Esperanto for English speakers now in Beta!
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It’s here!
Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language in the world, is now in beta and you can start learning it immediately.
The goal of the language was to create a politically neutral language that would help promote understanding and world peace... a language that is not tied to a specific country and that is easy to learn seemed like the best way to go about that. Ready to put that to the test and see if it indeed is as easy to learn as Ludwik L. Zamenhof says? (Today I learned that he also wrote the first grammar of the Yiddish language).
If you are an Esperanto and English expert, you are always welcome to apply to be a contributor in the Incubator.
If you are a huge fan of Esperanto who also happens hang out a lot in the Duolingo discussion forums to help people who are learning or are having trouble: the contributors of all the courses always have an eye out for awesome and active people to help them moderate the forums. If you write helpful and kind responses often, keep it up and you will stand out and maybe be invited and get one of those green shields around your face. :]
Please thank the Esperanto team for their love and dedication to this project, and help them test the beta course so that they can fix whatever needs fixin'. Thank you all! Enjoy!
EDIT: Wondering why people want to try Esperanto? Check out my post Esperanto: What is it and why learn it? for more info. There was an article written about this course published today on the 29th of May.
Homework to you all: How do you say "You rock!" in Esperanto?
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WoW. Level 7 already and yeah THANK U TEAM ESPERANTO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so incredibly happy! I would love to have the ability to talk to some people once I get a grasp of the language, would anyone be willing??
This is definitely the biggest thing ever happened in History of Esperanto. I mean there are bigger things that happened in it's History but it is biggest thing when it's seen in light of number of people will join to this planned language. If I'm not wrong then, number of speakers will double or triple in next 4-5 years. : )
Yes, I think the only thing that's comparable was the day the Esperanto flag was on the front page of Google. :)
Looking up info on it, I see now that it was in 2009 to celebrate Esperanto Day (Dec 15). More details here: https://www.esperanto-usa.org/en/content/esperanto-day-google
I think the only thing that could top this, is if schools started offering Esperanto as a second language option. Anything to get more people interested and speaking it.
There's a programme in the UK, doing just this: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxGranta-Tim-Morley-Springboa
I am glad to be witness to this moment and part of history as a new Esperanto speaker Czesc
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Yay! Congrats on the launch!
You weren't kidding when you were saying 'soon' yesterday. ;)
A month after the twins were born (Ukrainian and Norwegian), The little baby Esperanto came out. When will mother Duo stop bothering the doctors (the incubators) and have all the babies (languages), so we can enjoy them all? :) Mother Duo is now expecting Hungarian and Russian!
Mother Duo <-> Mother Russia? In all seriousness, great to see duolingo expanding so quickly, hopefully attracting even more budding language learners in the future!
This is somehow the weirdest thing and the funniest thing I have seen this morning! XD
Hah! What a great present for me on my birthday today. Even more motivation to get started on this language that I wanted to learn before I even knew about Duolingo! Thank you so much course contributors!!
Make sure that you enjoy today. Rarely anyone celebrate birthday by studying a language, but you will be doing it. Isn't it?
Yep, he and I were the two people who started building the course... thanks for all your help Swdreamk33! :)
Thank you SO much amuzulo, except why did you have to put it in beta during the final exams! Lots of people love Esperanto, but can't exactly take it right now, because they have to take final exams. (sigh)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
:OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!! TODAY I'VE BEEN VERY BUSY SO I CHECKED IT ONLY AT THE START OF THE DAY, IT'S AMAZING!!!
There I go!!!!!!!!!!
EDIT after I calmed down: Excuse the spam xD
That's exactly what happened with me, I was too busy to keep checking if the course is available, and then in the evening, I just came to Duolingo to do some lessons, but I thought that I can check the Discussion and what do I see - Esperanto is available!!! :D So I started dancing :D
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Excellent! I learned some Esperanto a while back but didn't keep it up, so I've been waiting for this to get back into it. Thanks & congrats to the team :D
Mi ankaŭ.
Very happy to see this - thanks to the Esperanto team and Duo for making this happen!
I want to thank you all people who contributed! Thank you, Esperanto team for making it possible for us to learn Esperanto!
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Always glad to have a new language, even if I have no intention of learning it myself. Now that 3 slots are freed in the Incubator, It will be interesting to see which new languages will be filling them.
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"Varma kafo rapide iras al parko." is going to be another T-shirt blockbuster!
