Speaking Up for Esperanto.

Over the years, Esperanto enthusiasts have grown thick skins. Ever since a Polish Jew invented the language in 1887 in the hopes of fostering a cross-cultural community, cynics have mocked it as an idealistic cult for linguistic weirdos. Yet for such an ambitious and unlikely idea--three quarters of the words are from Romance languages and the rest from Slavic, Greek and Germanic tongues--it has earned its share of notoriety. Saddam Hussein felt so threatened by it, he expelled Iraq's only Esperanto teacher during his tyrannical regime. And billionaire benefactor George Soros owes his prosperity to the idea: he defected from Communist Hungary at the 1946 World Esperanto Congress in Switzerland.

To hear a growing number of enthusiasts tell it, the language's most glorious day may actually lie ahead. Though numbers are hard to come by--and those available are hard to believe (the Universal Esperanto Society estimates 8 million speakers)--the language may be spreading in developing nations in Africa, Asia and South America. "Because of the Internet, we have seen a vast improvement in the levels of competent speakers in places like China and Brazil," says Humphrey Tonkin, a professor of English at the University of Hartford and the former president of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA). Meanwhile, a small community of diehards has been lobbying to make it the official language of the European Union. Indeed, Esperanto seems perfect for a modern age, when global barriers are being torn down by free trade, immigration and the Internet--and where activists, hobbyists and intellectuals across the globe are communicating as never before.

The renewed enthusiasm for the language was on display last week in Goteborg, Sweden, the site of the 88th annual World Esperanto Congress. Some 1,800 members of the UEA--from places as varied as Japan, Israel, Nepal and Brazil--conversed in what sounds like a mixture of overenunciated Italian and softly spoken Polish. Organizers say attendance outstripped last year's meeting by almost 20 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Esperanto home pages has jumped from 330 in 1998 to 788 in 2003.