ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question: What motivated Zamenhof to create Esperanto?
2017 marks the 100-year anniversary of the death of the creator of the international language, Esperanto, and has been therefore declared by UNESCO to be the Year of L.L. Zamenhof. Zamenhof was a Polish-Jewish medical doctor, inventor, and writer. He is most widely known for creating Esperanto, which is the most successful constructed language in the world. Roman Dobrzyński, a Polish Esperantist, has written a book based on interviews with Zamenhof’s grandson, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. The book, La Zamenhof-Strato, or Zamenhof Street, was originally published in Polish, and shortly thereafter in Esperanto, and has been translated into many languages including French, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Italian, Japanese and Korean, among others. Mr. Dobrzyński recently presented the Spanish translation of the book, La Calle Zamenhof, at Centro Sefarad-Israel, with the participation of the President of the Spanish Esperanto Federation, José Antonio del Barrio.
We spoke with Spanish Esperantist and translator Alejandro Pareja about Zamenhof and Esperanto.
