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Ido is a "reformed" version of the constructed language
Esperanto. It was
developed in the early 1900s, and still has a small following today,
primarily in Europe. The estimates of the number of speakers
range from 250-5000.
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Ido inherits many of the same grammatical features of Esperanto, and in many
cases the vocabulary is similar. Ido shares with
Esperanto the goals of
grammatical simplicity and consistency, ease of learning, and the use of
loanwords from various European languages. The two languages, to a great
extent, are mutually intelligible.
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Each word in the Ido vocabulary is built from a root word. A root word
consists of a root and a grammatical ending. Other words can be formed from
that word by removing the grammatical ending and adding a new one, or by
inserting certain affixes between the root and the grammatical ending. As
with
Esperanto, Ido is grammatically invariable; there are no exceptions in
Ido, unlike in natural languages.
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The pronouns of Ido were revised to make them more acoustically distinct
than those of
Esperanto,
which all end in i. Especially the singular and plural first-person pronouns
mi and ni may be difficult to distinguish in a noisy environment, so Ido has
me and ni instead. Ido also distinguishes between intimate (tu) and formal
(vu) second-person singular pronouns as well as plural second-person
pronouns (vi) not marked for intimacy. Furthermore, Ido has a pan-gender
third-person pronoun lu (it can mean "he", "she", or "it", depending on the
context) in addition to its masculine (il), feminine (el), and neuter (ol)
third-person pronouns.
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The vast majority of Ido speakers find out about the language after learning
about
Esperanto,
and so the percentage of Idists who know
Esperanto
is much higher than vice versa. The largest number of Ido speakers are found
in Germany, France, and Spain.
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Ido has a number of publications that can be subscribed to or downloaded for
free in most cases. The majority of Ido publications are composed mostly of
material on various subjects, with a few pages within on the status of the
movement and news on upcoming gatherings. Kuriero Internaciona is a magazine
produced in France every few months with a range of topics. Adavane! is a
magazine produced by the Spanish Ido Society every two months that has a
range of topics, as well as a few dozen pages of work translated from other
languages. Progreso is the official organ of the Ido movement and has been
around since the inception of the movement in 1908. Other sites can be found
with various stories, fables or proverbs along with a few books of the Bible
translated into Ido on a smaller scale. The site publikaji has a few
podcasts in Ido along with various songs and other recorded material.
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