Esperanto Literature Part Two

Zamenhof also translated the whole of the Old Testament ( The Book of Psalms appeared in 1908) and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, most of which were not published until long after Zamenhof's death.

Before this sustained burst of translating activity, Zamenhof published two other works of great value.

In the same year that Hamlet appeared, Zamenhof published La Universala Vortaro. This was a dictionary with grammatical explanations, written in five languages: English, French, German, Polish and Russian. An additional 1,740 new roots were added to the original 900 which appeared in La Unua Libro. If that still doesn't seem like a very large number, you should realise that the 900 original roots could be used to provide a working vocabulary of about 10,000 words.

And in 1903 he published La Fundamenta Krestomatio which, despite having undergone several revisions by later authors, is still in print. As my copy (which I bought new) is looking decidedly battered - despite its handsome and serviceable cloth binding -I think that this work deserves an article of its own.

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