A Brief History of
The International Language Esperanto

A hundred and twenty years ago, a shy, unassuming but greatly enlighted Lithuanian-Jewish eye doctor by the name of Ludovic L. Zamenhof published a small booklet in Russian introducing his creation of many years labour, entitled: The International Language by Dr. Esperanto. Within a few years the booklet was published in Polish, French, German and English and Dr. Zamenhof's modest linguisitic jewel spread far and wide over the following years throughout the world, culminating in the first International Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France in August 1905. Among the several hundred participants, Dr. Zamenhof was treated with great admiration and respect and this was only increased when, during his closing speech to the congress, he gave notice that he formally gave up all rights to the language; a great believer in the principles of democracy, he believed that the language should evolve through the general consensus of its speakers and proponents, and not at the whim of its inventor. Considering himself only the "originator" (inicianto) of the language, he thereafter chose only to offer opinion and give advice and therefore shared the esteem of expertise with the growing number of talented lexicographers, grammarians and writers who were professionally interested in the language.

What is Esperanto? Though some erroneously would call it an "artificial language", Esperanto, as Dr. Zamenhof's language came to be called, is actually a "planned" language. As someone with high ideals, it was his sincere hope that his language would come to serve mankind as a "bridge language" to enable inter-communication between the numerous peoples of this planet who spoke dissimilar languages.

The language itself is a wonder of simplicity which enables the learner to quickly master it. The following links provide the basic starting blocks to begin learning about and in Esperanto:

• The Boulogne Declaration
  
• Prague Manifesto
• Universala Deklaracio pri Homaj Rajtoj
• Esperantoverkoj

• Easy Introductory On-line Esperanto Course (from the Esperanto in Canada site)
• Gerda malaperis -- Intermediate-level Esperanto Course (.pdf kaj .mpeg files)
• Learn Esperanto via several languages (including Russian, Chinese, and Korean, among many others)
• Download Free Multi-Media Esperanto Course (9.8 MB)
• Free Online & E-mail Esperanto Courses in several languages

• USENET NEWSGROUP -- soc.culture.esperanto
• Hilelista Esperanto-Komunumo
• Le Monde Diplomatique (versio esperantlingva)
• La Ondo de Esperanto
• Libera Folio
• Wikipedia esperantlingva

• Basic Grammar and 1900-Word Esperanto-English Dictionary
• Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (de Bertilo Wennergren)
  
• Tekst-konvertilo de "x-sistemo" al "UTF-8"

• Yury Finkel's Esperanto page
  
• Don Harlow's Esperanto page
  
• Esperanto-language Forums
  

Today, according to the World Almanac, there are over a million speakers of this language throughout the planet. The Universal Esperanto Association, whose office is in the Netherlands, maintains a volunteer network of Delegates in over 70 countries with specialties in tourism, computers, jurisprudence, educational instruction, among many others, in order to promote contact among Esperantists with special interests. The UEA also promotes Esperanto through its consulting relationship with UNESCO and its yearly World Congress, held in a different country every year.

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