Portal:Esperanto/Article of the month/May 2008

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Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was an ophthalmologist and philologist who was the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken planned language. His native languages were Russian and Yiddish, but he also spoke Polish and German fluently. Later he learned French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and English. He also was interested in Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian.

Zamenhof was born in Białystok, Poland, a town then part of the Russian Empire, to a Russian father and Jewish mother. The town's population was made up of three major ethnic groups: Poles, Belarusians, and Yiddish-speaking Jews. Zamenhof was saddened and frustrated by the many quarrels between these groups. He supposed that the main reason for the hate and prejudice lay in mutual misunderstanding, caused by the lack of one common language that would play the role of a neutral communication tool between people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Find out more...