The history of Esperanto: Zamenhof and the Unua Libro

Esperanto has an author, a publication date and a birthday, so its history can be checked. Ten episodes, from a boy in a divided town to a language on every phone, with the myths taken out.

History in Esperanto needs one distinction above all: some verbs take an object, and their partners take none.

• Zamenhof naskiĝis en 1859. - Zamenhof was born in 1859.

1. Białystok: the boy and the four peoples

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof was born on 15 December 1859 in Białystok, then in the Russian Empire, now in Poland. Russian records read 3 December, because the empire used the Julian calendar.

In a letter to Nikolai Borovko, written in the 1890s and printed in Esperanto in 1896, he described a town of Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews, each speaking its own language and distrusting the others. He came to believe that the diversity of languages was a chief cause of hostility between people.

• Zamenhof kreskis en urbo kun kvar lingvoj. - Zamenhof grew up in a town with four languages.

On 17 December 1878 he celebrated a finished draft, Lingwe Uniwersala, with school friends. In 1879, while he studied medicine in Moscow, his father burned the papers. He started again and became an eye doctor who wrote a language in the evenings.

• Lia patro bruligis la paperojn. - His father burned the papers.

2. 1887: the Unua Libro

The first textbook came out in Warsaw in 1887, in Russian, signed D-ro Esperanto: Doctor Hopeful. It cost fifteen kopecks and held a dictionary of 917 roots. The pen name became the language's name.

26 July is kept as Esperanto Day; the calendar article explains why some keep 2 June.

• La libro aperis en 1887. - The book came out in 1887.
• Zamenhof eldonis la libron. - Zamenhof published the book.

The money came from the family of Klara Silbernik, whom Zamenhof married the same year.

Mistakes English speakers make