How Many Readers Speak Esperanto? 219
lifebouy asks: "I just read a story about a high school that teaches Esperanto. I've noticed the majority of Esperantists I have met are IT professionals, perhaps because it nurtures our need to explore new things. So I was wondering, how many Slashdot readers speak Esperanto? Has anyone else noticed the high rate of IT Esperantists?"
Esperanto, for what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Esperanto, for what? (Score:1)
Esperanto and Language Awareness [esperantic.org]
If you look under "Major Contributions" a little ways down the page you will some experimental evidence to suggest that if you only know one language now, learning Esperanto before learning another language may help you to learn a different language faster. To quote the page:
The headmaster of a secondary school near Manchester, England, found consistently over an 18-year period that pupils who learned Esperanto for a year acquired a level of fluency
Re:Esperanto, for what? (Score:2, Insightful)
And this has what to do with Esperanto, exactly? Studies have shown that learning any second language makes third and subsequent language
Re:Esperanto, for what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Incubis (Score:1)
Re:Incubis (Score:2)
Lister: I hope that when you arrive the weather will be clement.
Rimmer: Wrong, wrong, wrong, couldn't be wronger.
Tape: I hope that when you arrive the weather will be clement.
Re:Incubis (Score:2)
Yeah, but did you compare the subtitles to the actual spoken words? While the pronunciation was terrible, there were some funny "errors".
The most memorable for me was the subtitle that claimed Mr. Shatners character said "I love you", when in actual fact he literally said "I want to have your babies".
Sheer comedy!
Yaz
Re:Incubis (Score:2)
I studiously avoided the subtitles. Will have to give it another viewing!
Bandy, may I suggest duct tape?
Probably a very small number (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:1)
I've programmed a 6510 that way, does that count?
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:1)
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
hellzapoppin! does this mean i'm officially old now, since I did this?
however, to answer the question, i think the correlation (and i've seen that) is because both sets of people care passionately about something that the vast majority of people find utterly boring and useless.
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
I do know a few phrases in esperanto, though. Only the ones from Red Dwarf, however. A friend knew several "industrial phrases" in esperanto that he would say at times - stuff like "please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle before closing the door. This vehicle will not start moving until all doors are securely fastened shut". No idea where he picked it up, but he also knew a large number of computerized and rote phrases by heart (like the Disneyworld p
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
Right you are! (Score:2)
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
(BTW, I'm totally serious, I did all that stuff, even the walking through snowdrifts. No shit.)
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
Good thing. There's nothing worse than a shitdrift.
Re:Probably a very small number (Score:2)
I have done that, you insensitive clod!
Here's some Esperanto ranto (Score:5, Funny)
Look it's one thing to assume that
That's ok, and it's probably true.
But implying they are so nerdy as to speak Esperanto?
That, sir, goes too far!
For that, we will duel with plastic "light sabers" at dawn! (Nerd dawn that is, 1 PM local time.)
Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto (Score:2)
Bastard
Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto (Score:2)
As the frat boys say when reminded of embarrassing moments:
"Good times, good times."
Okay, I'll bite. (Score:2)
I'm a nerd. All but one of the laundry-list assumptions are false in my case. And I'm considering learning Esperanto. Why? Because the reasons listed here [esperanto.net] are pretty good ones.
Esperanto is not meant to be a replacement primary language. It's meant to be a useful fallback, a common secondary language. Oh no! Increased communication abilities! Not here! Not on slashdot!
Re:Okay, I'll bite. (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? I'd be genuinely interested to know which ones you found to be "pretty good". I skimmed through the FAQ (especially part 9) and all their answers struck me as either non-sequiturs or downright stupid.
Re:Okay, I'll bite. (Score:3, Funny)
Hey good idea! I've put some work into it, and I think this tattoo design is both simple and obvious. Since I can't set colors in a
Here's the tattoo I think is the best:
(However, a friend suggested this one; it's a bit more complex, but is perhaps even more accurate:
Re:Okay, I'll bite. (Score:2)
Stainless Steel Rat! Forgot about that!
Okay, I disavow my ealier mockery of Esperanto.
