Kiam ni ne respektas havis por mia frato

Mia frato Blejr neniam respektitas, ne eĉ kiam li falas el aŭto.

​Antaŭ 43 jaroj, mia familio loĝis en Forest Hills, urbeto ekster Pittsburgh. Blejr havis amikon, Akti, kiu patrino havis kabrioleto. Somertage, ŝi ofris kondukis la aŭton malrapide dum ni sidas sur la dorsoj de la seĝoj, por nia amuzo. (Mi aĝis 2 jarojn; Blejr kaj Akti aĝis 6 jarojn; kaj nia alia frato, Vilĉo aĝis 4 jarojn.)

La rajdo amuzis por ĉiuj ni, sed kiam la patrino de Akti turnis la ĉirkaŭe angulo, Blejr elfalis dum ni rigardis.

Poste 2 aŭ 3 minutoj, la aŭto alvenis ĉe nia domo, kaj ĉiuj ni eliris el la aŭto.

"Kie estas Blejr?" mia patrino demandis.

"Ho, li falis ĉe la angulo," Vilĉo diris, kaj ni iris en la domon por glaciaĵo.

Pensoj

Mi scivolas se mia geedziĝa estas finata.

Mi geedziĝis kun mia edzino antaŭ preskaŭ dekdu jaroj, konante ŝi antaŭe tri jaroj. Kiam ni geedziĝis, mi kredis ke nia amo sufus por tutaj niaj vivoj. Sed, ni estas tie ĉi nun, kaj mi ne povas diri ke mi konas se ŝi plu amas min ... aŭ se mi plu amas ŝin.

Kiel ni venis al tian lokon? Kiel povas du geviroj, kiuj diris ke ili amos ĉiam, rivi kie ili ĉiam, aŭ preskaŭ ĉiam, koleras? Mi ne povas feliĉigi ŝin plu. Kiam ŝi leviĝas matene, ŝi parolas kolere al mi; kiam ŝi revenas al hejmo poste sia laboro, ŝi parolas kolere al mi. Estas kiel ŝi ĉiam koleras, al mi, al aliulo, al ĉiuj kaj al ĉiojn. Kaj kiam ŝi koleras, ŝi uzas vortojn malbonegajn. Hieraŭ mi devis fermi la porton de la ĉam ke ŝi estis, ĉar ŝi estis kolerdiranta "Fiku tion! Fiku! Fiku!" denove kaj denove, unu foje poste alia. Ŝi ofte faras tion, kaj mi ja dormemas de tio.

Mi ja dormemas, kaj mi ne povas kontinui tiel. Hodiaŭ vespere, mi demandis de mi se mi povas kontinui geedziĝe tiel, kaj mi komprenis ke mi ne povas. Ni jam geedziĝas dekdu jarej. Kiel oni kontinui tiel por kvardek jaroj ke ankoraŭ venas? Kiel oni kontinui tiel por tridek jaroj ke ankoraŭ venas? Dudek? Mi ne povas, kaj mi ne certas ke estas iu kiu povas, sen feliĉeco sufa por diri "Mi amas mian edzinon."

Mi ne certas plu se ŝi plu amas min. Estas kiel nia geedziĝo mortis.

Ankaŭ, ni havas tri gefiloj; la plijunaj aĝas malpli unu jaro.

Mi ne volas por ili grandiĝas kun deedziĝo de ilia gepatroj ... sed mi ankaŭ ne volas por ili grandiĝas kun la kolero de sia patrino ĉiam kie ŝi estas.

Sinjoro Eternulo, aŭskultas mian preĝon, kaj trovigu por mi la respondon de tia problemo, ĉar mi ne scias via vojo.

my neural synapses fuse

At the library today as I practiced language skills with the girls, I managed not only to be outdone by the girls but also to lose what meager skills I have in any language.

After we returned the books that were due today, Evangeline and I started practicing our Esperanto. It works like this: I read her a word, and she gives me the Esperanto equivelant. Then I use the word in a sentence, and she has to translate the sentence. If I ask her a question, she has to answer me in Esperanto. (This has all sorts of insidious purposes. Besides teaching her the language, I pass on subversive ideas, like Bonaj demandoj ne havas facilajn respondojn. "Good questions don't have easy answers.")

