L.L. Zamenhof

While in junior high school, an amateur linguist and future oculist gave a youthful try at improving the odds for peace and understanding.

Growing up, Zamenhof witnessed violence, which he associated with the misunderstanding and lack of communication between the participants. His society was multilingual, but each native language was deemed superior by its native speakers. Were Zamenhof alive today, he might ask himself...

Could a common language help as a solution to conflict?

Could the main existing languages do the trick, or are they too complicated, putting native speakers at advantage, and carrying built-in nationalism that brings friction to the picture?

What of the great languages of the past? Could they be any better?

What of a constructed language, with few rules, no exceptions, inviting all?

Is persecution a measure of success? If so, could a language whose proponents at one time or another were persecuted in Tsarist Russia, the Soviet Union, France, Hitler's Germany, prewar and wartime Japan, Communist China, Romania, Iraq, Franco's Spain, and Salazar's Portugal be considered successful?

Is popularity a measure of success? If so, are 2 million speakers at a level of professional proficiency enough?

Zamenhof's creation, Esperanto is a carefully planned language, with just a few rules, and a 100-year track record that keeps on going in the form of original and translated literature and songs, pen-pals on-line and on paper, and engaging activities the world over.

Some years ago, the principles of Democracy, Global Education, Effective Education, Multilingualism, Language Rights, Language Diversity, and Human Emancipation were explicitly associated with the Esperanto language, in the Prague Manifesto. Zamenhof's ideas, somehow surviving, and struggling to help this crazy world.

times/places

Born 1859, Bjelostoko.
Died 1917, Varsovio.

Zamenhof. Lingvo Internacia (1887); Fundamento de Esperanto (1902).
Biographies: D-ro Edmond Privat: Vivo de Zamenhof (1923); Marjorie Boulton: Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto (1960).
Esperanto League of North America - ELNA.
Universala Esperanto-Asocio - UEA.
A page critical of Esperanto, from Justin B. Rye.

L.L. Zamenhof

times/places

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