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This article is part of the Esperanto series
Language
Esperanto | Grammar | Letters | Phonology | Orthography | Vocabulary
History
History | Zamenhof | Proto-Esperanto | "Unua Libro" | Declaration of Boulogne | "Fundamento" | Prague Manifesto
Culture and media
Culture | Esperantists | Esperantujo | Film | Internacia Televido | La Espero | Libraries | Literature | Music | Native speakers | Pop culture references | Publications | Symbols | Zamenhof Day
Organization and services
Amikeca Reto | Esperanto Academy | Kurso de Esperanto | Encyclopedia | Pasporta Servo | Pen pal service | Plouézec Meetings | TEJO | UEA | World Congress | Youth Congress
National Associations
Britain | Britain Youth | USA
Criticism
Esperantido | Propedeutic value | Reformed | Riism | Vs. Ido | Vs. Interlingua
Related topics
Auxiliary language | Constructed language | Ido | Interlingua | Novial | Volapük | Signuno
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Portal | Vikipedio | Vikivortaro | Vikicitaro | Vikifonto | Vikilibroj | Vikikomunejo | Vikispecoj

This article attempts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto and Ido, two constructed languages that have a related past but have since parted ways. Ido was invented in the early 20th century after a schism between those who believed that Esperanto had inherent flaws that prevented it from being a suitable international auxiliary language, and those who believed that Esperanto was sufficient as it was, and that endless tinkering with a language would only weaken it in the end. For information on the languages themselves, see the links above. Image File history File links Flag_of_Esperanto. ... Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Esperanto is a constructed auxiliary language based on the languages of Europe. ... The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, did not specify phonemic-phonetic correspondences for his language. ... Esperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, upper and lower case. ... The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. ... The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. ... L. L. Zamenhof Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer, Ludwik Łazarz) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859–April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language. ... Proto-Esperanto (or pra-Esperanto in the language itself) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhofs language project, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro in 1887. ... The Unua Libro (First Book) was the first publication to describe the international language, Esperanto (then called Lingvo Internacia, inter-national language). It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887, and later editions were published in Russian, 1888, Hebrew, 1889. ... The Declaration of Boulogne (Bulonja Deklaracio) was a document written by L. L. Zamenhof and endorsed by the attendees of the first world congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France in 1905. ... The Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundation of Esperanto) is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. ... The Prague Manifesto (or Manifesto de Prago) is a set of seven widely-shared principles of the Esperanto movement. ... The language Esperanto is often used to access an international culture. ... Esperantujo, also Esperantio, is a term used by speakers of the planned international language Esperanto to refer to the sphere of activity taking place in that language. ... // Feature films There are two feature films known to have been shot exclusively in the constructed language Esperanto. ... Internacia Televido is an Internet-based Esperanto-language television station, launched on the 5th of November, 2005. ... La Espero (the hope) is a poem written by L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917), the initiator of the Esperanto language. ... The following Esperanto libraries and collections of works in the Esperanto language are worthy of note: The Montagu Butler Library of Esperanto materials, maintained by the British Esperanto Association, whose collection of 30,000 items is often quoted. ... Since Esperanto is the largest planned language, there are over 25,000 books in Esperanto and the largest Esperanto book service at the World Esperanto Association sells over 4,000 books. ... Music in a variety of styles is written, recorded, and performed in Esperanto, a planned language used for international communication. ... Native Esperanto speakers (in Esperanto denaskuloj) come to be in families in which Esperanto (and usually other languages) is spoken. ... The constructed language Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. ... December 15 (Zamenhof Day, Zamenhofa Festo) is the birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto. ... Amikeca Reto (Friendship Network) is a directory of people around the world who do not necessarily want to host other Esperanto speakers, but want to work together and exchange ideas with others around the world. ... The Akademio de Esperanto is, according to its website, an independent language institute whose task is to conserve and protect the fundamental principles of the language Esperanto and control its evolution. ... Kurso de Esperanto is a free language course software with 12 units for the constructed language Esperanto. ... The Encyclopedia of Esperanto is an encyclopedia about the Esperanto Movement. ... The Pasporta Servo (Passport Service) is a publication in Esperanto. ... The Esperanto Pen Pal Service is an online service to help speakers of the Esperanto language find Esperanto speaking pen pals around the world. ... The Breton village of Plouézec has hosted an International Meeting annually since 1997. ... TEJO is the Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo, or World Esperanto Youth Organization. ... The World Esperanto Association (in Esperanto UEA: Universala Esperanto-Asocio) is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with members in 119 countries (as of 2000) and in official relations with the United Nations and UNESCO. In addition to individual members, 95 national Esperanto organizations are affiliated to UEA. Its... The World Congress of Esperanto (in Esperanto: Universala Kongreso de Esperanto) has the longest tradition among international Esperanto conventions, with an almost unbroken run of nearly a hundred years. ... The International Youth Congress of Esperanto or Internacia Junulara Kongreso is the biggest annual meeting of young esperantists in the world and participants usually number around 300 but have been know to have more than 1000 esperanto-speakers from all over the world coming for the entire week. ... The Youth Esperanto Association of Britain Junulara Esperanto-asocio de Britio (JEB) is new organisation for young esperantists in Great Britain which recently has been created due to that lack of an active youth Esperanto-movement for some time. ... Esperanto was conceived as a language of international communication, more precisely as a universal second language. ... Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Reformed Esperanto was a reformed version of Esperanto created in 1894. ... Riism (Riismo in Esperanto) is a modification of Esperanto to simplify it, to make it symmetric, and to incorporate non-sexist language and gender-neutral pronouns into it. ... This article attempts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto and Interlingua, two planned languages which have taken radically different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language. ... An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) is a language used (or to be used in the future) for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. ... An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose phonology, grammar and vocabulary are specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture the way natural languages do. ... Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... The constructed language Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). ... Novial [nov-, new + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed language devised by Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had previously been involved in the Ido movement. ... Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879-1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. ... Signuno alphabet & numerals Signuno is signed Esperanto, derived from Gestuno roots and Esperanto morphology by an anonymous author. ... Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... An artificial or constructed language (known colloquially as a conlang among aficionados), is a language whose vocabulary and grammar were specifically devised by an individual or small group, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture as with natural languages. ... An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) is a language used (or to be used in the future) for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. ...

