Esperanto - an effort by a Pole ...

Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a from Bialystok, at the time part of the Russian Empire. According to Zamenhof, he created this language to foster harmony between people from different countries. His feelings and the situation in Bialystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:

The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Bialystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies. In such a town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews and so on. This was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, so I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil.

-L. L. Zamenhof, in a letter to N. Borovko, ca. 1895

Today still, this language is thought to be a unique creation from one of the most brilliant minds ever to have lived on Earth. All this, from a Polish man...

Learn Esperanto for Free: language-learning-advisor.com/learn-esperanto-online-free.html

Zamenhof never self-identified as Polish.

Leyzer Leyvi Zamengov? A man whose Jewish father spoke Russian as a first language and whose Jewish mother spoke Yiddish as a first language and who called the area where he lived Litovujo and referred to himself as ruslanda hebreo is to you Polish?

The real pity is that Zamenhof himself wanted people to rise above things as petty as nationalism.

Esperanto went on to be the language of intellectuals, a member of my family met his wife ( croat) at a Esperanto conference in Croatia, they communicated using Esperanto for the first two years until she became familiar with english, they have been happily married for over 40 years. They are both still active in Esperanto circles.

Re: Ludvic Lazarus Zamenhof, as he grew older, he spoke more Polish, and that became the native language of his children

There was not Poland during his life, late 19th century as that geography was divided in three parts. So, it doesn't make sense to say Polish as there was no Poland especially if you think Poland is not an old nation name. If you said Lech, it could make sense as its old name was Lechistan. But, with Lechs becoming a minority gradually even today, it is meaningless to use Lechistan for Poland especially after 18th c.

Zamengov lived in the region that is in Poland now. So, he too can be called Pole in today if you call your grandfathers who lived during his time as Poles. It is not difficult to imagine your grandfathers too were speaking Russian during those periods. There were riots, disorders, etc. Esperanto was a language, an attempt to harmonize several languages in the region, understandable, to do things peacefully, that failed.

So to you Paul von Hindenburg is Polish. Interesting.

When Ludwik Zamenhof died and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw (Okopowa Street),
the rabbi of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw, Samuel Poznański, said:
"There will come the day, when the entire Poland will understand the fame that her great
son had given to his fatherland."


And Poland understood. One of the streets in my hometown of Słupsk is called
Zamenhofa, and there are streets named after him in Warszawa, Poznań, Kraków
and probably most Polish cities.

So, rabbi Poznański was right - Poland remembers her great son.

*Of course, the old rabbi didn't predict Harry - but we have to forgive him for that :)*

Yes, there are quite a few streets in that part of the world with that name. Perhaps you'd care to tell us what the name of that street was when the gentleman in question was alive?


Pity that the 'son' in question didn't consider himself to be Polish or refer to himself as Polish or have any Polish ancestors. Nevermind.

Who cares? Now it's called Zamenhofa street - Poland remembers her great son.


LOL You're ircorrigible.

Oh, well - anyway. Of course you're right - Zamenhof wasn't Polish, old rabbi Poznański
was an idiot and probably drank too much kosher vodka before the ceremony and was
talking nonsense :) Very well, Harry, very well. Take it easy.

I just like the way that when Poland had to suddenly rename a whole lot of streets, they managed to name so many after a man who didn't refer to himself as being Polish, didn't refer to where he lived as Poland, spoke Polish as a third language and had no Polish ancestors!


Let's ignore that fact that you haven't actually provided any source for your alleged quote, Poznanski was welcome to say whatever he wanted: none of it changes the fact that Zamenhof did not consider himself to be Polish.

Zamenhof and his wife Klara raised three children, a son, Adam, and two daughters, Sofia and Lidia. All three of his children were murdered in the Holocaust.

According to information I have read - Citizenship Russian Empire, Ethnicity Jewish and Nationality Polish.

who cares what nationality was Zamenhof. It is about the language Esperanto not him. I love Esperanto and the great idea behind it!

Oh, by all means - here's the source...

pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwik_Zamenhof


...that crazy old Rabbi - what was he thinking? :)



He might not have Polish ancestors, spoke Polish as a third language and didn't even realize
his Polishness, but deep inside he was Polish through and through. One would think that you
live here long enough to know that being Polish is not about genes, nationality or a state
you live in, but unfortunately the spirit of Polishness still evades you.

