Esperanto [SEP] country of origin
then part of the Russian Empire but now part of Poland. According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labour we spend in learning foreign tongues" and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood." His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:
About his goals Zamenhof wrote
, and Polish "od" ('than') morphed into Esperanto "ol" ('than'). Sonorants and voiceless obstruents, on the other hand, are found in many of the numerals: "cent" ('hundred'), "ok" ('eight'), "sep" ('seven'), "ses" ('six'), "kvin" ('five'), "kvar" ('four'); also "dum" (