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XI. The Movement to Reform Esperanto 

After the Boulogne congress, Zamenhof busied himself with the development of the 

language. In his foreword to the Fundamento, he had promised that he would speak in 

detail about the language at the Boulogne congress, but he reneged on that promise in 

order to avoid conflict at the congress. 

Having postponed resolution of the language questions until one of the future 

congresses, he dealt with them in his correspondence with Javal. He outlined his ideas 

for the development of the language on the 24

th

 of September, 1905, in a lengthy, 28-

page letter. He admitted that the language was not perfect. He felt, however, that the 

flaws were few, correctable and worth correcting because “Esperanto [had] 100–150 

words or forms that were actually bad, and that correcting them would cause each 

Esperantist no more than a few hours' work to learn them once and for all, but would be 

of colossal benefit to Esperanto” (Mi estas Homo, 113). 

He listed the unsuitable items that were to be changed and pointed out that changing 

them would necessitate the introduction of neologisms, new words and forms that would 

not replace the old ones, but would exist alongside them. 

Zamenhof put his project into its final form and sent it to Javal on the 18

th

 of 

January, 1906. Javal was disappointed that he did not propose any change in the 

alphabet. In the future, argued Zamenhof, every printer and telegraph station will have 

the Esperanto letters and, in the meanwhile, “h” can be used after a letter to indicate the 

accent, just as the Germans use “e” to replace the umlaut. The actual changes he 

proposed were few: four grammatical changes and a few dozen words and affixes to 

replace some that were too long or were subject to misinterpretation. 

Javal authored a report to the Language Committee on replacing the accented letters 

with non-accented ones in telegrams. He also persuaded the parliamentarian Lucien 

Cornet to sponsor a bill introducing Esperanto into the schools of France as an elective 

subject. The bill was co-sponsored by twelve other parliamentarians and was put to a 

vote on the 3

rd

 of April, 1906. It was defeated. 

Javal consulted with parliamentarians and with the Committee on Public Education 

and wrote to Zamenhof that they would not accept Esperanto with diacritical marks and 

arbitrary correlative words.

11

 Zamenhof replied that he would give Javal “the full right 

to introduce into Esperanto whatever reforms he found necessary and that [he would] 

publicly sign off on everything”, provided Javal would guarantee the French 

government's acceptance of Esperanto. Javal, of course, could not give that guarantee. 

The second Universal Congress of Esperanto took place in Geneva between the 27

th

 

of August and the 5

th

 of September, 1906 and passed almost without incident. The 

question of language reform was not dealt with in the plenary sessions and Javal's report 

was not even discussed. 

---

27 

 

In Geneva, Javal convinced Zamenhof to study the question of reforms in a practical 

way and promised him 250,000 francs if he would make the changes “he thought 

necessary to facilitate learning the language, not only for our contemporaries, but also 

for future generations”. The Belgian officer Charles Lemaire, founder of Belga Sonorilo 

(Belgian Bell) and president of the Royal Belgian Esperantist League provided part of 

the money. 

Between the 17

th

 and the 23

rd

 of October, 1906, a secret conference took place in 

Paris, involving Zamenhof, Lemaire, Javal, and two interlinguists, Miguel de Torro and 

André Blondel. They all wanted reforms to one extent or another, but they could not 

agree on how to make them, because Zamenhof, unlike the others, treated Esperanto, not 

as an easily changeable object, but as a living language. 

Zamenhof refused the money offered, even though, at four percent interest, it would 

have allowed him to abandon his medical practice and live free of financial difficulties 

with his family. He did agree, though, that Javal and Lemaire could use a private 

replacement spelling and promised that he would not raise a protest if Javal published 

his effort. Michaux, Émile Gasse and Gaston Moch aligned themselves with the reform 

and Lemaire began using the proposed reforms in Belga Sonorilo. 

Meanwhile, professor Louis Couturat, the initiator of the Delegation for the 

Acceptance of an International Auxiliary Language, began corresponding with 

Zamenhof and various reform-minded Esperantists. The Delegation had been proposed 

during the Paris Exhibition in 1900 and was set up on January 17

th

 , 1901 to study the 

problem of international communication and to select the most suitable international 

language. The selection was to be made by the International Association of Academies 

and, if that association refused, by the Committee of the Delegation. 

On the 1

st

 of November, 1906, Couturat circulated his project Esperanto Without