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Esperanto Day: December 15
09/30/06
Esperanto Day: December 15
Okay, the warning is perhaps premature, but it could take a while to learn enough Esperanto to go along with the official 'day'.
Having encountered Esperanto a long time ago as one of the more durable 'universal language' attempts around, it was funny to encounter it last year at a booth at the big BUGA garden show in Munich.
Esperanto is fairly easy for Europeans. If you know English and French or Italian or Spanish, and in some cases German, you can puzzle out a lot of the vocabulary and the like.
The Wikipedia entry has a lot of amusing surprises, like having Shatner star in an all-Esperanto horror film called Incubus.
It also seems the fashion to have a "day" for everything, so it's no big surprise that there's an Esperanto Day. Perhaps I'll try to go along with the stated 'blog in your native language and translate to Esperanto' theme. That said, though, I'm very, very rusty. Someone may have to remind me, too.
I think my vocabulary stopped short at phrases like La hundo sidas sur la fajro - 'The dog sits on the fire'.
The phenomenon of remembering dumb phrases best really abounds. I still remember stupid phrases like:
* Mes cheveux ont la mine d'un écureil repassé - [French] my hair looks like a pressed squirrel
* Mi pelo tiene el aspecto de una ardilla planchada - [Spanish] my hair looks like a flat squirrel (couldn't find the word for 'pressed' at the time)
* Ni pà bú pà dà hei yu - [Mandarin Chinese] are you afraid of the big black fish?
* Mekula watoto wote nyumbani - [Swahili] I have eaten all your children at home
5 comments
I’ll be happy to remind you – and we can even provide some translation help, if you need it. Just sign up:
http://esperanto-usa.org/node/515
Cheers!
Thank you, Steven :) My sole Esperanto book is half a kilometer deep in storage, but I can probably muddle along with some good online references and an online dictionary, if need be, since I’ve got a few European languages under my belt (is knabo still the word for boy? I think only Germans, East Europeans and Monty Python fans, cf. knnnnnn-iggit, can possibly pronounce it :)
When Americans say “cannot” a little quickly, they tend to run the K and N sounds together very much like knabo…
Thanks for signing up!
Mi estas kontenta scii, ki almenaux unu neesperantisto partoprenos Esperantotago. Mi mem jxus eklernis Esperanton en jlio, sed mi parolas gxin suficxe bone, miaopinie, ke mi povu traduki mian blogon Esperanten.
Let’s see if I can translate that :)
“I am happy to know that at least one non-Esperantist would participate in Esperanto Day. I myself just learned Esperanto in July, but I speak [g^in? Can’t find a good translation of that] sufficiently well, in my opinion (?), that I could (not povus?) translate my blog into Esperanto”
Well, we’ll see what I can come up with in a couple of weeks’ time. Maybe I should keep it around as a draft and add a few words at a time :)
