simonvarwell.co.uk

As I mentioned on my blog a few weeks ago, I did a recent spell as the tweeter on the ScotVoices account. That is, of course, one of many “national” Twitter accounts where someone from the country tweets about their life, their country, and indeed anything (within reason) they fancy.

I’ve now had a couple of weeks or so to mull over my experience, and feel I should blog a wee report on how it went.

Before I do, though, I had every intention – thanks to a suggestion from my opposite number on the Pakistan account – to “storify” my week’s conversations. Storify is a handy little tool that searches, records and presents tweets (or indeed emanations on other social media platforms) in the form of a conversation that you can later easily read through and present to others. To do a whole week of tweets was admittedly a little vain, but I felt it would be a nice way to remember the week as well as pick out highlights when it came to writing it up.

It was also, however, an enormously fiddly process to transfer several thousand tweets at once, and – long story short – she couldn’t handle it, Captain. I emailed Storify and – to my enormous surprise – a friendly, fluent English-speaking human being wrote back to apologise. Basically, he explained, the system is not designed for the capturing of many hundreds of tweets at once, but saw that there was great potential in it being used by “national” accounts like ScotVoices, and he said he would pass the idea on to colleagues.

So that aside, you’ll have to cope with my memory.

And in a nutshell, being ScotVoices was a blast.

The first thing I noticed was that the experience was very different from my own Twitter account. I was tweeting more often than I would for my personal account, and there was a huge level of interaction, with anything I tweeted rendering a number of replies or retweets and indeed often generating long conversations between various users.

That was nothing to do with the quality or nature of anything I said, but simply to do with the numbers of people following the account. I think my personal account had, at the start of my ScotVoices week, around 400 followers (though its grown since as a result). ScotVoices, however, had something like 2,500, and I was totally unused to this level of interest and interaction. Trying to be polite and engaged as possible, I replied to as much as I could. While it was all fascinating, it was at times exhausting in a way to keep up with everything.

It was fun, though, and that was because I tried as much as possible to ask questions and generate discussion. The account after all is about reflecting the country, and life is as much about questions as pronouncements. In any case, asking a question then sitting back is sometimes easier than trying to spout forth on something in a balanced way.

So I posed a number of questions over the week: about the nature of Scotland, the relationship between the cities and the rest of the country, or (and this was a popular one) people’s best photos of Scotland.

My favourite discussion, though, was when I turned the independence referendum debate on its head. Rather than asking people’s views (which had been done by previous custodians of the account), I instead asked people who subscribed strongly to either yes or no to share what they thought the opposite side’s strongest argument was. There’s too much polarisation in politics, not least these days in Scotland, and so it was fun to get everyone thinking as objectively as they could about the views of the “other side”.

I wasn’t passive in all the discussions, however, and did “lead” at other points. I went on an admittedly predictable evangelical rant about the merits of Esperanto, and to be fair did get a lot of positive interest from it. I also, on a day off, went on a couple of hours’ “photo walk” around Inverness, tweeting photographs of various parts of the city, going into bits of local history where I knew it, and generally sharing a flavour the city I live in. Judging by the responses, this was probably one of the best received parts of my week on the account, and was certainly one of my favourites to do.

When I visited Edinburgh for work at the start of my week, I even attempted to convene a face to face gathering in a pub for whoever was in the area. After 30 minutes of waiting, nobody had turned up so I headed to my hotel… only to receive a tweet a wee while later asking where I was. It was from none other than an MSP who was an old comrade in arms from our days in the SNP Students at Aberdeen University. I set followers on a fun guessing game as to which MSP it was that I’d inadvertently stood up, and the first correct guess won a copy of my book (as did the MSP himself for his trouble).

I learned a lot, too, over the course of the week. I learned, for instance, that there’s a huge amount of international interest in Scotland. Many of the account’s followers, judging by those who interacted with me, are from European and North American countries. While awareness of the independence referendum was surprisingly low (it was a question I specifically asked), there was a huge general interest in and love of Scottish people, culture, scenery and history.

I also learned a lot from other countries – not only those people who replied who were following the account, but also the the many other foreign accounts that ScotVoices was already following. I had good chats with my equivalent tweeters on the Pakistan, Egypt, Sweden and Netherlands accounts, and it was nice to have a brief crossing of paths with people from so many different countries – like a sort of “citizen’s United Nations”.

