Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof
| L. L. Zamenhof | |
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| Born |
Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof 15 December 1859 Białystok, Russian Empire (now Poland) |
| Died | 14 April 1917 (aged 57) Warsaw, Poland |
| Nationality | Polish-Jewish |
| Known for | Creating Esperanto |
| Spouse(s) | Klara Zamenhof |
| Children | Adam, Sofia and Lidia |
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Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (Polish: Ludwik Łazarz Zamenhof, 15 December [O.S. 3 December] 1859–14 April [O.S. 1 April] 1917), usually credited as L. L. Zamenhof, was a Polish-Jewishmedical doctor, inventor, and writer. He is most widely known for creating Esperanto, the most successful constructed language in the world. He grew up fascinated by the idea of a world without war and believed that this could happen with the help of a new international auxiliary language, which he first developed in 1873 while still in school.
Zamenhof was born on 15 December (3 December OS) 1859 in the town of Białystok, Poland, at that time in the former Russian Empire as a result of the 18th century partitioning of Poland. His parents were of Polish-Lithuanian Jewish descent that inhabited the central part of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He appears to have been natively bilingual in Yiddish and Russian (Polish language was restricted and forbidden in public conversations by the Tsarist authorities), presumably the Belarusian language of his home town, though it may have been only his father who spoke Russian with him at home. From his father, a teacher of German and French, he learned those languages and Hebrew as well. Despite this he spoke Polish, one of the major languages of Białystok alongside Yiddish, Belarusian, and German, and it was Polish that was to become the native language of his children after settling in the Kingdom of Poland. In school he studied the classical languages: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. He later learned some English, though in his own words not very well, had an interest in Lithuanian and Italian, and learned Volapük when it came out in 1880, though by that point his international language project was already well developed.
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