Pra-Esperanto

Pra-Esperanto is the current, and traditional, name for the first language project that L. L. Zamenhof created. Zamenhof was a child when he first got the idea to make an international language.

Many years, and some work, were needed before the work seemed finaly ready to him. On December 17, 1878, that is, about one year before the first publication of Volapuk, Zamenhof celebrated his birthday and the birth of the language with some friends, who had liked the project. Zamenhof himself called his language "Lingwe Uniwersala" ("universal language").

When he began his studies at university, Zamenhof handed his work over to his father, Mordechai, for him to keep until the end of his studies. His father, not understanding the ideas of his son and thinking that the project was a pointless effort, burned the work. Zamenhof didn't find out about the matter until 1881. Bravely, he restarted work to prepare a new language textbook.

We have now only four lines of Pra-Esperanto from 1878, from an early song that Lewis composed:

 Malamikete de las nacjes,          Hatred of the nations,
 Cadó, Cadó, jam temp' está;        Fall, Fall, it is already time!;
 La tot' homoze in familje          The entire humanityinto a family
 Konunigare so debá.                Must unite itself.

During later years, Zamenfor remade, remodified, and refined his language idea, mostly through translation in and out of other languages.

Through diverse versions and attempts at the language, Zamenfof changed certain parts.

For example:

Variable sylable accents, for certain forms of verbs, were rejected in favour of allways stressing the second-last. The letters ĉ, ĝ, etc. replaced the Polish-seeming ć, dź, etc. In 1885, the language was greatly changed, but it still remained somewhat similar to the proto-language. In a later letter to Nikolai Borovko, Zamenhof wrote:

"During six years, I worked, perfecting and testing the language, although in the year 1898 the language seemed already completely ready to me."

In 1887, Zamenhof published "La Unuan Libron", ("The First Book"), which contained the contemporary Esperanto.

Gaston Waringhien, in his book, "Lingvo kaj vivo" ("Language and Life"), analyzed the evolution throughout the manuscripts from 1881,1882, and 1885.