t of the world's international diplomacy dis- putes resulted from a communication failure between monolingual speakers and the inevitable misunderstandings of nuance that occur when one language is translated into another. Zamenhof set out to solve this "Tower of Babel" problem (origin of the word "babble," by the way), resulting in the creation of the international language called Esperanto. In Esperanto, the word "Esperanto" means "one who hopes." Since its creation, Esperanto has been learned by millions and, believe it or not, is widely spoken-current estimates are approximately two mil- lion speakers. And its use is far from being purely academic: Meetings are held in Esperanto, advertising campaigns use it, hotels and restau- rants publish literature using it, and professional communities such as health care and scientific research now use Esperanto widely as a way to universally communicate information. Second only to English, it is the lingua franca of the international world. It is most commonly spoken in Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia (particularly mainland China), South America, and Southwest Asia. It is less commonly spoken in North America, Africa, and the Middle East. Esperanto's success as the language of international communication results from three advantages. It is easy to learn; it is politically neutral; and, there are practical reasons to learn it. The structure of the language is SO simple and straightforward that it can typically be learned in less than a quarter of the time it takes to learn a traditional language. For example, all letters have one sound and one sound only. There are only 16 grammar rules to learn, compared to the hundreds that pervade Eng- lish and other Romance or Germanic languages. Furthermore, there are no irregular verb forms (you have to love that!). Even the vocabulary is simple to learn; many words are instantly recognizable (and learnable), such as these: Telefono (telephone) Biciclo (bicycle) Masxino (machine) Reto (network) Kosmo (outer space) Plano (pl