Europanto
Spoken in:	Belgium
Region:	Brussels
Ranking:	Not in top 100
Genetic classification:	Artificial language  Europanto
Language codes
ISO 639-2	art
SIL	EUR

Europanto is a constructed language, a linguistic jest with a hodge-podge vocabulary from many European languages. It was created in 1996 by Diego Marani, a translator for the European Council of Ministers in Brussels. Marani created it in response to the perceived dominance of the English language; it is an emulation of the effect that non-native speakers struggling to learn a language typically add words and phrases from their native language to express their meanings clearly.

Thus, Europanto has a grammar much like English, with words borrowed from various languages and adapted to be easily understood. It is sometimes considered a parody of the international auxiliary language genre, particularly the "Euroclone" variety.

The name Europanto is a portmanteau combination of European and the Greek stem πάντ- (all), and resembles Esperanto.

Marani wrote regular newspaper columns about the language and published a novel using it.

See also

• English as a lingua franca for Europe

External links

• BBC News - Europe - Linguistic virus let loose on English (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/220511.stm)
• Europanto home page (http://www.europanto.contagions.com/europanto.html)
• Europanto - What is it? (http://www.neuropeans.com/topic/europanto/what/more.php)