So we're on a roll, going back and forth, and then suddenly Rachel interjects a translation on her own. An accurate one.

I have given her virtually no instruction in Esperanto. She's drilled me on some of my vocabulary, and she's heard me make simple requests in Esperanto, but otherwise it's stuff she's overheard me explaining to her fratino or she's picked up from our impromptu conversations.

So my brain pops the clutch over that one. I wrestle it back into gear, and then suddenly Evangeline starts correcting my grammar. "You forgot to add the -N!" she wails. (It's true. I keep forgetting to add the -N for the accusative case.)

Then I realize that while I'm using words I've learned from the more advanced lessons that Evangeline hasn't reached, she is having no trouble following me. Demandi is an infinitive; theoretically, all Evangeline should know is the verb forms. In practice, she's already converted it into a noun, demando/n, and doing the same with other verbs.

I used to be ahead of her, mostly because I am the teacher, and so I need to understand it if I'm going to teach her. I now realize that my vocabulary is slightly larger, probably because I'm already bilingual and know a smattering of French and Spanish to boot, but she is rapidly eclipsing whatever advantage I have. Her brain is wired right now for language acquisition, while for me it's work.

So much work that my language center finally seized up and stopped working completely. We were having a little back-and-forth in Esperanto when I said, "Jodia estas los compleanos de your grandfather."

The girls looked at me like I made no sense. Which I didn't -- in four different languages. I had mashed them all together into one coherent statement that made sense only to me.

mi difektas mian cerbon

Mi nomiĝas Davidon. Mi lernas Esperanton.

Miaj gepatroj havas tri filojn: Brianon, Herberton, Wardon kaj min. Mi estas la tria. Mia plej maljuna frato estas Briano. Li studis Latinon du jarojn. Wardo kaj mi studis hispanan du jarojn sed ni ne parolas ĝin. Herberto studis francon unu jaro kaj hispana unu jaro. Miaj fratoj parolas lingvon Anglan nur. Mi parolas la Creolon Francan de Haïtio ĉar mi loĝis en Haïtio du jaroj. (Mi estis instruisto de lingvon Anglan, kaj misiisto.)

Mi studias Esperanton kelkaj semajno, kaj mi kredas, ke mi ne malbone skribas (parolas) sed mi ne bone skribas (parolas). (Havu pacienco.)

Mi havis kvar hundojn. La unua nomiĝas Foncion. La dua estis Ajakso; mi havis lin kiam mi loĝis en Haïtio. La kvara hundo kiu mi havas estis Sandy. Ŝi mortis en 2005. (Mi kredas.) Mia tria hundo estis Hamleto.

Mia edzino kaj mi havas du filinojn, Evangelinon kaj Raĉelon. Mia edzino ne lernas esperanton, sed mi kaj niaj fratinoj bone lernas. Ni parolas Esperanton en nia domo, kaj en la librejo. Ni parolos en la lernejo.

Mi vespere promenas kun miaj filinoj.

Mi faras picon. Evangelino amegas mian picon. Raĉelo ametas lin, sed ŝi manĝas ĝin.

Mi skribis tiu, kaj mi studas esperanton kvin semajno!?

¡Hay caramba! Mi pli bone skribas esperanton pli Creolon Francan.

esperanto for fantasists

One of the things I like about learning Esperanto is that the rapid progress you make encourages you to keep going, even when the only other person in your area who speaks the language is your 8-year-old.

Because it's a designed language, rather than one that grew organically, Esperanto has extremely regular grammatical rules. Verb conjugations, for example. It doesn't matter if the subject is first person or third, singular or plural, the verb ending is always the same. Thus it's mi estas, vi estas, ŝi estas and so on; compare that to English, where the same phrase is rendered I am, you are, she is.

Similarly, nouns always end in O, infinitives always end in I, adjectives always end in A, and adverbs always end in E. A little monkeying makes it possible to turn the same root into four different parts of speech: sano (health), sani (to be healthy), sana (healthy) and sane (healthily). So I can say Mi sanas or Mi estas sana, and thus I have two ways of saying "I am healthy," depending on the preferences of my native tongue and the strictures of the medium I'm using to write or speak.

It takes some getting used to. Saying "I make bread morningly" (Mi matene faras panon) doesn't come quite as naturally as saying "I make bread in the morning" (Mi faras panon en la mateno), but I have to give the language credit for flexibility. Especially since I'm assured that any root can be turned into any part of speech, which would indicate that I can say Ŝia onklo nokte panas, but I really have no idea what it would mean to say "Her uncle breads nightly."

Ah well. I'm having fun, which is a good thing to say about any hobby, and as is borne out by the following:

1. La vampiroj manĝis la bluajn kukojn.

The vampires ate the blue cakes.

2. Ŝi renkontis la marvirinon kiu faras sekan panon.

She met the mermaid who makes dry bread.

3. Mi kredas ke mia filo kaptis malsanan lupviron per sukero kaj lakto

I think that my son caught an unhealthy werewolf with sugar and milk.

[Hm. Could I say that as "Mi kredas kiu mia filo sukere kaj lakte kaptis malsanan lupviron"?—ed.]

4. Vampiroj ne amas lupvirojn ĉar ili trinkis la brunan limonadon.

Vampires don't like werewolves because they drank the brown lemonade.

5. Dudek fantomoj ne vidis la butikon.

Twenty ghosts didn't see the store.

These are, of course, essential sentences in any language. The one I haven't figured out yet how to ask is, "Where is the bathroom?" Fortunately, here in my own house, my family can understand the question in English in the unlikely event that I need help.

esperanto in revival

So, as you may have noticed if you read my most immediately previous blog entry, I'm learning Esperanto, primarily with my older daughter, but to a lesser extent with my younger one, who has caught her sister's interest and my enthusiasm.

Apparently we're not the only ones. Deutesche Welle notes that Esperanto is experiencing a revival of interest, thanks in no small part to the Internet:

"The Internet has opened up new possibilities," Boris-Antoine Legault, a leading Esperantist in North America, told the Canadian Press. "Esperanto is a fantastic tool on the Internet as a bridge language."

Be it blogs, forums, or online tutorials, the Internet has allowed Esperanto to reach larger audiences than it used to. Pre-Internet, learning Esperanto generally meant ordering a book from a little-known publisher or perhaps visiting one of the few dusty Esperanto offices still open in a few larger cities.

Read the entire story

So it's not exactly a dead language, as my brother Brian claimed in a recent conversation I had with him. (I'll give Brian some slack, though: His chief contact with an Esperantist earlier was on an e-mail listserv with someone who insisted in writing all his messages in Esperanto with a delayed English translation, even though no one else on the listserv spoke the language.)

I have to admit, I made my initial contact with the Esperanto-USA through their web site, and while Evangeline is taking the postal version of the correspondence course, so she can enjoy getting mail, I've been doing my lessons via e-mail.

I found it interesting that the United Kingdom is about to see some Esperanto-language clothing ads, with subtitles. And of course, there was that 1965 horror film, "Incubus," with William Shatner that was filmed entirely in Esperanto. With what I imagine is a relative shortage of new literature, music, and TV or movies available in the language, those roughly 3 million people are a shoo-in market for anyone ambitious enough to tap into it.

So I'm not convinced that it's going to be attaining its goals of international understanding any time soon, but I am pretty sure that this is a language that's not going away any time soon either.

mia filino kaj mi lernas esperanto

Translation: My daughter and I are learning Esperanto.

I just completed the second lesson in the free 10-lesson correspondence course. It's a simple but serviceable enough language that I can see why some Esperantists can be so pushy and dogmatic about making it into the international lingua franca. With only two lessons under my belt, I already can count to just shy of one million, I can speak in three tenses, and I'm even able to share some basic information about myself.

This is further than I got with two years of Spanish in high school, and about where I stood with Creole after six months of living in Haiti. It really is easy to learn. Evangeline is able to catch all the weird sentences I throw at her, like "Miaj amikoj estas grandaj insektoj" (My friends are big insects), and translate them into English with only a little difficulty. If we keep on pace, I think by the end of the year she and I will be able to have largely private conversations out in public.

That, incidentally, holds a lot of appeal for her as well. She wants to see if she can convince two of her best friends to learn the language so they can have a secret language at school.

