An Amazing Mind

I recently wrote about my experiences with Esperanto, and why it was the best language (after English) for me to learn.

A couple of readers responded, and seems they also seem to think Esperanto is the best thing since salty pretzels covered in chocolate. Here’s what some of them said:

“When I as a late teenager learnt esperanto just for fun (to have a secret language with my best friend) I could never guess what it would mean to me 40 years later.
The language has brought to me work(a profession in library) friends in 5 continents and travels between south Bulgaria up to north Norway, from east Finland(Imatra) to west England (Morecombe), guests from several countries, numbers of contacts in internet and so on.”

and

“On my foreign travels speaking English, German, French, Spanish, Greek and some Italian and Serbo-Croatian never got me invited into any private homes anywhere - but speaking Esperanto most certainly did! And thus gave me quite a different take on life in Bulgaria, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Romania than I would have got as a regular tourist. Try it - Esperanto can be as useful as you yourself like to make it!”

So I though “Hey, maybe other people would like to know more about this ‘Esperanto’ thing!”

Here are a few reasons you might want to learn Esperanto:

• you want to learn a new language, but aren’t sure which one
• you tried learning other languages, but got stumped by complicated grammar and counter-intuitive spelling
• you want to meet some totally awesome people

It’s hard to explain what makes the Esperanto community so awesome (though I’ll try ). But I have a good reason to believe you’ll love the kind of people you can meet through Esperanto. And the reason is… you’re reading my blog! There’s just something about that.

First, I’ll give you a crash course in Esperanto grammar, so you can see why the language totally rocks. And then I’ll give you The REAL Reason Esperanto rocks!

Esperanto grammar - why Esperanto rocks as a language

1. All Esperanto verbs are regular

Do you know what all natural languages have in common? The verb “to be” is irregular. I am, you are, he is… there’s no logic behind that! And in most languages, there are dozens, or even hundreds other irregular verbs.

Of course, not so in Esperanto. In Esperanto, EVERY verb is completely regular. So you have:
esti - to be
dormi - to sleep
promeni - to walk

And the present tense is always the same: Mi dormas, vi dormas, li dormas, ni dormas (I/you/he/we sleep(s) ). The past and future tenses are also incredibly simple. Mi dormis, mi dormos (I slept, I will sleep).

2. Pronunciation and spelling are simple and obvious

One thing that confused me to no end when I was learning French was the random spelling and complicated pronunciation. For example… the words es, et, and est are pronounced EXACTLY THE SAME in French, and so are the endings -ot and -aux. Aaaargh!

Esperanto to the rescue! It has a phonetic alphabet. Which means that every symbol you write corresponds to one sound. You can check out the Esperanto alphabet. Oh, and you can check out this cool English poem to see why a non-phonetic alphabet is confusing. Try reading it out loud for extra lolz

3. Every noun ends in -o, every adjective ends in -a, every adverb ends in -e

This makes the Esperanto much easier to learn. It also helps you construct words that you never heard before. For example, if you know that “rapida” means fast, you can form “rapide”, which means quickly.

4. Prefixes and suffixes

This is where the real power of Esperanto grammar comes.

I heard stories of people learning Japanese getting confused, because you have to use a different word for the same thing depending on who’s doing it. If it’s you, it’s small and unworthy, if it’s the other person, it’s grand and exquisite. And if you’re talking to a person of really high social rank, you use yet ANOTHER word for the EXACT SAME action. Crazy Japanese

Esperanto is the exact opposite! After you learn a word, you will be able to form a lot of other word by using some basic prefixes and suffixes.

For example:
granda means big
malgranda means small

bela means pretty
malbela means ugly

So once you learn that rapida means fast, you will be able to form malrapida. (Figure out for yourself what that means ;))

The REAL reason Esperanto rocks

Esperanto’s grammar is great. But you know what’s really REALLY awesome about the language?

The people.

The Esperanto community is more like a big family than just a bunch of people speaking the same language. There’s a program where you can stay in other Esperanto speakers’ homes when you visit other countries. I haven’t tried it yet, but I heard people have great experiences with that. I’ll definitely try it myself next summer.

There’s also this aspect of Esperantists that I love… they’re less likely to follow the mainstream. For example, when I was at the summer camp this August, one morning I was sitting at a breakfast table with 3 other people. The talk turned to computers, and we found out that ALL OF US were using Linux!

In general population, about 1% of people use Linux. At the summer camp, there were at least 8 of us out of about 70 people. Yay for Linux :D. Esperantists are also more likely to do other minority things, like be vegetarians.

That’s something I really enjoy about Esperantists. They’re not afraid to be different from the mainstream. This makes them very liberal-minded and accepting. They’re all also really cool and friendly people (but then again, almost ALL people are cool and friendly ).

So hopefully I gave you some good reasons to think about learning Esperanto. If you want to learn more, visit lernu.net. Enjoy!

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