Reformed Esperanto was a reformed version of Esperanto created in 1894. It is notable as the only complete Esperantido to have been created by Esperanto's original creator, Dr. L. L. Zamenhof. Although Zamenhof's stated preference was to avoid any discussion of changes, he was put under considerable pressure (including financial) to respond to the diverse reforms proposed by others. Reluctantly he decided to present a reformed dialect himself and undertook to continue guiding the community, whether or not reforms were eventually agreed.
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Although Zamenhof initially called his reform a systematic attempt to re-create the language in the light of more than six years of practical experience, scarcely any of the Esperanto community of the time accepted it as a whole. The majority voted to reject all changes. Zamenhof himself later rejected the whole project and referred to 1894 as 'a wasted year'. In 1907 he expressly refused permission to anyone wishing to re-publish the proposed reforms. In 1929 Johannes Dietterle cited this refusal as justification for omitting details of the reform project from his collection of Zamenhof's complete works, Originala Verkaro.
Some of the proposed reforms from 1894 such as replacing the -oj plural with -i, the removal of the diacritics and adjectival agreement were used in the language reform project Ido beginning in 1907, but these were not accepted by the Esperanto community either and Esperanto has changed relatively little since the publication of Zamenhof's Fundamento de Esperanto in 1905.
Main proposed changes
- The accented letters would disappear, together with most of their sounds.
- The "c" would be pronounced like the old "ŝ"; "z" as the old "c", i.e. as "ts".
- The letters "ĝ" and "ĵ" would be usually replaced by "g" and "j" respectively.
- The definite article would be eliminated.
- The accusative would have the same form as the nominative and depend on position for clarity.
- A plural noun would replace "-o" with "-i", instead of adding "-j".
- Both adjectives and adverbs would take the ending "-e", be invariable, and depend on position for clarity.
- The number of participles would be reduced from six to two.
- The table of correlatives would be replaced with words or phrases taken from Romance languages.
- The roots of the language would be changed to reflect the new alphabet.
- The roots of the language not taken from Latin or Romance languages would be replaced by such.
Language samples for comparison
The Lord's Prayer in both Reformed and standard Esperanto for comparison:
The Reformed version follows Zamenhof's revised roots.