Posted by Lex
Have you ever played the game World of Warcraft? If not, you might be one of the few who hasn’t! (I count myself among your number, though).
Like any social game that attracts a worldwide audience, World of Warcraft has speakers of all languages who play the game. Apparently, it has a decently-sized Esperanto community, as well! If you want to practice your Esperanto while you play, take a look at this forum on Lernu to find some fellow Esperantists. If you’re going to be addicted to an online game for so long, you might as well manage to learn something from it. Why not make Esperanto that something?
Alternately, don’t hesitate to see whether any non-speakers would be interested in learning it. Think of the possibilities!
Posted by Lex
Have you ever heard of the philosophical concept of linguistic relativity? If not, there’s the possibility that you’ve already thought about it yourself! Come to think of it, according to the theory, you’ve been thinking about it your whole life, probably without realizing it. According to the theory, the thoughts you are capable of thinking are heavily influenced by your first language. It’s a rather intuitive concept, in my opinion. If you were to compare the way color is expressed in English and in Russian, for example, you might notice an extreme difference in phrasing. In English, we say “the sky is blue.” In Russian, the literal translation of the Russian equivalent is to say “the sky blues.” That is to say, there is a verb devoted to being a particular color. Imagine how much either language alters your perception of the world!
It makes me wonder what implications Esperanto could have as an artificial language. Since most of us learn it as a second language (or so I figure), we already have our own linguistic biases when we turn to Esperanto. What of the person who learns Esperanto as a first language? How profoundly must it affect someone’s way of thinking, to think in a manner that is constructed - planned, in effect - by another human being?
Thinkers have already judged Esperanto in regards to linguistic relativity. The brilliant George Orwell was said to have drawn the inspiration for the totalitarian language “newspeak” in his novel 1984 from his experiences with Esperanto. Clearly a pessimistic interpretation, wouldn’t you say?
What do you think? How could Esperanto as a native language influence one’s thinking? Could it? Does it perhaps defeat the purpose of Esperanto to learn it as a first language?
Posted by Lex
What is Lojban? A friend of mine introduced me to it as another “competitor” of Esperanto - another logical, planned language designed to surmount language barriers. It seems as though Lojban has a more scientific feel to it than Esperanto does. Where Esperanto emerged from L.L. Zamenhof’s attempts to promote cultural awareness, Lojban was invented with scientific applications in mind, such as computing. Of course, Lojban purports to be linguistically and culturally neutral, like Esperanto [at least intends to be!], so in theory it would not be limited to scientific fields.
If you are curious about this other constructed language, the Internet (as always!) is abound with resources. There are several free texts available to help with Lojban learning, use, and comprehension. I’ve found an introductory text from Lojban.org, as well as a dictionary from the same site.
Posted by Lex
Yes, Esperanto has been the target of many a joke. For all its praiseworthy qualities, it has a lot that can be mocked. (In the English-speaking world, for example, the verb for “to fare” has a suspicious phonetic resemblence to a wholly unrelated verb…) There’s also an “article” about Esperanto in a certain “dramatic encyclopedia” to which I cannot, in good conscience, link you. (It made me laugh, but we all know I’m on the simple-minded end of the intelligence spectrum!)
While sometimes I feel that jokes at Esperanto’s expense are a series of cheap shots, perpetuated by general ignorance about the language itself and linguistics in general, sometimes the comedy offers a surprisingly effective criticism. It’s not that surprising - satire has been one of the best means of inveighing against problems since the dawn of literacy. For now, I would like to point you toward this forum on XKCD.
XKCD itself is a webcomic, devoted to all sorts of random topics. Apparently, it has examined artificial languages on more than one occasion. While the comic manages to be of a consistently high quality, I’m amazed by the lengthy and well-argued discussion about Esperanto and language linked above. Though I haven’t had the chance to tackle all of it - only the first ten pages or so - what I’ve seen so far is worth a look. Check it out, and be sure to read some comics for a laugh in the meantime.
(La fina cxenero estas sxercajxo. Min surprizis gxia ekzisto.)
Posted by Lex
Esperanto has always enjoyed a remarkably intuitive number system. We use root words for the cardinal numbers 0-9, and then there are various prefixes to denote larger and larger multiples. So, where languages like Spanish have words like cuarenta for 40 [N.B. - Thank you for catching me in yet another moment of stupidity, Toraku!], Esperanto uses kvardek. At a glance, you can tell it means “four tens,” or 40. (I don’t mean to disparage the Spanish language by citing it here…I simply want to make a comparison for Esperanto’s benefit, and I remember being bothered by numbers in my pre-university days!)
Since we’ve stumbled into a new year, and a new decade, I figured it would help to provide a list of some Esperanto time denominations. They work much like the Esperanto number system - find the root word you need (probably jaro, meaning “year”), and append the requisite number. At this rate, you can be a historian in no time at all!
