Esperanto
- Date
- 1887 · confidence high
- Place
- Warsaw, Masovia, Poland
- Credited to
- L. L. Zamenhof
- Field
- Communication
What it is
An international auxiliary language presented by a Jewish ophthalmologist in Warsaw in the Unua Libro, with a sixteen-rule grammar and roots drawn from European languages. It is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world.
The book appeared in Russian under the pseudonym 'Doktoro Esperanto' in July 1887; Zamenhof was born in Białystok, then in the Russian Empire. Schleyer's Volapük (1879) was its immediate predecessor as an auxiliary language.
What it led to
- the Esperanto movement and its first World Congress at Boulogne-sur-Mer (1905)
- original literature and translations in Esperanto
- a model for other auxiliary languages such as Ido
Built on
- Volapük (1879)