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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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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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