2. How many people speak Esperanto?
It is always difficult to measure the number of speakers of any
language; it is rather like estimating the number of people who play
chess. Speakers of a second language vary widely in their competence
and fluency. The World Almanac, whose researchers
actually conduct
interviews with speakers, estimate about two million speakers
worldwide. This puts it on a par with `minority' languages like
Icelandic and Estonian. Of course, unlike these other languages,
Esperanto is not the primary language for its speakers, although
there are native speakers (denaskaj parolantoj) of Esperanto
who learned to speak it (along with the local language) from
their parents.
3. Where do I find classes, textbooks, etc?
For U.S. residents, the Esperanto League for North America is the
best and most reliable source for Esperanto materials. They
offer a free basic correspondence course (about which we will
say more later), and may be offering a more detailed and advanced
paid correspondence course. They have an extensive catalogue
of books, including texts, reference, fiction, poetry, and
cassette tapes. Their address is
Esperanto League of North America Box 1129 El Cerrito, CA 94530A free information packet can be obtained from ELNA by calling their toll-free information number: 1-800-828-5944, or by sending electronic mail to elna@netcom.com (be sure to include your paper-mail address!)
A more immediate source of texts, especially for those with access to a university, is your local library. The quality of the books, of course, will vary widely, but most of the texts, even the older ones, will provide a reasonable general introduction to the language. One exception, mentioned here only because it was surplused to many libraries around the US, is the US Army's Esperanto: The Aggressor Language, which is more of a curiosity than a useful textbook.
The problem with most old texts is that they are...well...old! Their presentations can seem very bland and old-fashioned, and their `cultural' information about the Esperanto community will often be hopelessly out of date. The newest American textbook, and probably the best, is Richardson's Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language. It is available from ELNA and perhaps some libraries. Another book, the Esperanto entry in the Teach Yourself ... series of language primers, is a slightly stodgy but very useful introduction to the language. The Teach Yourself book can sometimes be found in ordinary bookstores. There is also a Teach Yourself English/Esperanto two-way dictionary that is a very popular and handy reference.
Another good, if a bit old-fashioned, textbook, Step by Step in Esperanto, has recently been reprinted and is available from ELNA. Still another book recommended by more than one participant is Saluton! by Audry Childs-Mee. This is entirely in Esperanto, with many pictures.
Macintosh owners with HyperCard and MacinTalk can take advantage of an introductory HyperCard course on Esperanto. This is available from ELNA for a nominal media charge, or can be downloaded from the Sumex Info-Mac server. Swedish and Dutch versions of this course have appeared in their respective countries.
*** *** If you know of other texts that should be mentioned here, *** please let me know ***Each summer, San Francisco State University and ELNA offer a three-week curriculum of Esperanto courses, in which one may participate at beginning, intermediate, or advanced levels, and earn three semester credits. It is widely considered to be one of the best opportunities to learn to speak Esperanto `like a native', and draws students and faculty from around the world.
*** *** Further info, like details on Chaux-de-Fonds (sp?) activities *** and similar international learning opportunities, are *** requested ***For those with relatively little time, a free Postal Correspondence Course is available. You mail in each of ten lessons, and a grader corrects your exercises and sends you the next lesson. Send a self-addressed stamped envelope to
Esperanto Information Center
410 Darrell Road
Hillsborough, CA 94010
415 342-1796
**** If you think YOUR country should be listed here, let me know...The Free Correspondence Course is also available online as the Free Esperanto Course. Information is posted regularly to this group. The Correspondence Course is now conducted in English, French, and German versions.
The European Computer Manufacturer's Association Standard ECMA-94 contains four 8-bit Latin alphabets to cover a variety of European languages. Latin alphabet 3 covers Esperanto (as well as nine other European languages). This alphabet also forms the basis for the international standard coding ISO 8859-3 (LATIN-3). This eight-bit coding is probably the best `canonical' representation for the storage of Esperanto text, although it is inconvenient for sorting applications (this is a common technical difficulty for almost all languages). A more immediate problem is that the Internet mail protocol is currently only able to transmit 7-bit ASCII. Finally, it may be inconvenient to generate the eight-bit codes on particular input devices.
