Esperanto was devised in the 1880s by Dr. Ludwig Lazar Zamenhof (1859-1917) who was a Jew, born in Poland. Disheartened by the strong anti-Semitic feelings of the time, Zamenhof formulated Esperanto as a neutral international second language. He thought this would pave way for the liberation of Jews from the hands of racism.
Commenting on the formation of a separate Jewish state out of erstwhile Palestine, he said,
"Jews will be living there as if on a volcano… conflicts and persecutions there will not stop until the Jews are expelled from there once again".
In his book Dr Esperanto, Zamenhof defines a simple grammar and a vocabulary of 900 words. He derived these words from Romanesque, Germanic and Slavic languages.
To create new words, you an add appropriate suffixes and prefixes.
Optimists say Esperanto will become the new international language sometime in the future. We'll have to wait and see.
And Esperanto means 'Hopeful'.
2 comments:
I am convinced Esperanto has a bright future.
Your readers may be interested in the following videohttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Dankon, Brian. I've started learning basic Esperanto. Hope we can soon communicate in the unique language.
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