The languages remain close, and to some extent mutually intelligible. An Italian play which was written with the dialog in two dialects of Italian was translated with Esperanto and Ido representing these two dialects. In the same manner in which dialects often serve as sources for new words through the literature of ethnic languages, so Ido has contributed many neologisms to Esperanto (especially in poetic substitutes for long words using the mal- prefix).

Linguistic comparison

Esperanto is based on the Fundamento de Esperanto by L. L. Zamenhof, whereas the grammar of Ido is explained in the Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido. The Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundation of Esperanto) is a book by L. L. Zamenhof, published in the spring of 1905. ... L. L. Zamenhof Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer, Ludwik Łazarz) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859–April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language. ...

Morphology

Morphology is where one of the largest differences between the two languages can be seen. Both languages have the same grammatical rules concerning nouns (ending with -o), adjectives (ending with -a) and many other aspects. However, the relationship between nouns, verbs and adjectives underwent a number of changes with Ido, based on the principle of reversibility. In both languages one can see a direct relationship between the words multa "many" and multo "a multitude" by simply replacing the adjectival -a with a nominal -o, or the other way around. Morphology is a subdiscipline of linguistics that studies word structure. ...

Some minor differences include the loss of adjectival agreement, and the change of the plural from an agglutinative -j tacked onto the end to a synthetic replacement of the terminal -o with an -i. Hence, Esperanto belaj hundoj ("beautiful dogs") becomes Ido bela hundi. Ido also does away with the direct object ending -n, so Esperanto mi amas la belajn hundojn ("I love the beautiful dogs") would in Ido become me amas la bela hundi. An adjective is a part of speech which modifies a noun, usually describing it or making its meaning more specific. ... An agglutinative language is a language in which the words are formed by joining morphemes together. ... A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-to-word ratio. ...

