title: Zootopia

text: Wracked with guilt, Judy quits her job and returns to Bunnyburrow. There, she learns that "Night Howlers" are actually the crocus bulbs Weaselton stole; they contain a neurotoxin that has severe, lasting psychotropic effects on mammals that causes them to return to a feral state. Judy returns to Zootopia and reconciles with Nick. With the help of Mr. Big, Judy and Nick interrogate Weaselton, who admits he was hired by a ram named Doug. They find Doug in a laboratory hidden in the city subway, where he manufactures a Night Howler serum to be shot at predators via a dart pistol. Judy and Nick obtain a serum gun as evidence, but before they can reach the ZPD, Bellwether confronts them in the Natural History Museum, revealing herself as the mastermind behind a prey-supremacist conspiracy. The duo become trapped in an exhibit and Bellwether shoots Nick with the pistol in an attempt to infect him as she summons the ZPD, but Nick had disabled the pistol by replacing its ammunition with blueberries. Judy reveals she recorded Bellwether's confession with the carrot pen, after which the ZPD arrives.


title: Zootopia

text: Bellwether and her accomplices are arrested, while Lionheart, still in prison, publicly denies knowledge of her plot and insists that imprisoning the infected predators was a "wrong thing for the right reason". With the cause of the epidemic identified, the predators are cured, Judy rejoins the ZPD and Nick becomes her partner and the first fox police officer.


title: Zootopia

text: Development of the film that would come to be called "Zootopia" began when Byron Howard pitched six story ideas to Disney Animation chief creative officer and executive producer John Lasseter, of which three involved animal characters: an all-animal adaptation of "The Three Musketeers", a 1960s-themed story about a "mad doctor cat...who turned children into animals", and a "bounty hunter pug in space". The common thread running through these ideas was that Howard wanted to do a film similar to Disney's "Robin Hood", which also featured animals in anthropomorphic roles. According to Howard, "Zootopia" emerged from his desire to create something different from other animal anthropomorphic films, where animals either live in the natural world or in the human world. His concept, in which animals live in a modern world designed by animals for animals, was well received by Lasseter, who responded by embracing and lifting Howard "in the air like a baby Simba". Lasseter suggested that Howard should try combining the 1960s theme with the animal characters, especially the space pug. This led Howard to develop and pitch "Savage Seas", an international spy film centered on an arctic hare named "Jack Savage" who was somewhat like James Bond. It was around this time that screenwriter Jared Bush was hired to work on the film; he was excited to work on a spy film because his own father and grandfather had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.


title: Zootopia

text: Howard and Bush continued to develop the film with the assistance of the Disney Story Trust, the studio's top creative personnel who meet regularly to review and discuss all projects in development. The most delightful part of the spy film turned out to be its first act, set in a city created by and for animals. To focus on the all-animal city, Howard eventually dropped the 1960s setting, along with the espionage and international aspects, and changed the film into a contemporary police procedural in which Nick Wilde was the lead role and Judy Hopps was essentially his sidekick. For a while, "the filmmakers were very committed" to that version of the story, but then in November 2014, the filmmakers realized the film's plot would be more engaging if they reversed the roles to instead focus on Hopps as opposed to Wilde. The change in perspective involved dropping several characters, including two characters known as "The Gerbil Jerks" who were described as "trust-fund gerbils that had nothing better to do than harass Nick."


title: Zootopia

text: In May 2013, "The Hollywood Reporter" initially reported that Howard was directing the film and that Jason Bateman had been cast, but little else about the film was known at the time. "Zootopia" was first officially announced on August 10, 2013, at the D23 Expo, with a March 2016 release date.


title: Zootopia

text: Research for the film took place in Disney's Animal Kingdom, as well as in Kenya and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, where animators spent eight months studying various animals' walk cycles as well as fur color. Eight hundred thousand forms of mammals were created for and featured in the film. To make the characters' fur even more realistic, they also went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to closely observe the appearance of fur with a microscope under a variety of lighting. The filmmakers drew inspiration for "Zootopia"s urban design from major cities including New York City, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Paris, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Brasília. To develop a city that could actually be inhabited by talking mammals ranging in size from to and from drastically different climates, the filmmakers consulted Americans with Disabilities Act specialists and HVAC system designers. For assistance with designing motor vehicles appropriate for so many different types and sizes of mammals, the filmmakers consulted with J Mays, former chief creative officer of the Ford Motor Company. During the development process, Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan F. Horn suggested that Nick should expressly state his disappointment ("Just when I thought someone actually believed in me...") after discovering that Judy still fears him as a predator. In March 2015, it was revealed that Rich Moore ("Wreck-It Ralph") had been added as a director of the film, in addition to Jared Bush ("") as co-director.


title: Zootopia

text: Disney's most recent work on animating fur was for the titular character of the 2008 film "Bolt", but the software they had used at the time was not ready for creating the realistic fur of the animals of "Zootopia". Therefore, the studio's IT engineers developed the fur-controlling software "iGroom", which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping and shading of fur and made it possible to create a variety of eccentric character styles for each animal. The software was also able to control an unseen "imaginary" under-layer that gave fur a degree of plushness not seen before. This feature was used to create characters like Officer Clawhauser, who has a big head that is entirely made of spotted fur. Characters with noteworthy numbers of strands of hair or fur included both of the two lead characters, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, who each had around 2.5 million hairs; a giraffe with nine million strands of fur; a gerbil with 480,000 strands; and a rodent with more strands of hair than the 400,000 that were on Elsa's head in "Frozen".


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" was the second time Disney used the Hyperion renderer, which they had first used on "Big Hero 6". A new fur paradigm was added to the renderer to facilitate the creation of realistic images of the animals' dense fur. Nitro, a real-time display application developed since the making of "Wreck-It Ralph", was used to make the fur more consistent, intact and subtle much more quickly, as opposed to the previous practice of having to predict how the fur would work while making and looking at silhouettes or poses for the character. The tree-and-plant generator Bonsai, first used in "Frozen", was used to make numerous variations of trees with very detailed foliage.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" was produced in makeshift quarters in a giant warehouse in North Hollywood (together with "Moana") while Disney Animation's headquarters in Burbank was being renovated.


title: Zootopia

text: On May 6, 2015, Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin were announced as having been cast, respectively, in the roles of Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps. The filmmakers chose Bateman because they wanted an actor who could bring "a funny yet heartfelt side" with "a wily, dry-witted sort of voice". Bateman described his character as "a crafty, sarcastic schemer", remarking on the role's similarity to many other roles he had done since he was 12. He explained that he had said to the directors: "'What kind of voice do you guys want me to do?' And they just looked at me like I was an idiot and said, 'Just do what you do. Just talk.'"


title: Zootopia

text: Commenting on the casting of Goodwin, Moore said that she brought "very centered sweetness, tremendous heart and a great sense of humor"; he described Judy as "a little Pollyanna mixed with Furiosa". Goodwin stated about her character: "People mistake kindness for naivete or stupidity, and she is a good girl through and through. But she's not a dumb bunny."


title: Zootopia

text: The film's score is composed by Michael Giacchino, in his first feature-length project for Walt Disney Animation Studios, as he previously worked on several short films and television specials produced by the company, as well as multiple Pixar films. Recording took place from November 16–20, 2015, with an 80-piece orchestra conducted by Tim Simonec. In addition to her voice role of Gazelle, pop star Shakira also contributed an original song to the film titled "Try Everything", which was written by Sia and Stargate. The soundtrack was released on March 4, 2016, by Walt Disney Records.


title: Zootopia

text: The first teaser trailer was released online at Walt Disney Animation Studios' YouTube page on June 11, 2015. A second teaser trailer was released online again at Walt Disney Animation Studios' YouTube page on November 23, 2015, featuring a sequence of the film where the main characters encounter a Department of Mammal Vehicles (based on the DMV) run entirely by sloths. The official theatrical trailer for the film was released online at Walt Disney Animation Studios' YouTube page on New Year's Eve 2015. Figures of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde were released for "Disney Infinity 3.0" on March 1, 2016.


title: Zootopia

text: In addition, the studio devoted considerable marketing attention to the furry fandom demographic, believing that they would logically be most interested in this film project.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" was released on March 4, 2016 in Disney Digital 3-D, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D, making it the first Disney animated film shown in domestic IMAX theatres since "Treasure Planet" (2002). It was shown for the first time to the public as a feature film in an international competition for a young audience during the Brussels Animation Film Festival in Belgium on February 7, and was screened to the general media and audience on February 13.


