Seeking math articles in simple Esperanto

The U.S. National Science Foundation has perhaps a couple dozen of the kind of article you are looking for, and they are even in the Public Domain.

How do I know? Because I put them there.

Since the late 1970’s, I have been writing Public Domain articles, mostly on mathematics, but also a bit on science and language arts, and sending a copy of everything to the National Science Foundation. Most of the articles are only one page long. The collection by now consists of about 600 (six hundred) pages. About 5% (five percent) of the articles are in Esperanto.

So, I suppose that anyone could request a copy of the collection from the National Science Foundation, for only a nominal (postage and handling) fee, as the entire collection is in the Public Domain, and part of the intent of the National Science Foundation is to make science available to the public.

My guess is that if you want the Esperanto articles, you would have to order the entire collection, because the staff at the National Science Foundation probably doesn’t want to have to leaf through the whole stack asking themselves “Which of these is an article on mathematics in Esperanto?” It’s hard to tell at a glance the difference between an article on mathematics and an article on, say, thermodynamics.

As I recall, most, if not all, of the mathematics articles in Esperanto are actually bilingual: in both English and Esperanto. You could, of course, simply white-out the English in order to create the challenge you want for your students.

(By the way, I think your use of the verb “deconstruct” to mean “translate” is ill-advised. This verb has a specific technical meaning in philosophy/linguistics, and the careless/incorrect bandying about of specific technical terms can only damage the reputation of Esperanto among academic linguists. Yes, I know it’s not proper to judge something by the slips of its individual users, but the reality is that this is what is done, at least for new ideas struggling to get a foothold – and yes, Esperanto, in spite of being over a century old, is still “new” to virtually everyone on this planet. The dismissive smile on the face of an academic linguist who happens to see that someone is “deconstructing” Esperanto is, well, simply devastating. – Yes, I know that I am using “decipher” to mean “translate”, but this is a well-established metaphorical use of “decipher”.)

Anywho, the National Science Foundation has a website, of course, but since you would have to be dealing with them by snail mail (unless they have scanned all this stuff onto the computer, which I highly doubt), here is their street address:

National Science Foundation
Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington VA 22230

In October 2001, I received an acknowledgement (indeed, kudos) letter from the National Science Foundation regarding this collection of Public Domain articles. The text of the letter is as follows:

Dear Mr. Jones,
Thank you for sending the National Science Foundation your set of articles.
Our staff enjoyed looking at them and discussing them. It is an interesting collection of mathematical topics. Your colleagues must find them helpful as well. Thank you for sharing your set of articles with us.
Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education

If you want to see the actual letter itself, I have uploaded it as a PDF file to my ipernity account.

Also, in the catalog of UEA is listed the book Amuza matematiko por gelernantoj, by Petko Amaudov and Ljudmila.Amaudova: “Sofio, 1992 (2a eld.). 108p. 20cm. Ilus. Diversaj problemoj kaj tekstoj je pluraj niveloj; abunde ilustrita per desegnaĵoj kaj figuroj.”

Happy reading!

Regards,
Mike Jones

You might try going to the 'mathematics' article in Wikipedia, choosing Esperanto as the language, and clicking around to see where some of the related articles go. Probably many won't be what could be termed 'simple' Esperanto, but one never knows.