We invite CSUDH students, faculty, staff, visiting researchers, and community members to explore primary sources in the Gerth Archives & Special Collections!
Our hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00am-12pm and 1pm - 4:30pm.
LIB South 5039, 5th floor
Esperanto is a constructed language that was created by L.L. (Ludwig Lazar) Zamenhof in the late 1800s. Zamenhof was born in 1859 to a Jewish family and was the oldest out of four brothers and three sisters. His family lived in Bialystok, a city in Poland that had a history of being part of Prussian and Russian territory. Several different communities resided within Bialystok, including Jewish, German, Russian, and Polish, which created a linguistic and cultural divide. This divide was one of the influences Zamenhof used to create the universal language, Esperanto.
Zamenhof had his first banquet to initiate the new language in 1878, though his first book titled Unua Libro (First Book), which was not published until 1887. The Unua Libro was written in Russian, Polish, German, and French and mainly discussed the language and the idea behind it. The second book titled, Dua Libro was released a year later in Esperanto. The first and second books, along with Zamenhof's promotion of the language, increased its awareness. In 1888 small Esperanto groups began to form.
Today the language is spoken by about two million people worldwide. Congresses and meetups occur in different countries to promote the use of Esperanto and to connect people with interests in Esperanto.