Esperanto hodiaŭ: Where the Language Actually Lives
By Michael McGettrickUpdated 12 October 2026
has no country, so it lives where its speakers meet: online, at a few hundred events a year, and in the spare rooms of hosts who will put a fellow speaker up for free. None of it will come and find you. All of it takes you the moment you turn up.
| Where | What it is | Word to know |
|---|---|---|
| , Discord | group chats, every day | |
| Vikipedio | the encyclopedia, 300,000+ articles | Vikipedio |
| free stays with speakers | | |
| congresses | a week, once a year | |
| weekend meetings | dozens a year, everywhere | |
Quick check
Now use it: three quick questions on the chart above. The full practice is further down.
Pick the right one
0/3What does each word mean?
la reto
retejo
babili
La reto: the words
means net, and the online vocabulary is built on it from pieces you already have:
| Word | Built from | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| root | net, the internet |
| -- | a website |
| | |
| -- | to browse |
| root | to chat |
Nobody approved in a committee: it is the place suffix on , and you could have built it yourself. Two verbs come from , to pour:
.- I want to download the album..- She uploaded her film.
In chat you will see elsxuti and alsxuti: the x-system, a way of typing the hatted letters on any keyboard. It is input, not spelling, as typing Esperanto explains. That is also why this page's address says hodiaux.
Where the speakers are online
Where the (chatting) happens:
| Place | Good for |
|---|---|
| busy groups by topic and country | |
| Discord | voice practice, younger crowd |
| r/, much of it in English | |
| large groups, older crowd | |
| .net | courses and forums for learners |
| u | an app showing speakers near you |
| independent news about the movement |
.- We chat onevery evening.
Vikipedio, the Esperanto Wikipedia, has passed 300,000 articles: more than many languages with a state and a school system behind them. A large share are short stubs about villages and species, and the editors are a few hundred people, not thousands. For a learner it is still the biggest body of free, plain prose in the language. Read the article on something you know well: you will guess most words, and the rest stick.
Vikipedio.- I read about my town on Vikipedio.
Music and listening
The label of record is Vinilkosmo, founded in 1990 by Floréal Martorell near Toulouse. Its catalogue runs from folk to rock: music and films has the acts worth starting with.
For speech, listening to Esperanto lays out a ladder from short daily news pieces to long podcasts. A podkasto is a podcast: a straight loan, which shows that Esperanto borrows like any living language.
podkaston .- I listen to an Esperanto podcast on the train.
The numbers
Nobody has counted Esperanto speakers: you cannot run a census on a language with no territory. Published estimates run from about 60,000 to two million, a spread wide enough to be an admission rather than a measurement.
A small group, usually put in the low thousands, grew up with the language at home:
.- She is a native speaker.
What the headcount misses is how connected the speakers are: the next Esperantist is usually a message away.
The associations
| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| UEA | world association, 1908, Rotterdam; runs the UK |
| TEJO | the youth organisation; runs the IJK |
| national bodies | e.g. - Britio, -USA |
| free stays with hosts, run by TEJO |
The UEA was founded in 1908 by Hector Hodler, Théophile Rousseau and others. It has consultative relations with UNESCO, has lost members for decades, and still does what nothing else does: it runs the and gives the language an address when institutions want one. TEJO is the youth wing; its (IJK) is where the young speakers are.
is the most concrete thing the language offers: a fellow speaker's spare room, free, on the understanding that you speak Esperanto while you are there.
Congresses and meetings
The has met most summers since 1905, with gaps during the two world wars and an online year in the pandemic. It moves every year: recent hosts include Montreal, Turin and Arusha in Tanzania. Below it come the IJK, over the New Year, national congresses and many weekend meetings.
| Word | Pieces | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| -- | a meeting, a meet-up |
| -- | to register |
kotizo | root | the fee |
| -i | to speak your own language |
o.- I registered for the meeting.
There is even kabei, to leave the movement abruptly, from , the pen name of Kazimierz Bein, a celebrated prose stylist who walked away in 1911. A language with a verb for quitting it has a sense of humour about itself. The congress article has the full week.
What Duolingo leaves out
The Duolingo course launched in 2015 and brought in a wave of beginners. A tap-the-tile course tends to leave four gaps:
| The gap | Where to close it |
|---|---|
-n beyond the object | the accusative: |
| correlatives | the correlative table |
| affixes in use | word building |
| output | write and speak: the groups above |
Tapping the right tile is not writing a sentence, and the gap between the two is where most people quietly stop.
What to do next
- Telegram
- Vikipedio
- renkontiĝo
- Pasporta Servo
- Universala Kongreso
- Join one
group and post one sentence today. - Read one Vikipedio article a day about something you know.
- Register for one online event or weekend
othis month.
Vortaro
| Esperanto | English |
|---|---|
| net, network, the internet |
| website |
| |
| to chat |
| to download |
| to upload |
podkasto | podcast |
o | a gathering, a meet-up |
| to register, to sign up |
kotizo | a membership or attendance fee |
| host |
o | native speaker |
| fellow (traditional) |
| to speak your own language at an event |
kabei | to leave the movement abruptly |