
Some of his followers successfully insisted on keeping the Esperanto movement independent of ideological commitments, arguing that if Esperanto were to succeed, it would do so only by attracting to its cause men and women of different religious, political and philosophical opinions. In the same years in which, starting in the Slavic-speaking lands, Esperanto began its spread throughout Europe–while philanthropists, linguists and learned societies followed its progress with interest, devoting international conferences to the phenomenon– Zamenhof had also published an anonymous pamphlet, which extolled a doctrine of international brotherhood, homaranism. The experience of oppression, followed by the persecution of intellectuals, especially Jewish, at the hands of the Tsarist government, ensured that Zamenhof’s particular fascination with international languages would become mixed with a desire for peace between peoples.īesides, although Zamenhof felt solidarity towards his fellow Jews and forecast their return to Palestine, his form of secular religiosity prevented him from fully supporting Zionist ideas instead of thinking of the end of the Diaspora as a return to Hebrew, Zamenhof hoped that all the Jews could be, one day, reunited in an entirely new language. Born of a Jewish family in Bialystok, an area of Polish Lithuania then part of the Tsarist empire, Zamenhof passed his childhood in a crucible of races and languages continually shaken by nationalist ferment and lasting waves of anti-Semitism. Zamenhof’s origins and personality helped shape both his conception of the new language and its eventual success. When his uncle Josef asked him what was the non-Hebrew name he had, according to custom, chosen for his contacts with Gentiles, the seventeen year old Zamenhof replied that he had chosen Ludwik because he had found a reference to Lodwick (also spelled Lodowick) in a work by Comenius ( letter of 31 March 1876 see Lamberti 1990: 49). Zamenhof, born in 1859, had been fascinated with the idea of an international language since adolescence. Hopeful), and this was soon adopted as the name of his language. Ledger Ludwik Zamenhof yet he wrote the book under the pseudonym Dr.
Lingua latina per se illustrata esperanto manual#
Preface and Complete Manual (for Russians). “ Esperanto was first proposed in 1887 in a book, written in Russian and published in Warsaw at the Kelter Press, entitled The International Language.
Lingua latina per se illustrata esperanto plus#
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or less. This photo from the Congressional Book of the 4th World Esperanto Congress in Dresden, 1908. Zamenhof (1859-1917), creator of the IAL Esperanto.
