Lindstedt

Google Translate's attempt at translating the poem on page 4: From early times feel I am back To my vid',figures vague, you. Do try me this time you hold ? Have been to you a cordial the inklin ' ? You alpremiĝas ! So, please come Out of the fog that surrounds me ; Junece my lap already ekskuas for magic breath that flows through you

I've got the magic in me :)

"In this paper I shall try to show that early Esperanto can be fruitfully discussed as a contact language which arose partly spontaneously, and which exhibits substratal traces of its Jewish and Slavonic background."

Esperanto, as spoken today, possesses at least three features that show it resembles natural languages:

1) Esperanto must be learned by participating in the speech community, not only with textbooks, grammars and dictionaries.

2) Several grammatical and lexical (Of or relating to the words of a language) changes are due to anonymous speakers, not official or unofficial language planning.

3) Esperanto has acquired native or first-language speakers, most being bilingual or even trilingual. All using another language more often than Esperanto in their adult lives.

Esperanto can be related to contact languages. It generally follows European (German being a big one) and universal patterns but there are some clear Slavonic, Yiddish, and Russian influences.

A majority of the lexicon is derived from Romance languages with many German and some Slavic vocabulary influences also. Sometimes the use/meaning of a Romance-based word is influenced by its Russian counterpart. The phonemes of Esperanto are very close to those of Yiddish.

Zamenhof saw a necessity for a common second language because of the discrimination he experienced as a Jew in an Eastern European ghetto. He originally attempted to standardize Yiddish, but then decided to create a language that could be used internationally by any ethnic group.