Various `ASCIIzations' of the accented letters are popular. Some people type a circumflex before the accented letter; others type it afterwards. Some use a `<' sign instead. Some use the Fundamentan formula with following `h'. Others follow with a `~' (tilde) to facilitate alphabetization.
The best ASCIIzation is probably to use following `x', which has several advantages: the `x' is not part of the Esperanto alphabet and so the digraphs like `cx' can automatically be translated to Latin-3 codes or other representations; `x' is alphabetic, so various editing and text-processing programs treat `accented' words as single units; since `x' is near the end of the alphabet, sorting algorithms are quite reliable when applied to words coded in this way. Finally, combinations like `sx' are rare in English, so automatic conversion of mixed Esperanto/English text is highly reliable. While nobody can dictate a standard, widespread adoption of this convention on the networks would facilitate the development of standard programs to convert or display the accented characters, at least until 8-bit mail transmission becomes commonplace.
Esperanto's circumflexed characters are covered by the incipient `wide
character' standards (Unicode and ISO 10646), so Esperantists will not
be left out if and when those standards are widely adopted and
implemented. Unicode is a widely endorsed 16-bit character encoding
expected to be supported by Microsoft's Windows NT and Apple's
QuickDraw GX system software.
5. How do I display those characters on a (Mac, PC, etc.)
`Dumb' terminals generally cannot overstrike accents with arbitrary
characters, and so cannot display the Esperanto characters. Most
modern equipment uses `softer' display technology and can display the
Esperanto characters given proper software.
On the Macintosh, one can prepare and display text with an Esperanto `font'; such fonts usually match the accented characters to convenient (USA) keyboard equivalents, rather than to standard binary codes. A couple of such fonts (Imagewriter resolution) are available on ELNA's HyperCard disk, and Esperanto versions of Helvetica and Times (in Type 3 PostScript) are also obtainable through ELNA and via anonymous FTP from ftp.stack.urc.tue.nl .
INFORMATION SOLICITED ON OTHER MACINTOSH FONTSWordPerfect 5.1 allows the display of Esperanto characters when the 512-character screen is selected from the Setup menu. To type an accented character, type control-v, the charactrs.doc table number, comma, the character code, and Return. The Esperanto codes are all in table 1, with the following values:
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - - C:100 c:101 G:122 g:123 H:126 h:127 J:140 j:141 S:180 s:181 U:188 u:189so that you type <CTRL-V>1,100<RETURN>> to get circumflexed C. You can set up a `keyboard file' to assign these combinations to keys. (Thanks to Cleve Lendon and Michael Johnson for this information)
In Word Perfect 5.1, you can also type <CTRL_V> followed by the character and the accent mark; thus <CTRL-V>C^ gives C-circumflex. Two problems are: the lowercase circumflexed j looks lousy in most fonts and there is no breve on the keyboard, so u-breve cannot be done this way. (thanks to D. Gary Grady for this information)
Two programs, vidi and montru, which can display some of the common Esperanto ASCIIzations as accented characters on PCs with graphics boards, are available via anonymous FTP (see below).
On Unix (and other) systems running X11, it is possible to create a text font using the ISO 8859-3 encoding. With such a font in your server's font repertoire, an xterm window (with terminal modes set for 8-bit output) can display Esperanto text using standard Unix commands such as cat. An ISO 8859-3 font is included in the contributed software portion of Release 5 of X11. The Esperanto versions of Helvetica and Times for the Mac might be usable with a suitably equipped X11 server -- since they are Adobe Type 1 fonts -- but this has yet to be verified.
GNU Emacs Version 19 is able to deal with arbitrary X11 keyboard inputs and output fonts. It can be obtained from the usual GNU sources (e.g. prep.ai.mit.edu). There is also a version of GNU Emacs, known as MULE, that is able to handle several non-ASCII encodings, including Latin alphabets 1 thru 9 (except 8) and several Asian languages. It comes with X11 fonts for all these alphabets, including ISO 8859-3. Sources are in several places; try sh.wide.ad.jp in /JAPAN/mule/mule-1.1
In any of these cases, a certain amount of data massaging may be necessary to convert some particular representation of Esperanto text (see Question 4) to an appropriate form.
