Cultural Background
Zamenhof was born on December 15 (December 3 OS), 1859 in the town of Białystok in the Russian Empire (now part of Poland). He has stated that his mother tongue was Russian, but he also spoke Yiddish and Polish; and that became the native language of his children. His father was a teacher of German, and he also spoke that language fluently. Later he learned French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and English, and had an interest in Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian.
In addition to the Yiddish-speaking Jewish majority, the population of Białystok was made up of four other ethnic groups: Lithuanians, Poles, Germans, and Belarusians. Zamenhof was saddened and frustrated by the many quarrels among these groups. He supposed that the main reason for the hate and prejudice lay in the mutual misunderstanding caused by the lack of one common language. If such a language existed, Zamenhof postulated, it could play the role of a neutral communication tool between people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.
Read more about this topic: L. L. Zamenhof
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