title: Zootopia

text: In China, the state's SAPPRFT granted the film a rare two-week extension to play in theaters in addition to its limited 30-day run, which was to have ended on April 3.


title: Zootopia

text: The film was retitled for theatrical release across several international territories. In the United Kingdom and other European, Middle Eastern, and North African countries, the film was renamed Zootropolis, a reference to the concept of a "metropolis" rather than to that of a "utopia". This was due to Disney being unable to trademark the name "Zootopia" in these territories for various legal reasons, including Danish Givskud Zoo registering the name Zootopia in 2014. In Germany, the film was titled Zoomania due to a children's book by German author Kay Fischer titled "Zootopolis" released in 2010.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, and Digital HD platforms on June 7, 2016. It includes some bonus material such as "Scoretopia", an alternate opening, and the music video to Shakira's "Try Everything". The film debuted at the top of the home media sales chart for the week ending on June 12, 2016. Zootopia was released on 4K Blu-ray on November 5, 2019.


title: Zootopia

text: On June 22, 2020, amid the reopening of movie theaters due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, Disney announced that "Zootopia", along with 11 other Disney owned movies were to return to US theaters during a 4-week period. "Zootopia" returned to US theaters on June 26 and played through July 2, 2020, alongside "The Avengers", and "The Greatest Showman". The film grossed a total of $393,600 and was the top film in theaters during its US re-release.


title: Zootopia

text: Weeks later, on July 20, 2020, it was confirmed that the film would be returning to theaters in China, along with "Big Hero 6" and the Chinese debut of "Sonic the Hedgehog" on July 31, 2020.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" grossed $341.3 million in the U.S. and Canada and $682.5 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $1.024 billion, against a budget of $150 million. On March 18, 2016, the film reached the $500 million mark, becoming the third consecutive Walt Disney Animation Studios film to reach the milestone after "Frozen" (2013) and "Big Hero 6" (2014). On April 5, it became the first film of 2016 to gross over $800 million in ticket sales, and on April 24, became the first ever film of 2016 to cross $900 million. On June 5, the film crossed the $1 billion mark, becoming the second film of 2016 to do so (after the studio's own ""), the fourth animated film (after "Toy Story 3", "Frozen" and "Minions"), the eleventh Disney film, the third Disney animated film, and the twenty-sixth film overall to reach the milestone.


title: Zootopia

text: Worldwide, it was the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2016 (behind "Civil War", "Rogue One", and "Finding Dory"), the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2016, the second-highest-grossing Walt Disney Animation Studios film (second-highest overall) of all time in its original release (after "Frozen"), the second-highest-grossing original film (behind "Avatar"), and the fourth-highest-grossing animated film of all time. "Deadline Hollywood" calculated the net profit of the film to be $294.9 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues for the film, making it the fifth-most profitable release of 2016.


title: Zootopia

text: In the United States and Canada, pre-release tracking suggested the film would open to $60–70 million from 3,827 theaters in its opening weekend. It played in 3,100 3D theaters, 365 IMAX theaters, and 325 premium large format screens. It earned $1.7 million from Thursday previews, a record for a non-Pixar Disney animated film, for an animated film opening outside of summer, and seventh-biggest all time for an animated film. Buoyed by good word of mouth, it earned $19.5 million on its opening day, also a record for a non-Pixar Disney animated film (breaking "Frozen"s record), and the second-biggest for a March animated film (behind ""). In its opening weekend, it scored a better than expected $75.1 million, which was the biggest non-Pixar Disney animated opening (breaking "Big Hero 6"s record), the biggest opening weekend among Walt Disney Animation Studios films (breaking "Frozen"s record), the biggest March animated opening (breaking "The Lorax"s record), the seventh-biggest March opening, and the tenth-biggest animated opening of all time. Furthermore, its opening weekend is also the fourth-biggest for an original film, behind "The Secret Life of Pets", "Inside Out", and "Avatar". It also performed exceptionally well in IMAX, where the film brought in $5.2 million from 366 screens, the second-best animated IMAX opening behind only "Toy Story 3" ($8.4 million).


title: Zootopia

text: In its second weekend, it fell gradually by 31% to $51.3 million and recorded one of the best holds for an animated film, more or less on par with "Wreck-It Ralph"s second weekend drop of 32%, but a bigger drop than "The Lego Movie"s 27%. It continued to top the box office for the third weekend, earning $37.2 million, falling by 28% from its previous weekend while passing the $200 million mark. This made it the second-biggest third weekend for a film that did not open at over $100 million, behind "Avatar" ($68 million) and ahead of "Skyfall" ($35 million). The film was overtaken by the superhero film "" in its fourth weekend, despite only a marginal decline. It spent a total of 13 consecutive weeks in the top ten, more than any other film except for "Avatar" (14 weeks) and "Frozen" (16 weeks) over the last decade.


title: Zootopia

text: It ended its theatrical run on August 4, 2016, after playing in theaters for a total of 154 days. It became the second-highest-grossing Walt Disney Animation Studios film (behind "Frozen"), the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2016, and the tenth-highest-grossing animated film of all time. In June 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing most theaters worldwide and limiting what films played, "Zootopia" returned to 280 theaters (mostly drive-ins) and grossed $393,600.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia" received a scattered release as Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures took advantage of school holidays in various markets. The film opened in a limited number of international markets in the weekend ending February 14, earning $4.5 million in three markets. It expanded to 22 markets in its second weekend, into 36% of its total international markets, and added $31.2 million. It added another $33 million in its third weekend with no new markets. In its fourth weekend, it expanded to 45 countries and grossed $64.7 million, coming in second place at the international box office, behind the Chinese film "Ip Man 3". $3.3 million came from IMAX showings. It finally topped the box office in its fifth weekend after a strong second-weekend gross in China. It added $89.3 million from 45 countries, an increase of 25% from its previous weekend. It remained in first place for the second time in its sixth weekend, before "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" took the top spot. It passed the $500 million mark in its eighth weekend.


title: Zootopia

text: In its opening weekend—which varied between markets—the film grossed $3.1 million in Spain and an additional $1.7 million in Belgium and Denmark. In Belgium, it had the biggest ever animated opening for a Disney or Pixar film. It broke opening records for a non-Pixar Disney animated film in China ($23.6 million), France ($8.1 million), Russia ($7.8 million), Germany ($6.6 million), Hong Kong ($1.5 million), Poland ($1.2 million), and India. It opened in the United Kingdom and Ireland with $7.5 million, Mexico with $4.6 million, Australia with $3.2 million, Brazil with $2.6 million, and in Italy, on a non-holiday weekend with $3.1 million. The film had number-one openings in Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, and South Africa. In the UK and Ireland, with significant competition from "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and the animated family film "Kung Fu Panda 3", the film had a £5.31 million ($7.6 million) opening weekend from 579 theaters, including £1.74 million ($2.5 million) worth of previews, debuting in second place behind "Dawn of Justice" and falling just short of Walt Disney Animation Studios' best opening in the UK. It fell just 24% in its second weekend.


title: Zootopia

text: "Zootopia"s largest markets overseas are China ($235.6 million), followed by Japan ($70.1 million), Russia and the CIS ($39.2 million), Germany ($34.2 million), the UK ($34.2 million), France ($31.9 million), and South Korea ($31.6 million). In China, it is the highest-grossing Disney film in local currency (¥1.530 billion), surpassing "" (¥1.464 billion), as well as the seventh-highest-grossing film of all time. In Russia, it is the second-highest-grossing film of all time in local currency (₽2.3 billion), behind only "Avatar" (₽3.6 billion). It topped the Russian and German box office for three weekends, and the Chinese and Korean box office for two weekends.


