L. L. Zamenhof developed Esperanto in the 1870s and '80s. Unua Libro, the first print discussion of the language, appeared in 1887. The number of Esperanto speakers have increased gradually since then, without much support from governments and international organizations. Its use has, in some instances, been outlawed or otherwise suppressed.
Standardized Yiddish Around 1880, while in Moscow and approximately simultaneously with working on Esperanto, Zamenhof made an aborted attempt to standardize Yiddish, based on his native Bialystok (Northeastern) dialect, as a unifying language for the Jews of the Russian Empire. He even used a Latin alphabet, with the letters ć, h́, ś, ź (the same as in early drafts of Esperanto, later ĉ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ) and ě for schwa. However, he concluded there was no future for such a project, and abandoned it, dedicating himself to Esperanto as a unifying language for all humankind. Paul Wexler proposed that Esperanto was not an arbitrary pastiche of major European languages but a Latinate relexification of Yiddish, a native language of its founder. This model is generally unsupported by mainstream linguists.
Development of the language before publication
Zamenhof would later say that he had dreamed of a world language since he was a child. At first he considered a revival of Latin, but after learning it in school he decided it was too complicated to be a common means of international communication. When he learned English, he realised that verb conjugations were unnecessary, and that grammatical systems could be much simpler than he had expected. He still had the problem of memorising a large vocabulary, until he noticed two Russian signs labelled Швейцарская (švejtsarskaja, a porter's lodge – from швейцар švejtsar, a porter) and Кондитерская (konditerskaja, a confectioner's shop – from кондитер konditer, a confectioner). He then realised that a judicious use of affixes could greatly decrease the number of root words needed for communication. He chose to take his vocabulary from Romance and Germanic, the languages that were most widely taught in schools around the world and would therefore be recognisable to the largest number of people. Zamenhof taught an early version of the language to his high-school classmates. Then, for several years, he worked on translations and poetry to refine his creation. In 1895 he wrote, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that it was already completely ready." When he was ready to publish, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works such as the Bible and Shakespeare. This enforced delay led to continued improvement. In July 1887 he published his Unua Libro (First Book), a basic introduction to the language. This was essentially the language spoken today.
Unua Libro to Declaration of Boulogne (1887–1905) Unua Libro was published in 1887. At first the movement grew most in the Russian empire and eastern Europe, but soon spread to western Europe and beyond: to Argentina in 1889; to Canada in 1901; to Algeria, Chile, Japan, Mexico, and Peru in 1903; to Tunisia in 1904; and to Australia, the United States, Guinea, Indochina, New Zealand, Tonkin, and Uruguay in 1905. In its first years Esperanto was used mainly in publications by Zamenhof and early adopters like Antoni Grabowski, in extensive correspondence (mostly now lost), in the magazine La Esperantisto, published from 1889 to 1895 and only occasionally in personal encounters. In 1894, under pressure from Wilhelm Trompeter, the publisher of the magazine La Esperantisto, and some other leading users, Zamenhof reluctantly put forward a radical reform to be voted on by readers. He proposed the reduction of the alphabet to 22 letters (by eliminating the accented letters and most of their sounds), the change of the plural to -i, the use of a positional accusative instead of the ending -n, the removal of the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, the reduction of the number of participles from six to two, and the replacement of the table of correlatives with more Latinate words or phrases. These reforms were overwhelmingly rejected, but some were picked up in subsequent reforms (such as Ido) and criticisms of the language. In the following decade Esperanto spread into western Europe, especially France. By 1905 there were already 27 magazines being published (Auld 1988). A small international conference was held in 1904, leading to the first world congress in August 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. There were 688 Esperanto speakers present from 20 nationalities. At this congress, Zamenhof officially resigned his leadership of the Esperanto movement, as he did not want personal prejudice against himself (or anti-Semitism) to hinder the progress of the language. He proposed a declaration on founding principles of the Esperanto movement, which the attendees of the congress endorsed.
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