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Native Esperanto speakers (in Esperanto denaskuloj or denaskaj esperantistoj) are born into families in which Esperanto is spoken (usually along with other languages). This usually occurs when the parents meet each other at an Esperanto gathering but do not know each other’s native language. Often one or both parents choose to use Esperanto as the main language in communicating with the children, who thus acquire the language in the way that other children acquire their native languages; those children then become natively multilingual. It also happens that the parents use Esperanto between themselves, but use another language when speaking with the children. Then the children, who wish to understand what the parents are saying between themselves, learn (or at least comprehend) spoken Esperanto.
Esperanto is not the primary language of any geographic region, outside of temporary gatherings (such as conventions like the World Congress of Esperanto) and isolated offices (such as the World Esperanto Association's central office in Rotterdam). Consequently, native speakers have limited opportunity to meet one another except where meetings are specially arranged. For this reason, some parents consider it important to bring their children regularly to Esperanto conventions. Similarly, the annual Children's Congress of Esperanto (Infana Kongreseto) happens alongside the largest Esperanto convention, the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso). According to Ethnologue, there are "200–2000 who speak Esperanto as a first language."[1]
The most famous native speaker of Esperanto is businessman George Soros, son of Tivadar Soros, publisher and writer in Esperanto.[2] Also notable are young Holocaust victim Petr Ginz, whose drawing of the planet Earth as viewed from the moon was carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and Daniel Bovet, the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
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Below is a list of noted native Esperanto speakers.