My problem with Esperanto...

No posts for a long time. This reflects exactly what happened to my Esperanto learning progress: it stalled. I don't really know how to 'get back on track', but due to not using it, I start losing it, and that makes it even harder to read anything, so I don't, and my Esperanto competence slides further down the slippery slope.

How I can combine learning Esperanto with a busy day, I don't know. I don't think it's a problem with Esperanto as such, as I had the same experience with other things I attempted to learn, be it brushing up my Latin or learning basic Economics. There's a limited amount of time and energy available, and anything non-essential falls by the wayside first.

Any idea how to solve this dilemma?

Esperanto on YouTube

I had a look at 'Esperanto' on YouTube, and there are indeed some video clips of people talking in Esperanto. Some are obviously staged, and sound unnatural, but there are others as well, and it really brings home the difference between learning a language from text and learning it from conversations.

In order to learn it properly, I guess I have to investigate that in the future.

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Mi rigardi 'Esperanto' en 'YouTube', kaj mi trovis kelkajn filmojn de personoj konversacias en e-o. Kelkaj estas sursceniga kaj sonas malkrude, sed tie estas aliaj. Ili klarigas la distingo de lerni lingvon skribe kaj parole.

Lerni e-o dece, mi devas esplori tian estonte.

The next step - la sekva paŝo

Having completed the course, I've started two further steps: a) reading The Hobbit, and b) going through Piron's "Gerda Malaperis".

With the Hobbit I managed to read the first page with the aid of a dictionary. It is very slow, as I'm lacking most of the vocabulary, so I think I'll put that aside and concentrate on Gerda Malaperis, which is supposed to provide a good way to acquire the basic vocabulary of Esperanto.

I also started my eldest daughter on the correspondence course, and she is very interested. I hope she will keep up her excitement, as it will help her with other languages further down the line.

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Nun ke mi finis la korespondan kurson, mi ekas du novajn paŝojn: a) legi La Hobito, kaj b) studi "Gerda Malaperis" de Pirono.

Kun la Hobito mi elfaras legi unuan paĝon kun vortero. Legi estas tre malrapida, ke mi malhavas la plejparto de vortoj, pro tio mi pensas mi ĉesas la Hobiton provizore kaj fokusas plu Gerda Malaperis ke provizas bonan vojon al grandan vortaron de e-o.

Mi ankaŭ ekis mian plej maljunan filinon de koresponda kurso, kaj ŝi estas tre interegisa. Mi esperas ŝi estados ekscita, ĉar ĝi helpos ŝin lerni aliajn lingvojn estonte.

Spotted any mistakes? Please let me know in the comments!

Perceptis iajn erarojn? Rakonti al min en la komentoj!

Unfortunate Timing - malĝustatempe

Yesterday I finished the correspondence course, and I got an on-line diploma, which I proudly show to everybody who is interested. The only problem is that yesterday was April 1st, a day which is usually connected to hoaxes and jokes. So I'm not that convinced that that date on my diploma will not have a slightly downgrading effect...

Hieraŭ mi finis la korespondan kurson, kaj mi nun havas diplomon kiom mi fiere pavas al ĉiuj kiu estas interesiĝaj. La nur problemo estas ke hieraŭ estis la unua de aprilo, tago asocia kun ŝercaĵoj. Por ke me ne estas konvinka ke tio dato ne estas plietiĝonta mian plenumon...

(The Esperanto version will probably have many mistakes in; please let me know if you spot any!)

Words out of context

Lernesperanto came up with another enigma today: subten - back. This does not seem to make sense, what word class is it? It looks like a particle of some sorts, as in I looked back. But still odd. Also, back is quite ambiguous:

I've hurt my back when picking up this heavy item.

Back in 1970, petrol was much cheaper.

The damage was at the back of the house.

He was sitting in the back seat of the car.

When I finally looked up 'subten' in the on-line dictionary, I found the solution:

subtenajxo - abutment

subteni - abet, support, sustain

So it was neither of the above, but instead to back, the verb meaning 'to support somebody', as in I backed the winning candidate in the election. Another nice illustration that words don't have meaning out of context!

Esperanto Newspaper

Wow. I just looked at another blog which has language-related articles, and there was a tag esperanto. Curious, I looked what was there, and the first thing was an article about Le Monde being published in Turkish. So what? How is that related to Esperanto? The answer is, further down there was also a link to an Esperanto version of Le Monde!

Parallel Learning

I'm mainly doing the FEC, the correspondence course; here I get the basics, and also am in touch with an actual human being, so I can try out writing a few sentences and get feedback on those. A bit more of a personal touch than a simple self-study course. And I did try a few self-study courses in my time, not just with Esperanto. Getting through them is hard.

So while I'm waiting for the corrections of my exercises (which are turned around extremely fast!), and in idle time during the day (eg my lunch break) I'm having a look at what other learning resources there are, and there are a few Esperanto-related ones. Today I was curious if there was an Esperanto group on Facebook, and there are in fact several. In one of their postings I found a reference to Unilang, which has an Esperanto course for beginners. This is quite good, but has a few typos, and there are some answers which seem not quite right in English.

The best thing is that it's fun to practice different sentences, learn a different set of words, and repeat the basic grammar described from different angles. And, unlike the FEC, it's not as out-dated: I haven't yet come across sentences where a teacher beats a pupil, a bad girl smokes (only men smoke, good girls don't) and mother washes the children. And who drives to Paris with lemonade under their seats?!?

Progress: just finished lesson 7 today, which is a test. I wanted to do it without reference to the teaching materials, and it was quite easy. Translating vocabulary from Esperanto into English is not much of a problem if you've had some exposure to European languages--the other way round is much more tricky!