Re:Okay, I'll bite. (Score:2)
I think their FAQ disproves this myth quite handily, so I won't bother. From your list of suggestions, I've already studied French and Russian, but the point remains (also in their FAQ) that I am at a permanent major disadvantage when conversing with a native French or Russian speaker. Artificial languages help lev
Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
Sure, we'd be better off learning German or some real language (actually, I've done that. I have a working knowledge of German, Chinese, etc.). But consider the effort and time required to pick up those languages. (it took me a couple of months to just wrap my mind around the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive in German). In contrast, Esperanto can be picked up fairly easily. You can get a
Re:Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
Because we can.
Why should any geek learn to have a sense of humor?
Because my post was a joke.
What's Esperanto for "Lighten up and laugh"? Sheesh.
Re:Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
Sorry bout that.
Re:Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
So why should any geek learn Esperanto? For all the above reasons, but most of all: Because we can.
The biggest reason NOT to learn Esperanto? Opportunity cost.
There is no payoff to learning it. It's a completely useless exercise. Why not spend that time learning something else that would be infinitely more interesting? Learn to play the piano. Learn to draw. Learn to fly an airplane. Hell, learn to read an ancient language such as Latin so you can read certain literature the way it was originally writt
Re:Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
So you aren't interested in languages. But that is indeed an interest of many geeks, so the other things aren't infinitely more interesting.
Hell, learn to read an ancient language such as Latin so you can read certain literature the way it was originally written.
You could learn Esperanto so you can read certain literature the way it was originally written, too. Part of the point of Esperanto is that learning Lati
Re:Why worry about utility?? (Score:2)
know esperanto, you've been exposed to the
rudiments of a number of different european
languages as a result. But I have to ask
whether you wouldn't have gained more general
knowledge by studying an ancient root language
such as latin or koine greek.
Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto (Score:2)
Eyes! Burning!
Must wash eyes! With acid!
Naked Euro-nerds speaking Esperanto.
Must. Destroy. Optic. Nerve.
Esperanto? (Score:3, Funny)
(For those that don't get it, it's a rough translation of "I don't speak esperanto, you insensitive clod!")
How many here speak Esperanto? (Score:3, Funny)
Learning Esperanto the fun way! (Score:3, Informative)
For those who are interested in learning more about Esperanto, I recommend visiting this website [esperanto.ca]. It even has its own rather unique mascot. Perfect for making people feel at ease
As Rimmer would say: "Bonvoro alsendi la pordiston, lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!" And I think we all know what that means.
DeeK
Re:Learning Esperanto the fun way! (Score:2)
Of course. "Please send for the porter, there appears to be a frog in my bidet!".
(Sorry, couldn't help myself :) ).
Yaz.
cognitive dissonance??? (Score:2)
So now tell who is better off. Someone who speak esperanto or gibberish????
a joke i once heard... (Score:5, Funny)
If a person who speaks 3 languages is "trilingual" and a person who speaks 2 languages is "bilingual", then what do you call a person who speaks 1 language?
Answer: American
I think this illustrates the image that many people around the world have. Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages. Perhaps Esperanto would be a good way for americans to get with the program globally ;)
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:1)
And the second language is invariably English. No, I'm serious. English is the defacto universal language. Sorry France, but the Lingua Franca now comes from the other side of the channel. When I visited Europe I tried speaking German in France. Very few Frenchmen knew German. But everyone knew English.
Since the lingua franca is English, there's little incentive for native English speakers to learn another language. Plus, at least in the US,
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Man. You sound like my Spanish teacher. Come on. This is why we have translations. There is a *huge* range of thoughts and ideas in English. No one has enough time to capture the whole range of ideas in their own language, let alone another ten.
Spanish is an interesting language with a
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
That's like saying there's no reason to try a papaya or mango because you can get those flavors as slurpees at 7-Eleven. A translation is a translation. It may be very good and have artistic finesse of its own, but it's not the original.
And yes, there are more books and ideas written natively in English than you could ever absorb. That doesn't mean you wouldn't benefit
Literature (Score:2)
I now realize that I would rather be able to read Spanish or French or Italian because of the wealth of literature available. Yes, most of it is available translated into English, but it doesn't *feel* right sometimes. I always wonder how mu
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but you're, how to say it, wrong. I'm fluent in German and manage literary Chinese, and I can tell you from experience how unsatisfactory translations are.