Finally, from a discussion I sparked about Scottish food, I learned that porridge made with banana-flavoured Yazoo is something I really must try some time.

My experience on ScotVoices convinced me that social media really does have a place. It doesn’t have to be all about trolls, abuse, mudslinging and endless pictures of cats. It can be a place where windows are opened to other parts of the world, jokes and ideas can cross cultural boundaries, and we can give real voices to real people.

It was an exciting week. Though I’m rather glad to be back to just the one Twitter account.

I realised, on my way back from Luxembourg in November, that I’d been lucky enough to tick off eight foreign countries this year.

First up was a work trip to Romania, swiftly followed by our wonderful five-country overland trip through Europe that took in France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany. Then our weekend in Luxembourg also saw a couple of hours in Belgium.

It’s the most countries I’ve been to in a year since 2001, when Niall and I did our big four month journey from Frankfurt to Cairo. That trip took in sixteen countries (I think), and I’ve not come anywhere near that total since.

2012′s eight countries is halfway to that record, which isn’t bad for stuff done mostly in leave from work. It proves that with a bit of saving and planning you don’t need to quit your job in order to travel lots.

That said, I’m less chuffed that this year’s countries were all repeat visits. In thinking about it, I haven’t actually visited a new country since Spain (and, briefly, Portugal) in 2010. A trip which, incidentally, I still hope to explore in blog form one day.

Now I’m not one for travelling with a checklist, and arguably it’s better to visit one country in depth than five superficially. After all, I’m saying I visited Belgium this year on the back of about three hours, and my claim that I visited Portugal is based on a mere thirty minute hop over the border from Spain in 2010. So it’s always an inexact and misleading indicator of one’s travels.

It’s also nice (and, on the whole, cheap) to do things more domestically, such this year’s hillwalking (1|2) or the trip to Edinburgh for The Next Stop. Scotland’s a great place that I am sure I’ll never bore of exploring. That said, as someone so keen on travel I  sometimes find it rather tempting to keep a running total of countries.

I think that total is somewhere in the mid- to late-thirties, which means I’m now lagging seriously behind Niall, with whom I’ve had an informal “country total” competition for some years now. Of course, it’s been a few years since he began working on oil rigs around the world and then commenced his wonder hunting, so it’s fair to concede that it’s been dead and buried as a meaningful contest for some time.

I’ve no idea where my next travels are. Earlier this year I seriously considered the idea of going to the world Esperanto congress in Rejkjavik in August 2013. Iceland is a country I’ve long wanted to visit, and indeed it’s probably at the top of my wishlist. For cost reasons, though, I had to rule it out. I would have wanted to not just participate in the congress and see a bit of Rejkjavik but would also have done a tour of the country as a whole while I was there. Even with cost-cutting measures such as camping or Couchsurfing, research suggested that it would still have been a prohibitively expensive trip. Another time, then.

There’s also the as yet unvisited half of the list of 28 mullet places, mostly in the USA. They, however, are firmly on the back burner until I get my second book out and perhaps earn a bit of money from it that could fuel another mullet trip. And frankly I really ought to be focussing more on both my forthcoming books rather than indulging in new large-scale trips I can’t yet afford.

That said, there’s talk of a more modest adventure  in 2013 – another wonder hunt with Niall to pick off more French candidates. That should, if it goes ahead, be reassuringly close by, easy and enjoyable.

So apart from that, then, I think I need to focus on the writing. 2012′s travels have been fun, but there are books to get done. Major new travels can wait.

The progress of my Esperanto is having more and more slow phases at the moment. It is hard to find the time to read, study and use the language when it is one I of course don’t really use on a day to day basis. The internet has been invaluable, therefore, particularly interaction with the seemingly increasing community of Esperantists on Google+ where I have over five hundred people in my Esperanto circle.

It’s in this arena that some speakers have developed the idea of encouraging ourselves to use Esperanto in social media more and more, and this has culminated in Esperanto-Monato (Esperanto Month), or EOMO for short. The idea is that throughout November participants will use Esperanto exclusively or as much as possible on social media platforms, as a way of making the language more instant and everyday. If we can’t use it as a main language in “real” life, why not try to do so for a spell in online life?

It will partly be a good way of demonstrating Esperanto’s value as an everyday international language which is easy, fun and rewarding to use, and may also give non-speakers a chance to see just how logical and understandable it can often be.

But mainly it will be good practice to use it more spontaneously and practically on social media. Instead of tweeting a thought or a joke in English, why not force myself to do so in Esperanto? Rather than post a piece of news on Facebook (which I increasingly rarely do) why not try to write it in Esperanto and perhaps learn a couple of difficult words along the way? And if I’m posting a lot in Esperanto in Google+ then it’s a useful step to push myself into making it my primary language in that platform.

So I’ve decided that my participation in Esperanto-Monato will manifest itself in the following ways:

On Google+ I’ll post entirely in Esperanto, and do so  publicly rather than just in my Esperanto circle which those not in it won’t see.

On Twitter, I’ll try to tweet primarily in Esperanto, though won’t promise not to occasionally tweet something here and there in English.

On Facebook, which as I say I am using less and less, I’ll go fully Esperanto.

I haven’t yet decided whether I will blog exclusively in Esperanto for the month, though this may not be an issue as things are very busy at the moment for me and there’s not much time for writing much in any language right now. I do have a couple of ideas for blog posts in Esperanto, though, so there might be a few appearances of the langauge over November.

Comments or replies on any of the above to other people’s posts in English, will of course,  be in English. It would just be confusing otherwise.

EOMO will be an interesting experiment. I might not manage, I might put off or annoy people who don’t speak the language, or alternatively I might end up really enjoying it, really valuing the practice, and deciding never to post in English again (though I seriously doubt that!).

It’s only for a month, though, so time will tell.

“Mi estas tradiciisto”, mi diris al apuda samideano. Estis la Edinburga kongreso, kaj prelego estis ĵus finita pri naismo.

Mi ne ŝatis la ideon, ĉar mi ne vidis la problemon kun “mi legis Shakespearon”, kaj ne vidis la bezonon por “mi legis na Shakespeare”. Kvankam mi povus vidi la kialo se oni amis popmusikon de la sesdekaj jaroj kaj volis diri ke oni ŝatis Da Doo Ron Ron Ron… -on.

“Mi supozas”, mi daŭrigis diri, “ke la kialo estas mia lernado. Precipe mi lernis per ‘Teach Yourself Esperanto’, kaj ĝi estas malnova libro. “Ekzemple, mi preferas ‘malsanulejo’ ol ‘hospitalo’. Ŝajnas pli esperanta.”

Ni parolis plu pri reformo, kaj la senĉesaj debatoj en Esperantujo pri ĉu la lingvo povas pliboniĝi. Mi koncedis ke jam “mal” ofte ne plaĉis al mi. Mi trovis “malbona” iomete ema de Orwell kaj 1984. Ofte oni havas klaran ideon de la natura defaŭlto (ekzemple, bona/malbona, granda/malgranda), sed dekstreco estas defaŭlto kaj maldekstreco estas la derivitaĵo. Ĉu ĝi ŝajnas natura al vi? Estas malbona por la maldekstremanuloj. Mi sentas problemojn ankaŭ kun “malferma” kaj “ferma”. Ĉu la fermeco estu la defaŭlto? Ne se oni estas butikestro.

“Sed ofte,” mia kunparolanto diris, “oni havas aliajn vortojn, ekzemple ‘mava’, kiel ‘malbona’.” Estis ne tute uzita de Esperantistoj, sed estis ideo kontraŭ “malbona”.

La babilado altiris alian samideanon. Ili sugestis aliajn eblecojn, ekzemple “liva” (por “maldekstra”), “pigra” (por “maldiligenta”) kaj “aperta” (por “malferma”).

Bone. Sed poste, kiam mi diskutis ĉi tiujn ideojn kun aliaj partoprenantoj, mi trovis aliajn vidpunktojn – kaj interese, junaj esperantistoj ofte preferis la “mal-” vortojn ol la novajn vortojn kiel “mava” ktp.

Ĉe la fino de la kongreso, mi sidis kun du aliaj junaj parolantoj, kaj mi rakontis pri mia diskutoj pri “mal” kaj alternativoj. Ni pensis ke se oni povas redukti la numeron de vortradikoj per “mal”, estas multaj eblecoj. Kial, ni scivolis, nur uzu “mal” por adjektivoj? Estus grava rendimento por Esperanto se oni povus redukti la substantivojn ankaŭ.

Ekzemple, kial uzu “tranĉilo”, kiam oni povus krei la vorton “malforko”? La vorto “teksto” iru, kaj anstataŭ oni povas diri “malbildon”. “Filmo” iĝu “mallibro”. Legumoj iĝu “malviando”. Estas facile!

“Virino” iĝu “malviro”, kaj “ido” nun estus “malpatro” – do “idino” iĝus “malpatramalviro”. Pripensu la eblecojn por plibonigi Esperanton per malismo!

Se oni progresus la ideon, oni povas forigi iom da numeroj, ĉar estas tro multaj en Esperanto. Per “mal”, ni povas uzi la binaran sistemon, kun nur du numeroj: unu kaj malunu.

Kaj kial diru “saluton”, se oni povas diri “malĝis”? Kial jesu, se oni povas malneu?

Plej mirinde, oni povas kunigi naismon kaj malismon. Se “na” montras la akuzativon, “malna” montru la nominativon. Frazoj kiel

mi manĝas pomon

iĝas naisme

mi manĝas na pomo

sed ankaŭ malisme iĝas

malna mi manĝas na pomo

Pli bone, ĉu ne?

Kaj kial oni montras demandojn per “ĉu” sed faras nenion por montri deklarojn? Oni bezonas la novan vorton “malĉu”!

Se mi demandas se vi manĝas pomon, mi diras “ĉu vi manĝas pomon?” Sed se mi volas diri ke vi certe manĝas pomon, mi devas uzi “malĉu” por klarigi.

Ĉu vi manĝas pomon?

Jes, malĉu mi manĝas pomon.

Kaj, jes, kun naismo ankaŭ, iĝas…

Malĉu malna mi manĝas na pomo.

Eble, ĉiu vorto havas malisman eblecon. La frazo “mi manĝas pomon” povas tial iĝi…

Malĉu malna malvi maltrinkas na maloranĝo.

La eblecoj de malismo estas senfinaj, ĉu ne?

En la pasinta semajnfino, mi partoprenis en la kunkongreso de la Esperantaj asocioj de Britio kaj Skotlando, lokita en Edinburgo. Estis mia unua Esperanto kongreso, kaj estis tre interesa.

Anstataŭ skribanta pri la kongreso per longa blogafiŝo, mi pensis ke mi povis doni nur mallongan liston de mia ĉefaj lernitaĵoj de la kongreso.

Jen…

1. Mi parolas pli malpli bone….

Mi komencis en septembro, lasta jare, kaj ŝajnas al mi ke mi atingis bonan nivelon dum tiu tempo. Kelkaj homoj diris al mi ke mi parolis bone.

2. …sed mi komprenas ke mi havas longan vojon al flueco.

Fakte, multe da homoj neniam atingas ĝin. Partoprenantoj kiu parolis Esperanton antaŭ multaj jaroj priskribis ilin mem kiel eternaj lernantoj. Mi pensas ke estas granda malsameco inter la mallonga vojo de komencado al meza kapablo, kaj la longa vojo de meza kapablo al flueco.

Mi trovis ke mi ne tute komprenis la homojn kiujn mi kunparolis, kaj mi komprenis inter ĉirkaŭ kvarono kaj duono de la kongresaj prelegoj. Kaj pri la prelegoj…

3. Kongresoj eble ŝajnas internevidanta.

La temoj de la afero de la kongreso estis plejparte pri Esperanto mem. Ĉi tio ne estas problemo aŭ kritiko. Estas kompreneble kaj nature, kiam oni kunvenas Esperantistojn, ke ilia saminteresoj temos pri (kaj sola pri?) Esperanto. Do la temoj estis plejparte pri la lingvo kaj sia literaturo, traduko, uzado, plibonigado kaj lernado.

4. Reformo estas konstanta afero en Esperanto.

Eĉ ĉu minoritato aŭ malofta voĉo, mi vidis ke ĉiam estos ideoj, ĉu bonaj ĉu malbonaj, kiu volus ŝanĝi la lingvon. Mi skribos denove (kaj eble iomete frivole) pri ĉi tiu temo baldaŭ.

5. Onia Esperanto vere plibonigos en kongreso.

Dum tri tagoj kiam mi parolis preskaŭ ĉiam en Esperanto, mi kompreneble plibonigis. Okazoj por babilado estas kutime rara por Esperantistoj trans la mondo, do mi komprenas kial homoj ofte antaŭĝojas partopreni en kongreso. Mi trovis ke mia ebleco, komprenado kaj memfido kreskis dum la semajnfino, kaj mi eĉ ekpensis iomete en la lingvo.

6. Parolantoj estas reala komunumo

Kialo por mia plibonigo estas aliaj parolantoj. Ofte, aliaj kongresaj partoprenantoj helpis kaj korektis min, kaj la malnovaj parolantoj gvidis aliajn kiel mi. Estis vera sento de komunumo inter parolantoj, ĉar kvankam ni havis nur Esperanto kiel kunintereso, la naturo de la lingvo ankaŭ donas al multaj homoj interesojn en, ekzemple la internaciismon, lingvojn generale, vojaĝadon, kaj tiel plu. Tial, plaĉas al mi la vorto “samideano”, esprimanta la ideon ke parolantoj kunhavas ne sole lingvon sed ankaŭ mondvido.

Mi eĉ trovis surprizan numbron de kristanoj en la kongreso. En la kongresa diservo dimanĉe, mi nombris ĉirkaŭ kvarono de la tutaj kongresanoj.

7. Esperanto estas bela religia lingvo

Mi jam legis la biblion en Esperanto dum kelkaj monatoj, sed la lingvo estas tre bela aŭdi en la diservo. Esperanto havas la riĉan senton de sentempeco kaj profundo de la latina lingvo, sed ankaŭ havas la komprenpovon de facila, neŭtrala, unuiĝanta lingvo.

Ĝis la sekvonta kongreso!

Se vi trovas erarojn, bonvolu korekti min!

I stumbled across a very powerful example of the beauty of Esperanto last week.

This picture was posted on Twitter by a user called @roman_eo, and is a great illustration of the way that the language uses affixes to build words in a logical and easy way.

#English vs #Esperanto twitter.com/roman_eo/statu…

— Roman Mutin (@roman_eo) March 13, 2012

The list uses the verb “manĝi” (pronounced “manji”), and it means “to eat”. So naturally, it’s a very important word indeed.

By using various different word endings, the list shows how you can come up with a whole range of food-related words. In English, of course, you have to learn these seemingly unrelated words individually – how on earth, for example, can you see a logical link between “eat”, “silverware” and “diner”? Of course the words themselves make sense, but they have no obvious connection to each other, so someone in the early stages of learning English will struggle to spot the relationship.

However, in Esperanto, thanks to its clever construction, you barely need to spend more than a few minutes learning these words, because the rules are just so consistent. For instance, you can see at a glance from the list how to make the future tense of a verb (add “os”), and what affix means “container” (“uj”) or “place” (“ej”). You know which of them are nouns or adjectives, because all Esperanto nouns end in “o” and all adjectives in “a”. And you just bung on “j” (pronounced “y”) to make a plural.

I could go on – Esperanto’s ability to let you consistently and satisfyingly reapply what you’ve learned to new situations, without exception or irregularity, is one of the language’s big attractions.

Here’s an example: if I was to now give you a new root, “trink” (meaning “drink”), you would be able to use the list above to instantly create seventeen new words without, as would be the case in English, having to learn each of them independently or try them out hesitantly in conversation. You can be assured that they’ll be correct, and you can use them for the first time with as much confidence as if someone had taught them to you in detail. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle having infinite possibilities because you know that each piece will fit seamlessly with any other piece.

In fact remember doing just this a little while ago. I was talking to another Esperantist and wanted to describe someone who was interested in languages. As you can see from the second-last example in the list, “ema” means having interest in something or a tendency towards it. I’d first met it through the word “hundema” – predisposed towards dogs, or interested in dogs. So rather than the comparatively cumbersome

“ŝi estas interesita je lingvoj” (“she is interested in languages”)

I was simply able to say

“ŝi estas lingvema”.

I’d never used the word “lingvema” before. I’d never checked it with a more experienced speaker, and I’d never looked it up in a dictionary. But I knew with complete confidence from the accessible way that Esperanto grammar works that the word would be technically correct and entirely understandable.

Esperanto, for this and many other similar reasons, really suits someone who has my combination of language interest on the one hand and laziness on the other.

Apart from Nigerian scammers, the Daily Mail website and a dreadful, never-ending avalanche of kitten photos, the internet is a pretty remarkable thing.  It’s been a huge tool in my learning of Esperanto which, five months since I started, is probably beyond the “beginner” phase and into “intermediate” territory.  It’s fair to say that Esperanto went out of fashion for much of the twentieth century, though I sense from discussing the matter with folk that the internet is allowing for something of a modest renaissance for the language.

