[HN Gopher] A beginners guide to Esperanto (2003)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       A beginners guide to Esperanto (2003)
        
       Author : simonebrunozzi
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2022-09-27 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | nivenkos wrote:
       | Mi parolas Esperanton kaj mi rekomendas uzu la librojn Teach
       | Yourself Esperanto kaj la novajn Enjoy Esperanto kaj Complete
       | Esperanto de Tim Owen, kaj na Lernu.net kaj Duolingo.
        
         | plumeria wrote:
         | Dankon, mi estas komencanto.
        
       | flipcoder wrote:
       | Great video on it if anyone wants an overview of the basics:
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCiFMD8RNbg
       | 
       | And here's a cheat sheet:
       | 
       | https://i.imgur.com/zMMY7CL.jpg
       | 
       | It's very fun to learn and I highly recommend it!
        
       | panxyh wrote:
       | The language really is as easy to adapt as advertised. Too bad it
       | got clamped, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it suddently
       | resurfaced among youth as some koombayah meme.
        
         | scroot wrote:
         | One of the more interesting parts of the Esperanto story is
         | that right at the moment when world organizations were starting
         | to take it seriously (in this case, the defunct League of
         | Nations), the movement split between the users of Ido -- a
         | spinoff of Esperanto -- and the Esperantists themselves. It was
         | due to this split that the League failes to make a firm
         | recommendation on a specific international auxiliary language,
         | because they were waiting to see what would happen
        
           | shadowofneptune wrote:
           | Of note is that the LoN effort was championed by Japan and
           | China. This may be surprising if you know how Esperanto draws
           | mostly from Polish and other European languages, but consider
           | that the contemporary diplomatic languages were French and
           | English (still are). It would have put everyone on a more
           | even footing.
        
         | sshine wrote:
         | I think it'll continue to be this undying language that done
         | people perpetually pick up.
         | 
         | Takes 3-6 months to learn fluently, and a lifetime to find
         | other speakers. ;-)
         | 
         | Maybe in the next 100 years, some neo hippie collective of a
         | not insignificant size decides to make it the preferred
         | language of their community. It'd be cool to walk into a part
         | of a city where Esperanto is the norm, like Chinatown or the
         | Jewish neighbourhood.
        
           | runarberg wrote:
           | I think every 10th comment I make on HN is arguing against
           | the notion that technology will fix the problem. But I think
           | now I'm gonna do the opposite. It seems like technology is
           | indeed well on its way of making the need of an international
           | auxiliary language obsolete.
           | 
           | For government functions live translation is something
           | skilled translators can do pretty easily, and for common
           | folks, live machine translations is getting better and more
           | accessible.
           | 
           | I for example read many tweets written in languages I don't
           | understand. And I think it is only a matter of time before
           | other social platforms (including GitHub and HN) catches on
           | to provide accessible translation tools so people can read
           | and write in their native language, and have machines
           | translate for them.
           | 
           | As for communicating face to face, surely there could be a
           | device (or more likely a phone app) that does that, but
           | mostly I think people will just continue to learn an
           | auxiliary language or two and find a common language to
           | communicate in, only using the translation app as a backup in
           | emergencies.
        
         | 7thaccount wrote:
         | Yep. A few months of just very casual study took me MUCH
         | further than 3 years of daily Spanish in school. The regular
         | grammar and 10,000 other nice additions takes so many
         | complexities out of the language. It also just sounds beautiful
         | to me.
        
       | pixelpoet wrote:
       | Maybe they could do a guide on English apostrophes next.
        
       | creativeembassy wrote:
       | If anyone else is interested in learning it, I'm getting back
       | into it via Duolingo and that's working well for me so far.
        
         | sshine wrote:
         | Mi opinias ke lernu.net estas bona hejmpago por lerni
         | Esperanton.
        
           | ASalazarMX wrote:
           | My first experience with Esperanto left me disillusioned
           | because it looked silly. It tries to be universal by becoming
           | a Frankenstein monster of the most popular languages. And the
           | diacritics, it could have taken the opportunity to reduce
           | them to the minimum indispensable, but no. Page = pago for
           | some weird reason.
           | 
           | I've always wanted to learn Loglan/Lojban because of that,
           | but those are even more niche.
        
             | flipcoder wrote:
             | I set up my keyboard so I can type the additional letters
             | with the right alt key. There are keyboard layout options
             | for Windows, Mac, and Linux as well as mobile keyboards.
             | 
             | For example: Right alt + c = c
             | 
             | For linux its pretty simple, you just have to use:
             | setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option
             | esperanto:qwerty
        
             | plumeria wrote:
             | If you use iOS you can download the Esperanto keyboard
             | (Esperanta Klavaro) [0]
             | 
             | [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/esperanta-
             | klavaro/id957192189
        
         | mordechai9000 wrote:
         | Saluton! Me too. I like the app but find the attempts at
         | gamification a little annoying. I wish I could just turn all
         | that off.
        
       | anthk wrote:
       | Just learn Spanish. It's almost the same, it blended lots of
       | words from Iberian languages and the spelling it's even more
       | simple.
        
       | Cyberdog wrote:
       | I don't understand why someone would learn something like
       | Esperanto when they can put that time and effort into learning a
       | language that people actually use in the real world instead.
       | 
       | Now excuse me as I go back to making a Snake clone in Zig.
        
         | AussieWog93 wrote:
         | To be fair, if you're a native English speaker learning a
         | second language, you'll probably get just as much out of
         | learning Esperanto as you would German or French or Indonesian.
         | 
         | At the end of the day, it's a hobby.
        
           | maw wrote:
           | Those languages have extensive literatures which you could
           | read in the original. Esperanto doesn't.
        
         | orwin wrote:
         | Because it is very easy to learn and help learn more languages.
         | 
         | Since its a mix between Romance, Slav and Germanic, it can
         | easily act as a gateway, like if you speak a romance language
         | and want to learn Slavic, starting with Romanian the learning
         | Russian will be easier.
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | With Spanish you cover Latin America, Spain a good chunk of
           | the US, 33% of the English language and a big chunk of
           | Lusosphere, Francosphere and Italosphere.
        
         | LAC-Tech wrote:
         | Lots of reasons.
         | 
         | First a lot of us native English speakers are monolingual,
         | because that's all we need to be. A lot of us view fluency in
         | another language as something reserved for incredibly
         | intelligent people. Esperanto is so easy to learn that it
         | disabuses us of that notion.
         | 
         | Secondly, linguistic curiosity. What's a constructed language
         | designed to be easy to use actually like? Is it as easy as
         | people say it is?
         | 
         | Lastly, community. There aren't as many esperanto speakers as
         | there are Hindi or Spanish or Mandarin speakers, sure. No one
         | is denying that. But a brief search suggests there's 100,000
         | active speakers, which isn't nothing.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-09-27 23:00 UTC)