Esperanto day (26/07)

Every year on July 26, fans of the world's first artificial language celebrate Esperanto Day. This iconic system was created by ophthalmologist Ludwig Zamenhof (1859-1917). He was born in Bialystok — now this city is located on Polish territory, and in the 19th century it was part of the Russian Empire. Zamenhof's neighbors were Russians, Belarusians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Lithuanians.

Communication with people of different nationalities pushed the young man to create a language that anyone on the planet could understand. Ludwig Zamenhof published his first work under the pseudonym Esperanto. This name, which translates as «Hopeful», soon became the name of the language itself.

It is difficult to say how many people currently use Esperanto, since there are no official statistics kept. Website «Ethnology» estimates the number of people speaking the language at 2 million people. According to this source, for several hundred people — is mainly children from international marriages — Esperanto is their native language.

Today they all celebrate Esperanto Day. It was on July 26, 1887 that Ludwig Zamenhof published a textbook on Esperanto —, the so-called «First Book» (esper). Unua libro). He began work on the publication as a high school student and already in 1878 he introduced his classmates to outlines of the future language. The final draft of the textbook was ready in 1885, but for two years Zamenhof tried to find a publishing house that would publish the textbook. On July 26, the book was printed at Kelter's printing house in Warsaw.

The Russian-language version was published in a circulation of 3 thousand copies, and by the end of 1887 the textbook was published in Polish, German and French.

Despite the fact that currently no state has officially approved this language, in 1921 it was recommended by the French Academy of Sciences, in 1954 – UNESCO. In 1985, UNESCO approached its member states and international organizations with a proposal to introduce Esperanto education in schools and use this language in international cooperation. And every year hundreds of international conferences and meetings are held in Esperanto without translators.

In addition to Esperanto Day, fans of this language also celebrate Zamenhof Day (esper. Zamenhofa Tago). It is celebrated on December 15, Ludwig Markovich's birthday. For the first time, Esperantists celebrated this date en masse in the 20s of the 20th century. It is now proposed to rename this holiday Esperanto Literature Day, Esperanto Book Day or Esperanto Culture Day.

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