"Lando sen lingvo estas lando sen animo."
Translation:A country without a language is a country without a soul.
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This is an old Irish quote from an Irish rebel at the turn of the last century to encourage Irish people to speak Irish instead of English. Its almost always repeated during discussions of the Irish language. It basically says that we should speak Irish because its our culture and heritage and thats more important than the commercial and travel benefits of English.
I'm really surprised to see it hear.
I suspect the Esperanto version came from this Esperanto translation of a book on Scots Gaelic, where it is quoted as "an Irish proverb" with no other attribution or context: http://www.iol.ie/~carsfrn/Gaela%20Lingvo.htm
I bet the Duo developers put together this lesson by scraping the web for "Esperanto, proverb." It's interesting indeed to hear this one's history; thank you.
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Mi samideas tutkore. Vivu la Franca Kebeka! Vivu la Kataluna! Vivu la Irlanda! Vivu malplejpartaj lingvoj!
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Language learner: What's that noise?
Esperanto: ŬooooooooOOOOOOOooooo mi estas bona lingvo, lernu min ooooOOOOOOoooooo
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I understood this to mean something about language preservation, as in saving and speaking indigenous/near-extinct languages.
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thankfully I don't think there are any countries that don't have any language
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Oh boy this comment section. My interpretation is that they're saying a country without people living there doesn't have a soul, or much going on. I know it's an Irish proverb with a different meaning originally intended, but if the course creators put any thought into adding this sentence, then my interpretation was their thought process. Then again, I might be wrong.
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Well none of the Americas has much in the way of soul, its just European languages with a few mixed in tribal languages
