It was actually invented with that purpose: anyone who spoke any European language should be able to understand esperanto. It was meant to be a lingua franca.

STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING Y’ALL AND TELL ME IF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS

I,understand about a half of it, I speak some dutch

“What Happened? Did your computer catch a virus? Did you suddenly develop BSE [mad cow disease]?”

Between German, English, Latin, a bit of French, Dutch, Spanish and Italian that was actually pretty readable to me.

I speak English and a very little spanish, and I can read it.