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OLPC: Esperanto on the Children's Machine?
olpcnews.com — Because the OLPC is a communications tool and an education tool, some people feel that it would be good to use the OLPC to learn Esperanto and then to deliver learning materials in Esperanto. In addition, children in different countries would be able to communicate with one another more easily.
fajro- 16 diggs
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- EEnrique, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Our dear friend Hagnar said:
>Esperanto was a bad joke.
>How many people even still speak it?
>If I remember correctly, it has declined steadily.
You cannot remember something that you never
learned. In 1886 there was exactly one person that
understood Esperanto. I don't believe that number
has declined. On the contrary, with a little bit of ups
and downs, specially during the two World Wars,
Esperanto kept growing all the time since its
publication in 1887.
And it grew much more during the last two decades
thanks to Internet. I am not asking you to believe me.
Just go to the site google.com and enter the word
"Esperanto". If you get less than a million hits, just
ignore what I say.
Two months ago, more than two thousand Esperanto
speakers from about sixty countries, met in Florence,
Italy. During the whole week they participated in many
diverse activities speaking only Esperanto. They didn't
need any translators to be able to communicate, and
more than that, they all could talk to each other, which
is not possible in other international meetings, where
everything is done thru a big panel of translators.
This page offers information in 62 languages:
http://esperanto.net/
that means that many people that cannot understand
English, still may learn Esperanto. For most of these
people, learning English mean ten years of sacrifice,
high costs ... and most of them will never reach a level
for comfortable conversation. Instead, Esperanto can
be learned in less of one year. Much less if your really
try.
As a bonus for learning Esperanto, it will be a little
easier to learn another language, even English, after
knowing Esperanto.
You may learn Esperanto for free from this page:
http://lernu.net/
I can help you learn Esperanto, and I promise you
that I will not tell your friends that you are so crazy
that you want to learn Esperanto.
Write to me to eenrike (at) gmail (dot) com
Please start your Subject line with the word "Esperanto"
I have been using Esperanto for more than forty years.
Best wishes,
Enrique,
Fremont, California, USA
http://esperantofre.com/ - timsk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"If I remember correctly"? Is that another way of saying, "I've no idea, but I'll make something up and hope it sounds like I know what I'm talking about"?
To take your points in order:
"Oh, you're kidding me"
-- no, I believe the suggestion to be made in good faith.
"Esperanto was a bad joke."
-- again, not sure what you're basing that on, but the couple of million people who speak it find it useful. It's great for travelling (Google for "pasporta servo" for instance) and making proper contact with local people. Not *every* local person, certainly, but with *some* people in many towns and cities in over a hundred countries across the world.
"How many people even still speak it?"
-- see above.
"[...] it has declined steadily."
-- love to know again what figures you're basing that statement on, but take the Esperanto Wikipedia, to quote but one example: for a language that's dying out and that anyway nobody ever spoke in the first place, I think 15th position isn't a bad achievement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Multilingual_ranking_October_2006).
Anyway, see the article itself for more comments:
http://www.olpcnews.com/content/education/esperanto_on_olpc.html - Dejo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The online dictionaries of Travellang use Esperanto as a bridge language, but you don't see that on the screen. If there's ever a breakthrough in machine translation or speech recognition it will likely be with Esperanto.
- respro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1 I fully endorse "fajro"'s proposal or should I say his wish!
I happen to be an enthusiastic but realistic Esperanto speaker since 1999. I used to maintain commercial relations by means of the international language in Brazil and in China.
The language is a 119 year young phenomenon (° 1887 Zamenof’s “Unua Libro de la Lingvo Internacia”), that one day might be the and probably the most fundamental, the most
economic, the most democratic solution of communication problems of the
World citizen and indeed for all of us, inhabitants of the beautiful blue planet earth, we, the poor and imperfect terrestrials. (For more details, refer to the websites below).
It's odd that science is trying to look for a dialogue with ET's, whilst on our own planet we still have famous language barriers: unfortunately, the Tower of Babel is still standing strong.
Mankind is in dire need of a common, simple, neutral, second language in order to improve the human interoperability and perhaps, one day in the distant or far future, we'll need such a language to communicate in a human like way (not with bits and bytes) with friendly or even hostile ET's.
I've nothing against English, but unfortunately that language certainly by no means is the best choice as a real "International Language". We can do better and the solution already exists. All we need to accomplish this are clever, courageous, responsible politicians and world leaders who think ahead.
Perhaps this is a dream, but please, allow mankind to have such dreams and to foster them.
Requesting your highly appreciated elaboration on these ideas I respectfully ask you to bear in mind the wise words of a man called Victor Hugo: “L’utopie, c’est la vérité de demain” (Utopia is tomorrow's truth)
Friendly greetings from Belgium,
(Korajn salutojn el Belgio),
Remy SPROELANTS, Civ Eng
B-3583 PAAL-BERINGEN
www.esperanto.net ( http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html )
Leer gratis een geweldige taal!
Apprenez gratuitement une langue géniale!
Learn a cool language for free!
www.lernu.net
www.edukado.net - esperantistabr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I, as a brazilian esperantist, support this idea. Esperanto are simple, neutral, propedeutical, and it is spoken in the whole world. Unhappyly the people do not want to see this, and prefer to reject esperanto without knowing what exactly it is.
Great initiative! Esperanto for children!
Felipe Queiroz
President of Brazilian Esperantist Organization for Youngers
http://bejo.esperanto.org.br/
I´m so sorry, my english is poor...
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