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IV. The Origins of Esperanto 

Zamenhof had been busy devising an international language ever since his years as a 

Gymnasium student. When later asked about the development of Esperanto, he 

explained the principles on which his language planning was based (Mi estas Homo 33-

38). He had realized early on that in order to be international a language would have to 

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be neutral, belonging to no nation or ethnic group that might be privileged by its use 

over others who would have to learn and use it as a foreign language. In this respect, the 

ideal neutral solution would be an ancient language, but he thought Latin and Greek to 

be too complex for common use. 

Accordingly, he began to reflect on a planned language solution. The creation of a 

language with a great number of grammatical rules and ponderous dictionaries seemed 

too huge a task for one man, however. Moreover, it was hardly possible to mould an 

easy-to-learn grammar from those of the Russian, German, French, Polish, Hebrew, 

Latin, and Greek languages that he spoke from childhood or had learned later. 

In his fifth year as a Gymnasium student, Zamenhof was introduced to English and 

was surprised to find that its grammar was much simpler than those of Latin and Greek. 

As a result, he began to exclude from his language project superfluous and little-used 

forms, irregular verbs and other exceptions. In this way, he quickly arrived at a grammar 

that contained only the most essential rules and could be outlined in only a few pages. 

Having solved the problem of an overly complex grammar, Zamenhof was left with 

the difficulty of learning a vast vocabulary. Initially, he tried to solve the problem by 

using a series of logically constructed words along the lines of a, ab, ac, ad... ba, ca, 

da... e, eb, ec...be, ce, de... aba, aca, ada..., etc in which each element had a specific 

meaning. His attempts to use such forms, inspired by the philosophical languages 

invented in the 17

th

 century, showed him that, despite their rigid logic, they were 

difficult to learn and almost impossible to memorize. He therefore abandoned logical 

classification and turned to the vocabularies of the Romance and Germanic languages, 

selecting especially words that were recognizable internationally. The difficulty with this 

solution, however, was that the new language's vocabulary would be just as huge as 

those of the languages it was taken from, since every word in the national language 

would require an equivalent in the new language. 

His solution was to adopt a system of word formation using affixes. Thanks to this 

system, it was possible to learn only the basic root-word, to which the addition of 

invariable suffixes and/or prefixes would create words in the same semantic field 

without the necessity to learn each one separately. For example, the root-word vend 

(=related to selling) allows the formation of words like vendi (to sell), vendejo (store, 

shop), vendisto (salesperson, salesman), vendistino (salesperson, saleslady), vendaĵo 

(item for sale), etc. 

When he began his last year (the eighth) at the Gymnasium, he distributed his 

Lingwe Uniwersala, an early version of Esperanto, among his classmates. On the 5

th

 of 

December 1878 in the Zamenhof family home, he celebrated with several classmates 

"the canonization of the language" On the festive table lay the new language's grammar 

and dictionary along with several translations into the Lingwe Uniwersala. 

Unfortunately, none of these items has survived. The young men reportedly conversed in 

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the new language and enthusiastically sang the anthem: 

Malamikete de las nacjes 

Kadó, kadó, jam temp' está! 

La tot' homoze in familje 

Konunigare so debá. 

  (Hostile barriers between peoples, fall, fall, it is time! The whole of  

 

 

humanity must come together as one family.) 

Although only the name "Lingwe Uniwersala" and the above four-line anthem have 

survived from this early project, it is clear that it was based on the same three main 

principles as present-day Esperanto: an international vocabulary, a regular grammar and 

word formation using affixes. 

A few months later, the devotees of Lingwe Uniwersala graduated from the 

Gymnasium and went their separate ways. Zamenhof's language project was suspended 

for a short time while he studied for his final exams and then because of his move to 

Moscow. Once settled in Moscow, however, he continued work on his project and 

sometimes made serious changes to the language. Each time he made a significant 

change, he produced original texts and translations in order to try out all aspects of his 

language. 

Of these interim projects, only a few texts have survived. These are contained in 

three notebooks Zamenhof used for his Lingvo universala during the summer vacations 

of 1881 and 1882. 

It is interesting to note that, for today's Esperantists, the language of the notebooks 

from 1881 and 1882 is more difficult to understand than the anthem from 1878, even 

though the notebooks are closer in time to the final version of Esperanto. The main 

reason for this is Zamenhof's use in the notebooks of a great number of one-syllable 

roots whose origin is barely recognizable. These short words and one-syllable roots for 

the most frequent words resulted from the influence on Zamenhof's new language of the 

newly popular international language project, Volapük. However, Volapük's influence on 

Zamenhof was temporary.

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He continued working on his language, perfecting it and rejecting whatever might be 

superfluous to its development. Most importantly, he paid less and less attention to 

inventing new details, and more and more to making it harmonious, investing the 

language as a whole with a definable spirit. That was the effect of the five years he spent 

polishing the language.