Greater differences arise, however, with the derivations of many words. For example, in Esperanto, the noun krono means "a crown", and by replacing the nominal o with a verbal i one derives the verb kroni "to crown". However, if one were to begin with the verb kroni, "to crown", and replace the verbal i with a nominal o to create a noun, the resulting meaning would not be "a coronation", but rather the original "crown". This is because the root kron- is inherently a noun: With the nominal ending -o the word simply means the thing itself, whereas with the verbal -i it means an action performed with the thing. To get the name for the performance of the action, it is necessary to use the suffix -ado, which retains the verbal idea. Thus it is necessary to know which part of speech each Esperanto root belongs to.

Ido introduced a number of suffixes in an attempt to clarify the morphology of a given word, so that the part of speech of the root would not need to be memorized. In the case of the word krono "a crown", the suffix -izar "to cover with" is added to create the verb kronizar "to crown". From this verb it is possible to remove the verbal -ar and replace it with a nominal -o, creating the word kronizo "a coronation". By not allowing a noun to be used directly as a verb, as in Esperanto, Ido verbal roots can be recognized without the need to memorize them.

However, this solution is only partial, and with other derivations it is still necessary to know the parts of speech of Ido roots. The main difference is that Ido corresponds more overtly to the expectations of the Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is more heavily influenced by Slavic semantics. This aspect of Esperanto had been simply assumed by its inventor, and had not been made explicit when Ido was created.

Vocabulary

Although both Esperanto and Ido share a large amount of the same vocabulary, there are many important differences. Ido uses the twenty-six letter Latin alphabet in its entirety without any special characters or diacritics. Conversely, Esperanto eliminates the "unnecessary" letters "q", "w", "x", and "y"; and adds "ĉ", "ĝ", "ĥ, "ĵ", "ŝ" and "ŭ". Aside from these minor spelling differences, Ido aims to correct what were perceived as deficiencies in Esperanto. The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... Q is the seventeenth letter of the Latin alphabet. ... W is the twenty-third letter of the modern Latin alphabet. ... X is the twenty-fourth letter of the Latin alphabet. ... Y is the twenty-fifth letter of the Latin alphabet. ... Ĉ or ĉ (C circumflex) is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing a voiceless postalveolar affricate (either palato-alveolar or retroflex), and is equivalent to or in the IPA. Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets. ... Äœ or ĝ is a consonant in the Esperanto alphabet. ... Ä¥ in different fonts (Code2000, Sylfaen, Pragmatica Esperanto Ĥ, or Ä¥, is a consonant in the Esperanto alphabet. ... Ä´ or ĵ is a consonant in the Esperanto alphabet. ... Åœ or ŝ is a consonant in the Esperanto alphabet. ... Ŭ or Å­ is a letter in the Belarusian language, when written in the Łacinka alphabet (based on the Latin alphabet), and is also a letter in the Esperanto alphabet. ...

Internationality

The creators of Ido felt that much of Esperanto was either not internationally recognizable, or unnecessarily deformed. Ido aims to fix these with more "international" or "corrected" roots. This can sometimes be at the expense of Esperanto's simplified word building process. Below are some examples in first Esperanto then Ido with English, French, Spanish and Italian for linguistic comparison: The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Affixes

Ido claims the prefix mal- (creating a word with the exact opposite meaning) in Esperanto to be overused as a prefix, and also that it can be inappropriate since it has negative meanings in many languages, and proposes des- as an alternative in some cases. Ido also uses a series of opposite words in lieu of a prefix. For example, instead of malbona ("bad", the opposite of bona, "good"), Ido uses mala, or instead of mallonga ("short", the opposite of longa, "long"), kurta. Listening comprehension was also given as a reason: the primary Ido grammar book states that one reason for the adoption of the Latin-based sinistra for "left" instead of maldextra (mal- plus the word dextra, or dekstra for "right") is that often only the last one or two syllables can be heard when shouting commands. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

Ido does not assume male gender in a word. For example, frato means "brother" in Esperanto, but "sibling" in Ido. Ido uses the suffixes -ino ("female", used as in Esperanto) and -ulo ("male", not to be confused with the same Esperanto suffix which means "person"). Thus "sister" would be fratino (the same as Esperanto), but brother, fratulo . Some groups use three separate words: patro ("father"), matro ("mother") and genitoro ("parent"). Compare this with Esperanto patro, patrino and gepatroj respectively. The last is especially difficult in Esperanto, since the prefix ge- means "both genders together" and is inherently plural, thus rendering "parents" instead of "parent". One might say unu el la gepatroj, "one (out) of the parents". In linguistics, noun classes, also called grammatical gender is a type of inflection. ...

