Those of you who know me personally will know that I am an Esperantist, a speaker of Esperanto . Esperanto is what is called a planned or artificial language, invented (if that is the right word) by a Polish Jew, called Ludwik Zamenhof, living in Bialystok in NW Poland in 1887. His vision was to create a language which would be easy to learn and would unite people by serving as a universal second language. Zamenhof authored the book outlining the 16 simple rules of grammar of what he called la Universala Lingvo (the Universal Language) under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (The Hoping Doctor). It was this pseudonym which became the name of the language. Esperanto looks and sounds like a sort of Slavicised Italian. Here is a sample sentence: "En la komenco estis la Vorto." ("In the beginning was the Word"). In my experience Esperanto functions as a language. I have been able to converse in Esperanto and indeed correspond in the langauge. When I was learning...