Esperanto: A Window on Language

I was born in Bialystok [Белосток, Polish: Białystok] (15 December 1859, the 3rd of December in the Russian calendar), in the province of Grodno, in Poland. This place of my birth and of my childhood years gave direction to all my future endeavors. The inhabitants of Bialystok consisted of four diverse elements: Russians, Poles, Germans, and Jews. Each of these elements spoke a separate language and had hostile relations with the other elements.

In that town more than anywhere an impressionable soul might feel the heavy sadness of language diversity and become convinced at every step that the diversity of languages was the single, or at least the primary, force which divided the human family into unfriendly parts. I was educated as an idealist; I was taught that all men were brothers, while at the same time in the street and in the court at every step everything made me feel that men as such did not exist: only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, and the like existed.

Little by little I discovered, of course, that everything is not so easy as it seems to a child. One after another I cast aside my various childish utopian-isms, and the dream of a single human language was the only one I kept with me. I was somehow pulled toward it, though of course without any clearly defined plans. I don’t remember just when, but certainly very early, I developed the awareness that the single language could only be a neutral one, belonging to none of the existing nations.

When I went on from the “Bialystok Real School” (then already called the gymnasium) to the second-class gymnasium in Warsaw, I was attracted for a time to the ancient languages [Latin and Greek], and dreamed that I would sometime travel through the whole world and give inflammatory speeches to convince people to revive one of these languages for common use.

Later —I don’t remember how anymore— I came to the firm conclusion that that would be impossible, and I began to dream, however unclearly, of a new, artificial language.

I often began new attempts, in those days, and thought out hugely rich artificial declensions and conjugations and so on.

I had learned German and French in childhood, when one cannot yet make comparisons and draw conclusions, but when I began learning English in the 5th class, the simplicity of English grammar leaped before my eyes, especially thanks to the abrupt transition from Latin and Greek grammars.

I noted that a richness of grammatical forms is merely a blind historical accident, not a necessity for a language. Under this influence I began looking through my language and throwing out unnecessary forms, and I found that the grammar began to thaw in my hands. Soon I came to the most minimal grammar, which occupied no more than a few pages, without detriment to the language. And I began to give myself over more seriously to my dream.

Markus Zamenhof (1837-1907), Ludwick’s Father. When Ludwick left for medical school in 1879, at the age of 20, his father burned his notes for the “silly” new language. Years later Markus asked his son to translate his multilingual collection of proverbs into Esperanto.
Desmet’ 2020

Once, when I was in the 7th class of the gymnasium, I noticed the formation of the [Russian] word shveytsarskaya (швейцарская = porter’s lodge) which I had seen many times, and of the word kondityerskaya (кондитерская = confectioner’s shop). This -skaya (-ская) interested me, and showed me that suffixes provide the possibility of making from one word a number of others which don’t have to be separately learned. This idea took complete possession of me.

“The problem [of vocabulary] is solved!” I said to myself. I took the idea of suffixes and began to work enthusiastically in that direction. I began comparing words and looking for constant, definite relations among them, and every day I threw large series of words out of my dictionary, and substituted for them a single suffix defining a certain relationship. I found that a huge number of words expressed by a base form (e.g., mother, narrow, knife) could be easily transformed into common words [plus suffixes] and thus vanish from the vocabulary.

[In modern Esperanto: mother = patr-in-o (= parent + feminine + noun), narrow = mal-larĝ-a (= opposite + wide + adjective), knife = tranĉ-il-o (= cut + instrument + noun). —DKJ]

The mechanics of the language were now before me, as though in the palm of my hand, and I began to work regularly on it, with love and hope. Soon after that I had written the entire grammar and a small vocabulary.

I should say a few words about the material for the vocabulary: Much earlier, when I was going through the grammar and throwing out everything unnecessary, I wanted to use principles of economy. for words also; and, convinced that it made no difference what form a word had if we simply “agreed” that it expressed a given idea, I simply thought up words, trying to make them short and to avoid having too many letters in them. I said to myself that instead of the 8-letter word “converse,” we could equally well express the same notion by, for example, the 2-letter word “pa.” Therefore I simply wrote a mathematical series of the shortest easily pronounced combinations of letters, and to each of them I gave the significance of a defined word (thus a, ab, ac, ad, … ba, ca, da, … e, eb, ec, … be, ce, … aba, aca, … etc.).

