Proto-Esperanto
Encyclopedia
Proto-Esperanto is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution of L. L. Zamenhof
's language project
, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro
in 1887.
for communication between different nationalities. He originally wanted to revive some form of simplified Latin
or Greek, but as he grew older he came to believe that it would be better to create a new language for his purpose. During his teenage years he worked on a language project until he thought it ready for public demonstration. On December 17, 1878 (about one year before the first publication of Volapük), Zamenhof celebrated his birthday and the birth of the language with some friends, who liked the project. Zamenhof himself called his language Lingwe Uniwersala ("world language").
W is used for v. Otherwise, all modern Esperanto letters are attested apart from ĉ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ. Known verb forms are present -à (commonly reported as -á), imperative -ó, infinitive -are. Nouns were marked by -e in the singular and -es in the plural; the article was singular la and plural las. It appears that there was no accusative case, and that stress was as in modern Esperanto, except when marked, as in -à and -ó.
Only four lines of the Lingwe uniwersala stage of the language from 1878 remain, from an early song
that Zamenhof composed:
In modern Esperanto, this would be,
Jam temp' está remains an idiom in modern Esperanto, an allusion to this song.
, burned the work. Zamenhof did not discover this until he returned from university in 1881, at which point he restarted his project. A sample from this second phase of the language is this extract of a letter from 1881:
Modern: Mia plej kara amiko, neniam mia senkulpa plumo fariĝus tirano por ci. Mi povas de cent ciaj leteroj konkludi, kiel sciigoj de tiu-ĉi speco devas vundi cian fratan koron; mi kvazaŭ vidas cin jam ... would my innocent pen become a tyrant for you. From a hundred of your letters I can conclude that announcements of this kind must wound your brotherly heart; ...)
By this time the letter v had replaced w for the [v] sound; verbal inflection for person and number had been dropped; the nominal plural was -oj in place of -es (as well as adjectival -a and adverbial -e); and the noun cases were down to the current two (though a genitive -es survives today in the correlatives). The accusative case suffix was -l, but in many cases was only used on pronouns:
Beside the stronger Slavic flavor of the orthography (ć, dź, h́, ś, ź for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ) compared to the modern language, the imperfective verb forms (present and imperfect) still had final stress:
The pronouns ended in a nominal o (or adjectival a for possessives: mo "I", ma "my"), but there were other differences as well, including a conflation of 'he' and 'it':
In addition, there was indefinite o 'one'.
The correlatives were similarly close, though it is not clear if there was a distinction between indefinite and relative foms (modern i- and ki-; these may have corresponded to kv- and k-) and no possessive forms are known:
The last row was evidently pronounced as fj-.
Esperanto at this stage had a consonantal ablaut in verbs, with a voiceless consonant for at attempt at something, and a voiced consonant for success. For example, aŭti to listen (for), aŭdi to hear; trofi to look for, trovi to find; prufi to argue (a point), pruvi to prove. Traces of this remain in a few pairs of words such as pesi 'to weigh (an item)' and pezi 'to weigh (have weight)' (cf. their derivatives pesilo 'scales' & pezilo 'a weight').
es to avoid overt appearances of nationalism, and the new bases of the letters ĵ, ĝ (for former ź, dź) helped preserve the appearance of Romance and Germanic vocabulary.
In 1887 Zamenhof finalized his tinkering with the publication of the Unua Libro
("First Book"), which contained the Esperanto
language as we know it today. In a letter to Nikolai Borovko he later wrote,
, in his book Lingvo kaj Vivo ("Language and Life"), analyzed the evolution of the language through manuscripts from 1881, 1882, and 1885.
L. L. Zamenhof
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...
's language project
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, prior to the publication of his Unua Libro
Unua Libro
The Unua Libro was the first publication to describe the international language Esperanto . It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887 in Warsaw, by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Over the next few years editions were published in Russian, Hebrew, Polish, French, German,...
in 1887.
The Lingwe uniwersala of 1878
As a child, Zamenhof had the idea to introduce an international auxiliary languageInternational auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
for communication between different nationalities. He originally wanted to revive some form of simplified Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
or Greek, but as he grew older he came to believe that it would be better to create a new language for his purpose. During his teenage years he worked on a language project until he thought it ready for public demonstration. On December 17, 1878 (about one year before the first publication of Volapük), Zamenhof celebrated his birthday and the birth of the language with some friends, who liked the project. Zamenhof himself called his language Lingwe Uniwersala ("world language").
W is used for v. Otherwise, all modern Esperanto letters are attested apart from ĉ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ. Known verb forms are present -à (commonly reported as -á), imperative -ó, infinitive -are. Nouns were marked by -e in the singular and -es in the plural; the article was singular la and plural las. It appears that there was no accusative case, and that stress was as in modern Esperanto, except when marked, as in -à and -ó.
Only four lines of the Lingwe uniwersala stage of the language from 1878 remain, from an early song
Song
In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...
that Zamenhof composed:
| Malamikete de las nacjes, | Enmity of nations, | ||
| Kadó, kadó, jam temp' està; | Fall, Fall, it is time!; | ||
| La tot' homoze in familje | All humanity in a family | ||
| Konunigare so debà. | Must unite. |
In modern Esperanto, this would be,
- Malamikeco de la nacioj,
- Falu, falu, jam temp' estas;
- La tuta homaro en familion
- Unuiĝi [= kununuigi sin] devas.
