Third class (February 25th)

Summary

In the third class we talked about dictionaries, international events in Esperanto (UK, IJK, JES, etc.), reviewed some of the homework from last time (chapter 3), introduced the grammar in chapter 4, and watched the remainder of part 1 of Mazi en Gondolando.

You should now be familiar with:

  • the grammatical ending -a for adjectives

  • how the plural endings on adjectives “agree” with their nouns, e.g. Jen unu malgranda kato kaj du grandaj hundoj.

  • the pronouns mi, vi, ni, ŝi, li, ili, and ĝi

  • the addition of ĉu to form jes/ne questions from statements

  • the “correlative” words kio / tio, kia / tia, and kiu / tiu

  • the use of the preposition de to form possessive phrases, e.g. la frato de Maria

  • the prefix mal- to make antonyms like malbela, maljuna, and malantaŭ.

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

Homework

  1. Read chapter 4 of the text (“La urbo”) and solve the ekzercoj and demandoj. I’ll have solutions for you next week. If there’s something you don’t understand, ask!

  2. Try solving the exercise for the first part of Mazi en Gondolando (see below) and compare your answers with the ones on the back of the sheet. (No peeking!)

Handouts

Media

  • We talked about how the lexicon of Esperanto has grown enormously over the past 130 years, from the ~900 roots in Zamenhof’s original pamphlet to over 15,000 roots and over 40,000 lexemes in the latest version of the Plena Ilustrita Vortaro (PIV). And that’s not counting the many technical dictionaries covering specialized terms in science, mathematics, and engineering.

    But don’t be scared! As with the contents of massive dictionaries like the English OED, the vast majority of the specialized vocabulary in PIV is superfluous for everyday use — and largely unknown to most speakers of the language.

  • We listened to the song Ĉu vi kontentas? (a title which you should now be able to understand!) by the Swedish band La Perdita Generacio:

  • We watched the remainder of part 1 of Mazi en Gondolando, which introduces some of the grammar we’ll see in chapter 4, including the -n ending:

  • We watched a few short videos about international events:

    An overview based on JES (Junulara Esperanto-Semajno) in Poland and Germany:

    Scenes from the 102nd UK (Universala Kongreso) which took place in Seoul, South Korea:

    And a brief ad for the upcoming IJK (Internacia Junulara Kongreso) in 2019, to be held in Liptovsky Hradok, Slovakia: