THE BIRTH OF ESPERANTO.
Freely translated from an Esperanto version of a Russian letter written by Dr Zamenhof, by John Ellis.
"This is an appropriate place for me to say a few words about the material for the dictionary. Much earlier, when I had examined and rejected every non-essential from the grammar, I had desired to exercise the principles of economy in respect of the word-material also. Thinking that it was a matter of indifference what form any particular word took, so long as it was agreed that it should express a given idea, I simply invented words, taking care only that they should be as short as possible, and did not contain an unnecessary number of letters. Instead of using "interparoli" (to converse), a word of eleven letters, why should we not express the idea just as well by some word of two letters, say, "pa"? So I simply wrote the shortest and most easily pronounced mathematical series of conjoined letters, to each factor of which series I gave a certain meaning (e.g., a, ab, ac, ad, ba, ca, da ...; e, eb, ec ...; be, ce ...; aba, aca ... etc.).
"But I immediately rejected this notion, for my own personal experiments proved that these invented words were very difficult to learn, and even more so to remember. I came to the conclusion that the material for the dictionary must be Romance-Teutonic, altered only so far as regularity and other important requirements of language demanded. Standing upon this ground, I soon observed that the present languages possessed an immense supply of words already international, with which all the nations had a prior acquaintance, and which formed a veritable treasure house for the future international language—and, of course, I utilised this treasure.
"In 1878 the language was more or less ready, although there was a good deal of difference between my lingwe uniwersala of that date and the present Esperanto. I told my fellow-students about it—I was then in the 8th Class of the gymnasium—and the greater part of them were attracted by the idea, and struck by the unusual easiness of the language, began to study it. On the 5th of December, 1878, we united to celebrate the birth of my language by a solemn festival. During the feast there were speeches in the new language, and we enthusiastically sang a hymn the commencing words of which were as follows:—
"Malamikete de las nacjes
Kadó, kadó, jam temp’ está!
La tot’ homoze in familje
Konunigare so debá."
which being interpreted into English, 'May the enmity of nations fall away, fall away, for the hour is come! All mankind must become as one family.’
"On the table, in addition to the grammar and dictionary, lay some translations in the new language.
"And thus the first stage of my language came to an end.
"I was then still too young for my work to appear before the public, and I decided to wait five or six years longer, and during that time to carefully test my language and to work it out fully and practically. Half a year after the feast of December 5th, 1878, we finished our course at the gymnasium and separated. The future apostles of the new language made some attempts to discuss 'the new language,’ but, meeting with the ridicule of their elders, forthwith renounced it, and I remained in a glorious minority of one. Foreseeing nothing but scoffing and persecution, I decided to hide my work from the eyes of all.