The History of Esperanto in Ten Episodes, 1859 to Today

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.

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.

7. 1933-1945: the persecutions

In Mein Kampf, Hitler gives Esperanto as an example of the universal language a Jewish conspiracy would impose. The regime then took the movement apart; the German association expelled its Jewish members to show loyalty, and it made no difference.

In the Soviet Union, Esperanto was never formally banned. In the Great Purge its leaders were arrested as spies until the union stopped working: Ernest Drezen was shot on 27 October 1937, the poet Nikolao Nekrasov on 4 October 1938. Both were rehabilitated in 1957.

All three of Zamenhof's children were murdered. Adam was shot at Palmiry on 29 January 1940; Zofia and Lidia were killed at Treblinka in 1942.

• La polico arestis la gvidantojn. - The police arrested the leaders.

The standard history is Ulrich Lins, La danĝera lingvo: the dangerous language.

8. 1954 and 1985: UNESCO

Both resolutions are real, and both say less than is often claimed. At Montevideo, on 10 December 1954, UNESCO:

At Sofia in 1985 it congratulated the movement on its coming centenary, invited member states to mark it and to promote a study programme on the language problem and on Esperanto, and recommended that international non-governmental organisations consider using Esperanto among their members. Neither resolution makes Esperanto a UNESCO language, and neither asks governments to adopt it.

• Unesko notis la rezultojn de Esperanto. - UNESCO noted Esperanto's results.

9. The internet

For a century, the hard part was finding someone to speak to. The internet fixed that.

Vikipedio now has about 390,000 articles.

• Hodiaŭ oni lernas Esperanton rete. - Today people learn Esperanto online.

10. How many speakers?

Nobody counts Esperanto speakers, because no country does. The estimates depend on how fluent a speaker must be.

Treat any single figure with care: the estimates differ by a factor of ten or more, and each depends on what counts as speaking the language. What survives is a small, scattered speech community that has used the language every day for well over a century, with no state behind it.

• Neniu scias, kiom da homoj parolas Esperanton. - Nobody knows how many people speak Esperanto.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Tell the story of 1887 aloud in five sentences, with aperis and eldonis.
2. Read Esperantismo and the internal idea.
3. Put 15 December and 26 July in your calendar.

See also

• Esperantismo and the internal idea - what the Declaration of Boulogne says, and what the movement is for.
• Who decides what is correct Esperanto - the Fundamento, the Ido split and the Akademio.
• La kongreso - the annual gathering that started at Boulogne.
• Esperanto hodiaŭ - where the language lives now.
• Homaranismo - Zamenhof's private creed, and why he kept it apart.
• Esperanto and the religions - the faiths that use the language.
• Festivals and the Esperanto calendar - Zamenhofa Tago and Esperanto Day.
• igi and iĝi - the suffixes behind naskiĝi, fondiĝi and mortigi.