WARSAW (AFP)---Some 2,000 people from 60 countries came together Sunday in Poland for a world conference on esperanto, in the native village of the inventor of the universal language.
The 94th world congress opened in Bialystok, in northeast Poland, where Ludwik Zamenhof, who created the esperanto language, was born in 1859, the PAP news agency reported.
The inventor's grandson, Christophe Zaleski-Zamenhof, who lives in France, gave the opening address, stressing that his grandfather's goal for esperanto was to "build bridges" between nations.
Ludwik Zamenhof, who was an ophthalmologist by profession, became known for his passion for languages which led to creating the base for esperanto, designed as a universal second language that could facilitate communication among people around the world.
Zamenhof was convinced that conflicts and misunderstandings stemmed mainly from the difficulty of communication in a multi-lingual world.
The name for the language came from his pseudonym, Doctor Esperanto, which
at its root means hope.
The language -- characterised by a neat structure with no irregular verbs -- is sometimes criticised for being too similar to Latin European languages.
Zamenhof died in 1917 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.