Correlatives

Ido does not use the regularized table of correlatives as Esperanto, but uses Latin-derived roots, so Esperanto, kio equals Ido quo, "what"; Esperanto tie, equals Ido ibe, "there", etc. A pro-form is a function word that substitutes a word, phrase, clause, or sentence whose meaning is recoverable from the context, and it is used to avoid redundant expressions. ...

Proper nouns

Esperanto may or may not "Esperantize" names and proper nouns, depending on many factors. Most standard European names have equivalents, as do many major cities and all nations. Ido, on the other hand, treats most proper nouns as foreign words, and does not render them into Ido.

Personal names

As stated above, most European given names have Esperanto equivalents: "John" is Johano, "Alexander" is Aleksandro, etc. Because some cultures place the surname first before the given name and others last after it, it is usual in Esperanto circles to find the surname in all capital letters. "John Smith" may be rendered "John SMITH" or "Johano SMITH" in the first mention. Most non-Western names do not have equivalents and are rendered as close as possible in Esperanto orthography. A given name specifies and differentiates between members of a group of individuals, especially a family, all of whose members usually share the same family name. ... A family name, or surname, is that part of a persons name that indicates to what family he or she belongs. ... Majuscules or capital letters (in the Roman alphabet: A, B, C, ...) are one type of case in a writing system. ...

Ido, on the other hand, simply leaves the names as is; "John Smith" would be "John Smith" in Ido. Names from languages with non-Latin scripts are rendered as phonetically as possible. Ido does not capitalize surnames.

Place names

Most countries have their own names in Esperanto. The system of derivation, though is sometimes complex. In Old World nations, where the country is named after an ethnic group, the main root means a person of that group: anglo is an Englishman, franco is a Frenchman. Originally, names of nations were created by the addition of the suffix -ujo (container), hence England and France would be rendered Anglujo and Francujo respectively (literally, "a container full of Englishmen/Frenchmen"). More recently, Esperanto has adopted -io as the national suffix, thus creating names more inline with standard international practice (and less odd-looking): Anglio, Francio. The Old World consists of those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia, and Africa (collectively known as Africa-Eurasia), plus surrounding islands. ...

In the New World, where citizens are named for their nation, the name of the nation is the main word, and its inhabitants are derived from that: Kanado ("Canada"), kanadano ("Canadian"). Carte dAmérique, Guillaume Delisle, c. ...

Names of cities may or may not have an Esperanto equivalent: Londono for London, Nov-Jorko for New York. Place names which are difficult to render in Esperanto, or which would be mangled beyond recognition usually remain in their native form: Cannes is usually rendered as "Cannes".

In Ido, country names must conform to the language's orthography but otherwise are left unchanged: Europa, Peru, Amerika. City names are treated as foreign word (London), except at times when part of the name itself is a regular noun or adjective: Nov-York (Nov for nova, or "new", but the place name York is not changed as in "Nov-Jorko" in Esperanto). This is not a hard and fast rule, however, and New York is also acceptable, similar to writing Köln for the city of Cologne in Germany. South Carolina becomes Sud-Karolina, much in the same way that a river called the "Schwarz River" is not transcribed as the "Black River" in English even though schwarz is the German word for black. However, less well-known place names are generally left alone, so a small town by the name of "Battle River" for example would be written the same way, and not transcribed as "Batalio-rivero". This is because transcribing a little-known place name would make it nearly impossible to find in the original language.

