LINGUISTS

Ferenc Kazinczy

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof

Ferenc Kazinczy
Ferenc Kazinczy  (1759-1831), was a Hungarian man of letters whose reform of the Hungarian language and attempts to improve literary style had great influence. Born in a well-to-do family of the nobility, Kazinczy learned German and French as a child and entered a famous Protestant college at Sárospatak in 1769. Later he studied law and became a civil servant. Imbued with the ideas of the Enlightenment, he was at home in the progressive administration introduced by the emperor Joseph II, but during the reactionary period under Francis II he joined the opposition. He was arrested for participating in a political conspiracy (December 1794) and condemned to death, even though his role was minor. His sentence was commuted to imprisonment, and he was released in June 1801, a middle-aged man standing on the threshold of a new life, which he intended to devote entirely to the improvement of Hungarian literature.

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof
Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof  was born on December 15, 1859, Białystok, Poland, Russian Empire [now in Poland] and died on April 14, 1917, Warsaw. He was a Polish physician and ophthalmologist, who created the most important of the international constructed auxiliary languages: Esperanto.