Ted Alper's blog

Bonvenon al la hotelo "Esperanto"

Ted Alper — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:38:58 +0000

bragging about my children, or yet ANOTHER freebie Esperanto can get you...

Ted Alper — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:03:56 +0000

I have frequently told the story of how I became interested in Esperanto when my 8-year old son, who was already becoming interested in languages and communication, came to me with his idea for making up a new language of his own.

poemoj petitaj

Ted Alper — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 07:09:56 +0000

Ĉi-vendrede, la literatura klubo de la ret-gimnazio
kie mi laboras kiel matematika instruisto okazigos deklamadon de poemoj. Ĉiu studento kaj ĉiu instruisto estas invitata deklami iun ajn poemon, ĉu originalan, ĉu verkitan de aliulo.

La poemoj ne devas esti en la angla -- fakte, tiuj, kiuj nun studas, aŭ jam majstris iun lingvon, estas kuraĝigitaj legi alilingve.

Maybe math is not the universal language.

Ted Alper — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:59:59 +0000

The IMO (International Math Olympiad) questions have been
posted online recently -- in quite a multitude of languages! You can see 39 separate documents of the problems, which includes several regional variations of the same language (2 in Korean, several in Arabic, Simplified Chinese vs. Traditional Chinese, etc).

These are VERY tricky problems!

maybe a bit too much on the google thing...

Ted Alper — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 09:17:11 +0000

Last week, I ran into a fellow to whom I had been introduced the week before. After some idle conversation, he startled me by asking about Esperanto! It turned out that, after our initial meeting, he had googled me, and links to Esperanto (such as this blog) show up fairly high on the page.

An interesting discussion followed, but I was definitely a little shaken by the experience. Is this what I want my students -- or parents of students, or prospective employers, business partners, etc. -- to find if they search for info about me?

oh, why the heck not? Esperanto is hardly my guiltiest pleasure, though I'm not sure the others are accessible online. (I suppose there are still some links to Pokemon out there). And, if it bothered me enough, I could use a pseudonym (is "doktoro suferanto" taken?)

Esperanto Day Exercise -- 119 years young! (Cent dek naux jaroj de juneco!)

Ted Alper — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:24:03 +0000

OK, instead of doing the work I need to do, or sleeping so I'll be at least fresh for work tomorrow, I've been sitting here free-associating and trying to translate as I go. I don't think this quite fits the suggested theme for Esperanto Day, but it will have to do.
Comments and criticisms are always welcome -- it's the only way I'll learn!

Today, December 15, marks the 147th birthday of L. L. Zamenhof ; Esperanto, itself, born in 1887, is now only 119 years old. [Admittedly, that can sound prehistoric! My 13 year old son describes the 1960s as a time before the internet, when people wrote in cuneiform, liked disco music, and treated illnesses with leeches. Of course, he's wrong about disco, that was later.]

Not so brave new world, or another freebie Esperanto might get you...

Ted Alper — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:43:41 +0000

Ah, well, my unicode in the text-window for leaving a message in the lunch for my son seems to have broken the KidChow program! (Actually, I don't think it was the Esperanto, I had included some material on Oomoto, and apparently, it was the Japanese characters which made the system garble my order)

From my email correspondence with the company:

Got it. I see the issue. I haven‚Äôt seen this before and just got off the phone with my techie. It seems there is a site glitch we haven‚Äôt seen before in the lunchbox notes where if you enter certain special characters other than the standard ones like ! or ‚Äò, it hiccups. I see your order is essentially blank. Please email me your lunch item requests and we‚Äôll update your order. We‚Äôll also buy the lunch! It‚Äôs the least we can do.

Brave new world

Ted Alper — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 17:16:17 +0000

My kids' school doesn't have a cafeteria, so they contract out for premade lunches one can order (I'll spare you the side stories about our particular needs and experiences with previous food vendors). We are trying out a new place, "Kid Chow" -- and I can order lunches (at least one week in advance) online, from their varied selection of school-appropriate lunches to be delivered at mid-appropriate-day.

All well and good, but the esperanto connection comes because
they include a window for a note to your child to be included in the meal -- virtual love! And it accepts unicode! (at least the online textwindow does -- we'll see how their printer does next week when the first meals arrive). Since Morris knows a little Esperanto (At least, he knows more Esperanto than I know of Hebrew and Arabic, the languages he studies), for this first week I've been including small messages to him. -- along the lines of:

Harry Potter in Esperanto!

Ted Alper — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:47:14 +0000

Maybe everyone else knows about this already, but I stumbled upon it by chance at Libera Folio (in particular this story ).

You can read the details there, but note there's a petition you can sign to encourage a major publisher to be willing offer the book (and so encourage the agent of the H.K. Rowling to consent to its publication)

This is the banner that links to the petition:

My reply to the article "lost in translation"

Ted Alper — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:11:37 +0000

I saw the thread at the ELNA membroj Yahoo group about the article Lost in Translation , which includes various replies -- I also see at least one other blogger here has printed his reply; here's mine. I don't think I'm quite the proselytizer limako is, and I can already think of other things I should have added, but I do try to be honest and positive -- and there's no point in second-guessing myself forever.