Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

Regular readers might know that in June 2003 (between the launch of The World of Stuff and when I actually started blogging), I studied the Esperanto language.

Half of you are asking, "What's that?" Well, in an increasingly globalized world, more and more people of different languages are communicating with each other. How do you communicate when there are different languages involved? Often, the parties may use a language such as English or French. It may not be the native language of either, but it has become common in business and trade due to the global enterprises of Englishmen and Frenchmen of the past (think "Rule Brittania, Brittania rules the waves...").

Esperanto, on the other hand, is designed to serve as a neutral common language for people of different first languages. Isn't that much more fair? After all, if you were talking one-on-one to someone in Japan, you wouldn't want to learn Japanese, would you? If you were both speaking Esperanto, you'd be meeting each other halfway, so to speak. Think of it like a linguistic handshake.

The other half of you are asking, "I know what it is, but does anyone speak it?" The answer is yes! People all over the world speak it. There are large concentrations of speakers in Europe and East Asia, but Esperantists can be found in just about any country, and odds are there's an Esperanto club near you. Many works have been translated into Esperanto, and there are original works in the language as well.

So anyway, that's what I was thinking of in June 2003 when I went to learn the language. I tried, but I just couldn't learn from an online course. This past weekend I got interested in it again. So I ordered a book: "Teach Yourself Esperanto," which, according to a leading Esperantist, is the best Esperanto textbook in English.

My goal is to become fluent in Esperanto. It's supposed to be the easiest language to learn, because the grammar is very regular and new words can be created using suffixes and prefixes. As an example of the latter, how is someone learning English going to know that "beef" means "cow meat"? The words are nothing alike. But in Esperanto, "bovo" is "cow" and "bovaĵo" is beef. Likewise, "kato" is "cat" and "kataĵo" is "cat meat." Can you guess what "homaĵo" is?

The funny thing is, I can see myself achieving this goal. Even though I've taken Spanish classes for nine years, I can't possibly imagine myself thinking in Spanish and spewing it out like it's nothing. But with Esperanto it's quite different. I can imagine myself speaking it effortlessly. Now I just need to get out there and do it.

This link's for the ladies: it's the Color Diamond Encyclopedia. Over three hundred colors have been identified, and you can see pictures of tons of them. A girl's best friend? Maybe, but rocks have nothing on me.