L.L. Zamenhof Painted on a Korean Fan (2017). Not surprisingly, perhaps, people who learn and use Esperanto often become “fans” of its creator, sometimes with arresting results.
D.K. Jordan

But I discarded this thought immediately, for the experiments which I did myself convinced me that made-up words were very difficult to learn, and even harder to remember.

I became convinced that the material for the vocabulary would have to be Romance and Germanic, changed only as much as would be required by regularity and other important conditions of the language. I observed that modern languages already possessed a large stock of available words that were already international, were known to all peoples, and would provide a supply for the future international language. And of course I used that supply.

In the year 1878 the language was already more or less ready, although there was still a great difference between my “lingwe uniwersala” of that time and Esperanto as it is spoken today. I told my friends about the project —I was then in the 8th class of the gymnasium. Most of them were attracted to the idea and struck by the extraordinary easiness of the language and they began to learn it. The 5th of December 1878 we solemnly celebrated the birth of the language. During this celebration there were speeches in the new language, and we enthusiastically sang our anthem, which began as follows:

Dika Street (Now Zamenhof Street) in Warsaw, About 1885. Zamenhof lived and practiced ophthalmology in one of these buildings.
Lapenna 1960

On the table, besides the grammar and vocabulary, lay a few translations into the new language.

Thus ended the first period of the language. I was still too young to come out with my work publicly, and I decided to wait another five or six years and during that time to try out the language carefully and work it out practically. Half a year after the celebration of the 5th of December we finished at the gymnasium and went our several ways. The future apostles of the language tried to talk a little bit about a “new language,” and meeting the ridicule of grown-ups, they immediately gave it up; I remained entirely alone. Foreseeing only ridicule and persecution, I decided to hide my work from everyone.

Dika Street at the End of World War II. Local Esperanto speakers planted an Esperanto movement flag in the ruins of Zamenhof's one-time home and clinic.
Lapenna 1960

For six years I worked perfecting and trying the language, and I put in a good deal of work, even though the language had seemed all ready in 1878. I translated a good deal into my language, and wrote original works in it, and these further efforts showed me that what had seemed all ready to me theoretically was not yet ready practically. I had to chop out, substitute, correct, and radically transform a lot of things. Words and forms, principles and postulates pushed and obstructed each other, when in theory, entirely apart and in short experiments, they had seemed entirely satisfactory.

But practice convinced me more and more that the language still needed a certain uncapturable “something,” the uniting element that gives a language life and defines a completely formed “spirit.”

Cover of An International Language: Preface and First Textbook, by Dr. Esperanto. Warsaw, Russia, 1887.
Esperanto March, 2023, p. 56.

I began to avoid literal translation from one to another language and tried to think directly in the neutral language. Later I found that the language in my hands had already ceased to become a pale shadow of some other language with which I was concerned at any given moment, and had received its own spirit, its own life, a uniquely defined and clearly expressed physiognomy, no longer dependent upon any sort of outside influence. The words flowed of themselves, flexibly, gracefully, and entirely freely, just like a living, mother tongue.

I finished the university and began my medical practice. And now I had begun to think about the publication of my work. I prepared the manuscript of my first booklet, An International Language: Preface and First Textbook, by Dr. Esperanto [“one who hopes”], and set out to find a publisher.

At last, after long efforts, I was able to publish the booklet myself in July of 1887. I was very excited before it came out. I felt that I stood at a Rubicon and that the day when my booklet would appear I should no longer be able to turn back. But I could not give up the idea that had entered my body and blood; I crossed the Rubicon.

Esperanto: A Window on the Study of Language
(And Vice Versa)

Chapter I
The Case: Zamenhof and Esperanto:
The Challenge of Creating a Language

Esperanto: A Window on the Study of Language (And Vice Versa)

Chapter IThe Case: Zamenhof and Esperanto:The Challenge of Creating a Language

Esperanto: A Window on the Study of Language
(And Vice Versa)

Chapter I
The Case: Zamenhof and Esperanto:
The Challenge of Creating a Language