Thanks to the web, I’ve been able to study the language, exchange emails with other Esperantists, read articles and stories online, and find many speakers to interact with on Google+.  Yes, that much-maligned social networking service from Google may not be the success they hoped it would be, nor the “Facebook-killer” some hoped, but I have to say I enjoy it.  It’s clean, crisp, advert-free (for now) and easier to manage what you do than on Facebook.

One very handy feature of Google+, which makes it ideal for learning a language, are the “hangouts”.  These allow you to have a video chat with a large number of people together.  An Argentinian Esperantist in the USA has started holding a weekly hangout (or “kunvidejo”, literally “place to see together”), and I joined one the other day and found the relaxed chat with him, a Brazilian and a German to be good fun and a useful experience.  Reading and writing a new language is all very well, but nothing beats using it in real conversation to improve your competence and confidence.

He made a video of us all talking, as an advert and encouragement to other speakers (whatever their ability) to join in the weekly chats.  You can see me, and the others, speaking Esperanto so you can get a feel for what it sounds like and even surprise yourself with how much you might find familiar in this satisfyingly simple language.  I look like I’m reading a script in my part, though my hesitancy is purely down to a lack of conversational practice.  That will come in time, I’m sure.

I spend a lot of time on trains.  Too much, at times.  I’m at the stage where I recognise train conductors, can recite stations along routes my most regular routes, and have often found myself at the whim of the vagaries and foibles of ScotRail.  Mostly, to be fair, ScotRail does a good job, though its staff do let it (and passengers) down terribly at times, for instance by not having a clue how to get places or not checking whether passengers have all fully boarded.

One regular consequence of being on trains is the delays.  Sometimes the weather, technical problems, staffing shortages or whatever else mean that trains can’t run, and I’ve had more than my fair share of replacement buses, freezing cold station platforms, late night replacement taxis and soul-sapping experiences at the life-void that is Perth railway station, which incidentally is home to The Worst Cafe In The World.

I’ve come to be philosophical about delays.  There’s nothing you can do about them, except sit back, try enjoy your journey, and politely complain in writing later.  And if you’re delayed by a certain length of time – as I all too often am – you can get part or all of your ticket reimbursed.  I’ve obviously been unlucky in the past few months because I’ve found myself amassing about a hundred pounds of compensatory rail vouchers.

Much as compensation in the form of rail vouchers is like giving the victim of a botched tooth extraction the chance to have the rest of their healthy teeth extracted for free, I’m too much of a lover of travel to turn down the chance for free trips.  And the vouchers will certainly come in useful.

In a couple of weeks, I’m going to Glasgow overnight to see Explosions in the Sky play – the third time I’ll have seen them live – and I’m very much looking forward to it.  In April, I’ll be attending the joint Scottish and British Esperanto Congress in Edinburgh.  Both will be all the more enjoyable for them costing me nothing in terms of train tickets.

Those trips will still leave plenty vouchers left, which will come in handy for another rail adventure I am planning.  I am not sure when precisely it will be, but it will be this year, certainly.  I want to get under the skin of my very regular Inverness-Edinburgh journey, by finding out more about the places I pass through with often the barest of glances, towns and villages I have mostly never been to.  The plan, therefore, is to travel from home in Inverness to Edinburgh by rail, stopping for a minimum of two hours at every station.  It will take me the best part of a week: though of course that doesn’t account for any delays…

I’ve decided to practice my written Esperanto with this, my first blog post in the language. If you speak it, please comment with any errors you can see that I’ve made. If you don’t speak it, try reading it and tell me how much you understand – given I’m still at a reasonably basic level, you might follow more than you think!

Mi daŭrigas studi Esperanton, kaj mi ĝuas ĝin.

Lastatempe, mi vizitis Edinburgon por laboro, kaj mi renkontis du esperantistojn, unu kiun mi renkontis en la sabatrondo de la asocio skota, kaj alia kiun mi ne konis. Ni havis ĝojan vesperon de manĝo, trinkado kaj babilado, kaj estis bona praktiki mian paroladon kaj aŭkultadon. Miaj amikoj diris al mi ke mi plibonigas, kaj unu diris, ke mi estas flua en Esperanto! Mi ne estas certa pri tio, ĉar mi skiribas kaj legas plibone ol mi komprenas aŭde.

Eble, ĉi tio estas la sama problemo por multaj Esperantistoj. Ni loĝas trans la mondo, kaj malofte proksime de aliaj parolantoj.

