linguistic:translation, structural:reformatting
Native speakers

Native Esperanto speakers, eo: denaskuloj, lit. ' person from/since birth ', have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents. This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language. As of 1996, according to Corsetti, there were approximately 350 attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers (which means there were around 700 Esperanto speaking natives in these families, not accounting for older native speakers). The 2022 edition of Ethnologue gives 1,000 L1 users citing Corsetti et al 2004.

However, native speakers do not occupy an authoritative position in the Esperanto community, as they would in other language communities. This presents a challenge to linguists, whose usual source of grammaticality and meanings are native speakers.