On one side - I have words of old, wise Rabbi; on the other - the words of Harry from PF.
With all due respect to Harry from PF, I'd rather believe Rabbi Poznański - the Great Rabbi
of Warsaw synagogue at the time Zamenhof, the great son of Poland, died.

Those would be his descendants.


Based on what? He referred to himself as a Russian Jew who live in Lithuania! His mother was a Lithuanian Jew and his father was a Russian or Belorussian Jew (depending on who you believe).

Don't worry harry, Torq is just angry becuase Pope John Paul II wasn't Polish either, because:

- He moved to another country.
- Changed his name to fit in.
- And none of his body was buried in Poland.

He became a true Vaticaner (Vaticanian ?:)

*Ducks and runs as fast as the wind*

*doing his best Harry impersonation*

Well, let's forget for a moment that you didn't actually provide any links that would prove his
alleged Polishness. Do you really mean that Ioannes Paulus II, a perfect citizen of Vatican,
who wrote most of his works in Latin, spoke many languages (Polish being only one of them)
was Polish? That's ridiculous.

I think it is wonderful that a man dreamed of bringing people together through a common language but I think he would be disappointed to see so few Esperanto speakers after such a long time. Estimates of the number of speakers are said by some to be as much as two million and others say as little as 10,000 but most do not accept either figure and the numbers are more likely between 50,000 and half a million. That is a lot for an artificial language but not enough to bring people together in any major way. It seems language thrives because of emotion and practical market forces rather than because of rational thinking.

Here is the source I found the info on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._L._Zamenhof

There is also a Roosvelt street in the place where I live ;D

Karol Józef Wojtyła had a Polish name, a Polish mother, a Polish father, was born in what was then Poland, spoke Polish as a first language, referred to the place where he was from as 'Poland' and self-identified as a Pole. Therefore, depsite his taking a non-Polish name, deciding to leave Poland and not being buried in Poland, he is at the very least partly Polish.

Zamengov had a Russian (possibly Belarussian) father, a Lithuanian mother, was born in Russia, referred to the place that he was from as Lithuania, didn't have a Polish name, spoke Polish as a third language and self-identified as a Russian Jew. How does that make him even partly Polish?!

From what I can see, the sole claim for Zamengov being Polish is that he was born in what is now Poland and, despite them not being ethnically Polish, his parents were born in what was at the time claimed by Poles as Poland. This is interesting: the bastard who oversaw the destruction of Warsaw was born in what is now Poland to a father from a family of Polish noblemen and a mother named Elżbieta Ewelina Szymańska. OK, he didn't self-identify as a Pole (like Zamengov) and he didn't die with a Polish name (like Zamengov) and he didn't visit Poland much during the last 30 years of his life but if Zamengov is Polish, Erich von Zelewski must certainly be Polish too. So a Pole is to blame for the destruction of Warsaw. Or at least he would be if we used such ridiculous ways of assessing nationality!


A source which anybody can edit. And coincidentally the same source which doesn't describe a man born French to French parents who lived almost all of his adult life in France as "French-Polish" but does describes a man born in Poland to Polish parents and who self-identified as a Pole (before and after WWII) and fought in the Polish army as "Belarussian". Reliable source is it?

Oh yeah, just like the Americans - nobody calls Americans nationalist, even though they had their own problems. I heard that Jews in America had problems getting certain jobs till well in the 60s, and Blacks still have problems, not to mention Puertoricans.

So we had problems too - big deal.

Who he was then? Was he Belarussian [a Belorussian father]? Was he Lithuanian [a Lithuanian mother]? Was he Russian [a Russian Jew as he identified himself]?

In a way Zamenhof can be compared to Adam Mickiewicz. The latter described himself as Lithuanian, was born in Russia [since he was born in 1798 in Zaosie or Nowogródek which were Russian since 1795, but now are in Belorus] and died in Constantinople.

The concept of Polishness in the 18th century and then into the 19th century was quite different from what it is now. It is somewhat similar to the concept of "Britishness" of today. At the end of the existence of Poland as a soveregn state, the adjective 'Polish' referred to the territory of Poland as it was then, that is to a state which included ethnic Poland, ethnic Lithuania, half of ethnic Latvia, almost the whole of ethnic Belorus and half of ethnic Ukraine. Since formally Poland was a federal state until 1791, the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were reffered to as 'Litwini' [Lithuanians] irrecpective of their ethnicity, wheras the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland, that is mostly the ethnic Poles and the ethnic Ukrainians were commonly referred to as 'Koroniarze' [inhabitants of the Crown as opposed to the inhabitants of the Duchy] since the term 'Polish' had become too much universal.