Thanks to all contributors to this course.
Awww, I don't get why people are reporting this sentence as unnatural. The coffee just wants to enjoy the sun for a bit... More seriously I've really tried to avoid such sentences, but there is just so little vocabulary taught by this point, so this happens. :)
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It's a brilliant sentence. The more unusual the example is, the easier it can be memorised. As for unnatural report option, I think it should be turned off for Esperanto: it's an artificial language, so there can't be 'natural' phrases :)
YAY!! I just started and got the basics 1 done!! I am so excited!!! Thank you SOOOOO much!!
Thank you! I joined Duolingo especially to do this course to improve my knowledge of la bela lingvo.
Good thing I've finished all my written exams today, lol. I just completed Basics 1 and I'm already liking it, so thank you so much Team Esperanto! :D
Me too! I had quit using Duolingo for the last year but have been anxiously awaiting the Esperanto and Russian launches. Glad to be back again!
Al fin tenemos el tan anhelado curso de Esperanto. Felicidades por ese gran logro. Ahora a estudiar Esperanto, pues. :D
Guido, ya tendremos otro idioma en común además del inglés y del español. Yupiiiii!!!!
Great, you guys decide to release it right before my finals week. :P Just kidding, this is great news! Thanks to everyone who contributed and I look forward to starting the tree once I'm finished with my exams :D
I have a HUGE test tomorrow, I shall die!
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Oh no! Esperanto will still be here for you when you come back after the test. No dying here! :o
No dying here! :o
Is that an official promise? As long as we maintain our streak we won't ever die? ;)
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No doubt about it. It has been scientifically established that as long as your streak continues, that is proof that you are not dead no matter how bad you may be feeling. However, once your streak is discontinued all bets are off.
Thanks to my streak I can clearly demonstrate that, no matter what it looked like to others or what they may have wished, I have not been dead even once these past two years.
Thanks, but I haven't finished the Norwegian tree yet. Can't be a polyglot without finishing the tree!
Oh my... I'm trying to refresh school learned German and to learn French. So, here is just one question: how do you think, can I take Esperanto and not get confused? How much lexicon and grammar are similar to German & French? I'm especially concerned about French, I have a rough time grasping it =(
Trust yourself. Your brain will figure it out. I read elsewhere that French students that took two months to learn Esperanto were better French speakers after two years, versus students that only studied French for two years. You're helping your brain. I can't find that particular study, but it's in keeping with other results of fast language aquisition as shown here on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto
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I went in to do "a lesson" out of curiosity and just started plowing through. It's really fascinating!
Wow, awesome. I've been following you since who knows back when and now it feels an honor that you're doing a course I helped build. Enjoy the course!!
Now this one sounds like a perfect justification to learn it =) I think my subconscious just wanted to hear someone's approval to not to feel guilty.
Check it out a little bit. It is way simpler than both of those. Verbs have the same ending for all pronouns. All singular nouns end in '-o' and plural adds '-j' for an English "-oy" sounding ending, with only an accusative form to add which only adds '-n'. Other parts of speech each end in their own letter. The language is phonetic, so that what you see is what you say - no mute letters and each letter has a specific sound.
http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_grammar
http://www.forvo.com/search-eo/viro,%20viroj/
http://esperanto-panorama.net/vortaro/eoen.htm
On a side note, is there an Esperanto keyboard someone would recommend for when we are not on the lesson pages (which have the few special letters). Although I can copy and paste from the Character Map, I would like a version of the international keyboard that would let me put the ^ on the consonants that need them in this language.
To get the ^ you can use the US international keyboard. Use Right-Alt 6 then type the letter. â ô etc.
On a mac, use US Extended: alt/opt + 6 will get the circumflex for ĝ, ŝ, etc..., and alt/opt + b will get the breve for ŭ.
Let me try that: ¼ Oops! Right-Alt 6 gave me one-fourth symbol instead. I have the US international keyboard, but there must be an extended version somewhere. I can type Shift 6 and then the vowel for â, ê, î, ô, and û, but it won't work for consonants: ^s
I tried Right Alt Shift 6 then S , but nothing happened and then I had S.
Yeah, I think that there are actually several slightly different US International layouts. I'm on fedora linux and the full layout description is "English (international AltGr dead keys)" For me Right Alt Shift 6 gives ¼. Right Alt 6 followed by any character gives the circumflex. ŝ ĉ ĝ â etc. ŭ is Right Alt Shift 9 followed by u.
Oh look, someone has posted about this: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8831852 I am going to try to install this Tajpi keyboard for Esperanto.
Replying to northernguy but already too many levels of reply:
I can guarantee you that "Just about everybody on this board" is using the default keyboard layout that comes with their device/OS/locale.
As for the three people actively participating in this particular subthread, I agree that we are all talking about slightly different layouts. That is what I was saying when I pointed out that there are several different layouts that may be labelled "US international" Because of this, I wasn't really trying to provide a fullproof, universal recipe for making a circumflex. I was just pointing out that there are keyboard layouts that allow one to comfortably produce all the diacritics and special characters for a fairly large set of European languages. Clearly each individual should have a look at what is provided on his/her computer or device and see what is most comfortable for him/her.
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JeffA2
You are not using U.S. international keyboard configuration. You are talking about a completely different keyboard configuration from just about everybody on this board.
Currently learning French and German in school, after reading up around the topic I think adding Esperanto to your checklist would honestly improve your skills in other languages, and is simple especially in comparison to a complex language such as German!
I was originally not planning on learning it, but now that I've tried it, it is so easy! I have been able to guess correctly what most things mean without going over the word with my mouse when a word is first introduced.
A huge thank you to everyone who made this possible, as well as Duolingo for not only allowing this wonderful thing to happen, but to let us experience it for free. I bet Zamenhof could not have imagined a learning platform like this in his wildest dreams! I'm so excited for this!! :D
YES! Dankon duolingo. Thank you so much! I love the language! I've been waiting for so long!
Jes!!! :D Thank you so much for your work! I was waiting for this course since I didn't really like the concept of Lernu and all the other courses were rather boring and made me lose my motivation. I know that Duolingo will keep me motivated to finally learn Esperanto. I'll start right after I've finished my Norwegian tree!
(Oh I'm so glad I've just written my final exams and now I have plenty of free time! Perfect timing, Duolingo :P)
Ha, speaking of exams I'm in an unlucky spot, would love to put some time into Duolingo but gotta revise for exams in a couple weeks!
Ohh but you can celebrate with Duolingo afterwards! In a couple of weeks the courses will be more stable, so... that's a little plus :D Wish you good luck!
Almost 2000 roots, but using affixes you can get much more words (source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/464596177035738/permalink/465862906909065/)
To moderators and people who have completed the course: What can we expect after completing it? Will I be able to have a normal conversation about basic topics?
I would guess so, but I can't guarantee it. At the least I'd say you should be able to read virtually any book in Esperanto. :) I'd be curious to hear how much of radio Muzaiko people can understand after completing the course!
Vi bonegas! Gratulon al la kreintoj, provlegantoj kaj testantoj de ĉi tiu mirinda kursaro!
You rock! Congratulations to the creators, proofreaders and testers of this marvellous course!
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Nope, as all the courses that go in to beta, they are only available on the web until it stabilizes a bit. Once it seems technically stable, it will show up on Android and iOS. :]
really? I was able to access german for spanish speakers seven months ago while it was in beta phase. Perhaps the said course is almost stable.
Anyway, accessing the Esperanto course through DL's mobile site.
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I said technically stable. It can be considered technically stable while still in beta. ;]
haha, being a regular mobile user I was almost worried reading this comment chain, didn't even think of using the browser on mobile... xD
Well was I looking forward to this. A shame I have to work more on French & German now for exams, but at least now I have some form of procrastination ^.^
I mentally screamed after reading an email notif that Esperanto is now available here. Oh. My. God.
Until I discovered it's not yet available on the mobile app version. I cri
But heyooo, it's fine! YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME. Thank you for giving us this chance to learn this language!
Just give it time :) All courses still in Beta are only available on the website. As soon as it clears Beta, you'll see it available on mobile, etc.
I love Esperanto! It is an amazing language and so easy to learn. I wish that world governments would have given it a chance and tried to make it a universal language like Zamenhof intended.
But if we could all talk to each other more easily then world governments might have to stop blaming all their problems on immigrants and foreigners so much... ;)
I like it because I feel like i'm in a secret society. No governments allowed. :)
I had a dream last night where I went to a country in Europe in an alternate universe where they speak Esperanto. It looked a lot like Switzerland. I was just exchanging pleasantries in Esperanto with people who were walking along a mountain path.
