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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Breves (Re: Diacritic symbol names)
Message-ID: <donhCy7qGo.6Fx@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America
References: <Cy6Gs2.Lz5@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <38glpg$pq@agate.berkeley.edu> <38gqiq$eft@nntp1.u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 05:12:24 GMT
Lines: 37

charmii@u.washington.edu (David Prager Branner) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <38gqiq$eft@nntp1.u.washington.edu>:

>I thought Zamenhoff's first language was Yiddish, and his second Russian. 
>This at least is what my grandfather told me;  his father met Zamenhoff at
>least once.  I had understood him to be a secular Jew born in Russian
>Poland, presumably with leanings toward German culture (as most Russian
>Jewish intellectuals in those days had), and an eye-doctor by profession. 
>Does anyone have sure knowledge? 
>
It would not be surprising to find that Zamenhof (one f) spoke Yiddish as 
his first language, though I suspect that his father -- a polyglot and 
strict disciplinarian -- would have frowned upon it. Z claimed Russian 
as his "milk" language, and indeed wrote articles and poetry in Russian 
when he was a college student in Moscow (all under various pseudonyms). 
He also wrote what must be one of the first grammars of Yiddish, which 
was never published but exists in manuscript, I believe in the university 
at Haifa. I don't know about his leanings toward German culture, but know 
that he used a German translation as the basis for his Esperanto translation 
of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ and believe that he used a German translation as 
the basis of his translations of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales.
He also translated works from German (e.g. Goethe's _Iphigenia at Tauris_) 
as well as French, Russian and Polish.

Z was by profession an ophthalmologist "in later life" -- he devised 
Esperanto while still a high school and college student.

In response to Ivan Derzhanski's query why Z used u-brev instead of w in 
Esperanto, someone mentioned that in Polish w is pronounced "v" (sometimes 
"f"). Ditto in German and, I believe, several other central European 
languages with Latin orthography. In Romance languages it is, I believe, 
quite rare.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/donh/donh.html 
