Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof: 150 years from his birth

Today, the 15th December of 2009, we celebrate 150 years since the birth of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, the inventor of the artificial language cold Esperanto. According to the Romanian Explanatory Dictionary since 1998, Esperanto is “an artificial language, formed by elements of vocabulary and grammar barrowed from the most popular European languages, created with the purpose of becoming an international language. – From fr. Espèranto”.



The language Esperanto was developed between the years 1872 – 1887, by the polish oculist Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, joining to the category of the other auxiliary international languages created already. The name of the language was given by the nickname of its creator, meaning “the one who hopes”.


The language contains a set of rules, considered to be easy to be retained, and that were taken over from different languages, not just from the European languages, but from the entire world. The rules are chosen so that they would be easy to retain and would offer to the language the same expressivity as a living language, called also ethnic language.


Zamenhof was 19 when he elaborated his first project, about the creation of a universal language, and when he was 28, in 1887, he published his first paper work, under the nickname of Doktor Esperanto.