title: Zootopia

text: In China, where it was locally known as "Crazy Animal City" (疯狂动物城), the film exceeded expectations and was considered Hollywood's biggest breakout success in China since 2015's "Jurassic World" made $229 million. It had an opening day of $3.4 million on its way to $23.6 million for its three-day opening weekend, debuting in second place and scoring the biggest non-sequel animated opening, as well as the second-biggest three-day opening and IMAX opening for an animated film, behind "Kung Fu Panda 3". In its ninth day of release (a Saturday), it recorded the biggest single-day gross ever for an animated film, with $25 million (compared to $10.6 million on its first Saturday), and passed the lifetime total of "Big Hero 6" to become the highest-grossing Disney animated film in China. In its second weekend, it grossed $60 million, an enormous increase of 139% from its previous weekend, and crossed the $100 million mark to become the third animated film in China to do so, after "Kung Fu Panda 3" and "". This also marked the single best weekend for an animated film. In mid-March, the combined total of "Kung Fu Panda 3" and "Zootopia" alone broke 2014's record of $286 million in box office grosses for American animated features in China. In its third weekend, it grossed $40 million for a total of $175 million, making it the highest-grossing animated film of all time in China. On March 27, its seventeenth day of release, it passed the $200 million mark, becoming the first animated film, the second Disney film, and the sixth Hollywood film overall to pass that milestone. It became the highest-grossing animated film of all time and the second-highest-grossing film of 2016, behind only "The Mermaid".


title: Zootopia

text: It opened in Japan on April 23 and earned $4 million in its opening weekend, debuting at second place in the box office, behind "", and had the third-biggest Walt Disney Animation Studios debut in that market, behind "Frozen" and "Big Hero 6". Deadline.com pointed out that the average opening number might have been due to the 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes, which could have affected moviegoers. In a rare achievement, it topped the box office in its third weekend after two weeks at No. 2. In the following two weekends, it continued to increase its ticket sales, and topped the box office there for four consecutive weekends. After four straight wins, it was finally overtaken by the R-rated superhero film "Deadpool". It was the No. 1 western/Hollywood film for eight consecutive weekends. "The Hollywood Reporter" cited that strong word of mouth, audiences watching both the English and Japanese versions, and 3D and 4DX screenings, as well as a popular Japanese version of the "Try Everything" song by Dream Ami, all helped boost "Zootopia"s performance. Its strong run in the market aided the film to propel past the $1 billion mark worldwide. It remained in top three for 11 consecutive weekends and has grossed a total of $70.1 million there.


title: Zootopia

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads: "The brilliantly well-rounded "Zootopia" offers a thoughtful, inclusive message that's as rich and timely as its sumptuously state-of-the-art animationall while remaining fast and funny enough to keep younger viewers entertained." It was the site's second-highest-rated film of 2016 behind "Moonlight". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 78 out of 100, based on 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Zootopia

text: Neil Genzlinger of "The New York Times" considered the movie "funny, smart, [and] thought-provoking". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" wrote that "Zootopia" "may be the most subversive movie of" 2016, giving the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and praising its timely message about the harm of prejudice in the face of the prevailing xenophobic political rhetoric at the time of the film's release, and the film's humor. Peter Debruge at "Variety" opined that "Zootopia" "plays directly to the studio's strength". IGN reviewer Eric Goldman gave the film a 9.0 out of 10 'Amazing' score, saying ""Zootopia" is a wonderful example of how Disney, at its best, can mix its past and present together in a very cool, compelling way. It takes the classic animation trope of animals walking, talking and acting like humans, but gives it a modern spin both in terms of its humor and animation style ... and also in its themes, which are meaningful and fascinatingly topical."


title: Zootopia

text: In the UK daily newspaper "The Daily Telegraph", Robbie Collin noted, "The lion doesn't just lie down with the lamb, they run for City Hall on a joint ticket. It's the diversity dream come true. Or is it? […] Think Busytown by way of Chinatown. It's almost certain to be the most existentially probing talking animal cartoon of the year." Collin added, "Like Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy in "48 Hrs.", albeit considerably cuter, Judy and Nick make a hilariously strained but effective double act – not least thanks to Goodwin and Bateman's tremendous vocal work, which trips along with the effortless swing and snap of great bebop."


title: Zootopia

text: Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com, despite generally liking the film (three out of four stars), had trouble with the film's central metaphor that conflicted with its message:


title: Zootopia

text: Also in "The Daily Telegraph", Rosa Prince singled out the film's lead character, Judy Hopps, as a welcome change for Disney animated feature film heroines, such as the Disney Princess franchise. She found that unlike those characters' focus on romance or family loyalty, Hopps' focus is on her dream career as a police officer and serving her city.


title: Zootopia

text: Some were critically divided of the message about universal prejudices of all sorts interpreted as an allegory of American racism. Nico Lang of "Consequence of Sound" felt that Disney delivered a kids' version of "Crash", yet others criticized the use of prey and predator species in the "allegory" while critics at "The Root" stated positively that the movie acknowledges culpability of systemic racism and white supremacy.


title: Zootopia

text: The film was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of 2016, and won the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Critics Choice Movie Award and Annie Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It also received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film, which it lost to "Kubo and the Two Strings".


title: Zootopia

text: On March 21, 2017, a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed against Disney by Esplanade Productions, a company owned by Gary L. Goldman, the co-screenwriter of "Total Recall". The lawsuit claims that Goldman (in 2000 and 2009) pitched a concept to Disney for a live-action film titled "Looney", which was about a socially awkward animator who creates a self-inspired TV cartoon called "Zootopia". Disney twice rejected the pitch, but Goldman accused the company of copying the name, themes, settings, and character tropes. Filed with the lawsuit was a graphic of early concept artwork of characters that are claimed to appear similar to major characters from the film, including Nick Wilde, Judy Hopps, Flash, and Chief Bogo. A Disney spokesperson described the lawsuit as being "ridden with patently false allegations". After months of back-and-forth deliberation between the two parties, U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald dismissed the infringement claims on November 8, 2017. As stated in the final review, "Goldman's effort to make the plots of "Looney" and "Zootopia" seem similar were strained. All the purported similarities between the two works were themes, not plot points or sequences of events, that were too general to be protected by copyright law." Esplanade appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which affirmed the dismissal on April 24, 2019.


title: Zootopia

text: A card game based on the film called "Zootopia: Suspect Search" was released, as well as a game for mobile phones titled "Zootopia Crime Files".


title: Zootopia

text: In May 2018, it was announced that a "Zootopia" graphic novel is set to be published by Dark Horse Comics. The graphic novel, titled "Disney Zootopia: Friends to the Rescue", was written by Jimmy Gownley, with art by Leandro Ricardo da Silva. It was released on September 25, 2018.


title: Zootopia

text: On January 22, 2019, Disney Parks announced a themed area based on "Zootopia" was to be coming to Shanghai Disneyland Park, with construction on the land beginning on December 9, 2019. Construction halted for a brief period during the COVID-19 pandemic, but by June 2020, construction had resumed.


title: Zootopia

text: On September 11, 2022 at the D23 Expo, Disney revealed that the film is being considered to be added to Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park at Walt Disney World in Florida, but nothing has been confirmed yet.


title: Zootopia

text: On December 10, 2020 during the Disney Investors Day livestream, Walt Disney Animation Studios announced that a television series entitled "Zootopia+" would premiere in 2022 on Disney+ as one of the studios' first television projects, as most TV shows based on Disney's animated films are produced by Disney Television Animation. It was announced to be an anthology series that would feature storylines that follow 3 sets of characters from the film (the mobster shrews, the tiger dancers, and the sloths). On November 12, 2021, Disney confirmed the series for a release in 2022, and also released a first-look teaser image which included characters from the film not previously confirmed to be in the series. The series would be directed by Trent Correy and Josie Trinidad. It was released on November 9, 2022 with six shorts.


title: Zootopia

text: Among the episodes include an action parody starring Bonnie and Stu Hopps, a musical starring Duke Weaselton, a "Real Housewives" spoof with Fru-Fru, a film noir parody with Mr. Big, a dance competition parody with Clawhauser, Bogo, and Gazelle, and a romantic comedy parody with Flash and Priscilla. Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde cameo in the action parody and make other appearances throughout. All the cast members from the movie reprised their roles. The music is composed by Curtis Strong and Mick Giacchino (Michael's son), with Michael scoring the "Duke: The Musical" episode with lyrics by Kate Anderson and Elyssa Samsel ("Olaf's Frozen Adventure", "Central Park").


