First Esperanto Society Formed
On this day in 1905, the first Esperanto Society in the United States was established in Boston. Invented by a Polish doctor in the 1880s, Esperanto was an entirely new language created to promote international communication. With its simple grammar and phonetic spelling, Esperanto was easy to learn. It was soon adopted by large numbers of people in Central Europe, where many different languages were spoken in a relatively small geographic area. Boston in the early 1900s was full of intellectuals and scientists who found the idea of an international language appealing. Although it never gained widespread popularity in the U.S., it is spoken by more than two million people around the world.
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