And
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
The other reason that people tend to speak english only is that the US is so large that many people if not most spend there whol
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
That's because you need at least two languages to effectively communicate in Europe (at least your nation's language and English). Here in the US, we can go anywhere in a nation the size of the EU, as well as most of Canada, without having to speek any other language than English.
In Europe, you need French and Italian and German and Spanish and English if you want to be able to communicate fluently. Yes, English has become the language of
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:3, Funny)
I've been to the US, they don't all speak one language!
I spent time in Georgia and then I went to New York (where I met someone from Minnesota). No one can claim these are all the same language, they are too dissimilar!
I won't even begin with the travesty of calling what they speak "English"!
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Europe is extremely proud of it's phone system. They standardized on GSM early and it has paid off with near universal coverage and compatibility. Europe is now proud to be unifying their currency to enable more open commerce between countries. Europe is also proud of the EU, which unifies regulations and law (to a degree), also allowing greater trade and unity between all of the nations in Europe.
Wonder why people never learn more than 1 language in the US? It's because they don't r
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
We can "get away" with English because everyone in the US, as well as anyone who wants to deal with US businesses, speeks English. If the US were an island of 10,000 with an oddball language, we wouldn't be able to "get away" with it.
My point was this: Europe doesn't need ten types of cellphones or ten types o
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
America used to have many mainly German-speaking parts, with German newspapers and stuff, but after WW2, many schools stopped teaching it.
English is boring. I'm quentilingual. Whee.
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
I know this shit, I've got a ladyfriend from Shanghai.
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
I have to say, as an Englishman who has lived and worked in the US, that this stereotype is largely unfounded. Most of the Americans I know also speak another language, for example Spanish or Russian or Hebrew or Japanese - and to a far higher standard than I speak any foreign languages (in my case, French and Dutch).
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Most colleges in the US will not let you in unless you either speak a second language (2 years high school). They will make exceptions easially enough, but you cannot graduate unless you take a second language in college. To be more accureate, you need either 2 years in high school, or 1 in college. If you speak two languages but didn't take any classes to get it, that doesn't count.
Most americans at one time spoke two languages. Most have forgotten the second because there is no call for it. Those w
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
I think we would be content for them to master English!
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Me: habla ingles?
90% of the Spanish populace: no
Granted a lot of people in Europe seemed to know some broken English, to make it sound as if everyone in Europe speaks it fluently is very misleading.
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
Re:a joke i once heard... (Score:2)
sorry. i'm working on learning two other artificials already: D'ni and Quenya. just for fun.
I didn't know that D'ni was documented anywhere! Can you post a pointer?
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Yeah, nobody uses it, there's no practical value... waitasec...
Jen unu esperantisto cxe Slashdot (Score:1)
(La sekvaj vortoj ne estas traduko, sed aliaj pensoj).
I often use Esperanto on the net, for which it's very well suited. It's quite the useful language for speaking with people from diverse backgrounds on an equal footing. The threads on soc.culture.esperanto are some of the most interesting I've ever read/participate
Is Esperanto worth learning? (Score:1)
I also feel bad speaking to people in English when I'm abroad but most people always seem to speak English better than I speak their native language.
Still I'm wondering if it's really worth learning Esperanto. Any idea of how many people actually speak esperanto?
Also more to the point, have any of the esperanto speakers here actually used esperanto to speak to someone who didn't speak Eng
Re:Is Esperanto worth learning? (Score:2)
Yes, but maybe not for the reasons you initially think. There have been studies that have shown that people who learn Esperanto as their second language can pickup other human languages (like French) suprisingly faster than people who only know their native language. Learning Esperanto can thus help accelerate and improve your ability to learn other languages.
Yaz.
Re:Is Esperanto worth learning? (Score:2)
How does that make it hugely useful? "Esperanto is very useful because you can use it as a way to join the community of people who speak Esperanto and wish they had someone else to talk to." What's hugely useful on the net is English.
Consider the self-selection fallacy here. The people you will be talking to are going to be more u
Re:Is Esperanto worth learning? (Score:2)
Esperanto for n00bs... (Score:3, Informative)
So, I did a bit of research and found that Esperanto is actually a very interesting language. Apparently it is an "artificial" language, created by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof and published in 1887. The concept was to to be a "middle ground" language, facilitating communication between people of different backgrounds or cultures. Esperanto is apparently much easier to learn than many national languages and was designed to be a straight-forward neutral language. Surprisingly, there are an estimated 2 million Esperanto speakers in the world.
