Proto-Esperanto

Proto-Esperanto(Esperanto:Pra-Esperanto) is the modern term for any of the stages in the evolution ofL. L. Zamenhof'slanguage project, prior to the publication ofUnua Libroin 1887.
The precursors to the Esperanto alphabet can be found in Zamenhof's proposal for the use of Latin script in hisLitvish-based unifiedYiddishproject (Esperanto:novjuda lingvo,Russian:новоеврейска языка"Neo-Jewish language").The consonant letters are equivalent to those of modern Esperanto, apart from lacking a letter for[dʒ]. The diacritic, however, is an acute:ć, h́, ś, ź(the last for Esperantoĵ). The vowel letters are the same apart from there being noŭ. Their values are similar to Esperanto in theLitvishreading, with the addition ofoŭ, thoughPoylishreading is divergent. There was in addition a letterěfor theschwa, which only appeared before the consonantslandnand was replaced byein some circumstances. The circumflex is used, but indicates that a letter is not pronounced: e.g.ês iẑis pronounced/si/. The following is a sample, with Litvish and Poylish readings:
Neo-Jewish:
Litvish reading:
Poylish reading:
As a child, Zamenhof had the idea to introduce aninternational auxiliary languagefor communication between different nationalities. He originally wanted to revive some form of simplifiedLatinorGreek, but as he grew older he came to believe that it would be better to create a new language for his purpose. During his teenage years he worked on a language project until he thought it was ready for public demonstration. On December 17, 1878 (about one year before the first publication ofVolapük), Zamenhof celebrated his 19th birthday and the birth of the language with some friends, who liked the project. Zamenhof himself called his languageLingwe Uniwersala(Universal Language).
Wis used forv. Otherwise, all modern Esperanto letters are attested apart from those with diacritics (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ). Known verb forms are present-á, imperative-ó, infinitive-are.Nouns were marked by-ein the singular and-esin the plural; the article was singularlaand plurallas. It appears that there was no accusative case, and that stress was as in modern Esperanto, except when marked, as in-áand-ó.
Only four lines of theLingwe uniwersalastage of the language from 1878 remain, from an early song that Zamenhof composed:
In modern Esperanto, this would be,
Jam temp' estáremains an idiom in modern Esperanto, an allusion to this song.
While at university, Zamenhof handed his work over to his father, Mordechai, for safe-keeping until he had completed his medical studies. His father, not understanding the ideas of his son and perhaps anticipating problems from theTsarist police, burned the work. Zamenhof did not discover this until he returned from university in 1881, at which point he restarted his project. A sample from this second phase of the language is this extract of a letter from 1881:
Modern:Mia plej kara amiko, neniam mia senkulpa plumo fariĝus tirano por vi. Mi povas de cent viaj leteroj konkludi, kiel sciigoj de tiu-ĉi speco devas vundi vian fratan koron; mi kvazaŭ vidas vin jam ...
By this time the lettervhad replacedwfor the [v] sound; verbal inflection for person and number had been dropped; the nominal plural was-ojin place of-es(as well as adjectival-aand adverbial-e); and the noun cases were down to the current two (though a genitive-essurvives today in the correlatives). The accusative case suffix was-l, but in many cases was only used on pronouns:
In addition to the stronger Slavic flavor of the orthography compared to the modern language (ć, dź, h́, ś, źforĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ŝ, ĵ), the present and past imperfective verb forms still had final stress:
The pronouns ended in a nominalo(or adjectivalafor possessives:mo"I",ma"my"), but there were other differences as well, including a conflation of 'he' and 'it':
In addition, there was indefiniteo'one'.
The correlatives were similarly close, though it is not clear if there was a distinction between indefinite and relative forms (moderni-andki-; these may have corresponded tokv-andk-) and no possessive forms are known:
The last row was evidently pronounced asfj-.
Esperanto at this stage had a consonantalablautin verbs, with a voiceless consonant for an attempt at something, and a voiced consonant for success. For example,aŭtito listen (for),aŭdito hear;trofito look for,trovito find;prufito argue (a point),pruvito prove. Traces of this remain in a few pairs of words such aspesi'to weigh (an item)' andpezi'to weigh (have weight)' (cf. their derivativespesilo'scales' &pezilo'a weight').
Zamenhof refined his ideas for the language for the next several years. Most of his refinements came through translation of literature and poetry in other languages. The final stress in the verb conjugations was rejected in favour of always stressing the second-last vowel, and the old plural-son nouns became a marker of finite tenses on verbs, with an imperfect-esremaining until just before publication. The Slavic-style acute diacritics becamecircumflexesto avoid overt appearances of nationalism, and the new bases of the lettersĵ, ĝ(for formerź, dź)helped preserve the appearance of Romance and Germanic vocabulary.
In 1887 Zamenhof finalized his tinkering with the publication of theUnua Libro(First Book), which contained theEsperantolanguage as we know it today. In a letter toNikolai Borovkohe later wrote,
By 1894, multiple proposals to change Esperanto had appeared.
Zamenhof was pressured to incorporate them into Esperanto, and in response reluctantly presented areformed Esperantoin 1893. A vote was put to the members of the Esperanto League, including all subscribers toLa Esperantisto, and the proposal was voted down 60% opposed to 5% in favor, with a further 35% wanting different reforms.