Second class (February 18th)

Summary

In the second class we practiced pronunciation, listened to a few national accents in Esperanto, and moved on to review the grammar and homework from chapter 2 of the text.

You should now be familiar with:

• the grammatical endings -o and -j (and what they’re for)

• the present-tense verb ending -as and how a verb like fumas can mean either “smokes (regularly/in general)” or “is smoking (right now)” depending on context.

• the words kiu(j) and tiu(j)

• the direct article la and the word kaj

• the affixes -in, -ej, and ge-

• at least some of the new words in the chapter’s vortlisto.

Homework

1. Read chapter 3 of the text and solve the ekzercoj and demandoj. No need to send these in; I’ll have solutions for you next week. Questions are always welcome, of course; if there’s something you don’t understand, ask!

Class handouts / media

• We listened to a pop song called “Junaj idealistoj” by Finnish group Dolchamar:

• We briefly sampled some Esperanto broadcasters (and podcasters) from around the world to listen to their accents. If you’re interested in hearing more, check out our media list.

• Since we’ll soon be learning to count, we listened to part of the addictive Dek bovinoj, a children’s song:

  If you’d like to sing along, here’s the chorus:

  Ni bovinoj ŝatas muĝi
  kaj manĝadi freŝan herbon.
  Ni tre ŝatas la kamparon
  kaj ripozi longan tempon.
  
  Ni bovinoj estas grandaj
  kaj produktas multan lakton.
  Nia kapo havas kornojn
  kaj la buŝo grandan langon.