Check out some of these interesting links that I found:
Esperanto FAQ [esperanto.net]
What, why, who and where info about Esperanto [esperanto.org]
Previously mentioned educational Esperanto site with the little green goblin, "Zam" [esperanto.ca]
Re:Esperanto for n00bs... (Score:2)
Assuming that there are roughly 8 billion people on earth, that means the odds of any particular person speaking esperanto are roughly 0.025%, slightly better than the odds of dealing a four-of-a-kind hand in poker on the first try, which comes in at 0.024%.
Esperanto? (Score:2)
Bonus points to anyone asides myself who *has* coded in Oberon.
learnin (Score:2)
one of these days i'll program in esperanto.
How Many Readers Speak Esperanto? (Score:2)
Ok, someone has to ask (you know, the whole stereotype thing and everything):
How many Readers Speak Klingon? Are there more klingon speakers than esperanto speakers in Slashdot?
A glaring omission (Score:3, Troll)
http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=
Esperanto is known to amateur linguists as a "conlang" (constructed language), a class that includes everything from Klingon to Elvish. There used to be a conlang fool I saw spouting off on the net about how he had invented a new conlang, it was a combination of Japanese and Maltese as if it would be spoken by a dinosaur with enormous nasal cavities. I kid you not. And these people expect to be taken seriously?
If you want to be understood by the largest number of people, you'll study Chinese. If you want to be understood by the greatest number of technologists, you study English or Japanese. If you want to be understood by the greatest number of idiots, you study esperanto.
Re:A glaring omission (Score:3, Insightful)
Learning another natural language (well) is *hard*, and once you've done it you only know one more, you can converse with some new subset of the world populace, and at a sub-native fluency. You're still at a disadvantage a
Re:A glaring omission (Score:2)
Who exactly is at a disadvantage when business is conducted in a language where one party has less than native fluency?
Unless you're trying to sell Monty Python dictionaries ("My hovercraft is full of eels") to the Chinese or something, I'd argue that both parties are equally disadvantaged. In my work I deal with non-fluent speakers and in various languages all the time and I don't see where one party gets any
Re:A glaring omission (Score:2)
I'd just be happy if native English speakers practiced their English skills instead of wasting ti
Re:A glaring omission (Score:2)
Ah, that explains my co-workers.
Re:A glaring omission (Score:2)
There used to be a programming fool I saw spouting off on the net about how he had a webserver r
Mi! Mi! (Score:2)
Mi malbone parolas g^in. Mi lernis hejme.
I'm a bit rusty, having not paid much attention to my Esperanto studies for the last little while, but one of these days I'm going to start up again. I have several Esperanto books, including a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" I bought at Anne Frank house in Amsterdam last time I was there. It was rather funny purchasing it -- the people in the bookstore thought I had brought it with me, even though I plucked it off their shelf (presumably the people at the til
Re:Mi! Mi! (Score:2)
...
Sheer beauty.
Sounds doubleplusungood to me.
Same for Turkish and Finnish (Score:2)
10101010011010 (Score:2)
A note to newbies on accents. (Score:2)
A brief note to those of you seeing Esperanot writen for the first time. Esperanto uses 6 accented characters -- five of which (c, g, h, j, and s) use a cricumflex ('^') over them when accented, and one of which ('u') uses a breve (a upturned half-circle). These six characters exist in non-accented versions as well.
It was recognized early in the life of Esperanto that some printers (the profession, not the peripheral) may have problems handling these characters -- they probably wouldn't have the necess
Re:A note to newbies on accents. (Score:2)
How do you find them? What is your profession? (what do you primarily do on these keyboards).
My reason for asking is that these days I find my self frequently switching between German & English keyboards and I find it much easier to code on an English keyboard, but it is difficult to use for composing documentation on it. Any way the shifting about of these keys only bothered me for a few weeks, and now I'm OK with that, So I'm thinking hey moving these letters about isn't so
Re:A note to newbies on accents. (Score:2)
I'm a software developer/computer scientist. And you really on't need to find a specific Dvorak keyboard -- you can re-map an existing keyboard by moving the keycaps around, and then selecting the Dvorak keyboard keymap in your OS. Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Windows, and all other major (and many not-so-major) OSs come with out-of-the-box support for Dvorak keyboards.
