"Zamenhof, who was Jewish, was born in Bialystok on December 15, 1859. At the time, the city was part of the Tsarist Russian empire, and the hub of an ethnically-diverse region inhabited by speakers of Polish, Yiddish, Belarussian and Russian. Zamenhof dreamed of a day when people would be able to communicate in a universal language free of political connotations and misunderstandings, fostering world peace."Source: EJP and AFP
WARSAW (AFP)---The Polish home city of the 19th century founder of Esperanto is teaching the artificial language with panels in local buses to honour the 150th anniversary of his birth. Bialystok council announced it was paying homage to Ludwik Zamenhof by replacing on-board advertising with teach-yourself Esperanto panels providing vocabulary and basic phrases, Poland's PAP news agency reported.
The move in the northeastern city is part of preparations for an anniversary congress of Esperanto-speakers from around the globe, due to take place from July 25 to August 1.
Zamenhof, who was Jewish, was born in Bialystok on December 15, 1859. At the time, the city was part of the Tsarist Russian empire, and the hub of an ethnically-diverse region inhabited by speakers of Polish, Yiddish, Belarussian and Russian. Zamenhof dreamed of a day when people would be able to communicate in a universal language free of political connotations and misunderstandings, fostering world peace.
In his spare time, the ophthalmologist Zamenhof devised the easy-to-learn tongue in 1887 from elements of Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages and a slice of Latin and Greek grammar.
The language's name is derived from his writer's pseudonym Esperanto, a reference to the word "hope".
Zamenhof died in 1917 and was buried in Warsaw's Jewish cemetery.
Around two million people worldwide are estimated to speak Esperanto.
2 comments:
It's unfortunate that only a few people know that Esperanto has become a living language.
During a short period of 121 years Esperanto is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide, according to the CIA World factbook. It is the 17th most used language in Wikipedia, and in use by Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Native Esperanto speakers,(people who have used the language from birth), include George Soros, World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to NATO and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. According to the CIA Factbook the language is within the top 100 languages, out of all languages, worldwide.
Confirmation of this can be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670 A glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Saluton al vi. Dankon pro la artikolo. Mi estas admiranto de Dr Zamenhof kaj longtempa uzanto de la internacia lingvo Esperanto!
E. James Lieberman
Maryland, USA
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