be a universal second language. In other words, although he did not want Esperanto to replace national languages, he wanted a majority of people around the world to speak Esperanto. Many Esperantists initially shared this goal. General Assembly of UNESCO recognized Esperanto in 1954. Since then World Esperanto Association has got official relations with UNESCO. However, Esperanto was never chosen by the United Nations or other international organizations and it has not become a widely accepted second language.
Some Esperanto speakers like Esperanto for reasons other than its use as a universal second language. They like the Esperanto community and culture. Developing the Esperanto culture is a goal for that people.
People who care more about Esperanto's current value than about its potential for universal use are sometimes called "raŭmistoj" in Esperanto. The ideas of these people can together be called "", or "Raumism" in English. The names come from the name of the town of Rauma, in Finland. The International Youth Congress of Esperanto met there in 1980 and made a big statement. They said that making Esperanto a universal second language was not their main goal.
People who have goals for Esperanto that are more similar to Zamenhof's are sometimes called ' in Esperanto. The name comes from ', an Esperanto phrase which means "final victory". It refers to a theoretical future in which nearly everyone on Earth speaks Esperanto as a second language.
The Prague Manifesto (1996) states the ideas of the ordinary people of the Esperanto movement and of its main organization, the World Esperanto Association (UEA).
German town Herzberg am Harz uses nickname "die Esperanto-Stadt/la Esperanto-urbo" ("the Esperanto town") since July 12, 2006. They also teach the language in elementary schools and do some other cultural and educational events using the Esperanto language together with the Polish twin town Góra.
Esperanto is the only constructed language that the Roman Catholic Church recognises as a liturgical language. They allow Masses in the language and Vatican Radio broadcasts in Esperanto every week.
Many people use Esperanto to communicate by mail, email, blogs or chat rooms with Esperantists in other countries. Some travel to other countries to meet and talk in Esperanto with other Esperantists.
There are annual meetings of Esperantists. The largest is the ' ("World Congress of Esperanto"), which is held in a different country each year. In recent years around 2,000 people have attended it, from 60 or more countries. For young people there is ' ("International Youth Congress of Esperanto").
A lot of different cultural activities take place during Esperanto meetings: concerts of Esperanto musicians, dramas, discos, presentations of the culture of the host country and culture of the countries of the participants, lectures, language-courses, and so on. At the location of Esperanto meetings there is also a pub, a tearoom, a bookstore, etc. with Esperanto-speaking workers. The number of activities and possibilities depends on the size or on the theme of the meeting.
There are books and magazines written in Esperanto. Much literature has been translated into Esperanto from other languages, including famous works, like the Bible (first time in 1926) and plays by Shakespeare. Works that are less famous have also been translated into Esperanto, and some of these do not have English translations.
Important Esperanto writers are for example: Trevor Steele (Australia), István Nemere (Hungary) and Mao Zifu (China). William Auld was a British writer of poetry in Esperanto and honorary president of the Esperanto PEN Centre (Esperanto part of International PEN). Some people recommended him for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
There is music of different genres in Esperanto, including folk songs, rock music, cabaret, songs for solo singers, choirs and opera. Among active Esperanto musicians is for example Swedish socio-critical music group "La Perdita Generacio", Occitan singer "JoMo", the Finnish group "Dolchamar", Brazilian group "Supernova", Frisian group "Kajto" or Polish singer-songwriter Georgo Handzlik. Also some popular music writers and artists, including Elvis Costello and American singer Michael Jackson recorded songs in Esperanto, composed songs inspired by the language or used it in their promotional materials. Some songs from the album Esperanto from Warner Bros., which released - all in Esperanto - in Spain, in November 1996, reached a high position in the Spanish record charts; similarly, in 1999, in Germany, hip-hop music group "Freundeskreis" became famous with their single "Esperanto". Classical works for orchestra and choir with texts in Esperanto are "La Koro Sutro" by Lou Harrison and "The First Symphony" by David Gaines. In Toulouse, France, there is Vinilkosmo, which produces Esperanto music. The main internet Esperanto songbook KantarViki has got 3,000 songs in May 2013, both original and translated.
They play dramas from different writers such as Carlo Goldoni, Eugène Ionesco and William Shakespeare also in Esperanto. Filmmakers sometimes use Esperanto in the background of films, for example in "The Great Dictator" by Charlie Chaplin, in the action film "Blade: Trinity" or in comedy sci-fi television series "Red Dwarf". Feature films in Esperanto are not very common, but there are about 15 feature films, which have Esperanto themes.
The 1966 film "Incubus" is notable because its dialogues are in Esperanto only. Today some people translate subtitles of different films to Esperanto. The website "Verda Filmejo" collects these subtitles.
Radio stations in Brazil, China, Cuba and Vatican broadcast regular programmes in Esperanto. Some other radio programmes and podcasts are available on the Internet. Internet radio station "Muzaiko" broadcasts Esperanto programmes on the Internet 24 hours a day since July 2011. Between 2005 and 2006 there was also a project of international television "Internacia Televido" in Esperanto. Esperanto TV broadcasts on the Internet from Sydney, Australia, since April 5, 2014.
On the Internet there are many online discussions in Esperanto about different topics. There are many websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, television, and radio stations in Esperanto (see above). Google Translate supports translations from and into Esperanto since February 22, 2012 as its 64th language.
Apart from websites and blogs of esperantists and Esperanto organizations, there is also an Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) and other projects of Wikimedia Foundation which has also got their Esperanto language version or they use Esperanto (Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata). People can also use an Esperanto version of social networks, for example Facebook, Diaspora and other websites.
Several computer programmes also have an Esperanto version, such as web browser Firefox and office suite (set of programmes for use in an office) "LibreOffice".
Esperanto uses grammar and words from many natural languages, such as Latin, Russian, and French. Morphemes in Esperanto (the smallest parts of a word that can have a meaning) cannot be changed and people can combine them into many different words. The language has got common attributes with isolating languages (they use word order to change the meaning of a sentence) such as Chinese, while the inner structure of Esperanto words has got common attributes with agglutinative languages (they use affixes to change the meaning of a word), such as Turkish, Swahili and Japanese.
The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script. It has six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with circumflex), and ŭ (with breve). The alphabet does not have the letters "q, w, x," or "y".
The 28-letter alphabet is: