Blogs

NASKE 2013

NASK3 2013 will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. from June 27th to July 4th, 2013.

More details to follow.

Another slogan

"Real change begins with Esperanto."

Regards,
Mike Jones
16.Jan.2013
Fort Worth Texas

They could be talking about Esperanto - again.

There is a college whose website states that their mission is, "to graduate...students...determined to intentionally change the world for the better."

Good golly, Miss Molly, they could be talking about Esperanto!

The college in question is Philander Smith College. Here is the link:

http://www.philander.edu/about/

Regards,
Mike Jones
16.Jan.2013
Fort Worth Texas

Another case of unintentional Esperanto

Or, maybe we need to open an additional category of, "unintentional/ironic reference/allusion to Esperanto".

Anyway here it is: in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, "underdog" is listed as first appearing in 1887, the birth year of Esperanto.

However, in their online dictionary (15.Jan.2013), it shows a different date, but this different date also connects to Esperanto. That date is 1859, the birth year of the creator of Esperanto. Here's the link:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/underdog

Regards,
Mike Jones
15.Jan.2013
Fort Worth Texas

Chick Lit

How do you say 'chick lit' in Esperanto?

Chick lit, as I guess everyone knows, means literature "by and/or for women" (an Esperanto example being "Marta", of course). Now, how to translate this term into Esperanto? My suggestion is, "inja litro", with the following etymology:

"inja" is a melding of "in" and "nj" and "a", with only one "n" surviving in the melding.
"litro" is an abbreviation of "literaturo". Sure, "litro" already has the meaning of metric volume, but words often carry multiple meanings, and this should cause no problem, especially when the meanings are far apart. (Technically, it is not even a case of multiple meanings, but of two identically-looking-and-sounding words from different origins having their own meanings (such as "bat" in English - the animal, and the thick stick)).

So, does anyone have a better suggestion, or should we go with this?

Regards,
Mike Jones
7.Jan.2013
Fort Worth Texas

La Tao de Esperanto

La Tao de Esperanto: La Interna Ideo

Afable,
Mike Jones
3.Jan.2013
Fort Worth Texas

The Reflux Phenomenon

There seems to be a trend in English which, for lack of any other name that I am aware of, I will call the "reflux phenomenon", namely, that word-pairs strong in one direction come to be accepted, to the horror of self-proclaimed purists, as being valid in the other direction as well. The word "affect" being increasingly accepted to mean "effect" is one instance of this. Another is the increasing acceptance of "infer" to mean "imply" - to the extent that, I hear tell, it is condoned by some dictionaries. My third and last example for now is "i.e." being used to also mean "e.g.". No less of a cultural maven than Marisha Pessl, author of Special Topics in Calamity Physics, uses "i.e." to mean "e.g." on p. 350 of that debut novel of hers.

Ĉu stagnado?

Ŝajnas al mi ke aferoj iom stagnas ĝuste nun en Esperantujo. Ĉe UEA, membroj malaperas; ĉe TEJO, oni luktas por trovi vojon por Pasporta Servo; ĉe E-USA maloftas novaj informoj kaj diskutoj en la retejo . . . pri la libroservoj mi ne scias, sed mi ŝatus scii kiom da libroj nun vendas UEA kaj E-USA kompare kun pli fruaj jaroj. Ankoraŭ viglas nia bulteno en Usono, kaj la komunumoj de Lernu kaj Edukado daŭre aktivas--kvankam ne eblas vere scii kiom da homoj en tiuj komunumoj vere regas la lingvon kaj iel aktive uzas ĝin.

Mi volus scii la impresojn de aliaj homoj . . . ĉu vere, aŭ ne?

Solvon mi ne havas, krom tio ke estus bone klarigi la kialojn por Esperanto en la moderna mondo, kaj la kialojn por lerni kaj uzi ĝin. Ne plu (laŭ mi) validas la ideo de ia "Fina Venko". Ne plu validas la ideo ke la angla estas iugrade malamika. Pri la konservado de malofte uzataj lingvoj, nu, en la sfero de lingvoj ili dum jarmiloj aperis kaj malaperis . . .

What is Esperanto essentially, or, for that matter, what is English/Greek/French... essentially?

I just ran across some jokes about language, including Esperanto (of course) that I had never seen before. These jokes are all of the form "A is essentially B". Here is the link to the set of jokes about Esperanto, but from there you can easily navigate to similar jokes about English, Greek, etc.:

http://home.ccil.org/~cowan/essential.html#Esperanto

Happy reading!
Regards,
Mike Jones
26.Dec.2012
Fort Worth Texas

Carol for Another Christmas

I have noted before in this forum that oftentimes what someone says about a given topic seems like an advertisement for Esperanto. Here is the link to my original post on this:

http://www.esperanto-usa.org/en/content/they-could-be-talking-about-espe...

I've just run across another example of this that I want to share with you, a blockbuster-sized item where, "they could have been talking about Esperanto": the TV movie "Carol for Another Christmas".

I just saw this movie today, on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). The main theme was, "bloodshed starts when talking ends". Wow. You could hardly set the stage better for the introduction of Esperanto, because the talking that they were talking about was in an international context.

After watching the movie, I looked it up in Wikipedia, where they mentioned that it was shown only once: December 28, 1964, but Wikipedia also noted: