Welcome to Gaia! ::

But with a European bias! stare

There have actually been a few movies made entirely in Esperanto.

One of them, I believe, is terrible and involves William Shatner. xd

xDDD Now I want to see it!

I heard his acting was up to his usual standard....

still wanna see it?

Stick to the music... some of it is pretty good

(esperanto that is, not SHatners blaugh _)



Petition to get Harry Potter translated into Esperanto.

http://www.hp-esperanto.com/index.html?lang=eo&submit=Reiru+al+la+listo

So Esperantists should not say INCUBUS
just like like Actors should not say MacBeth.




A pic from the Australian Esperanto Summer School

Fascinating, so far!

Keep posting 'em. biggrin

I've always wanted to go to an Esperanto convention ever since I started learning the language in 2003, but like I said, there's nothing remotely Esperanto-related down here in the Southeastern US. neutral

When I cornered Kimo later in the day to find out everything I could
about
his no-doubt totally weird and fascinating upbringing, he met my
falling-over-myself excitement with a shrug. Born in Copenhagen to a Danish
father and a Polish mother who met through Esperanto, he appeared not to
appreciate how bizarre it was to be a native speaker of an invented language.
Esperanto was the medium of his parents' relationship and of the entire home
life of their family. Before you start getting indignant on his behalf, know
that growing up he had plenty of contact with the world outside his home and
learned to speak Danish as a native too. But he considered Esperanto his true
mother tongue. For Kimo, Esperanto was a completely normal fact of life in the
same way that Polish would have been if both of his parents had been Polish.
Kimo didn't choose to learn Esperanto, nor did his son, but everyone
else at
the conference did. Somewhere along the way they'd decided it worth their time
to learn this utopian pipe-dream language, and I wanted to understand why. The
stated reason in pamphlets and speeches and passionate letters to the
editor is
too abstract: "Esperanto is a 'linguistic handshake,' a neutral ground where
people of different nations can communicate as equals." Nice idea, but people
don't speak languages for abstract reasons. The Irish feel a strong emotional
attachment to the once-persecuted language of their heritage, but despite
mandatory school instruction, they don't speak Irish. So goes the story of
hundreds of attempts by political and cultural organizations to convince
people
to speak a language. And the fact that Esperanto is an invented language makes
the notion that anyone would speak it even more unlikely. The quest for a
universal language is at least as old as the story of Babel. More than a
thousand languages have been painstakingly brought into the world only to die
unspoken and alone. None of them at any point had anywhere close to 50,000
speakers, the most conservative estimate for Esperanto (the least conservative
is 2 million)--much less any native speakers.
Success is probably not the first word that comes to mind when you
think of
Esperanto. But in the small, passionate world of invented languages, there has
never been a bigger one.
Ludwik Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, was born in 1859 in the
city of
Bialystok, now part of Poland. I have a historical atlas of Eastern Europe
that
includes a map of "ethnolinguistic distribution" during this time. On the left
side is a smear of Polish orange, speckled with tiny purple dots of German. On
the right is a dramatic swath of Russian pink. Snaking down the middle is an
irregularly shaped confusion of multicolored stripes. Bialystok sits in the
center of it. Zamenhof wrote that his city of birth

marked the way for all my future goals. In Bialystok the population
consisted
of four different elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews. Each of
these
elements spoke a separate language and had hostile relations with the other
elements. In that city, more than anywhere, a sensitive person might
feel the
heavy sadness of the diversity of languages and become convinced at
every step
that it is the only, or at least the primary force which divides the human
family into enemy parts. I was brought up to be an idealist; I was
taught that
all men were brothers, while at the same time everything I saw in the
street
made me feel that men as such did not exist: only Russians, Poles, Germans,
Jews and so forth. This always tormented my young soul, though many might
laugh at such agony for the world in a child. Because at that time it
seemed
to me that adults had a sort of almighty power, I kept telling myself that
when I was grown up I would certainly destroy this evil.

The official birth of Esperanto occurred in 1887, the year that Zamenhof,
using Klara's dowry, self-published a small book entitled Lingvo
Internacia. He
modestly declined to attach his own name to it, signing it instead Dr.
Esperanto, meaning "one who hopes." He explained inside that an "international
language, like every national one, is the property of society, and the author
renounces all personal rights in it for ever." Ludwik and Klara packaged the
books and sent them into an unsympathetic world.
Nothing says success like bitter, angry jealousy in the hearts of your
competitors. In this case, the names read like the product of the perverted
etymological strategies of the modern-day pharmaceutical industry:
Inter-lingua,
Ido, Glosa, Globaqo, Novial, Hom-Idyomo. These are just a few of the many
languages proclaimed by their advocates to be simpler, more logical, and more
beautiful than Esperanto. But Esperanto can afford to be smug. It's the
only one
you've heard of.
And this drives the other guys nuts. When I first became curious about
the
topic of constructed languages, I joined a Listserv called Conlang. The
next day
my inbox held 287 messages. After a few days of this, I decided I wasn't that
interested and unsubscribed. I didn't know that I'd innocently stepped right
into the "flamewar" that ultimately led to the "great split," after which
things
calmed down considerably.
The split was between two groups. The first was composed of people
interested in quietly developing and discussing the languages they crafted for
science-fictional worlds, what-if-a-language-did-this playfulness, or
Tolkienesque fun (the true conlangers). The second was composed of those who
wanted to talk about an international auxiliary language for the real world
(the
auxlangers). The auxlang group included a few devoted Esperantists and a
larger
number of supporters of alternate projects. Most of the war was conducted
within
the auxlang group, as vitriol hurled at Esperanto for its "totally ridiculous
spelling system," the "backward and confusing affix system," and "the
accusative
-n abomination." Additional fighting took place between the various Esperanto
competitors--Ido took on Interlingua, and a new version of Novial took on
an old
version of Novial. The conlangers got fed up with "this stupid argument about
something that is never, NEVER, going to happen anyway. FACE IT!!!" and the
auxlangers, no doubt tired of being called "deluded lunatics" in the one place
it was supposed to be safe to talk about invented languages, agreed to
split off
and form their own list. The conlangers went back to tame exchanges about
tense-aspect marking and vowel harmony, and the auxlangers took it outside.
Every anti-Esperantist auxlanger is convinced that he (no need to fret
about
gender-neutral pronouns on this one) represents a superior product. Perhaps
one
of them does. Perhaps all of them do. It doesn't matter. At an Esperanto
conference, I witnessed a tired-looking man in a gray T-shirt defiantly
introduce himself as an Interlingua supporter. "I think it is a better
language," he announced. "It's clearer, more logical, and more beautiful than
Esperanto," and then, without the slightest trace of irony, "but I have no one
to speak it with."
Esperanto may never have risen to its position of prominence if it hadn't
suffered its own great split early on. In the lore of Esperantoland, it is
called The Schism, and if this makes you think of religious wars, you
aren't far
off. The Schism served to draw off the people who were interested in the
language itself (the prestigious scholars with linguistically sophisticated
suggestions for improving and perfecting it) from the people who were
interested
in the idea behind the language (the idealistic true believers, or,
depending on
whom you ask, the kooks).
Zamenhof was an amateur. He had no training in philology, no university
chair. But because he was driven by the serious (if na"ive) hope that his
language would help society, he devoted his energy to persuading people to use
it rather than convincing them to appreciate its design. His book had
included a
form for the reader to sign, agreeing to learn the language if 10 million
others
also signed the form. Fewer than a thousand came back, but enough interest had
been generated to inspire him to translate the original Russian text into
Polish, French, and German. He left the English translation to a well-meaning
German volunteer, who produced choice manglings such as, "The reader will
doubtless take with mistrust this opuscule in hand, deeming that he has it
here
to do with some irrealizable utopy." Before its chances were completely killed
in the English-speaking world, an Irish linguist took interest and produced a
more readable translation.
Small clubs of enthusiasts formed. Zamenhof came out with another
textbook,
a dictionary, and a translation of Hamlet, bringing into the world yet another
rendering of the melancholy Dane's soliloquy on existence: Chu esti ait ne
esti,--tiel staras nun la demando. The first Esperanto magazine, La
Esperantisto, was published in 1889 in Germany. The movement attracted some
prominent supporters, including Tolstoy, who wrote an essay for La
Esperantisto
on "the value of reason in solving religious problems." When this resulted
in a
ban of the magazine in Russia, Tolstoy wrote to authorities, promising not to
contribute anything else to it. His plea couldn't prevent the magazine's
downfall, but others were already rising to take its place.
In 1905, 688 people from 20 countries convened in Boulogne-sur-Mer,
France,
for the first international Esperanto congress. They wore the symbol of
Esperanto, a green five-pointed star, and so were able to identify each other
upon arrival at Paris train stations, where they gathered into conspicuous,
animated groups for the trip to the coast. Until then, Esperanto had been
primarily a tool of written correspondence. Many of them were speaking it for
the first time, excited to see it actually working. A reporter from the New
York
Herald noted that "all appeared to converse with great facility."
As a gesture of respect to the host country, the congress opened with a
polite singing (in French) of the distinctly un-Esperanto-like call to
violence
of La Marseillaise. ('To arms, oh citizens!/ Form up in serried ranks!/ March
on, march on,/ May their impure blood/ Flow in our fields!') An energetic,
tearful singing of the Esperanto anthem LaEspero ('On the foundation of a
neutral language/ people understanding each other/ will agree to form/ one
great
family circle') followed, and then, after greetings from the mayor and the
president of the chamber of commerce, Zamenhof took the stage to wild
cheers and
applause. He spoke of invisible, powerful spirits in the air, images of a new
future, and he ended with a prayer to a "powerful, incarnate mystery" that
"peace be restored to the children of mankind." The audience stood, waving
handkerchiefs and shouting, "Vivu Zamenhof! Vivu Esperanto!"

'Nonsensical-people pile' ? Aww.

That article is quite interesting!

Anyway, saluton. I just joined this guild...