Still, the ease of learning it aside, I can't see the language becoming more than a curiosity, a bit more established and enduring than Klingon, but not gaining the presence its strongest proponents would like. Even though it would be easy to adopt it as a lingua franca, particularly some place like in the European Union, I can't see any international government making the effort to do so.

Lacking the support of a nation, a multinational corporation such as Deutsche Bank, or even a sufficiently large group, its status as an "artificial language" deprives it of the necessary gravitas to be taken seriously.

Maybe if someone like George Soros -- the wealthy-as-all-hell financier is a native speaker of the language -- or some other well-placed and prominent Esperantist, were to back such an effort, it would come to something. But I'm not aware of anyone pushing such an effort at any level of government.

For those of us who do speak it, or at least who are learning to, it remains a great way to communicate with people from other countries whose native languages we may never learn. (And really, how many other languages can one person learn in a lifetime? This is my second second language, and I'm also working on Spanish.)

In addition to some Internet groups and some literature written in or translated into Esperanto, there's also the International Passport Service, or whatever its proper name is, which matches interested Esperanto speakers traveling aboard with potential hosts in the country they're visiting, who also speak Esperanto. I may have to try that some day, if I ever get to Lesson 10.

In the meantime, there's a group of Esperanto speakers that meets just outside Nova Bastille. We'll have to check that out sometime.

But, if anyone is still reading:

Mi havas tri fratojn.

Mia bela edzino kaj mi amas niajn belajn filinojn.

Mi ne havas filon.

Evangeline kaj Rachel faris bonan limonadon kun akvo, lemon juice kaj sukero.

Evangeline amas ŝian patron, ŝian patrinon, kaj ŝian fratinon.

Mi estis instruisto.

Mi estas filo, frato, edzo kaj patro.

Mi ne estas limonado; mi trinkas ĝin.

Mi ne trinkas kafon.

Mi faras panon.

Ishtar kaj Hannah estas ŝiaj amikoj. Ili kaptis birdojn kaj fiŝojn. (Not really.)

Sanaj knabinoj estas belaj knabinoj.

Ŝia patro portis Evangeline.

Mi amas malvarman limonadon kaj malvarman lakton.

Evangeline, ŝia fratino kaj mi lernas Esperanton!

Mi amas miajn filinojn, mian edzinon, mi patro kaj patrino, kaj miajn fratojn.

mi learnas esperanto

This is the year Evangeline decided to break all our brains.

In order to keep the children's brains from atrophying during the summer, I like to have them pick a research project or other academic sort of goal that they can work on, in addition to any new math concepts that we study and the standard reading goals.

This summer, Evangeline decided she wanted to learn a new language. We live in a part of Iowa with a heavy Hispanic population, but she didn't want to bolster her Spanish skills. I speak Haitian Creole, though not fluently, but she didn't want to learn that. She chose instead to learn Esperanto, that most famous of invented languages, which none of us speaks.

Esperanto is designed for ease of learning: There are no irregular verbs or nouns, spelling is a cinch once you grasp the language's flavor, and even the vocabulary is fairly accessible for an English-speaker, since it draws principally from European roots. If you speak a European language, the language is supposed to be a snap.

Additionally, studies have shown that studying Esperanto makes it easier to master other second languages. Many years ago in Britain, a school taught German to a control group for four years, and Esperanto to another group for one year, followed by German for three years. At the end of the road, the second group had a much stronger mastery of German than the control group.

Another incentive for learning Esperanto is that it is politically and culturally neutral; that is, you can speak Esperanto with someone from China, and you don't need to worry about sounding like an idiot, because it's a native language for neither of you. The words aren't laden with political significance because of one piece of history or culture; it's effectively a common middle ground.

I can vouch for how easy it is to learn, myself. At the end of the first lesson, I already could conjugate verbs into past, present and future tenses, and inflect nouns into nominative and accusative cases. The only barriers to communication were that I had to stop and recall the vocabulary as I spoke (as did Evangeline as she listened), and that because of the nature of the vocabulary list in Lesson One, all we could talk about was bread, cake, coffee and tea.

Lesson Two, which I've sneaked a peek at, includes information on adjectives and personal pronouns. Some auxiliary information in another flier also introduced numbers and colors. The language is so easy that, as Evangeline pointed out, we can now count just up to 1,000,000, even though we've been studying the language for less than a month.