Text processing languages like TeX and Troff permit the arbitrary placement of diacriticals on characters and so make the preparation of good-looking Esperanto documents quite easy. TeX's Computer Modern fonts are particularly good for this, because they include an undotted `j' character. Note that the hyphenation algorithms used by TeX and Troff are not intended for Esperanto and may produce unpleasant results. TeX is available, often as free software, for a variety of computers.
6. What about other `artificial' languages like Loglan, Ido, etc.?
People create languages for a variety of purposes. J.R.R. Tolkien's
languages of Sindarin and Quenya, for example, were created partly as
a recreation, and partly to fulfill a literary purpose. Many languages
have been created as international languages; only Esperanto has
continued to grow and prosper after the death of its originator. Many
of the people who have attempted to promulgate international languages
more `perfect' (i.e., more `international', more `logical', or
whatever) than Esperanto have failed to understand that -- given a
certain minimum standard of internationality, aesthetic quality, and
ease of learning -- further tinkering not only fails to substantially
improve the product, but interferes with the establishment of a large
community of speakers. A language like, say, Interlingua might be (by
some individual's criteria) `better' than Esperanto, but in order for
it to be worth uprooting the established world of Esperanto and
creating an equivalently widespread world community of Interlingua
speakers, it would have to be visibly and profoundly an improvement
over Esperanto of prodigious proportions. No international language
project has yet produced such an obviously ideal language.
In the network community, one of the best known planned language projects is James Cooke Brown's Loglan (and its revised offshoot Lojban). While some enthusiasts do see Loglan and Lojban as competitors to Esperanto, the languages were conceived not as a tool to facilitate better communication, but as a linguistic experiment, to test the Whorf hypothesis that a language shapes (or limits) the thoughts of its speakers. They are thus deliberately designed to bear little resemblance to existing human languages. While Loglan and Lojban are unlikely (and, by design, perhaps unsuited) to succeed as international languages, both are interesting projects in their own right. The address to write for Loglan information is
The Loglan Institute 3009 Peters Way San Diego, CA, 92117 U.S.A. [ (619) 270-1691 ] 70674.1434@compuserve.comFor Lojban, contact
Bob LeChevalier, President The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane Fairfax VA 22031-1303 U.S.A [ (703) 385-0273 (day/evenings) } lojbab@access.digex.netTo subscribe to a LOJBAN mailing list, send a message to listserv@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu consisting of the body line (not subject):
subscribe lojban Your Real NameLojban information can be found via anonymous FTP at ftp.cs.yale.edu
Those interested in the Mark Okrand's `Klingon' language can join a mailing list; contact
tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us to be added or to get information.There is a `constructed language' mailing list; send a message to
listserv@diku.dk consisting of the body line (not subject):subscribe conlang Your Real Nameto subscribe.
Finally, fans of Tolkien's language creations can join a Tolkien-language mailing list. Contact
jcb@dcs.edinburgh.ac.uk for information. (UK readers invert the address appropriately)
As for our own Esperanto newsgroup, many readers are interested in other
planned languages, and discussion of these can often be informative and
interesting. But politeness dictates that `Esperanto-bashing' in
an Esperanto forum is inappropriate and should be avoided.
7. How come Esperanto doesn't have [favorite word or feature]?
Although Esperanto is a planned language, it has developed well beyond
the point at which some authoritative person or group can dictate
language practice, however great the temptation may be to `tinker' with
the language. For example, many people are critical of the presence of
a feminine suffix and absence of a corresponding masculine suffix, and
have suggested masculine suffixes (-ab, -ucx,
-icx, -un), neutral pronouns
(sxli, ri), and/or re-interpretations of familiar words such as
redefining frato (brother) to mean `sibling'. But there is no single
individual or committee that will simply decree changes such as
these before they achieve general use.
Just as with any other language, the only way for such novelties to
attain acceptability is for them to be used in correspondence,
literature, and conversation by a growing number of people. So, if you
see a genuine lack in the language's existing stock of roots and
affixes, by all means use a new coinage (and always with
suitable explanation, since you are not using standard Esperanto) and
see if it catches on. Be warned that such neologisms are often
controversial and will meet with criticisms (in proportion to the
extent to which they break with the Fundamento or to
which they are
redundant to the existing language).
