I fell in love with the concept of Esperanto and was wondering what everyone else thought about it. Does it seem like a good idea? Have you even heard of it? :3
I've used Esperanto every day for the last two years. I speak it moderately well, I write a column about it in my university newspaper, and I do a radio show about Esperanto as well. Yup. Esperanto is pretty rad.
I love the idea of it, and I've tried to teach myself some, and I'm a not-so-active-anymore member on lernu.net... I'm planning on devoting much more time to it once I graduate in the spring. :)
Anyone have a good teach-yourself-Esperanto book that they'd recommend? <3
I think "Teach Yourself Esperanto" by Cresswell is a great book. Also, "Step by Step in Esperanto" is really fun, weird, and thorough, if you can find it.
Personally, I think lernu.net is where it's at, learning wise.
Why empty? Esperanto is a rather rich language. Word formation for example is flexible thanks to its agglutinative nature. And it may sound unintuitive, but the regularity of the language contributes to make it richer. Let me try to illustrate this. In English you can often prefix something with un- to make the opposite of something. But it does not work all the time (English being irregular). In Esperanto, the prefix mal- makes the opposite of something and you can use it for any word for which you want to make the opposite. It's regular. If it's logical, it's correct. So "mi sekvas la sagon" (= I follow the arrow) can logically be transformed into "mi malsekvas la sagon" which could be translated in English using several words (= I follow the arrow in the opposite direction). Regularity allows to build many words and be creative
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It feels empty to me because I do not get a sense of culture from it. The language itself is well-built, but it doesn't have the same feel as a language that has been around for thousands of years, where I can look up almost exactly how it evolved. Then again, I am a lover of history, and a language with little history evokes little interest. And I remind you that one does not need to be an expert to have an opinion; I tried Esperanto, I didn't like it. It does not make my point of few invalid.
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Anyone have a good teach-yourself-Esperanto book that they'd recommend? <3
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Personally, I think lernu.net is where it's at, learning wise.
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And I remind you that one does not need to be an expert to have an opinion; I tried Esperanto, I didn't like it. It does not make my point of few invalid.
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Have yet to get around to learning it though. Mainly due to my desire to relearn french.
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