The history of Esperanto: Volapük, Boulogne and Ido

3. Volapük falls, and a magazine appears

Esperanto arrived while an earlier project was at its height. Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest, published Volapük in 1879 and 1880. By 1889 it had about 283 clubs, and its Paris congress that August ran entirely in Volapük.

Then it split. Schleyer insisted on his rights over the language, reformers in its academy disagreed, and by 1890 the movement was in disarray. Zamenhof had already given his language away.

• La lingvo apartenas al neniu. - The language belongs to no one.

The first Esperanto magazine, La Esperantisto, began in Nuremberg on 1 September 1889. In 1895 it printed an article by Leo Tolstoy, and the Russian censor banned it, cutting it off from most of its readers. It closed that year; Lingvo Internacia, from Sweden, took its place.

4. 1905: Boulogne

The first Universala Kongreso met at Boulogne-sur-Mer in August 1905, with 688 people from twenty countries. It was the first time Esperantists from many countries met in such numbers to speak the language, and it ran entirely in Esperanto.

The congress adopted the Declaration of Boulogne. Its fourth point made the Fundamento de Esperanto the language's permanent foundation, in which nobody has the right to make a change:

• La Fundamento estas netuŝebla. - The Fundamento is untouchable.

It also set up the Lingva Komitato, ancestor of today's Akademio. Who decides what is correct Esperanto covers the institutions.

• La unua kongreso okazis en 1905. - The first congress took place in 1905.

5. 1907: Ido

In October 1907 a committee of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language met in Paris to choose a world language. Esperanto's delegate was Louis de Beaufront. An anonymous reform project signed Ido reached the committee, and the committee backed a reformed Esperanto along its lines.

Ido turned out to be mainly de Beaufront's own work, though how much Louis Couturat, the committee's secretary, added is disputed. Part of the movement's leadership went over.

Esperanto held, and the Fundamento is why: the core could not be amended, so a reform had nothing to attach to.

• La reformo ne ŝanĝis la Fundamenton. - The reform did not change the Fundamento.

6. 1914-1917: the war, and Zamenhof's death

The Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA) was founded in Geneva on 28 April 1908 by Hector Hodler and others. When war came in 1914, the Paris congress was cancelled, and the UEA, in neutral Switzerland, forwarded letters for families cut off by the front.

• Hodler fondis la asocion. - Hodler founded the association.

Zamenhof died in Warsaw, then under German occupation, on 14 April 1917. He was 57.

• Zamenhof mortis en 1917. - Zamenhof died in 1917.