In other words, the term 'Polish' had evolved over time to the level of resembling somewhat the term 'British'. Someone like Adam Mickiewicz described himself as Lithuanian and Polish, just as someone today may say of himself as Scottish and British. Being Scottish or Irish doesn't exclude being British at the same time [but being Australin or Canadian does, although they speak English as a mother tongue and have the same head of state as the British people]. This natural concept which is quite strange, however, to contemporary Poles, continued into the 19th century and even to the beginning of the 20th century. No wonder then that someone who was born in 1859, had a Belorussian father and a Lithuanian Mother, both of Jewish ethnicity, would have been naturally described as 'Polish' by their compatriots living in the Russian Empire on the territories which were once the integral part of the Rzeczppospolita of Both Nations. In this aspect, the term Polish depicts a certain historical, cultural or - to some extend - 'citizenship' concept and simply cannot be treated in the narrow ethnical or national terms of today. Zamenhof could have not felt Polish in this sense, just as an ethnic Scott will never feel English today, but he would have not objected - in my humble view - to have been called Polish in the broader sense of the word.

I do not believe there is any reliable source, that could solve this discussion. There are a number of books written about Zamenhof, still that is not a source it is only the authors opinion, in the same way that any post written on this forum is only the opinion of the author. It would be interesting to get to the bottom of this issue using "Zamenhof" as a case file.

Who the **** cares? Esperanto is a failed experiment.

LTB you're a cretin, Zamenhof was the son of a Russian and a Jewes, how is he a Pole? He was a russian jew.


Yes it is.

As far as I know, no source has disputed any of the following:
i) his father was a Russian Jew (or possibly a Belarussian Jew);
ii) his father's first language was Russian;
iii) his mother was a Jew who had been born in what is now Poland and into a Lithuanian family;
iv) his third language was Polish;
v) he referred to himself (in writing to others) as being a Russian Jew;
vi) he referred to (in writing to others) the place where he was from as Lithuania.

Sorry but I am struggling to see why Zamenhof is Polish, especially given that Chopin isn't supposed to be French.

AFAIK Polish, unlike Russian, has no way of easily distnguishing between an ethnic Russian (wherever they live) and a citizen of Russia (no matter what ethnicity). Come to think of it, it's hard to make the distinction (succinctly) in English too.

Let's create such a distinction here for Polish with Polak/Polka for the ethnicity and polski/polska for the inhabitant.

Zamenhof was born and lived most of his life in areas that are now Poland an adult he was more fluent in Polish than any other language (his claim). He wasn't a Polak, but you could argue that he was polski.

Capisci?

Clearly a sign of his true Polishness. What a great son of Poland he was!


...and a Pole for the spirit of Polishness present in a person.

Zamenhof - a great Pole, as Rabbi Poznański would agree.

So was Hindenburg: does that make him a Pole?


I'd be surprised if he did claim that he was more fluent in Polish than in a language which he had personally invented.


Well, you could if Poland followed the jus soli principle: sadly Poland doesn't and hasn't since well before the time of Zamenhof's birth (if it ever has at all!).

As Poland was partitioned at the end of 18th century, and divided between 3 countries: Austria, Prussia and Russia, it vanished from the map of Europe. The greatness of the nation, that used to be one of the biggest and powerful countries on the continent, started to weaken before the three acts of partition took place. The first (1772) and second (1793) partition decreased the territory of Poland, while the third one (1795) made the Poles become citizens of foreign countries.

Throughout 123 years the Poles struggled to keep their identity. Their conditions of life and rights differed based on the country they now lived in. In Austria (so called Galicia region) they lived in deep poverty but had more freedom than in Russian part, in which the Poles were not even allowed to speak Polish.

When the World War I broke out, the Poles fought with the hope to gain independence and freedom for their country. The process was long and gradual so the choice of 11th of November was rather symbolic as independence of Poland is closely connected with the end of the World War I. This was the day when Germany capitulated on Western front.

The act that guaranteed forming the country was released in November 1916. The boundaries, however, were still not agreed on. The Independence of Poland was officially announced on the 7th of November 1918. Taking into consideration Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, was born Bialystok, at the time part of the Russian Empire, it is understandable that he did not use Polish as a first language it was banned in his town at the time. The question that comes to my mind if Zamenhof had died after 7th of November 1918 would he have become a citizen of Poland by default or was he Polish after the act of November 1916 before his death.