jayeless
jayeless
Seems I havenā€™t been posting much in recent days! We returned Gizmo home on Monday (he seemed excited to be back in his own place) and since then, quiet. What I have done a lot of is adding new pages to my wiki. I had this sudden resurgence of interest in the constructed language Ido (w... www.jayeless.net
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V_
V_

@jayeless oh I did not know about Globasa. When I was younger I had a short phase where I tried learning Esperanto, but it never really sticked.

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jayeless
jayeless

@V_ Heh, I also had an "Esperanto phase", when I was about 12ā€“13 :) I actually got pretty decent with it, but didn't really keep it up. Between the other languages I've learned and what I remember of it, I can still mostly read it though, haha.

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V_
V_

@jayeless I think mine was around a similar age :-) or perhaps a bit later. But I've never got as far as you. I think I've heard from it first when reading Riverworld. But I think I was jounger when I've read that series. It's all a bit hazy ;-)

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odd
odd

@jayeless There are one person who regularly posts in Esperanto here, but I forget their name/handle at the moment. I bought the Toki Pona book, and tried it a little to learn it, but not having many Toki Pona speaking friends, (none), meant I gave up pretty quickly.

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@odd One big draw of Esperanto is that there is a lively community of people who not only speak the language, but are intensely interested in making international connections with other speakers.

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odd
odd

@philipbrewer There seem to be. Esperanto and itā€™s community is probably great, but I think I am too old (physio-mentally) to start learning it, and it would probably interfere with me learning English. I think itā€™s mostly me having learned enough English that I have understood how little I know of that, so I have to keep learning it.

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jayeless
jayeless

@philipbrewer @odd Yeah, while linguistically I prefer Ido, Esperanto clearly has a much more vibrant community and I'm sure that makes it easier (more rewarding) to sustain the effort of learning and using it. With Ido I keep losing momentum when I get to the "OKā€¦ but now what do I do with this?" stage šŸ˜•

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jayeless
jayeless

@V_ I'm not even sure where I first heard of Esperanto, but I was definitely pretty young when I saw it used (fleetingly) on Red Dwarf šŸ˜„ It wouldn't surprise me if that was my introduction, really, along with my mum telling me a bit about it when I asked her.

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agilelisa
agilelisa

@odd I assumed you had lived in the US at some point. Your English is excellent ā€” you write like a native speaker.

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odd
odd

@agilelisa Wow, thanks! Thatā€™s a great compliment! Iā€™ve never lived abroad, but have read American English books and watched a lot of American movies and TV series. However, sometimes I read a post someone has written, and I have to look up a word or two per sentence. For regular chats, I can usually manage with the skills Iā€™ve acquired, but will still have to look up the occasional word. And sometimes I get words mixed up. Like the time when I wrote ā€œHe isnā€™t holding a grunge against anyone.ā€ šŸ˜… (Should have been ā€œgrudgeā€). I have a tendency to mix ā€œthoughā€ and ā€œtoughā€ for example, but now with the predictive text in iOS it has gotten much easier.

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@odd I found that to be the big win with Esperanto: I could imagine actually learning it. With any national language, adult learnersā€”even those with some facility for learning languagesā€”are confronted with the fact that there's just too much. Not just too much vocabulary and grammar, but too much variety in the way it is spokenā€”Shakespeare to rap to thieves cant to the way it is spoken among South Asians who went to English-language schools. Even native speakers would be hard-pressed to learn all of it.

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@jayeless Fortunately Ido and Esperanto are very nearly intercomprehensible. So just hang out with the Esperantists and ignore them when they try to correct your Ido into Esperanto. :-)

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In reply to
odd
odd

@philipbrewer You are right. Excelling at English is a subjective matter, but having learned some since fourth grade, (Oxford English at school), and watching English speaking movies and TV, (mainly British, American, and Australian English), and talking with people from all over the world in English has helped feeling somewhat comfortable starting a conversation in English, (although my spoken English is awful). I have never spoken a word in Esperanto, except maybe if there is a word that is the same in English, German, or some of the Scandinavian languages. šŸ‘“šŸ» Iā€™m 53, and Iā€™m not sure my mental abilities for learning something completely new is feasible, (and my grammar isnā€™t good). šŸ’Š Iā€™m on certain medications also, so Iā€™m a bit slow with new things. āœØ If I, despite all of this*, were to try learning some Esperanto, where would be the best places for me to go online?

*) All my excuses. šŸ˜…

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@odd The last time I was coaching beginners, they were mostly using <a href="https://lernu.net">lernu.net</a>, but I think <a href="https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto">duolingo.com</a> has largely taken over. Either is fine. (I was briefly a tutor for the beginners at lernu.net.)

Of course you can also go old-school and get a book! There were a bunch of great Esperanto texts produce between WW I and WW II (a period during which people hoped that eliminating the language problem might eliminate war), and several of those texts are available for free at places like <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Esperanto&submit_search=Go%21">Project Gutenberg</a>.

Esperanto is very conservativeā€”a reaction to such things as the Ido schismā€”so the Esperanto spoken today is little different from the Esperanto of the 1920s and 1930s. Because of that, you can learn from those texts and be confident that modern Esperantists will be able to understand you just fine, and you'll be able to understand them.

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odd
odd

@philipbrewer Thank you for the background of Esperanto, and the resources! You know what? Iā€™m going to have a go at this, and see where it takes me. (Donā€™t expect immediate results, though. Iā€™m a slow learner).

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@odd Good luck! Don't hesitate to reach out with any more questions!

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odd
odd

@philipbrewer Thanks! Iā€™ve just downloaded several books from the Gutenberg Project.

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philipbrewer
philipbrewer

@odd Excellent!

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