Esperanto

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Esperanto was developed by L. L. Zamenhof in the late nineteenth century as a universal second-language. His idea was that everyone would benefit if Esperanto were to be adopted by all as a second language so that people who did not speak each other's national language could communicate easily with each other. In this way, scientists, artists, diplomats and merchants could make their ideas and needs known to each other without the aid of translators.

Esperanto is easier to learn than a national language and efforts are made to keep it from changing much so that users can communicate well regardless of their own cultures. As to the number of fluent Esperantists, estimates vary widely from about 250,000 to 2 million. There has been some energy devoted to getting the United Nations assembly to adopt Esperanto so as to save millions of dollars on translations. Some interest has been shown by the U.N. but people think highly of their own languages and don't want to go international, even though they belong to an international organization.
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