My primary keyboard is an old Honeywell WN-101 -- bu
Re:Dvorak (Score:2)
Yes, but not for the reason you're probably assuming. I've been "on the road" the last few days, and as I don't own a laptop (and don't carry my own keyboard around), I'm unable to use my personal system, so I've been forced to use QWERTY-based keyboards for my last several posts. Ugh! Can't wait to get behind my own keyboard again!!!
Yaz.
How to swear in Esperanto (Score:2, Funny)
Alas, the article is lost to antiquity. But a Google search produces this useful vocabulary list. [everything2.org]
Esperanto is now my primary language (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a full-time volunteer for the World Esperanto Youth Organization [tejo.org] in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. As of July 2002, I've been speaking Esperanto as my primary language travelling for six months through Brazil and Europe and then volunteering here starting in January 2003. I'm also a board member of Esperanto@Internet [ikso.net] which has done projects like lernu! [lernu.net] which is one of the best free language teaching environments online as well as the founder of the Wikipedia in Esperanto [wikipedia.org] which has over 8,000 encyclopedia
The single most useful language for cheap travel (Score:3, Interesting)
I learned Esperanto in 1996 and it has proven very useful. I travelled through Europe several times, staying at no cost at the homes of Esperantists, and finally moved there for good by first working for an Esperanto youth organisation in Holland. It's been a ticket to lower-cost travel, a genuinely international social life, and ironically more effective learning of national languages.
For those who would say that learning English or Mandarin is more important because there are more speakers, the traveller to, for example, Chile can't just call up any English speaker there and request free lodging and hospitality. With Esperanto, however, that's pretty common. In spite of the smaller number of speakers, Esperanto is much more useful for travel.
However, Esperanto is pretty useless if you spend all your time in the US. A lot of American Esperantists, though, end up leaving the US like I did after they learn the language because it's a ticket to a much more diverse and interesting world.
There's an old saying that... (Score:2)
Unfortunately, I don't know if it's true; snopes doesn't have anything. Can anyone shed any light?
Re:There's an old saying that... (Score:2, Informative)
English is good enough (Score:2)
Who cares why anyone should bother with Esperanto, when they have a language of perfect unambiguity, such as English.
Re:English is good enough (Score:2)
I'm kidding, seriously. For example, in my original post, what does the pronoun "they" refer to, "who" or "anyone"? I'd have to rewrite the sentence to be really clear about it.
I do (Score:2)
Since you asked: I do.
Esperanto? (Score:2)
Re:Esperanto? (Score:2)
Re:Esperanto? (Score:2)
I take it you've never studied Esperanto, or Latin or any other language without a conventional word order, at all? If you mark cases, like Esperanto and Latin do, then there's no need for a conventional word order. In Esperanto, accusative case is marked with an n; i.e. the cat pet the dog-n and the dog-n pet the cat mean the same thing, because the n tells you who's doing what to whom.
Re:Esperanto? (Score:2)
If you mark cases, like Esperanto and Latin do, then there's no need for a conventional word order
In other words, "inflection makes [word order] technically superfluous". If you're going to condescend, it helps to know the vocabulary of the field.
Despite the fact that it doesn't have to, Latin strongly favors Subject-Object-Verb word order in practice, and (as I said) I suspect that Esperanto also has a "normal" way of saying things, in the sense that people look at you funny if you say stuff the oth
Re:Esperanto? (Score:2)
Inflection also means "A slide, modulation, or accent of the voice". Since you said that you thought it was the same in English as Esperanto, that is the definition I thought you were using.
Esperanto also has a "normal" way of saying things, in the sense that people look at you funny if you say stuff the other way around all the time.
Weirdly enough, when you're speaking a language that's spoken by almost all non-native speakers,
Re:Esperanto? (Score:2)
Re:Well, I didn't before this post. (Score:2)
Oh great, does that mean that the number of seconds I pause between words has essential grammatical significance?
(for those who don't know Python, it is distinguished from usable languages by its reliance on precise quantities of invisible characters as crucial syntactical elements)
Pig Esperanto (Score:2)
Re:Pig Esperanto (Score:2)