8. Is there any Esperanto material available online?
Note: this information is not exhaustive. Check Martin Weichert's
`Yellow
Pages' (Flavaj Pagxoj) for more complete and up-to-date information.
An Anonymous FTP archive has been set up at ftp.stack.urc.tue.nl (131.155.140.128) in /pub/esperanto ; non-Internet users can retrieve material via email: send the following message to
ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com
connect ftp.stack.urc.tue.nl
reply YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE
dir pub/esperanto
get pub/esperanto/UPLOAD-INFO.ALSXUTO-INFO
get pub/esperanto/READ-ME.LEGU-MIN
quit
(binary files require more work; send `help' to ftpmail for info)
Another (older?) copy of this material can be found buried at
src.doc.ic.ac.uk, in
/media/literary/collections/Online-Book-Initiative/Esperanto
An FTP archive has been set up by ELNA at ftp.netcom.com in /pub/elna .
There used to be a Planned Languages Server at columbia.edu , but it is, apparently, no longer available.
An experimental FTP archive with material from the Akademio Internacia de la
Sciencoj and a rough version of a glossary of mathematical
terminology may be found at cfgauss.uni-math.gwdg.de
(directory ILo) .
Contact: Hoso HOLDGRÜN
The FTP archive, as well as some other materials, are
available through Gopher via the gopher server at
otax.tky.hut.fi
(130.233.32.32) port 70 (Helsinki University of Technology).
WWW (xmosaic) users can find an Esperanto section in an experimental
WWW server under URL
http://www_tios.cs.utwente.nl/esperanto
Some libraries have on-line listings of their Esperanto holdings. On
Internet, try:
Derk Ederveen
Also, see the next section's information about the Esperanto Lingva Servo,
and about the `Flavaj Pagxoj'.
Beginners in the language should not be afraid to attempt to post in
Esperanto; people are happy to correct language mistakes in a positive
and friendly way (not as `grammar flames') and a forum like this can be
a good way to get language practice. No, this is not strong enough.
Beginners are especially encouraged to post in
Esperanto whenever
possible.
Of course, if you are uncertain of your Esperanto ability, you should
include an English version of your text so that, if you make a serious
language blunder, people can determine what you were trying to say.
One service that might be of use is the Language Service (La
Lingva Servo), a group of volunteers who will correct the grammar
of short Esperanto postings. Information on the Lingva Servo,
with the current list of volunteers, is posted monthly to this
group.
If you are cross-posting articles to other newsgroups, please
do not post in Esperanto, unless English (or the usual language
of that newsgroup) is also included, preferably as the primary
language. Aside from being rude, such postings have tended to
create a lot of unwanted crossposted response traffic, usually
of an anti-Esperantan inflammatory nature. Similarly, while
it may sometimes be appropriate to mention Esperanto in other
newsgroups, continued discussion of Esperanto in inappropriate
groups like `comp.lang.c' will generate more heat than light, and
should be avoided.
NOTE! The administration of this mailing list has been recently
transferred to netcom.com ; the old address (at rand.ORG) will continue
to function indefinitely, but if you have the old address in any files,
you should update the information. Note that the new name is esperanto-l,
not esperanto, as the old one was.
The newsgroup soc.culture.esperanto is distributed on many
Internet and USENET sites and has an estimated readership of several
thousand. Every message sent to the mail.esperanto list is
forwarded to soc.culture.esperanto, and every article from
soc.culture.esperanto is normally forwarded to the mailing list.
Thus, if you are reading the newsgroup, you do not need to be
on the mailing list. However, note that the newsgroup is
theoretically an `Internet-only' group, and that many messages,
including all those forwarded from the mailing list, are
tagged with a `Distribution: inet' header line, and may not
be distributed to every site.
Incidentally, the link between the newsgroup and mailing
list means that mailing list members will sometimes see
strange messages having nothing to do with Esperanto, caused
when some lackwit cross-posts a message to all the soc.*
newsgroups. These people do not read the newsgroup anyway,
so replies sent to the mailing list (rather than the original
sender) will not reach them.
