What might a bulgarian housewife, an indian electrical engineer, an emirati university student and a brazilian steward living in Dubai have in common ? Answer: they speak ESPERANTO!
Esperanto is a constructed language, invented in the late 1800's. It is referred to as an 'international auxiliary language,' intended to facilitate communication between people of different native languages. Simply put - it's a a second language for everyone but not of any country or ethnic group: it is a neutral, international language.
Esperanto's creator, a Polish oculist named L. L. Zamenhof, knew first hand the problems caused by the lack of communication between people of different native languages. Early in his life he saw conflict, misunderstanding and war in Europe that he felt could be lessened or overcome if communication were easier between the diverse people of Europe and the world as a whole. To this end, he constructed Esperanto, intending it as a means of easy communication, a second language everyone could learn quickly, use easily, and carried no political baggage.
Characteristics
Esperanto has a very regular structure. Words are often made from many other roots, and in this way the number of words which one must memorize is made much smaller. The language is phonetic, and the rules of pronunciation are very simple, so that everyone knows how to pronounce a written word and vice-versa. All this make the learning of the language relatively easy.
Most Esperanto roots are similar to words from Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages. However, Esperanto is not merely a "pot-pourri" of those languages, but a true and independent language in itself - structurally more similar, furthermore, to non-European languages than to European ones.
Using Esperanto
Esperanto is most useful for neutral communication. That means that communication through Esperanto does not give advantages to the members of any particular people or culture, but provides an ethos of equality of rights, tolerance and true internationalism. This can be seen in many diverse situations: international meetings, books, magazines, music, the Internet of course, and often also in private and family life.Young people can have very meaningful experiences through Esperanto: being hosted free of charge in the homes of people in other countries and making contact with their culture without barriers; enjoying international festivals and training at interesting seminars; becoming acquainted with and learning more foreign languages; and becoming active and taking an interest in TEJO (youth Esperanto international organization), as the case should arise.
quarta-feira, 16 de setembro de 2009
What is Esperanto like?
Esperanto is largely based on Latin, but also borrows from modern European languages like French, English and Polish. Zamenhof chose word roots that would be recognizable to the greatest number of people. In this way, anyone who speaks a European language already has a large amount of vocabulary in Esperanto. The pronunciation is easy, similar to Italian with some influence from Eastern European languages.
Because of the 'internationality' of the vocabulary, and the relative simplicity of the grammar, Esperanto is very easy to learn. Estimates range from 4 times easier to learn than national languages, to as much as 10 times easier to learn Esperanto!
Zamenhof knew that Esperanto needed to be simple. So he devised Esperanto to have only 16 basic rules of grammar or syntax with no exceptions, unlike French or English or other national languages which seem to have endless exceptions. He also knew that it needed to be easy to read and write. He created a simple orthography with a basic rule of 1-sound 1-symbol. An 'e' will always be pronounced the same way, a 'c' is always pronounced the same way etc., and every letter is pronounced - no silent letters.
This is a far cry from English. Look at the following words:
throughthoroughthoughttough
The 'ou' combination is pronounced four different ways and the 'gh' combination is either silent or makes an 'f' sound. That's the orthographic nightmare of modern English. French isn't much better. This doesn't happen in Esperanto. Zamenhof also chose sounds that were common to the most languages. At most you'll find one or two sounds that you aren't familiar with in your native language, and these will probably be easy to learn. The stress is always on the second to last syllable. All this makes Esperanto easy to pronounce. You can read and pronounce correctly even words you've never seen or heard before, once you learn the alphabet, which takes only a few minutes.
Because of the 'internationality' of the vocabulary, and the relative simplicity of the grammar, Esperanto is very easy to learn. Estimates range from 4 times easier to learn than national languages, to as much as 10 times easier to learn Esperanto!
Zamenhof knew that Esperanto needed to be simple. So he devised Esperanto to have only 16 basic rules of grammar or syntax with no exceptions, unlike French or English or other national languages which seem to have endless exceptions. He also knew that it needed to be easy to read and write. He created a simple orthography with a basic rule of 1-sound 1-symbol. An 'e' will always be pronounced the same way, a 'c' is always pronounced the same way etc., and every letter is pronounced - no silent letters.
This is a far cry from English. Look at the following words:
throughthoroughthoughttough
The 'ou' combination is pronounced four different ways and the 'gh' combination is either silent or makes an 'f' sound. That's the orthographic nightmare of modern English. French isn't much better. This doesn't happen in Esperanto. Zamenhof also chose sounds that were common to the most languages. At most you'll find one or two sounds that you aren't familiar with in your native language, and these will probably be easy to learn. The stress is always on the second to last syllable. All this makes Esperanto easy to pronounce. You can read and pronounce correctly even words you've never seen or heard before, once you learn the alphabet, which takes only a few minutes.
Usefull links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
UK - http://www.esperanto.org/uk/espuk_en.html
Australia - http://aea.esperanto.org.au/
Esperanto Learning tool in many languages including english, arabic, french, farsi, russian and korean- www.lernu.net
http://www.tejo.org/info/pri_esperanto.php?lingvo=en
http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/what-is-esperanto.html
http://www.uea.org/info/angla.html
UK - http://www.esperanto.org/uk/espuk_en.html
Australia - http://aea.esperanto.org.au/
Esperanto Learning tool in many languages including english, arabic, french, farsi, russian and korean- www.lernu.net
http://www.tejo.org/info/pri_esperanto.php?lingvo=en
http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/what-is-esperanto.html
http://www.uea.org/info/angla.html
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