UNESCO: the hundredth anniversary of the death of Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto

Dear Editor, An important commemoration will occur 14 April under the auspices of UNESCO: the hundredth anniversary of the death of Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, the international language. Zamenhof was born in 1859 in Bialystok, which today is found in eastern Poland. He later lived in Warsaw, where in 1887, as a 27-year-old, he published the basis of the language, which later spread throughout the world. The Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) is especially celebrating this year’s anniversary of Ludwik Zamenhof’s death. Mark Fettes, the president of UEA and who lives in Canada, highlights: “Zamenhof was an extraordinary person. He gave life to a new language and thereby created the basis for a worldwide language community. We remember him with the greatest respect.” In truth, no other person in human history has been able to create a living language, which has a many-faceted culture and is comparable to the natural languages spoken by a people or in a particular country. In Hungary, Esperanto has already gained the same rights as any other foreign language.