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So happy! Congrats and thanks to Team Esperanto! I got the email while in school and started freaking out I was so excited. I am ready to finish the tree!
Yes!! I'm so excited to learn, is anyone up for being like my learning buddy?
wow, I was the 42nd person?! who joined and now it's already past 1300! This is going to ROCK!
Does anyone know when the three new languages (Norwegian, Ukrainian, and Esperanto) will be released onto the mobile edition?
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Yes they will, but only after a while (maybe a couple of months) when they are a little more stable.
For once, the notification worked to tell me this course is finally in beta!
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Notifications are sent out a little while after the course graduates to beta (not immediately). We make sure there are no apparent issues right after the release, and only then send them out (could be a couple of hours or a couple of days, depending). If you start the course before they are sent, you won't get one. So they are indeed working, we just don't want to spam you if you already know. =]
Hu ra! Now I have to quickly finish the Polish tree (in fact, English for Polish speakers, but you understand :] to fully immerse into Esperanto!
Dzięki! Mam już dużo przyjaciel polaków i przez całe lato będę w Polsku tak mam nadzieję, że coś się nauczę ;-) Jak by coś, zapytam cie; i ty mnie możesz zapytać o esperanto.
YIPPPEE!!! I love this language! Simple but yet constructed to perfection! Just beautiful. .. ;)
Thank you Team Esperanto for all your hard work :D Now I can learn Norwegian, Ukrainian and Esperanto over the summer!
This amazing website and community continues to grow thank you everyone who made this happen.
Thank you so much Esperanto team! I wonder when Klingon is coming out... It can't be as late as next year.
I was anxiously awaiting the email, and it finally came during science class. I gasped out loud, and yelled,"Yes!" Needless to say, I got very weird looks...
Scrolling through discussions Wait, what? Click .......YEAH!!!!! WHOOO!!! YEAH!!!!!!!
I could not be more excited!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ESPERANTO!!!!!!! I did basic 1 and I don't wanna stop!!!! Thank you Duolingo! You change my life everyday!
Not really sure what Esperanto is, but I'll be a good sport and give it a go after I finish my Italian, Irish, and Portriguese courses! Could someone please explain in more detail what Esperanto is and how it can be used?
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It is the most widely spoken artificial language out there. It's meant to be easier to learn than regular languages - no exceptions, and the grammar is designed to be as easy as can be. Verbs tend to have only one ending, for instance, that doesn't depend on the subject. You can try learning it in parallel with your existing trees - after an hour of wrestling with Irish an esperanto lesson will no doubt feel wonderfully refreshing.
The reasoning being that if, no matter how much effort you pour into Italian, you won't be as good as a native Italian speaker - so you would be at disadvantage in a conversation. Or vice-versa if you speak English with them. Of course that doesn't matter if you're planning holidays or ordering ice-cream, but imagine for instance an Israeli and a Palestinian negotiating a peace agreement. Speaking Hebrew or Arabic would give one party a big, unfair advantage as it would place the entire conversation on someone's cultural and linguistic home ground at the expense of the other partner. And using a third language, like English, puts the burden on both parties to learn a complex language with lots of irregularities and exceptions, that has its own cultural background that you have to learn about too if you want to use it adequately. Esperanto is (almost) no one's native language, so when we speak it we are all equals. And it's very easy to learn.
Dr. Zamenhof, who invented esperanto, thought that everyone being able to communicate in a language that's culture-neutral was the one solution to war, pogroms, conflicts etc. Nowadays these ideals are still very much a motivation, but more practically it's a way to connect easily with people and a good first step to learning their language. If you live in a decent-sized town you might have esperanto meet-ups, if you want to travel look up esperanto travel sites - you might find a friendly couch to sleep on and someone to talk to in an otherwise foreign country.
You are right but is the only special s i have on my ipad keyboard ;-)
We need the special characters button for comments here too!!
Hello! Will there be a "Words" section for Esperanto like the other languages? It is really handy for exercising and instead of keeping tons of notes.
Really like the language, I just have one quick suggestion, would be nice if I can click on each word to pronounce that word for me. Currently when I click on each word, it only provides translation
YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was SO looking forward to doing this course!
Thanks a bunch, Team Esperanto, for spoiling my final exams now because I MUST do your course =( Just kidding, you guys are awesome. Thank you thank you thank you =)
Have you noticed how this thread has a lot of people studying pretty much everything they can get their hands on and screwing up DL's formatting with all their badges?
