One hundred and twenty-five years ago, L.L. Zaminhof created the world’s most successful invented language-Esperanto. According to Bruce Sherwood, a professor in physics and an Esperanto speaker, Zaminhof created the language in an attempt to solve problems that many students face in an increasingly globalized world.

Born 1859, Zaminhof grew up in BiaÅystok in the Russian empire, which is now part of Poland, and met people from many different ethnic groups and speakers of many different languages. Zaminhof also came into contact with different religions including Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Judaism. According to Sherwood, because of all the the linguistic and ethnic differences,  BiaÅystok was not always a very happy place.

“There was a lot of strife,” Sherwood said. “He understood very well that having a common language doesn’t prevent strife because civil wars between people who speak the same language can be incredibly bloody and awful and terrible. But, he reasoned, that if you had an easily learned common language, within which people could be fully expressive, that would at least make it easier to address the larger problems.”

During the late ‘ 70s , Sherwood experienced struggled to communicate with other researchers and wrote about it for Physics Today.

“Even people who have studied English for many years can be very hard to understand,” Sherwood said. “The sounds of English are actually quite difficult. English has a large number of vowels. These small distinctions are the reason why so many foreigners, when they speak English, speak it with quite a strong accent.”

In contrast, Esperanto has only five vowels and a few consonants, and most words end in vowels, which helps to distinguish one word from another in a spoken sentence, so accents are not as much of a hurdle to communication. According to Sherwood, while an accent is not fatal to casual communication, it can get in the way of understanding.

During the ‘ 70s , Sherwood said he spoke with a Russian astrophysicist who said that at many conferences, Americans won scientific debates not because of their arguments, but because the conferences were in English, and thus they were able to convey their ideas with more force, power and eloquence.

“There’s an inequality, and it’s very bad for the person whose native language is not English, but it’s not good for English speakers, either, because we’re not getting a full story from the other person,” Sherwood said. “English speakers are getting a story that’s filtered through an imperfect brand of English.”

Many Esperanto speakers found that speaking the invented language breaks down barriers. Althought Sherwood was a linguistics professor and gave several scientific lectures in Spanish and Italian, he said he is much more expressive in Esperanto than either of those languages.

Gary Grady, an Esperanto speaker and consultant at FTSE, said that this feeling isn’t uncommon. Grady said, however, that Esperanto’s expressiveness is not the only reason the language is useful.

“It is politically neutral,” Grady said. “You are not learning the American language, the British language or the French language in the sense of ‘being from France.’ You are learning a language that belongs to anyone who wants to learn it. Everyone is equal on that level.”

Sherwood said that in addition to its multicultural nature, this desire for equality has influenced what he refers to as the “culture” of Esperanto. It is, he said, a perspective that many Americans could benefit from sharing.

“More and more the expectation is that everyone will learn English, giving enormous privileges to the native speakers while putting enormous burdens on the non-native speakers,” Sherwood said. “Everyone loses from that, not only because non-native English speakers are getting their ideas filtered through an inadequate medium of English, but also because we have not gone through the important process of meeting people halfway-and heaven knows that Americans are arrogant enough as it is.”

According to Chuck Mays, an N.C. State alum and organizer of the Esperanto Research Triangle Yahoo group, although there are many different reasons why Esperantists first come to learn the language, they all stick with it because they find it fun and the community rewarding.

“If you ask 100 people why they’re Esperantist , you’d get 100 different answers,” Mays said. “Everyone enjoys it for different reasons. Maybe it’s travel, or they just got into it and now they met friends, or maybe they’re just interested in languages. One thing special about Esperanto is, because the community is very small, a couple million people, if you do anything you’re a big fish in a little pond.”

“It’s a community of people who have gone through the effort to say ‘I want to meet other people halfway,'” Sherwood said. “‘I don’t want to be a beggar with my poor French, and I don’t want to go overboard with my excellent English. I want to meet people halfway.'”