Jen la interreto, vitala por Esperantistoj. Mi trovis multajn Esperantistojn ĉe Google+ kaj babilas kun ili en niaj Esperantorondoj. Ĉi tio helpas por lerni novajn vortojn kaj esprimojn. Mi ankoraŭ lernas per lernu.net kaj mia libro “How To Teach Yourself Esperanto”, ankaŭ. Vivo estas okupitega, kutime, sed iel mi trovis okazojn kelkfoje.

Ekzemplo de mia plibonigo estas, ke mi provis fari vortludojn en Esperanto. Mi amas ilin en la angla, do provas ilin en Esperanto ankaŭ. Mi skribis du en Google+ lastatempe.

1. Mi legis gazeton hodiaŭ, sed estis tro mallonga. Morgaŭ mi trovos gazegon.
2. Kio estas la malfrua lingvo monde? Vesperanto.

Ambaŭ okazoj, la ŝercoj recevis mutajn aŭ konfuzajn respondojn. Eble la legantoj estis komencantoj ankaŭ, Esperanto estas malvortludema, aŭ mi rakontis ilin malprave.

Tamen, estas la sama respondo ke mia ŝercoj ricevas en la angla, do mia Esperanto klare plibonigas al la sama normo.

It’s a couple of months or so since I first started to teach myself Esperanto.  Just as I reported in my earlier post on the topic, progress remains steady despite the fact I don’t always have much time to devote to it.  Through a book, online learning tools and interaction with people by email or social networking, I’ve managed to get some real practice and I have continued to expand my grasp.  There are difficulties and challenges, of course, but nothing that simply putting in the hours can’t solve.

On reflection, there are so many things I like about the language, all – as I’d blogged previously – connected to simplicity and uniformity.  I’d also add to that its beauty and poetry – while the regular use of the letters j and k may seem strange and unattractive to an English speaker, it is a beautiful language to listen to and the sounds trip delightfully off the tongue like a new and unusual flavour of ice cream.

However, there are two particularly attractive features of Esperanto that I find most helpful in using it, and I’d like to briefly mention them.

Firstly, regular verbs.  Once you know that infinitives end in i, the past tense in is, present in as and future in os, then you can apply these rules without exception to any verb root.  For instance, take the verb “to be” in just about any language and you’ll find it’s ridiculously irregular.  In Esperanto, however, it’s different.  The root is est, and it is always estis for the past tense, estas for the present tense and estos for the future.  And by the way, the verb never changes for the person, so you also know that it’s mi estas (I am), vi estas (you are), li/ŝi/ĝi estas (he/she/it is; ŝi pronounced “shee” and ĝi pronounced “jee”) and so on.  Given any verb root, you can then conjugate it for all persons and in all tenses, without fear of irregularity or exceptions.

The second thing I like develops this idea of roots a little further.  In essence you can, technically, do anything you like with any root.  Take patro, for instance, which means “father”.  All nouns end in o, so even before knowing what it means, you are assured that patro is a noun.  Meanwhile, all adjectives end in a and all adverbs end in e, so we know that patra will mean fatherly and patre will mean… fatherlyly?  Fatherishly?  Well, there’s not really an equivalent English word and I suppose we’d write “like a father” instead.  So already Esperanto’s flexibility with roots gives a breadth of expression that doesn’t always necessarily exist in English.

For instance:

• La patro parolas = the father speaks
• Li estas patra = he is fatherly (or fatherlike)
• Li parolis patre = he spoke fatherishly (or more properly, he spoke like a father)

The rules of the language even allow us to make it a verb: patri, to father.  Now I’ve never seen, learned or used the verb patri, and so by introducing it to you I am making a bit of an assumption.  However, the wonderfully consistent way that you can use the roots means that armed with just a single root you can confidently create fully conjugated verbs plus a noun, adjective and adverb – all without having to spend time learning each of those words individually.

Of course, not all roots will make sense if turned into everyone of those types of words.  For instance, you could turn kato (cat) into an adjective (vi trinkas kate – you drink like a cat) but the verb kati might be an odd and untranslatable concept.  However, if you were given, say, just ten roots you would immediately be able unlock a vocabulary of perhaps around a hundred or more words and phrases, none of which you need to learn or check independently because you just know from the rules that the root will behave logically and consistently in every single case.  This is why progress in Esperanto can be both swift and satisfying.

Mia studoj kontinuas (my studies continue)…