In fact, I see two chief difficulties. First is that no one around here speaks Esperanto, that we know of. And second ...

As I said, we live in an area with a lot of Spanish speakers. Many signs and notices are bilingual. And I've been trying to teach Evangeline and Rachel how to speak Creole. The result is that I already speak to them in a medley of three languages -- English, Spanish and Creole.

Add Esperanto to this mix, and I have visions of the girls learning four languages, and being able to separate none of them.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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foreign language

Five years later, I find it ironic where we are today. Evangeline and Rachel are learning some Spanish, by virtue of living in New Jersey. They're not as proficient as I would like, but they have some basic vocabulary and understand a few basic questions when I ask them in Spanish.

Similarly, I've really stepped up the Haitian Kreyol this past year, so that they understand what I want when I say things like, "Vi-n isit! Se tann pou soti kounye-a, non?" or "Ban-m men ou you le n travese rout la." They don't answer in Kreyol yet -- and Rachel is very quick to complain, "Please speak in English!" when I go on long enough. But they're getting it.

And a month ago, Evangeline and I were chatting about languages, and I mentioned off the cuff about Esperanto. Wouldn't you know, she glommed onto it right away, and has made it a goal this summer to learn some Esperanto. So I sent away for the free lessons, and already have started going over some of the basic grammar with her.

No luck on Arabic or Chinese, though I have some hopes of getting something done at the charter school in the next couple years.

Esperanto's back seat to English

I had a friend in college who learned Esperanto because she loves languages, but  my chief exposure comes from the "Red Dwarf" novels by Grant Naylor.

In those books, which are adapted from the BBC show, Esperanto is the universal auxiliary language of diplomacy of the future. From what I have read, that is one of the original end goals for the language. Its creator and early adopters had dreams that it would become the global lingua franca, making international communication a cinch and putting everyone on equal footing since no one would have the hometown advantag.

I had been under the impression the language was created in this century and never really caught on, but some estimates claim as many as 2 million Esperanto speakers globally.

That's not as much as a "natural" language, but it's nothing to sneeze at either. Esperanto is the most successful constructed language ever made. It is at least enough to make someone with a passing interest in linguistics waste a little time reading about it.

Judging by the web sites, at least some Esperantists still share that goal of a universal auxlang. They note that English has a global penetration rate of only 8 percent; i.e., that the population of native English speakers is limited largly to Great Britain and the United States, and a few other former or current territories and colonies of those two great powers, such as Australia and New Zealand.

Now criticism of English as a global language has some legitimacy. English is irretrievably connected to hundreds of years of Colonialism via Britan and the United States, and as our sun sets, it's likely the influence of English also will wane.

Other linguas franca historically have diminished when the power behind them disappears as well. Witness French, for instance. Once the language of international diplomacy and culture, it still has some added sway because of France's prominence in European and global history, but it's been bumped from its pre-eminent seat as the language to learn.

But the Esperanto criticism of English is exaggerated, and also rests on a faulty or inconsistent definition of what constitutes a speaker of the language. While they claim that only 8 percent of the world speaks English, these sites keep claiming that there are 2 million Esperanto speakers globally.

That's impressive, considering it has no homeland to speak of, but that figure surely includes speakers beyond the estimated 4,000 or so for whom Esperanto is their mother tongue. With that same definition in place, English has a much higher than 8 percent penetration rate globally. There are English speakers in almost every country on earth.

They may be confined to the wealthy and the powerful in some countries, but they're there. And in the countries of Europe, and many other places as well, English proficiency is part and parcel of getting a basic education.

English today is like Greek and Latin were in the days of the Roman Empire. While it's not universally spoken or taught in other countris, it is the de facto "second language" of the world and generates the bulk of new words in most major lanaguages.

Like Greek and Latin, English itself is fragmenting as it spreads and produces hybrid languages in different parts of the world. Singaporean English, or "Singlish" uses a hefty amount of English vocabulary, but follows Singaporean grammar. Similar things have happened in Russia with "Russlish" and in Mexico with "Spanglish." In the long run, international English may have less to do with the Queen's English than with its children.

Long and short of it? English is deeply entrenched into the affairs of the world. Expect it to last long after the United States recedes from the world stage.



Copyright © 2001 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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