Esperanto – a Language Created in Lithuania Which Will Put an End To Miscommunication

According to various estimates, there are currently between 3.000 and 6.000 languages in the world. Different languages help to define the nations or ethnic communities that speak them. They also cause miscommunications and conflicts. But what if there was a language that everyone knew and understood? Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof believed that, in that case, the world would be at peace. This idea inspired him to create an artificial, or synthetic, language that could easily be learned by everyone. This is how Esperanto was created, and the first textbook of this language was written in Lithuania.

Zamenhof was born in 1859 in Białystok (now Poland) to a family of Lithuanian Jews, or Litvaks. While studying at the Warsaw Philological Gymnasium, the fifteen-year-old came up with the idea of one language for the whole world. After graduating in medical studies, Zamenhof came to Veisiejai in Lithuania in 1885. He lived here for half a year and completed the first textbook of Esperanto called Unua Libro (‘First Book’). In 1887, he married Klara Zilbernik, the daughter of a businessman from Kaunas. She used her dowry, the wedding gift from her father, to publish an Esperanto textbook written by her husband.

Esperanto soon became popular. The world's first Esperanto organisation was established in Germany in 1888, and the monthly Esperanto publication La Esperantisto was launched after. Zamenhof realized that learning a language requires texts written in that language and so he published a collection of works translated into Esperanto in 1903. It also included two Lithuanian folk songs translated into Esperanto by the Lithuanian Aleksandras Dambrauskas-Adomas Jakštas and one of his own poems.

Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn. It is based on different European languages (Spanish, Italian, French, etc.): Zamenhof searched the languages for words with similar meanings and sound, and then created a new, synthetic, easily recognisable word. For example, the Esperanto word nova [Eng. new] is created from the Latin novus, Italian nuovo, French nouveau, Spanish nuevo, English new, German neues, Polish nowy. The rules of pronunciation are very simple: all words are pronounced as they are written and the emphasis is always on the penultimate syllable. The grammar is also straightforward. For example, nouns end in a vowel o and adjectives end in a. Unlike Lithuanian, which has seven declensions, Esperanto has only two: the nominative (answers the question ‘who?’) and the accusative (answers the question ‘what?’). All verbs have the same suffix.

Dambrauskas was the most active supporter of Esperanto in Lithuania. He wrote the first textbook in Esperanto in Lithuanian in 1890 and founded the Vilnius Esperanto Society in 1909. Unfortunately, the prosperity of Esperanto was halted by the world wars. Esperantists were persecuted by both the Nazis and the Soviets. The former was due to the fact that Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, was Jewish, and the latter to the fact that Esperanto, which fostered peace and communication with the world, contradicted the communist ideology. The Lithuanian Esperanto Association was re-established in 1988. Streets in Veisiejai, Kaunas and Vilnius have been named after Zamenhof.

Currently, one million to two million people in the world speak Esperanto. It is the most popular artificial language. It is spoken at international congresses, taught at schools, and used for writing and translating texts of various genres.