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein ( ; styled as SHEIN; ) is a Chinese online fast fashion retailer. Shein, originally named ZZKKO, was founded in 2008 by Chris Xu in Nanjing, China. The company is known for its affordably priced apparel. In its early stages, Shein was considered more of a drop shipping business than a retailer. In its early days, the company was not involved in clothing design and manufacturing, and instead obtained its products from the wholesale clothing market in Guangzhou. It was not until 2014 that Shein began to acquire its own supply chain system, transforming itself into a fully integrated retailer. The company has established its supply chain in Guangzhou with a network of more than 3,000 suppliers. Based in China and shipping across 220 countries, Shein is the world's largest fashion retailer, . The company was valued at $100 billion after a funding round in April 2022.


title: Shein (company)

text: In recent years, the company has found itself in the middle of several controversies including trademark disputes, tax evasion, human rights violations, and health and safety concerns. According to "Bloomberg Businessweek" and others, Shein's business model has benefitted from the China–United States trade war.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein, originally named ZZKKO, was founded in China in 2008 by entrepreneur and search engine optimization marketing specialist Chris Xu. The website SheInside.com was registered in March 2011 and advertised itself as "a worldwide leading wedding dress company", although it sold general womenswear too. The company acquired its items from Guangzhou's wholesale clothing market, which is a central hub to many of China's garment manufacturers and markets. Shein had no involvement in the design or production of the garments. However, it functioned similarly to a drop shipping firm, which sells items directly to international customers through third-party wholesalers.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein made their products available in Spain, France, Russia, Italy, and Germany in the early 2010s; as well as selling cosmetics, shoes, purses, and jewelry, in addition to women's clothing. In 2012, the company established the current website and began using social media marketing by collaborating with fashion bloggers for giveaways and advertising items on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.


title: Shein (company)

text: In 2014, Shein acquired Romwe, a Chinese e-commerce retailer, making it a "fully integrated retailer." By 2016 the company had 100 employees, and had already established their headquarters in Guangzhou, China. Two years later, in order to become a fully integrated retailer, Shein began to develop its own supply chain system. Within the same year, it acquired Romwe, another Chinese e-commerce shop. The firm's name changed again in 2015 from "Sheinside" to "Shein," claiming that it needed a name that was simpler to remember and easy to find online. By 2016, Xu gathered a team of 800 designers and prototype makers that manufactured Shein-branded clothing. The company began improving its supply chain, excluding vendors that provided low-quality items or photos.


title: Shein (company)

text: By 2019, its merchandise were featured on daytime television shows in the United States with other internet businesses such as Fashion Nova and Zaful. Meanwhile, fashion influencers also displayed Shein products in haul videos alongside other well-known retailers. Despite being an online retail store, Shein also opened up pop-up shops for people who do not wish to purchase online. Moreover, the retailer's early usage of TikTok and ability to advertise viral items boosted Shein's popularity.


title: Shein (company)

text: In 2019, Singapore-registered Roadget Business Pte listed Chris Xu and others as representatives. By 2021, Chinese corporate filing shows that Shein de-registered its main business, Nanjing Top Plus Information Technology Co Ltd. Singapore filings reportedly shows Roadget as the legal entity operating Shein's global website and owns Shein's trademarks.


title: Shein (company)

text: By November 2021, Shein grew from a company valued at $15 billion to one valued at $30 billion. During the pandemic of 2020, it reportedly made $10 billion in revenue, making it the seventh straight year of more than 100% sales growth for the company. , Shein was the world's largest online-only fashion firm. , it is the largest fast fashion firm.


title: Shein (company)

text: In April 2022, Shein raised $1 billion to $2 billion in private funding and had claimed 28% of the US fast fashion market. Earlier that year, a survey of 7000 American teenagers ranked Shein as their second favorite ecommerce website.


title: Shein (company)

text: In a May 2022, article in "Fortune", the company was described as catering to Gen Z while using big data and rapid Chinese manufacturing to quickly design clothing at a lower price point. The company was valued at $100 billion. In 2022, Shein established a distribution center in Whitestown and plans to open more distribution facilities in southern California and northeast US. In November 2022, Shein opened a new corporate office and distribution centre in Markham, Ontario, which will function as Shein's main distribution hub in the Canada.


title: Shein (company)

text: In October 2022, an article on the Wall Street Journal announced that Shein will be generating US$24 billion revenue in 2022, making it almost as large as Zara and H&M.


title: Shein (company)

text: According to CNN, TikTok plays a large role in driving customers to the company website due to a TikTok trend of bulk buying clothes from Shein and presenting Shein clothes to their audience like a standard haul video. On May 17, 2021, the number of Shein's app downloads surpassed those of Amazon.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein claims to utilize the psychology of the new generation and implements marketing strategies accordingly to achieve growth. In 2020, Shein was the most talked about brand on TikTok and YouTube, and the 4th most talked about brand on Instagram. Its low prices attract teenage internet shoppers with small budgets to post what they bought on social media.


title: Shein (company)

text: For user growth, the company offers relatively low prices to stimulate demand. With more spending, customers can be rewarded with more discounts, which are encouraged to be applied to their next shopping trip. Shein not only makes use of its algorithm-driven recommendation system but also attracts customers to visit the platform frequently to do tasks, like adding items into their cart, watching live streams and joining its contest show, in order to win points which can be redeemed later.


title: Shein (company)

text: Originally, Shein did not design its clothes. The company mainly sourced their clothing from China's wholesale clothing market in Guangzhou. However, Shein became a fully integrated retailer in 2014 when it secured its own supply chain system. Now, the company utilizes a network of manufacturing partners and suppliers in order to make and deliver its products.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein makes predictions on trends and produces items as quickly as three days after the identification of a trend. Shein also limits its orders to small batches of about 100 items to gauge customer interest, while its other competitors, like Zara, order larger quantities (about 500), increasing their chances of losing profit if orders are not purchased in full. According to Bloomberg News, Shein's small-batch strategy is seen as key to its success. Suppliers working with Shein also saw their business growing as the scale increased.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein is able to avoid paying export and import taxes, contributing to larger margins. The U.S. legislative bill Section 321 in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (also referred to as "de minimis") states that any import up to $800 per person is duty-free. This bill has allowed Shein to deliver to the USA without paying taxes, allowing Shein to have a competitive advantage over domestic companies in the USA.


title: Shein (company)

text: In 2018, the company was sued by Levi Strauss & Co. for copying a trademarked jean stitching. The case was settled out of court.


title: Shein (company)

text: In 2021, AirWair International Limited, who are known for the Dr. Martens boots, in a lawsuit accused Shein and its sister company, Romwe, of selling copies of their designs (and calling them "Martins") at a cheaper price while using photos of authentic Dr. Marten shoes to "entice customers," to which Shein responded with a blanket denial of AirWair International's claims. In March 2021, Ralph Lauren filed a trademark infringement and unfair competition lawsuit against Zoetop Business Co. (the parent company of Shein). In the complaint, Ralph Lauren said that Zoetop Business Co. selling clothing with a "confusingly similar" mark was an exploitation of their "goodwill and reputation of genuine Ralph Lauren products."


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein has also been accused by dozens of artists and small fashion retailers of stealing designs. In 2018, Ilse Valfre, who owns the LA-based brand Valfré, was notified by her customers that Shein was selling "identical copies" to her products. Quinn Jones, who is the co-founder of Kikay (an earring brand in Los Angeles), said that he found earring designs on Shein that were very similar to Kikay's earrings. Shein removed the products and pledged to drop the supplier that produced the copied item. Elexiay also claims that Shein stole its design of a pink and green hand-crocheted sweater, which costs $330, but was sold by Shein for $17. Reclamare PH and Sincerely RIA, both of which are small fashion brands, have said on their social media handles that Shein has copied their designs. Shein has also been accused of copying designs of non-clothing such as enamel pins. In an effort to bring awareness to Shein's actions and to help support indie brands and artists, the hashtag "boycottShein" became popular on TikTok and Twitter in 2020. In 2021, Mariama Diallo, founder of and designer for Sincerely Ria, accused Shein of stealing her designs in a Tweet that included comparative images to demonstrate her point.


title: Shein (company)

text: In 2022, Mexico's Secretariat of Culture challenged the use of Shein's use of traditional Mayan designs, prompting Shein to remove them from its website.


title: Shein (company)

text: The company also experienced a data breach in 2018 that compromised the email addresses and encrypted passwords of 6.42 million users, leading security experts to denounce the retailer's "reactive cybersecurity strategies" and inability to adequately protect its customers' information. Later, it was established that the company lied about the number of compromised accounts and that it was actually 39 million users that had not only their passwords and usernames stolen but also the information about their credit cards. Shein's parent company, Zoetop, was fined $1.9m in 2022 for its inadequate response to the data breach and for trying to minimize the severity of the breach.


