1859-1917

Contributed by Nikolai Grishin <konkordo@rdven.lv>

Ludwig Zamenhof  has created the international
language Esperanto. Esperanto is a very beautiful and easy language. Please
visit site http://www.esperanto.net.  Esperanto is the best solution of the problem of communication
between people of different nations. One more thing about Zamenhof: he was not only genious linguist, but
also a great idealist and thinker. He has created a philosophy Homaranism,
which became the "internal idea" of Esperanto, its "soul".
 

Doctor Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof was a remarkable man by anyone's standards.
During his entire life he selflessly gave much of his time and energy in the
pursuit of a project which he imagined early in his childhood: creating an
international language. His idea was to create a new language, one that
would be a second language for everyone. Through its use people of different
nations and ethnic groups could communicate on a neutral footing. This
project was intended to benefit all of humanity.

It is difficult to imagine the fervent devotion, the tireless energy, and
the intellectual prowess that went into converting an idealistic dream into
a living language. His creation, "Esperanto," is the most succesful planned
language in history. Over a century after its introduction, there are
Esperanto speakers in all parts of the world, as well as an active Esperanto
literary culture. When one considers that this project was undertaken in the
"free time" of a man who was attending medical school, and later was a
practicing oculist, the fact of its succesful completion becomes even more
remarkable.

Born in 1859 in Byalistok, a town in then Russian Poland, young Ludwig
noticed that the different ethnic groups in his town, (Russian, Jewish,
German, and Polish) did not understand each other's languages and treated
each other with animosity. He would later say that it was this experience
that inspired his first thoughts about an international language. His
reasoning was that if people could freely speak to each other, they would
begin to understand one another and gain mutual respect.

At an early age he proved to have a exceptional knack for learning foreign
languages. This gift was probably helped by the fact that both his father
and grandfather were teachers of foreign languages. They undoubtedly helped
and encouraged young Ludwig, as well as supplying him with suitable reading
material. By the end of his life he could speak fluently in Yiddish, Hebrew,
German, Russian, Polish, and French. He also had passed his Latin courses
with distinction and could speak a little English.

When he began to consider solutions to the language problem, his first idea
was that Latin could be revived and used as an international language.
However, after he had succesfully completed his Latin courses in school he
realized that it was not a suitable candidate for the task. It's complicated
grammar and orthography would make Latin extremely difficult for people to
learn in their spare time. Also, its lack of terminology for items and
concepts of everyday modern life, and its lack of a clear means to create
such terminology proved it to be an unfeasable solution. It was at this
point, in his early teens, that he made a fateful decision; he would create
a new language that would be simple to learn and would be flexible enough to
adapt to the needs of modern life. Little did he know that this goal would
become his life's work.

The classic biographies Life of Zamenhof (1920) by Edmond Privat and
Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto (1959) by Marjorie Boulton are the best
general sources on Zamenhof's life and work available in English.