What are the advantages of Esperanto?First, it is much easier to learn than other languages. The grammar is very regular, the spelling is phonetic. Esperanto makes a wide use of suffixes and prefixes to reduce considerably the number of words that have to be memorised. It is nevertheless a real language, enabling to express anything. There are even Esperanto poets. Secondly, it doesn't belong to a nation and can therefore be considered as a neutral language. Nowadays English speakers have an unfair advantage over people who don't have English as a mother tongue. Most people who have grown up in an English-speaking country don't realise how difficult and time-consuming it is for foreigners to learn English. How to learn it?www.lernu.net is a website that offers several free courses. One of them is called Ana Pana. Here is a screenshot. If you go to that website you can then click on any word to see the translation. Click on the speaker icon (not on the screenshot, but after you went to www.lernu.net) to hear the sentences read aloud. There are fill in the blank exercises, for example, to practise.
 Another free course available at the same website http://www.lernu.net is called "Vojagu kun Zam" (Travel with Zam). In that course you travel around the world. Here is a screenshot. Go to www.lernu.net to be able to hear the sound.  Why is Esperanto easier to learn than other languages?How to get free accommodation while travelling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasporta_Servo The 2010 edition has 1450 addresses of hosts in 91 countries. The booklet (directory) with the list of addresses costs only 9 euros + postage and can be bought online at http://katalogo.uea.org/ If you decide that you want to become a host yourself, then you get the directory for free. If you want to use the Pasporta Servo you have to be able to speak at least some Esperanto, but you are free to learn it with whichever method best suits you. You are not required to take any exams. The better you speak Esperanto the better you will be able to communicate with your hosts and enjoy them sharing their local knowledge. I have myself used that service while travelling in Hungary, Norway, etc. and was extremely happy about staying with local families and not at a hotel. What can you do with Esperanto?You can use it while travelling. In addition to using the Pasporta Servo mentioned above, you can attend many international conferences, get-togethers. The biggest event is the annual Congress organised by the Universal Esperanto Association. Usually about 2,000 Esperanto speakers from 60 different countries or so attend. There are congresses too specifically for young people. The calendar of events gives plenty of choice. In 2010 the World Esperanto Congress will be held in Cuba. But nowadays you don't need to travel to be able to find Esperanto speakers to chat with, you can use Skype, for example.     You can read books or subscribe to magazines. Lots of books have been translated into Esperanto, but there are quite a few authors who choose to write books directly in Esperanto, among them are a few Australians like Ronald Gates and Trevor Steele. You can listen to the radio in Esperanto. Melbourne community radio 3ZZZ broadcasts in Esperanto one hour every week. You can listen to those programmes at a time convenient to you by going to http://melburno.org.au/3ZZZradio/ Esperanto musicTo listen to songs in Esperanto go for example to http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/Muziko/folkloro.htmlInteractive gamesGo to http://members.iinet.net.au/~nicolee/game.htmlEsperanto in New South Wales For more information about Esperanto in New South Wales, go to http://www.espfed.com There are talks in Esperanto in Sydney the last Thursday of each month at 7pm.
About once a month there is a free introductory study day. Please e-mail nsw@esperanto.org.au for more information. In June or July 2010 there will be a talk about Esperanto in Hornsby. Please e-mail Nicole at nicole@cryogenic.net for more information. The photo was taken at the Stomp festival in Newcastle (June 2009) where the NSW Esperanto Federation had an information table about Esperanto. Comment by a Chinese ladyHere is what a Chinese worker in a factory of electric appliances in Nanking has to say. Her words have been translated from Esperanto into English, so that you can understand them:"I have always wanted to have contacts in the outside world. So I went to an English course. After an exhausting work day, there is not much energy left to strain one's mind and overload one's memory with so many unexplainable things (why, in English, can't you deduce 'first' from 'one' as you deduce 'tenth' from 'ten' and as we do in Chinese? Why can't you deduce 'my', 'mine', 'me' from 'I' as we do in Chinese?). So I realised that I simply could not assimilate all these complications. Just imagine, in English, if you know how to say tooth', this does not help you to say *dentist*, you have to memorise yet another word. And if you want to say 'mare', 'stallion' or 'colt', remembering 'horse' is of no avail. In Esperanto, as in Chinese, those words are derived from the basic word according to a consistent pattern. I'm very glad that when a course of Esperanto was organised in our factory, I decided to follow it. Here I felt comfortable, and I enjoyed the lessons very much. Esperanto is like Chinese, a language entirely consisting of invariable elements that combine without limitation. People say that English is the international language. But what's the use of an international language that cannot be acquired by working people? I have now many contacts all over the world. For what I wanted, I didn't need English. Too bad that I was so late in discovering it." Articles about EsperantoOn this website http://claudepiron.free.fr/articles.htm you'll find lots of very interesting articles about Esperanto. Scroll down to find the articles in English. I would like to recommend especially:
A book about foreign languages in general Contact usIf you would like more information about Esperanto, browse the net, there are lots of very interesting websites orcontact the NSW Esperanto Federation nsw@esperanto.org.au |