Mi estas felicxa kaj mi sxatas gxin cxar nun mi povas lerni esperanton cxi tie. YESperanto ;)
Amazing. That's a language I've never thought of learning but I will give it a try! ;)
I've been waiting for this course for soooo long! I love it! I can't wait until I'm thinking in Esperanto. To everyone that contributed, mi volas diri al vin dankon multa! Mi amas Esperonton kaj mi tre ekscitita!
So very, very happy about this one. I've played with Esperanto a bit with other books and courses but didn't get too deep. I'm excited about following up my recently finished Swedish tree with some Esperanto :)
One minor nitpick... any particular reason why the lessons don't accept the x system for the special characters?
Yes, there are technical reasons and they're complicated. Unfortunately all I personally could do was pester their developers about it, and don't worry I did that quite thoroughly. ;)
Congrats, and thank you for the dev team, have been waiting for this for almost a year!!!
yes finally I been waiting for so long. I even check this morning and nothing came back and here it is. Thank you team Esperatnto.....
when I heard that it was easy to learn, I was very happy and couldn't wait to try it out!! Thank you to the contributors for their time spent on this!!!!
SO MANY COURSES! (I'm convinced ya'll are trying to kill me) But yay Esperanto! And thanks to the hardworking team!
Thanks! Thanks for that! I was expecting it for a long time! Thank you all Esperanto team, i have no works to express my gratitude...
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Having finished Italian .... I was so waiting for this. Thank you Esperanto team. You rock.
It'll be available as soon as it clears Beta and is declared stable. After that it'll show up in the list of available languages for phones/tablets/etc.
Oh my gosh, I've been waiting soooo long ! I seriously cannot contain my exitement.
Same here! I need to finish 30 exercises of Dutch before I can start on Esperanto.
Tja, dat is wel een goede idee. Veel succes met je Nederlands en ik hoop je spoedig in de Esperanto cursus te zien! :)
Dankjewel... ik moet ook mijn Nederlands beter te maken, maar ik heb nu te veel met deze Esperanto cursus te doen. :)
Very pleased and impressed so far. Great job! Thank you to all the contributors. I am excited to see the course finally launch!
I will seriously finish this in a month! Can it teach enought with this small amount of units?
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I think you might slow down a little bit when Duo moves from structuring sentences in Anglo friendly patterns and starts displaying them in the less familiar patterns available in Esperanto.
Eg: right now they are showing you
I hit the ball
It could just as easily be: the ball hit I or even ball I hit. Subject and object are determined by small spelling changes not position in the sentence. English speakers find it a challenge to rapidly find the object and subject in complex sentences. Easy to make a mistake.
At least, that is how it is for me.
Let's hope not! i'm not a native english speaker and my native language has all sorts of spelling changeslike that! i'll pay attention to your advice and slow down if i have to, though. Thanks for the adivice!
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I didn't mean you should slow down. Quite the opposite, go full bore until you are forced to slow down. But as you seem to understand, determining parts of speech by their position is easier than detecting the presence of absence of a single letter.(especially if you are not used to doing it that way)
A couple of comments lead me to believe that Duo may have chosen to stick with Subject/Verb/Object order that western European languages employ. They are encouraging students to report false negatives because of altered word order to help them improve the program.
It they did, it would make sense. Even using conventional S.V.O. examples can sometimes provide hundreds of possible correct answers for a given example. Better to get the beta out the door and let the user base supply correct alternatives which can be applied as needed.
I am very pleased that Esperanto is finally in Beta. Es ist einfach perfekt! Czesc
yay i'm so hype. Now I can finally learn. I just wish meetup groups were bigger.
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To get an idea of just how good Duo's teaching method is try ...learnu.... for learning Esperanto. In my experience five minutes on Duo is roughly equivalent to one hour or more on learnu.
If you post on a thread that is shorter and more likely to be read by a lot of people, you will probably get a lot of suggestions about meetups etc. Even better, start your own thread for just that purpose.
oooh okay , but I meant meetup.com language exchanges. Okay, well when I finish the lessons i will post for an exchange. Thank you!
Esperantists meet up since way before meetup.com, so the way they do it usually excludes meetup.com. That doesn't mean we don't meet up though ;). Join the Facebook groups (nowadays there is one for every country) and look through the lists of events :).
i don't know why I can't open the practices on this website, (but the app works fine), I have tried with explorer,safari and Google chrome, every time it comes to the practice, nothing but blank is showing in front of me..... It's just me or other people in China has to use VPN too to learn Esperanto on Duolingo.
Quite possible the GFW is in the way, but no way to check of course. Maybe also check if you don't block flash and javascript?
I checked with a friend in Beijing and he said he could access it. Sorry I can't help more. :(
So happy! I've been wanting to learn this language since I was a little kid... glad it get to do it now!! :)
For anyone who wants to do it on mobile but can't since its in beta. I found a work around. Just go to duolingo on your web browser I found chrome works best and sign in and it works! Just not as nice as app but gets job done!
Does it accept erratic word order? I like to keep my sentences weird. EDIT: It doesn't :( sad. Ne estas mi felicxa...
But, thank you team Esperanto! :D So excited for this!
If it had, the course would've taken months longer to develop. We accept erratic word orders in reports though. :)
Are there any plans to modify the course to accept erratic word order in the future?
It's in his reply: they accept it via reports. When you find your word order isn't accepted, submit it via reports and over time they can incorporate it more fully into the course.
Thank you for this course and your hard work to make it possible for us to learn
Thank you so much! I've just started the course and I'm amazed at how easy Esperanto is to learn! :)
Do you mean "ci"? That is a bit of a 19th-century relic, I think. I never see the word in current Esperanto literature. Nowadays, "vi" is used interchangeably for second-person singular and second-person plural.
then esperantists have to invent more modern word for single form. it's a shame when planned language doesn't allow to divide such simple things.
i see a big influence of english in esperanto btw :(
Why are you suggesting it for Esperanto and not for English?
Esperanto started as an artificial language but now it’s used by many thousands of people all over the world, suggesting any change is as meaningless as suggesting a change in English
because english can't be good. it's natural language. as for esperanto - it's a huge waste of planned language potential. and it's not meaningless. things have to become better. it's called progress.
Well, it’s too late, Esperanto is a natural language too now in the sense that nobody can unilaterally change it. And yes it’s not perfect but we still can’t change it (and I doubt it would be even possible to design a "perfect" language anyway)
nah. i think we can change it. just speak ci instead of vi when you speak with single person. it's easy. changing alphabet is more hard - we may need tens of years to get enough support. and even after that it will be useless until original alphabet die. i would say esperanto hardly needs rolling release verison if you understand me.
But then we could change English as well, just say "thou" instead of singular "you" and that’s it, right?
And why would you want to change the alphabet of Esperanto?
You could look into Lojban. It has nothing to do with Esperanto but it’s a constructed language designed to have a nonambiguous grammar (but of course there are many many many more people using Esperanto to communicate than Lojban)
didn't know about thou. thanks for help. esperanto alphabet sucks because i have to use 3 layouts. even 2 of them make me damn my first language. and now it's like a hell.
who cares about number of language users? if i would care i wouldn't try esperanto as well. or linux. it would be a sad life full of limits.
Don’t take it wrong but it’s not the alphabet that sucks, it’s your keyboard layout. I only use one layout for English, French, Portuguese, German, Esperanto and Swedish (and I could write many more languages).
The number of speakers matters if you want to use the language in order to communicate with people. If you just want to learn it because it’s fun to learn a language, then indeed the number of speakers do not matter.
And Linux doesn’t have much to do with it, because it’s not used to communicate with people (you can use a Linux computer to communicate with someone with a different OS)
i doubt such monstrous layout is same ergonomic as 26 symbols of latin alphabet.
"in order to communicate with people" exactly. i learned english and espanol for this. not esperanto.
"And Linux doesn’t have much to do with it, because it’s not used to communicate with people" you didn't get it. of course linux is os and not language.
It’s not a monstruous layout at all, it’s actually a layout designed to be ergonomic (it’s called "bépo", it’s like Dvorak but for French) and at the same occasion they added all necessary characters needed to type in every European language.
I don’t know if you’re aware of that but the qwerty layout has been especially designed to be antiergonomic because if you type too fast on a typewriter it will lock up, so they designed a layout as crazy as possible so that it’s very hard to type conveniently.
Um, no, not really.
Lots of people use they as synonymous with he/she, especially if there's uncertainty about the gender of the person in question.
Moreover, lots of languages get by expressing these things in different ways or not making the same differentiations even that English does. Similarly, many languages make differentiations that English (and Esperanto) doesn't. How about inclusive and exclusive we, for example?