Jam temp' está remains an idiom in modern Esperanto, an allusion to this song.
The Lingvo universala of 1881
While at university, Zamenhof handed his work over to his father, Mordechai, for safe-keeping until he had completed his medical studies. His father, not understanding the ideas of his son and perhaps anticipating problems from the Tsarist policeOkhranka
The Department for Protecting the Public Security and Order , usually called "guard department" and commonly abbreviated in modern sources as Okhrana or Okhranka in Russia, was a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the police department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in...
, burned the work. Zamenhof did not discover this until he returned from university in 1881, at which point he restarted his project. A sample from this second phase of the language is this extract of a letter from 1881:
- Ma plej kara [ami] miko, kvan ma plekulpa plumo faktidźas tiranno pu to. Mo poté de cen taj brivoj kluri, ke sciigoj de [tuc fuc] fu-ći specco debé[j] blessi tal fradral kordol; mo vel vidé tol jam ...
Modern: Mia plej kara amiko, neniam mia senkulpa plumo fariĝus tirano por ci. Mi povas de cent ciaj leteroj konkludi, kiel sciigoj de tiu-ĉi speco devas vundi cian fratan koron; mi kvazaŭ vidas cin jam ... would my innocent pen become a tyrant for you. From a hundred of your letters I can conclude that announcements of this kind must wound your brotherly heart; ...)
By this time the letter v had replaced w for the [v] sound; verbal inflection for person and number had been dropped; the nominal plural was -oj in place of -es (as well as adjectival -a and adverbial -e); and the noun cases were down to the current two (though a genitive -es survives today in the correlatives). The accusative case suffix was -l, but in many cases was only used on pronouns:
- Ful-ći rudźo e ful-ći fiaro debá kini la princaŭ (Tiun-ĉi rozon kaj tiun-ĉi najtingalon devadis ricevi la princino) 'The princess needed to receive this rose and this nightingale'.
Beside the stronger Slavic flavor of the orthography (ć, dź, h́, ś, ź for ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ) compared to the modern language, the imperfective verb forms (present and imperfect) still had final stress:
- present tense -è, imperfect -à, preteritePreteriteThe preterite is the grammatical tense expressing actions that took place or were completed in the past...
-u, future -uj, conditional -as, jussive -ó, and infinitive -i.
The pronouns ended in a nominal o (or adjectival a for possessives: mo "I", ma "my"), but there were other differences as well, including a conflation of 'he' and 'it':
| 1881 pronouns | singular | plural |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | mo | no |
| 2nd person | to | vo |
| 3rd masc./neut. | ro | po |
| 3rd feminine | śo | |
| 3rd reflexive | so | |
In addition, there was indefinite o 'one'.
The correlatives were similarly close, though it is not clear if there was a distinction between indefinite and relative foms (modern i- and ki-; these may have corresponded to kv- and k-) and no possessive forms are known:
| ti- | fo | fu | fa | fi | fej | fe | fan | |
| ki- / i- | kvo, ko |
kvu, ku |
kva |
kve, ke |
kvan, kan |
kom |
||
| ĉi- | ćio | ćiu | ćii | ćian | ||||
| neni- | fio | fiu | fian |
The last row was evidently pronounced as fj-.
Esperanto at this stage had a consonantal ablaut in verbs, with a voiceless consonant for at attempt at something, and a voiced consonant for success. For example, aŭti to listen (for), aŭdi to hear; trofi to look for, trovi to find; prufi to argue (a point), pruvi to prove. Traces of this remain in a few pairs of words such as pesi 'to weigh (an item)' and pezi 'to weigh (have weight)' (cf. their derivatives pesilo 'scales' & pezilo 'a weight').
Transition to the modern Esperanto of 1887
Zamenhof refined his ideas for the language for the next several years. Most of his refinements came through translation of literature and poetry in other languages. The final stress in the verb conjugations was rejected in favour of always stressing the second-last vowel, and the old plural -s on nouns became a marker of finite tenses on verbs, with an imperfect -es remaining until just before publication. The Slavic-style acute diacritics became circumflexCircumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
es to avoid overt appearances of nationalism, and the new bases of the letters ĵ, ĝ (for former ź, dź) helped preserve the appearance of Romance and Germanic vocabulary.
In 1887 Zamenhof finalized his tinkering with the publication of the Unua Libro
Unua Libro
The Unua Libro was the first publication to describe the international language Esperanto . It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887 in Warsaw, by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Over the next few years editions were published in Russian, Hebrew, Polish, French, German,...
("First Book"), which contained the Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
language as we know it today. In a letter to Nikolai Borovko he later wrote,
Additional reading
Gaston WaringhienGaston Waringhien
Gaston Waringhein was a French linguist, lexicographer, and Esperantist. He wrote poems as well as essays and books on linguistics...
, in his book Lingvo kaj Vivo ("Language and Life"), analyzed the evolution of the language through manuscripts from 1881, 1882, and 1885.
External links
- Christer Kiselman, 2010. 'Variantoj de esperanto iniciatitaj de Zamenhof'. In Esperanto: komenco, aktualo kaj estonteco, UEA. Compares the variants of 1878, 1881, 1887, 1894, and 1906.