The Esperanto Society of Chicago is an organization of Esperanto speakers living in and around Chicago. The Society’s mission is to give Esperantists opportunities to connect with each other by organizing social and cultural events, and by providing an access point to the worldwide Esperanto community.
We meet in person around Chicago and online, where both beginners and experts come to speak the language. These meetings are open to anyone, so please feel free to drop in! The Society also hosts an annual picnic in the summer and a Zamenhof banquet in December. In addition, members frequently visit Esperantists in foreign countries and attend the annual national or universal congresses of Esperantists.
The Esperanto Society of Chicago was informally established in the mid-1950’s (pdf), and was registered as a not-for-profit organization in 1973.
What is Esperanto?
Esperanto was created with the goal of facilitating communication between people of different nations and linguistic cultures. Unlike national languages, Esperanto allows communication on an equal footing between people, with neither having the cultural advantage usually accruing to a native speaker. Esperanto was designed to be very easy to learn, and thus is extremely regular in grammar and vocabulary. First published in 1887 by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto has since grown to include about one million speakers around the world.
Interested in learning Esperanto?
The online courses at Lernu and Duolingo are good places to start.