Number of speakers

The most reliable estimate for the number of Esperanto speakers is around 1.6 million, though estimates vary widely. In the same manner estimates for the number of Ido speakers are far from accurate, but 500 to a few thousand is most likely. It is also important to note the distinction between the number of speakers compared to the number of supporters; the two languages resemble each other enough that a few weeks of study will enable one to understand the other with little difficulty, and there are a number of people that have learned Ido out of curiosity but prefer to support the larger Esperanto movement. The number of participants at the respective international conferences is also much different: Esperanto averages 2000 to 3000 participants every year whereas Ido has had a mere 15 on average for the past decade.

History

This section attempts to chronicle the history of the Esperanto and Ido movements in relationship to one another. For individual histories of the languages, please see: History of Esperanto and History of Ido.

The history of Esperanto and its relationship to Ido is one filled with perceived rivalry and betrayal as well as a good amount of misunderstanding. Many Esperantists have felt betrayed by the Ido movement, and many Idists feel their language doesn't get the respect it deserves. The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. ... Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ...

In 1900 Louis Couturat, after initial correspondences with Esperanto-founder L. L. Zamenhof created the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language. In 1907 in Vienna, the Delagation met to chose an international auxiliary language to give its approval from among the many candidates which had crept up. Most Esperantists assumed Esperanto would be an easy win. However, when Couturat presented his own pet project, a series of reforms to Esperanto which would eventually become Ido, and demanded an answer within a month, many in the Esperanto movement felt betrayed. Some Esperantists even accuse Courutat and his colleague Marquis Louis de Beaufront of a conspiracy saying the Internation Deligation was simply a front to put forth Ido. 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ... Louis Couturat (January 17, 1868 - August 3, 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. ... L. L. Zamenhof Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer, Ludwik Łazarz) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859–April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist, philologist, and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language. ... The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was a group of linguists who presented proposals for a revision of the Esperanto language in 1907. ... 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Vienna (German: Wien [viːn]; Slovenian: Dunaj, Croatian and Serbian: Beč Romanian: Viena, Hungarian: Bécs, Czech: Vídeň, Slovak: Viedeň, Romany Vidnya;) Vienna is the capital of Austria, and also one of the nine States of Austria. ... An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) is a language used (or to be used in the future) for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. ... Louis de Beaufront An advocate of Esperanto and was almost solely responsible for its early diffusion in western Europe. ...

Idists tend to see things differently. They note that many of the changes Ido made to Esperanto were those originally proposed by Zamenhof's Reformed Esperanto, which were ultimately rejected by the majority of the language's speakers. Idists perceived that Esperanto was flawed in many ways, and that rather than a conspiracy against the language, the proposals put forward by Courutat were simply improvements which were sorely needed. Reformed Esperanto was a reformed version of Esperanto created in 1894. ...

Language samples for comparison

Here is the Lord's Prayer in both languages: The Lords Prayer (sometimes known by its first two Latin words as the Pater Noster, in Greek as the , or the English equivalent Our Father) is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. ...

See also

• Esperanto and Interlingua compared

This article attempts to highlight the main differences between Esperanto and Interlingua, two planned languages which have taken radically different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language. ...

References

• Why Ido?

External links

• Which IAL? A comparison of the two languages by a supporter of both
• Fundamento de Esperanto (html)
• Kompleta Gramatiko di la Linguo Internaciona Ido (187-page pdf)

	Ido
Language:	Grammar | Phonology | Union | Ido vs Esperanto Seal of Ido language. ... Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... The official page for Uniono por la Linguo Internaciona Ido (Union for the International Language Ido) seem to be: http://www. ...
History:	Beaufront | Couturat | Jespersen | Esperanto and Ido Ido (pronounced //), a constructed language, was created to become a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds, easier to learn than any ethnic language. ... Louis de Beaufront An advocate of Esperanto and was almost solely responsible for its early diffusion in western Europe. ... Louis Couturat (January 17, 1868 - August 3, 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. ... Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen (July 16, 1860-April 30, 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. ... Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Related:	Esperanto | Esperantido Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. ...
Wikimedia:	Wikipedio | Wikivortaro