title: Shein (company)

text: In July 2020, a necklace with a swastika was reported and later removed from the site in response to widespread public criticism (the brand clarified that it was a Buddhist religious symbol, not a Nazi swastika). In May 2021, Shein received criticism for offering a phone case with an image of a handcuffed Black man outlined in chalk. Shein issued an apology for the offensive image, and also for using the image without the permission of the person who created the design.


title: Shein (company)

text: In June 2020, the Shein app was banned in India due to privacy concerns. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of India classified the Shein app along with 59 other Chinese apps under Section 69A in The Information Technology Act, 2000, saying "[u]pon receiving recent credible inputs that such apps pose threat to sovereignty and integrity of India, the Government of India has decided to disallow the usage [...] both [on] mobile and non-mobile Internet-enabled devices." Section 69A grants the central government the "power to issue directions for blocking public access of any information through any computer resource". However, it is still legal in India to purchase Shein products on other websites that are not covered under Section 69A.


title: Shein (company)

text: Shein was also cited in a "Marketplace" investigation overseen by professor Miriam Diamond at the University of Toronto for selling toddlers' jackets that contained almost 20 times the amount of lead permitted under Health Canada's safety regulations. The company also sold a red purse that exceeded permitted lead levels 5 times the amount. Shein notified Marketplace that they would stop selling the two items and would stop getting supplies with the corresponding suppliers until the problem was addressed.


title: Shein (company)

text: In August 2021, Shein claimed on its website that its factories were certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and SA8000. This was disputed and was considered to be a breach of the United Kingdom's 2015 Modern Slavery Act. According to Reuters, Shein was also in violation of a similar anti-slavery law in Australia. An investigation by Swiss advocacy group Public Eye found staff across six sites in Guangzhou were working 75-hour weeks, in breach of Chinese labor laws. Public Eye also discovered workshops with blocked corridors and stairways. According to Wall Street Journal, Shein has built an in-house team to provide monitoring of its supply-chain partners. Independent agencies such as Intertek Group will also be engaged to conduct audits.


title: Shein (company)

text: In November 2022, Bloomberg News reported that Shein's apparel was made with cotton sourced from Xinjiang.


title: Shein (company)

text: The United Kingdom requires foreign sellers shipping low-value consignments (under £135) to register for UK VAT, collect VAT from buyers on such shipments, and remit it to His Majesty's Revenue and Customs. It has been suggested that Shein failed to do so for at least 9 months after the requirement took effect, and its website does not display its UK corporate registration number or itemize VAT, as UK rules require.


title: Shein (company)

text: Deutsche Welle released in late 2021 a video detailing the ultra-fast-fashion system Shein is built on, criticizing the targeting of young adolescents less susceptible to make wise financial decisions, as well as the caused environmental impact. Other media outlets have pointed at the addictive nature of the app, noting how its low prices get people to buy things they do not actually need. Due to the affordability of Shein, most clothes are not high-quality and can lead people to disposing of them, exacerbating the textile waste problem.


title: Shein (company)

text: In response to criticism, Shein launched a resale service on its US app that enables the buying and selling of secondhand Shein fashion. There are mixed reactions towards the efficacy of this initiative. Shein pieces are highly affordable hence customers may choose to buy a new item rather than purchase a resale piece.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (). Zamenhof first described the language in "Dr. Esperanto's International Language" (), which he published under the pseudonym . Early adopters of the language liked the name "Esperanto" and soon used it to describe his language. The word translates into English as "one who hopes".


title: Esperanto

text: Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and "a""priori" (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages. Slavic languages also influenced the grammar and phonology. One of the language's most notable features is its extensive system of derivation, where prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate words, making it possible to communicate effectively with a smaller set of words.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate. Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" ().


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, but now part of Poland. In the 1870s, just a few years before Zamenhof created Esperanto, Polish was banned in public places in Białystok.


title: Esperanto

text: According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labor we spend in learning foreign tongues", and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood." His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:


title: Esperanto

text: Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language, to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a "community of speakers".


title: Esperanto

text: His original title for the language was simply "the international language" (), but early speakers grew fond of the name "Esperanto," and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation. The name quickly gained prominence, and has been used as an official name ever since.


title: Esperanto

text: In 1905, Zamenhof published the "Fundamento de Esperanto" as a definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of linguistic scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the founding of the Akademio de Esperanto (in part modeled after the Académie Française), which was established soon thereafter. Since then, world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (when it was moved to an online-only event). Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of more than 2,000 people, and up to 6,000 people at the most.


title: Esperanto

text: Zamenhof wrote that he wanted mankind to "learn and use ... en masse ... the proposed language as a living one". The goal for Esperanto to become a global auxiliary language was not Zamenhof's only goal; he also wanted to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication."


title: Esperanto

text: After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto, as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw on July 26, 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades; at first, primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years before the world congresses, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals.


title: Esperanto

text: Zamenhof's name for the language was simply ("International Language"). December 15, Zamenhof's birthday, is now regarded as Zamenhof Day or Esperanto Book Day.


title: Esperanto

text: The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between what is today Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multi-ethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language.


title: Esperanto

text: However, neither Belgium nor Germany had ever surrendered its original claim to it. Around 1900, Germany, in particular, was taking a more aggressive stance towards the territory and was accused of sabotage and of obstructing the administrative process to force the issue. It was the First World War, however, that was the catalyst that brought about the end of neutrality. On August 4, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, leaving Moresnet at first "an oasis in a desert of destruction". In 1915, the territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, without international recognition. Germany lost the war, Moresnet was returned to Belgium, and today it is the German-speaking Belgian municipality of Kelmis.


title: Esperanto

text: After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, a Japanese official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920, and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years. Hanotaux did not approve of how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French government retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in France's schools and universities. The French Ministry of Public Instruction said that "French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would be debased". Nonetheless, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. During this time, Anarchism as a political movement was very supportive of both anationalism and the Esperanto language.


title: Esperanto

text: Fran Novljan was one of the chief promoters of Esperanto in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He was among the founders of the Croatian (Educational Alliance), of which he was the first secretary, and organized Esperanto institutions in Zagreb. Novljan collaborated with Esperanto newspapers and magazines, and was the author of the Esperanto textbook "Internacia lingvo esperanto i Esperanto en tridek lecionoj".


title: Esperanto

text: In 1920s Korea, socialist thinkers pushed for the use of Esperanto through a series of columns in The Dong-a Ilbo as resistance to both Japanese occupation as well as a counter to the growing nationalist movement for Korean language standardization. This lasted until the Mukden Incident in 1931, when changing colonial policy led to an outright ban on Esperanto education in Korea.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many states. Repression was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956.


title: Esperanto

text: In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to ban Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, "Mein Kampf", Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination. Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out to be killed. The efforts of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching Italian, the language of one of Germany's Axis allies.


title: Esperanto

text: In Imperial Japan, the left wing of the Japanese Esperanto movement was forbidden, but its leaders were careful enough not to give the impression to the government that the Esperantists were socialist revolutionaries, which proved a successful strategy.


title: Esperanto

text: After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by the new workers' states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the Soviet Esperantist Union being established as an organization that, temporarily, was officially recognized. In his biography on Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto. However, in 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in the Gulag labour camps. Quite often the accusation was: "You are an active member of an international spy organization which hides itself under the name of 'Association of Soviet Esperantists' on the territory of the Soviet Union." Until the end of the Stalin era, it was dangerous to use Esperanto in the Soviet Union, even though it was never officially forbidden to speak Esperanto.


title: Esperanto

text: Fascist Italy allowed the use of Esperanto, finding its phonology similar to that of Italian and publishing some tourist material in the language.


title: Esperanto

text: During and after the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain suppressed anarchists, socialists and Catalan nationalists for many years, among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive, but in the 1950s the Esperanto movement was again tolerated.


title: Esperanto

text: In 1954, the United Nations — through UNESCO — granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in the Montevideo Resolution. However, Esperanto is still not one of the official languages of the UN.


title: Esperanto

text: The development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as Amikumu. With up to two million speakers, it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, "Esperantujo" ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken.