In English, and in Esperanto, we get along fine with one form for you/vi. If thou and ci have fallen out of use, it's likely because it didn't get used much.
If you want a singular form for you, one exists. I dare say most serious Esperantists would recognise it, even if they don't use it. And thousands of people are using the language just fine without out it.
So I ask again, why create a new word when 1) a perfectly serviceable word exists and 2) demonstrably, people are getting on just fine without it anyway, even though it exists if they wanted to use it?
That is my question, and you don't seem to have an answer... because telling me I'm asking the wrong question? Not an answer.
guys here is a nice story to read on your free time here is the link http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/stories/threepigs/
if u like the story feel free to give me a lingot and if you dont like to if you want give me a lingot anywass!!!!!
sorry for bad english
Is it just me or does the voice recording here sound like that on lernu? Just curious. Sounds amazing either way!!! Thanks for all your hard work Esperanto team!!!! I'm in love with the course!!
After Italian I will learn this language to better my language learning ability. Good luck everyone
Dankon Teamon Esperanton! Mi tre ŝatas tiun lingvon ĉar la gramatiko estas tre facila. Mi esperas ke mi povas flue komprenas ĝin frue.
I like the course, but one thing that would be very useful is if you could, at any stage in the course, be able to download the vocabulary so that you could enter it into a program like anki or something for long term review to really ingrain it in your long term memory and practice retrieval. I mean I could go back through everything I learned so far and copy the vocab word by word but that's sort of tedious esp. since I didn't think to do it initially. So having the ability to get the vocab at any given point would be convenient.
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You can get Esperanto decks downloaded from Anki. The vocab is at about the same level. Also use Memrise for Esperanto. Memrise even has vocab programs specifically for Duo French. I don't know about other languages though.
That way all you have to copy from Duo are those sentences that illustrate some tricky grammar point. To get those, just open up the first lesson in each group where Duo has the tips and notes section. Their basic grammar points come with illustrative examples right there in the notes.
If you want to try your newly learned skills or just practice Esperanto, come join at www.freenode.net ##Esperanto.
If my post is inappropriate or violates the forum rules, sorry and please delete.
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I don't see how it would be inappropriate. It is a chat room presumably built around Esperanto. Someone might post inappropriate content but that is a risk with any chat room. You have to open up your on board security programs to allow irc. (which I don't) but again that is true for any chat room.
I have a question... Since the words database in the Esperanto course is not very big. Can you suggest another sounce of dictionary-like style that we can use? I am asking because i googled a bit and i found a few places where a word means something and at another site it means something completely different - lastly i loaded Google translator which gave the same word a 3rd different meaning! (i can't find dictionaries like Oxford Eng-German ones that are 1000 pages)
WHOO! ~Happy Day~ :D
Although, not sure if I should put my German studies on hold, try them side by side or wait till I'm advanced enough with the first one... .__.
In any case, Thanks so much for all your hard work and dedication, you wonderful contributor peeps! ^^
This should keep me busy until Russian & Japanese are added x)
I really needed to pace myself. Or else I would have been half way through the course already. Good job team!
Thank you so much! I am thoroughly enjoying this easy-to-learn language!
THANK YOU. NOW WE THING FOR DUOLINGO. ESPERANTO FOR SPANISH (GRACIA. AHORA PENSAR PARA DUOLINGO. ESPERANTO PARA ESPAÑOL)
Esparanto? It's not really that widely used, is it? After all, it's a made-up language, so why learn it?! And of course the Klingon course is just trash.
Irish isn’t widely used either (about the same number of speakers as Esperanto worldwide), is much more complicated to learn and doesn’t allow you to connect to any "previously inaccessible" person given that virtually every Irish speaker also speaks fluent English (which isn’t the case at all for Esperanto, of course).
Does that mean that Irish is even more useless?
Don't have time to read the whole string - so maybe someone said this already, but a website I love is Off QC. http://offqc.com/ He posts about Quebecois French, sometimes citing differences between Parisian French and Quebec French. Great for learning about idioms. I should add: occasionallythe posts are about off-colour slang (from songs, signs, bar conversations overheard - all appropriately in context) - so if you are easily offended, skip it. You can also find him on Facebook, if that's easier. He posts a link to his blog, so you know when a new blog post is up, if you set that page to notify you.
Also if you like this feel free to give me a lingot!!!