Day - tago
Week - semajno
Month - monato
Year - jaro
Decade - jardeko / dekjaro (ten-year)
Century - jarcento / centjaro (hundred-year)
Millennium - jarmilo / miljaro (thousand-year)
Era - erao
Epoch - epoko
Generation - generacio (not really a time denomination, but appropriate for a discussion about years!)
Posted by Lex
In my part of the world, we have three hours left of the decade! Had I any semblance of forethought, I would have tried to find parties in multiple different time zones, so I could ring in the new year more than once. As matters stand, there will only be one new year for me tonight - but that’s more than enough!
I wish all of you a Bonan Novjartagon. May your new year be everything you need it to be - healthful, profitable, amusing, or whatever else you wish!
…And, when and if you celebrate, be safe, have fun, and don’t overdo it with the cxampano!
Posted by Lex
The comprehensive website Edukado provides a huge repository of Esperanto teaching materials. I stress the “teaching” aspect, rather than “learning,” because the site is designed with a practiced Esperanto speaker in mind. If you know the language well enough, and would like to have some documents and lessons to help you teach others, Edukado is the place to go. They also feature news, book reviews, and plenty of other resources. Take a look, and help spread the word!
While Edukado is appropriate for small-scale Esperanto efforts, there is at least one organization that supports high-level Esperanto endeavors. If you’re planning a large academic undertaking in Esperanto, check out the Esperantic Studies Foundation. In addition to sustaining programs of their own, the ESF also sponsors research pertaining to Esperanto. Whether or not you plan to embark on such a demanding effort, a visit to the ESF’s site is an encouraging one - it reminds us that the world still takes Esperanto seriously!
*Unrelated Note*: Ironically, my last comment on being unseated as a Google result drew enough hits to render my findings obsolete over the course of one night. Thank you, Internet, for frequently proving me wrong! I still place a large stamp of approval on Mr. Alper’s blog, however - be sure to visit it, if you have the opportunity!
Posted by Lex
Have you been looking for Transparent’s Esperanto Blog via a search engine? For a good, long while, this blog used to be the first result if one searched “Esperanto Blog” in Google. However, it seems that the more than capable Ted Alper has eclipsed this particular publication! Congratulations, Mr. Alper. I’m not certain whether or not one would consider it an achievement, but know that at least one person has noticed your climb to search-engine stardom!
In other trends, you may have noticed as of late that I’ve been managing fewer and fewer posts. Well, in part, it can be said that I’m a slacker. The other part of my excuse is that graduate studies may linger on the horizon, and as such, completing my undergraduate degree has claimed priority over our Esperanto discussions! You’ll still see periodic content updates - no fewer than five per month - but for the most part I won’t be quite as attentive until life becomes less hectic!
Thanks to all of you readers, and your candid commentary, this blog has been worth maintaining and exploring. I imagine the trend will continue, so in advance, dankon!
Posted by Lex
It’s hard to believe that 2009 is winding to a close. La miljaro (millennium, literally “thousand-year”) has seen its first decade, and now we find ourselves in the thick of the 21st Century. We’re at a pretty momentous point in world history, I think, and it calls for some New Year’s Resolutions that are thorough enough to merit being made at the decade’s end.
Be careful of the misleading Esperanto cognate rezolucio. While it does in fact mean “resolution,” it means the kind of resolution that a legislative body would pass - it is a motion, or a law, or some similar action. If you plan on making a resolution for la nova jaro, you want to use the word decideco.
Unlike rezolucio, the Esperanto term decideco refers to a decision, or a vow. It’s more appropriate for our purposes. Take a look at how the word is built. We see the infix -ec-, which addresses a noun form of an action. Then, there is the root decid-. You might have seen it as decidi, meaning “to decide.” As such, we have a word that means what we’re looking for - a decision, a thing we resolve to do.
Posted by Lex
Do you have snow where you live yet? For me, winter began about two weeks ago with the first snowfall, and the snow continues to pile up all across my region of the States. Some people dislike the snow, since ili bezonos sxoveli, but I love all the fun activities that come with it. (And yes, I consider shoveling snow to be fun!)
A word for this chilly season that you can keep in the back of your mind is the term glitveturilo. Let’s take a look at what it could possibly mean. We have glit-, which connotes slipping (think glita, meaning “slippery,” or gliti, “to glide”). There is vetur-, which brings about the notion of riding or traveling. Lastly, we have -ilo, meaning “tool.” Any guesses as to what they mean when they combine?
A “glitveturilo” is a sled, or a sleigh. Makes sense in retrospect, right? It’s a tool you ride by sliding all over the place. (With luck, your auxtomobilo won’t fit that description during the winter months!) Now, you have a word to use when you’re atop a large, snowy hill, and need to think of how to reach the bottom quickly.