title: Esperanto

text: While many of its advocates continue to hope for the day that Esperanto becomes officially recognized as the international auxiliary language, some (including raŭmistoj) have stopped focusing on this goal and instead view the Esperanto community as a stateless diasporic linguistic group based on freedom of association.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country, but it entered the education systems of several countries, such as Hungary and China.


title: Esperanto

text: There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state; any such plans came to an end when the Treaty of Versailles awarded the disputed territory to Belgium, effective January 10, 1920. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island, near Italy in the Adriatic Sea, used Esperanto as its official language in 1968, and another micronation, the extant Republic of Molossia, near Dayton, Nevada, uses Esperanto as an official language alongside English.


title: Esperanto

text: The Chinese government has used Esperanto since 2001 for daily news on china.org.cn. China also uses Esperanto in China Radio International, and for the internet magazine "El Popola Ĉinio".


title: Esperanto

text: The United States Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto, to be used from the 1950s until the 1970s in war games by mock enemy forces. A field reference manual, FM 30-101-1 Feb. 1962, contained the grammar, English-Esperanto-English dictionary, and common phrases. In the 1970s Esperanto was used as the basis for Defense Language Aptitude Tests.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the , a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006. There is also Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the Universal Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO, which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954. The Universal Esperanto Association collaborated in 2017 with UNESCO to deliver an Esperanto translation of its magazine "UNESCO Courier" ("Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto").


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto was also the first language of teaching and administration of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.


title: Esperanto

text: The League of Nations made attempts to promote teaching Esperanto in member countries, but the resolutions were defeated mainly by French delegates, who did not feel there was a need for it.


title: Esperanto

text: In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible.


title: Esperanto

text: All the personal documents sold by the World Service Authority, including the World Passport, are written in Esperanto, together with English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese (the official languages of the United Nations).


title: Esperanto

text: On May 28, 2015, the language learning platform Duolingo launched a free Esperanto course for English speakers. On March 25, 2016, when the first Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English. By July 2018, the number of learners had risen to 1.36 million. On July 20, 2018, Duolingo changed from recording users cumulatively to reporting only the number of "active learners" (i.e., those who are studying at the time and have not yet completed the course), which as of October 2022 stands at 299,000 learners.


title: Esperanto

text: On October 26, 2016, a second Duolingo Esperanto course, for which the language of instruction is Spanish, appeared on the same platform and which as of April 2021 has a further 176,000 students. A third Esperanto course, taught in Brazilian Portuguese, began its beta-testing phase on May 14, 2018, and as of April 2021, 220,000 people are using this course and 155,000 people in May 2022. A fourth Esperanto course, taught in French, began its beta-testing phase in July 2020, and as of March 2021 has 72,500 students and 101,000 students in May 2022.


title: Esperanto

text: As of October 2018, , another online learning platform for Esperanto, has 320,000 registered users, and nearly 75,000 monthly visits. 50,000 users possess at least a basic understanding of Esperanto.


title: Esperanto

text: On February 22, 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language. On July 25, 2016, Yandex Translate added Esperanto as a language.


title: Esperanto

text: With about articles, Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) is the 35th-largest Wikipedia, as measured by the number of articles, and is the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language. About 150,000 users consult the Vikipedio regularly, as attested by Wikipedia's automatically aggregated log-in data, which showed that in October 2019 the website has 117,366 unique individual visitors per month, plus 33,572 who view the site on a mobile device instead.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto's phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. The sound inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, whereas the vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic languages, and minor contributions from Slavic languages and Greek. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early authors, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French. Some evidence has shown that Zamenhof studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian and French and knew 13 different languages, which had an influence on Esparanto's linguistic properties. Paul Wexler proposes that Esperanto is relexified Yiddish, which he claims is in turn a relexified Slavic language, though this model is not accepted by mainstream academics.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character". Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is "subject–verb–object" (SVO). Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive prefixing, suffixing, and compounding.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants (depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker), five vowels, and two semivowels that combine with the vowels to form six diphthongs. (The consonant and semivowel are both written "j", and the uncommon consonant is written with the digraph "dz", which is the only consonant that does not have its own letter.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-to-last vowel in proper Esperanto words, unless a final vowel is elided, which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, "" "family" is , with the stress on the second "i", but when the word is used without the final " ()," the stress remains on the second  : .


title: Esperanto

text: A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in ', "strange") and five in medial position (as in "", "former slave"). Final clusters are uncommon except in unassimilated names, poetic elision of final "," and a very few basic words such as ' "hundred" and "" "after".


title: Esperanto

text: Since there are only five vowels, a good deal of variation in pronunciation is tolerated. For instance, "e" commonly ranges from (French ) to (French ). These details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in ' "hero" ( or ) and ' "great-grandfather" ( or ).


title: Esperanto

text: The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script, using a one-sound-one-letter principle, with the exception of [d͡z]. It includes six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with a circumflex), and ŭ (with a breve). The alphabet does not include the letters "q, w, x," or "y", which are only used when writing unassimilated terms or proper names.


title: Esperanto

text: All "unaccented" letters are pronounced approximately as their respective IPA symbols, with the exception of "C" – //.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto "J" and "C" are used in a way familiar to speakers of German and many Slavic languages, but unfamiliar to most English speakers: "J" has a "Y" sound [j~i̯], as in yellow" and "boy," and "C" has a ""TS"" sound [t͡s], as in "hits or the "zz" in "pizza". In addition, Esperanto "G" is always hard, as in "give", and Esperanto vowels are pronounced as in Spanish.


title: Esperanto

text: Even with the widespread adoption of Unicode, the letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the Unicode Standard) can cause problems with printing and computing, because they are not found on most physical keyboards and are left out of certain fonts.


title: Esperanto

text: There are two principal workarounds to this problem, which substitute digraphs for the accented letters. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, created an "h-convention", which replaces "ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ," and "ŭ" with "ch, gh, hh, jh, sh," and "u," respectively. If used in a database, a program in principle could not determine whether to render, for example, "ch" as "c" followed by "h" or as "ĉ", and would fail to render, for example, the word properly, unless its component parts were intentionally separated, as in e.g. "senc·hava". A more recent "x-convention" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an "x" (not part of the Esperanto alphabet) after the letter, producing the six digraphs "cx, gx, hx, jx, sx," and "ux".


title: Esperanto

text: There are computer keyboard layouts that support the Esperanto alphabet, and some systems use software that automatically replaces x- or h-convention digraphs with the corresponding diacritic letters (for example, for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, for Windows Phone, and Gboard and AnySoftKeyboard for Android).


title: Esperanto

text: On Linux, the GNOME, Cinnamon, and KDE desktop environments support the entry of characters with Esperanto diacritics.


title: Esperanto

text: Criticisms are levied against the letters with circumflex diacritics, which some find odd or cumbersome, along with their being invented specifically for Esperanto rather than borrowed from existing languages. Additionally, some of them are arguably unnecessary — for example, the use of "ĥ" instead of "x" and "ŭ" instead of "w". However, Zamenhof did not choose these letters arbitrarily: In fact, they were inspired by Czech letters with the caron diacritic but replaced the caron with a circumflex for the ease of those who had access to a French typewriter (with a circumflex dead-key). The Czech letter "ž" was replaced with "ĵ" to match the French letter "j" with the same sound. The letter "ŭ" on the other hand comes from the u-breve used in Latin prosody, and is also speculated to be inspired by the Belarusian Cyrillic letter "ў"; French typewriters can render it approximately as the French letter "ù".


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto words are mostly derived by stringing together roots, grammatical endings, and at times prefixes and suffixes. This process is regular so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, as in English (compare "birdsong" and "songbird," and likewise, and ). Speakers may optionally insert an "o" between the words in a compound noun if placing them together directly without the "o" would make the resulting word hard to say or understand.


title: Esperanto

text: The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in , all adjectives in , all derived adverbs in , and all verbs except the jussive (or imperative) and infinitive end in , specifically in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the present tense ; the jussive mood, which is tenseless, ends in . Nouns and adjectives have two cases: nominative for grammatical subjects and in general, and accusative for direct objects and (after a preposition) to indicate direction of movement.


title: Esperanto

text: Singular nouns used as grammatical subjects end in , plural subject nouns in (pronounced [oi̯] like English "oy"). Singular direct object forms end in , and plural direct objects with the combination ([oi̯n]; rhymes with "coin"): indicates that the word is a noun, indicates the plural, and indicates the accusative (direct object) case. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are singular subject ([a]; rhymes with "ha!"), plural subject ([ai̯], pronounced "eye"), singular object , and plural object ([ai̯n]; rhymes with "fine").


title: Esperanto

text: The suffix , besides indicating the direct object, is used to indicate movement and a few other things as well.


title: Esperanto

text: The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense , future tense , past tense , infinitive mood , conditional mood and jussive mood (used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. Thus, means "to sing", means "I sing", means "you sing", and means "they sing".


title: Esperanto

text: Word order is comparatively free. Adjectives may precede or follow nouns; subjects, verbs and objects may occur in any order. However, the article "the", demonstratives such as "that" and prepositions (such as "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative "not" and conjunctions such as "and" and "that" must precede the phrase or clause that they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".


title: Esperanto

text: The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by , published by Zamenhof in 1887. This book listed 900 roots; these could be expanded into tens of thousands of words using prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, , which had a larger set of roots. The rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed; it was recommended, however, that speakers use most international forms and then derive related meanings from these.


title: Esperanto

text: Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily (but not solely) from the European languages. Not all proposed borrowings become widespread, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots; "computer", for instance, is formed from the verb "compute" and the suffix "tool". Words are also calqued; that is, words acquire new meanings based on usage in other languages. For example, the word "mouse" has acquired the meaning of a computer mouse from its usage in many languages (English "mouse", French "souris", Dutch "muis", Spanish "ratón", etc.). Esperanto speakers often debate about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether meaning can be expressed by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.


title: Esperanto

text: Some compounds and formed words in Esperanto are not entirely straightforward; for example, , literally "give out", means "publish", paralleling the usage of certain European languages (such as German "herausgeben", Dutch "uitgeven", Russian "издать izdat'"). In addition, the suffix "-um-" has no defined meaning; words using the suffix must be learned separately (such as "to the right" and "clockwise").


title: Esperanto

text: There are not many idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto, as these forms of speech tend to make international communication difficult—working against Esperanto's main goal.


title: Esperanto

text: Instead of derivations of Esperanto roots, new roots are taken from European languages in the endeavor to create an international language.


title: Esperanto

text: The following short extract gives an idea of the character of Esperanto. (Pronunciation is covered above; the Esperanto letter "j" is pronounced like English "y".)


title: Esperanto

text: The vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and semantics are all thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, with the rest split between Greek, English and German. The syntax has Germanic and Slavic tendencies, with internal tensions when these disagree; the semantics and phonology have been said to be Slavic.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto speakers learn the language through self-directed study, online tutorials, and correspondence courses taught by volunteers. More recently, free teaching websites like and have become available.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto instruction is rarely available at schools, including four primary schools in a pilot project under the supervision of the University of Manchester, and by one count at a few universities. However, outside China and Hungary, these mostly involve informal arrangements, rather than dedicated departments or state sponsorship. Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest had a department of Interlinguistics and Esperanto from 1966 to 2004, after which time instruction moved to vocational colleges; there are state examinations for Esperanto instructors. Additionally, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland offers a diploma in Interlinguistics. The Senate of Brazil passed a bill in 2009 that would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in public schools, although mandatory if there is demand for it. , the bill is still under consideration by the Chamber of Deputies.


title: Esperanto

text: In the United States, Esperanto is notably offered as a weekly evening course at Stanford University's Bechtel International Center. "Conversational Esperanto, The International Language", is a free drop-in class that is open to Stanford students and the general public on campus during the academic year. With administrative permission, Stanford Students can take the class for two credits a quarter through the Linguistics Department. "Even four lessons are enough to get more than just the basics," the Esperanto at Stanford website reads.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto-USA suggests that Esperanto can be learned in, at most, one quarter of the amount of time required for other languages.


title: Esperanto

text: From 2006 to 2011, four primary schools in Britain, with 230 pupils, followed a course in "propaedeutic Esperanto"—that is, instruction in Esperanto to raise language awareness, and to accelerate subsequent learning of foreign languages—under the supervision of the University of Manchester. As they put it,


title: Esperanto

text: Many schools used to teach children the recorder, not to produce a nation of recorder players, but as a preparation for learning other instruments. [We teach] Esperanto, not to produce a nation of Esperanto-speakers, but as a preparation for learning other languages.


title: Esperanto

text: The results showed that the pupils achieved enhanced metalinguistic awareness, though the study did not indicate whether a course in a language other than Esperanto would have led to similar results. Similar studies have been conducted in New Zealand, the United States, and Germany. The results of these studies were favorable, and demonstrated that studying Esperanto before another foreign language expedites the acquisition of the other, natural language. In one study in England, a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a better command of French than a control group, who had studied French for a four-year period.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Speakers are most numerous in Europe and East Asia, especially in urban areas, where they often form Esperanto clubs. Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and central countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia; in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas; and in Togo in Africa.


title: Esperanto

text: Countering a common criticism against Esperanto, the statistician Svend Nielsen has found no significant correlation between the number of Esperanto speakers and the similarity of a given national native language to Esperanto. He concludes that Esperanto tends to be more popular in rich countries with widespread Internet access and a tendency to contribute more to science and culture. Linguistic diversity within a country was found to have no, or perhaps a slightly reductive, correlation with Esperanto popularity.


title: Esperanto

text: An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor at the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas in dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.). Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of more than one million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff. Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results.


title: Esperanto

text: In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number of Esperanto speakers is shown as two million. This latter figure appears in "Ethnologue". Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speaks the language. Although it does not meet Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, it still represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language.


title: Esperanto

text: Marcus Sikosek (now Ziko van Dijk) has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. He estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Van Dijk finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller-than-expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members.


title: Esperanto

text: Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:


title: Esperanto

text: In 2017, doctoral student Svend Nielsen estimated around 63,000 Esperanto speakers worldwide, taking into account association memberships, user-generated data from Esperanto websites and census statistics. This number, however, was disputed by statistician Sten Johansson, who questioned the reliability of the source data and highlighted a wide margin of error, the latter point with which Nielsen agrees. Both have stated, however, that this new number is likely more realistic than some earlier projections.


title: Esperanto

text: In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. According to the website of the Universal Esperanto Association:


title: Esperanto

text: Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put "the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions".


title: Esperanto

text: Native Esperanto speakers, , have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents. This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language. The 15th edition of "Ethnologue" cited estimates that there were 200 to 2,000 native speakers in 1996, but these figures were removed from the 16th and 17th editions. The 2019 online version of "Ethnologue" gives "L1 users: 1,000 (Corsetti et al 2004)".


title: Esperanto

text: As of 1996, there were approximately 350 attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers (which means there were around 700 Esperanto speaking natives in these families, not accounting for older native speakers).


title: Esperanto

text: However, native speakers do not occupy an authoritative position in the Esperanto community, as they would in other language communities. This presents a challenge to linguists, whose usual source of grammaticality and meanings are native speakers.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperantists can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated literature. There are more than 25,000 Esperanto books, both originals and translations, as well as several regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. In 2013 a museum about Esperanto opened in China. Esperantists use the language for free accommodations with Esperantists in 92 countries using the or to develop pen pals through "".


title: Esperanto

text: Historically, much Esperanto music, such as , has been in various folk traditions. There is also a variety of classical and semi-classical choral music, both original and translated, as well as large ensemble music that includes voices singing Esperanto texts. Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many world cultures in his music, used Esperanto titles and/or texts in several of his works, most notably (1973). David Gaines used Esperanto poems as well as an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Zamenhof for his "Symphony No. One (Esperanto)" for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1994–98). He wrote original Esperanto text for his ("I Can Cry No Longer") for unaccompanied SATB choir (1994).


title: Esperanto

text: There are also shared traditions, such as Zamenhof Day, and shared behaviour patterns. Esperantists speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto proponents, such as Prof. Humphrey Tonkin of the University of Hartford, argue that Esperanto is "culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one national culture". The late Scottish Esperanto author William Auld wrote extensively on the subject, arguing that Esperanto is "the expression of a common human culture, unencumbered by national frontiers. Thus it is considered a culture on its own." Critics have argued that the language is eurocentric, as it draws much of its vocabulary from European languages.


title: Esperanto

text: Several Esperanto associations also advance education in and about Esperanto and aim to preserve and promote the culture and heritage of Esperanto. Poland added Esperanto to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2014.


title: Esperanto

text: In the futuristic novel "Lord of the World" by Robert Hugh Benson, Esperanto is presented as the predominant language of the world, much as Latin is the language of the Church. A reference to Esperanto appears in the science-fiction story "War with the Newts" by Karel Čapek, published in 1936. As part of a passage on what language the salamander-looking creatures with human cognitive ability should learn, it is noted that "...in the Reform schools, Esperanto was taught as the medium of communication." (P. 206).


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto has been used in many films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exotic flavour of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. The Charlie Chaplin film "The Great Dictator" (1940) showed Jewish ghetto shop signs in Esperanto. Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely in Esperanto: "," in 1964, and "Incubus," a 1965 B-movie horror film which is also notable for starring William Shatner shortly before he began working on "". In "Captain Fantastic" (2016) there is a dialogue in Esperanto. The 1994 film "Street Fighter" contains Esperanto dialogue spoken by the character Sagat. Finally, Mexican film director Alfonso Cuarón has publicly shown his fascination for Esperanto, going as far as naming his film production company Esperanto Filmoj ("Esperanto Films").


title: Esperanto

text: In 1921 the French Academy of Sciences recommended using Esperanto for international scientific communication. A few scientists and mathematicians, such as Maurice Fréchet (mathematics), John C. Wells (linguistics), Helmar Frank (pedagogy and cybernetics), and Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten (economics) have published part of their work in Esperanto. Frank and Selten were among the founders of the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino, sometimes called the "Esperanto University", where Esperanto is the primary language of teaching and administration.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto business groups have been active for many years. Research conducted in the 1920s by the French Chamber of Commerce and reported in "The New York Times" suggested that Esperanto seemed to be the best business language.


title: Esperanto

text: Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote already in 1887: to create an easy language, to create a language ready to use "whether the language be universally accepted or not" and to find some means to get many people to learn the language. So Zamenhof's intention was not only to create an easy-to-learn language to foster peace and international understanding as a general language, but also to create a language for immediate use by a (small) language community. Esperanto was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was shared by Zamenhof among Esperanto speakers at the beginning of the movement. Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called , from , meaning "final victory". It has to be noted that there are two kinds of "finvenkismo"–"desubismo" and "desuprismo"; the first aims to spread Esperanto between ordinary people ("desube", from below) aiming to form a steadily growing community of Esperanto speakers. The second aims to act from above ("desupre"), beginning with politicians. Zamenhof considered the first way to have a better perspective, as "for such affairs as ours, governments come with their approval and help usually only, when everything is already finished".


title: Esperanto

text: Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called , from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the short-term improbability of the and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980. However the "Manifesto de Raŭmo" clearly mentions the intention to further spread the language: "We want to spread Esperanto to put into effect its positive values more and more, step by step".


title: Esperanto

text: In 1996 the Prague Manifesto was adopted at the annual congress of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA); it was subscribed by individual participants and later by other Esperanto speakers. More recently, language-learning apps like Duolingo and Amikumu have helped to increase the amount of fluent speakers of Esperanto, and find others in their area to speak the language with.


title: Esperanto

text: The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a green five-pointed star against a white canton, upon a field of green. It was proposed to Zamenhof by Richard Geoghegan, author of the first Esperanto textbook for English speakers, in 1887. The flag was approved in 1905 by delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at Boulogne-sur-Mer.


title: Esperanto

text: The green star on white ("") is also used by itself as a round (buttonhole, etc.) emblem by many esperantists, among other reasons to enhance their visibility outside the Esperanto world.


title: Esperanto

text: A version with an "" superimposed over the green star is sometimes seen. Other variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for Leftists, with the color of the field changed from green to red.


title: Esperanto

text: In 1987, a second flag design was chosen in a contest organized by the UEA celebrating the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "" (jubilee symbol), it attracted criticism from some Esperantists, who dubbed it the "" (melon) because of the design's elliptical shape. It is still in use, though to a lesser degree than the traditional symbol, known as the "" (green star).


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto has been placed in many proposed political situations. The most popular of these is the Europe–Democracy–Esperanto, which aims to establish Esperanto as the official language of the European Union. Grin's Report, published in 2005 by François Grin, found that the use of English as the lingua franca within the European Union costs billions annually and significantly benefits English-speaking countries financially. The report considered a scenario where Esperanto would be the lingua franca, and found that it would have many advantages, particularly economically speaking, as well as ideologically.


title: Esperanto

text: Left-wing currents exist in the wider Esperanto world, mostly organized through the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda founded by French theorist Eugène Lanti. Other notable Esperanto socialists include Nikolai Nekrasov and Vladimir Varankin. Both Nekrasov and Varankin were arrested during the Stalinist repressions of the late 1930s. Nekrasov was accused of being "an organizer and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organization of Esperantists", and executed on October 4, 1938. Varankin was executed on October 3, 1938.


title: Esperanto

text: The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.


title: Esperanto

text: The Baháʼí Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language. `Abdu'l-Bahá praised the ideal of Esperanto, and there was an affinity between Esperantists and Baháʼís during the late 19th century and early 20th century.


title: Esperanto

text: Now, praise be to God that Dr. Zamenhof has invented the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of becoming the international means of communication. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for this noble effort; for in this way he has served his fellowmen well. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees Esperanto will become universal. Therefore every one of us must study this language and spread it as far as possible so that day by day it may receive a broader recognition, be accepted by all nations and governments of the world, and become a part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that Esperanto will be adopted as the language of all the future international conferences and congresses, so that all people need acquire only two languages—one their own tongue and the other the international language. Then perfect union will be established between all the people of the world. Consider how difficult it is today to communicate with various nations. If one studies fifty languages one may yet travel through a country and not know the language. Therefore I hope that you will make the utmost effort, so that this language of Esperanto may be widely spread.


title: Esperanto

text: Lidia Zamenhof, daughter of L. L. Zamenhof, became a Baháʼí around 1925. James Ferdinand Morton Jr., an early member of the Baháʼí Faith in Greater Boston, was vice-president of the Esperanto League for North America. Ehsan Yarshater, the founding editor of "Encyclopædia Iranica", notes how as a child in Iran he learned Esperanto and that when his mother was visiting Haifa on a Baháʼí pilgrimage he wrote her a letter in Persian as well as Esperanto. At the request of 'Abdu’l-Baha, Agnes Baldwin Alexander became an early advocate of Esperanto and used it to spread the Baháʼí teachings at meetings and conferences in Japan.


title: Esperanto

text: Today there exists an active sub-community of Baháʼí Esperantists and various volumes of Baháʼí literature have been translated into Esperanto. In 1973, the Baháʼí Esperanto-League for active Baháʼí supporters of Esperanto was founded.


title: Esperanto

text: In 1908, spiritist Camilo Chaigneau wrote an article named "Spiritism and Esperanto" in the periodic "La Vie d'Outre-Tombe" recommending the use of Esperanto in a "central magazine" for all spiritists and esperantists. Esperanto then became actively promoted by spiritists, at least in Brazil, initially by Ismael Gomes Braga and František Lorenz; the latter is known in Brazil as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, and was a pioneer of both spiritist and Esperantist movements in this country. The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists.


title: Esperanto

text: William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist and occultist in the United Kingdom, co-founded the first Esperanto club in the U.K.


title: Esperanto

text: The Teozofia Esperanta Ligo (Theosophycal Esperantist League) was formed in 1911, and the organization's journal, "Espero Teozofia", was published from 1913 to 1928.


title: Esperanto

text: The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of the Tanakh (or Old Testament) done by L. L. Zamenhof. The translation was reviewed and compared with other languages' translations by a group of British clergy and scholars before its publication at the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1910. In 1926 this was published along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called the "". In the 1960s, the tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version. Since then, the Dutch Remonstrant pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books, in addition to new translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and some books of the Tanakh. These have been published in various separate booklets, or serialized in , but the Deuterocanonical books have appeared in recent editions of the "Londona Biblio".


title: Esperanto

text: Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. After he suggested that Esperanto replace English as an international "lingua franca", it began to be used in the seminaries of Qom. An Esperanto translation of the Qur'an was published by the state shortly thereafter.


title: Esperanto

text: Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of ("Foundation of Esperanto"), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Universal, Saussure, Romániço, Internasia, Esperanto sen Fleksio, and Mundolingvo, were all based on Esperanto.