Duncan Thompson (duncan@spd.eee.strathclyde.ac.uk) coordinates an
Esperanto penpal service. He posts a monthly announcement describing
the service to soc.culture.esperanto (or send him mail for details).
Martin Weichert
ESPER-L@TREARN is a BITNET-based mailing list; every message
sent to soc.culture.esperanto is forwarded to ESPER-L, but
not the reverse.
(So that ESPER-Lers should post, when possible, to esperanto-l@netcom.com)
ESPER-L is managed by an automated mailing list server; to
get added, send a message like
CompuServe Information Service (CIS) has an Esperanto board
in its Foreign Languages Education Forum; CIS subscribers
can type /GO FLEFO for further information.
For those Internet sites providing the Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
service, Esperanto conversation takes place regularly on Tuesdays at
1500-1700 GMT (UT) on the channel `#Esperanto'. Contact Axel
Belinfante
GEnie has some discussion of Esperanto in the Public Affairs
Roundtable board, Category 15 -- International Affairs, Topic 29.
GEnie users can receive Internet mail.
America Online seems to have about a dozen members who include
`Esperanto'
among their interests,
but no Esperanto forum exists. AOL users can receive Internet mail
and so can subscribe to the mailing list.
Some Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) provide Esperanto services.
In France, the Minitel system has an Esperanto service: try
36.15 ESPERANTO for information. 36.14 PING is an online chat
and mailbox service in four languages (French, Esperanto, Italian,
and English). 36.14 RIBOUREL is `300 pages about/in Esperanto'
In Slovenia, Boris HERMAN is sysop for the Center BBS (FidoNet
2:380/125 (??)). His current address is unknown.
The Italian Radical political party has an Internet-accessible bulletin
board (agora.stm.it, currently 192.106.239.3) that appears to support
seven languages including Esperanto.
An Internet-accessible BBS has been set up in Russia:
Log in with username bbs
Contact: Ivan Popov (pin@demos.su)
There is also an FTP directory /esperanto at surplus.demos.su ;
Note that Internet connections to these sites are not always reliable.
9. In what language should people post to this newsgroup/list?
This is left up to the judgement of the sender, based on his or her
language expertise, the nature of the material, and the time available
for composing the message. Several of our readers are not native
speakers of English; for some, it is easier to read and write Esperanto
than English. On the other hand, many of our readers have only the
most basic exposure to Esperanto (and wish to learn more). The best
solution would be to post bilingually in English and Esperanto (if you
know Esperanto), but of course that requires composing the posting two
times. Messages involving details of Esperanto culture (such as a
recent thread involving some of the personalities of the early
Esperanto movement) can probably be entirely in Esperanto without
losing much of the intended audience. Similarly, messages likely to be
of interest to people who are just learning about Esperanto should be
posted in English (at least).
10. Are there other bulletin boards, online services, etc?
The Internet mailing list mail.esperanto contains about
70 individual entries. Whenever someone sends mail to
`esperanto-l@netcom.COM', that mail is forwarded to everyone on
the list. People on other networks that can receive
Internet mail (e.g. on CompuServe or GENIE) can subscribe
to the mailing list. Mailing list members may subscribe
on a `digest' basis, receiving batches of ten or so messages
at a time, with shorter headers. All correspondence related
to mailing list subscriptions (including UNsubscribe requests)
should be sent to:
Warning:
The network community is very large, and is growing
rapidly. There are many foolish, rude, or inexperienced people
who will post articles to the network. Some of them
are, unfortunately, interested in Esperanto. Do not favor
them with your attention.
SUBSCRIBE ESPERANTO your name
to listserv@trearn.bitnet To unsubscribe, send
SIGNOFF ESPERANTO
to the server
***
*** Surely there are more?
***
An international FidoNet `echo' ESPERANTO exists in Germany, reachable
from at least Spain, Italy, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Portugal;
ask your FidoNet sysop to subscribe to the this service. For more
information, you can contact
Mario Mueller 11. What are PIV, PV, PAG, and UEA? What are IRC/IRKs?
As with other groups, there are some common acronyms that come up from
time to time here: