Februaro 2008
14 Feb. (ĵaŭdo): Intro
In class
We rushed through a quick tour of the history of Esperanto, how it is being used today, and we checked out a few audio samples of radio broadcasts from around the world. (See the Links page for more.)
No grammar this week; we'll begin to focus on the nuts and bolts of the language next time.
Homework
- Esther Schor is a professor of English at Princeton University who recently attended the IJK (an international gathering of young Esperanto speakers) in Hanoi, Vietnam. Read her account from the Jewish Daily Forward titled Crocodiling in Esperanto On the Streets of Hanoi.
- Dr. Claude Piron was a Swiss psychologist and a translator of English, French, Russian and Chinese at the United Nations. Watch his video The language challenge: facing up to reality (8 min) on YouTube.
- Lernu! is an excellent, free, online learning portal for students of Esperanto. It has many resources you'll find useful, and is a great place to continue studies on your own. Sign up for a free account: at the main page of the site, click on Register in the menu bar. Once you're registered, go to the About Esperanto section and read Introduction to the language.
- If you don't have it already, download and install Skype and register a name for yourself. It's free! We'll be using Skype to practice with each other and to chat with speakers who live far away.
- If you can, watch part one of Mazi en Gondolando from the CD-ROM distributed in class. If you didn't get a CD (or if it won't play!) don't worry—we'll watch the first part of the video in class next week.
21 Feb
This week's Esperanto trivia: George Soros
George Soros is a American businessman known for his work as a financial speculator, philanthropist, and—more recently—for his political activism. However, few people know that this Hungarian-born billionaire is also a native speaker of Esperanto, and that the language played a pivotal role in his escape from behind the iron curtain.
His father, Tivadar Schwartz, was a Hungarian Jew and prominent Esperantist who wrote Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto, a harrowing account of how his family survived in Nazi-occupied Hungary. The autobiography is written in Esperanto and was only recently translated into English.
In response to rising antisemitism in Hungary, Tivadar changed the family name in 1936 from Schwartz to Soros—which in Esperanto means will soar. After the war, young George escaped the Soviet Bloc by defecting to the West at an Esperanto youth conference.
The English translation of Masquerade received good reviews. If you're interested, you can find copies in both Rush Rhees and the Rochester Public Library.
In class
We covered the alphabet and pronunciation, started talking about grammar, and we watched some of the first part of Mazi. PDF handouts: chapter #1, pronuncation practice.
Homework
- Read the handouts and do the exercises in chapter 1.
- Visit the alphabet practice page at Lernu and test your pronuncation.
- Practice sounding out the words on the pronunciation handout. You can test yourself during our next Skypecast!
Skypecast info
The first of the weekly Skypecasts runs from 6-7 pm EST on Monday, Feb 25th. To join, follow the link you received in your email.
We also have a dedicated text-chat room on Skype that is available 24/7. You can join at any time with this link: Join the text chat! The chat room is open to everyone, but only class members will be able to type messages.
28 Feb
This week's digression: Kunvenoj/Meetings
The purpose of Esperanto is to help people communicate, so it's not surprising that they use the language for conventions, congresses, meetings, get-togethers and gatherings of all sorts.
On any given day there are conferences taking place all over the world for everyone from astrophysicists to railroad workers to people who practice the fine art of broom-tossing.
We talked about the biggest annual convention of them all, the Universala Kongreso, which draws about 2,000 people to a different city each year. Last year's UK occurred in Yokohama, Japan. This year it will be held in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Of particular interest to young people are the IJK and the Internacia Seminario. (see the video above!)
Two large get-togethers in the USA are ARE held in Silver Bay, NY each October and NASK in San Diego, CA in July. There are also TKEK, NOREK and others...
In class
PDF handouts: chapter #2, solutions for chapter #1, exercises for part #1 of Mazi.
Homework
- Read the handouts and do the exercises for chapter 2. Email me your answers or bring them to class next week.
- Watch the first part of Mazi and fill in the blanks in the exercise sheet.
- If you didn't send me your chapter #1 homework, use the solutions sheet to check your answers.
On to March...