My story is similar to Todd's. I first learned of Esperanto when I was very young. I don't know how the subject came up, but I remember my parents telling me it was an artificial language. In about 1999, I read of a movie filmed enirely in Esperanto that had been found after having been lost for thirty years. The movie was "Incubus" starring William Shatner. I thought it would interesting to see, but never got around to making any effort to find. About a year ago, while browsing through previously viewed videos in a video and book store I found "Incubus." I bought it. After watching it I did some research on esperanto and found the Seattle Esperanto Society. I have since been attending their monthly meetings. My Esperanto is still very limited, but I hope to become fluent enough to carry on a conversation. As for "Incubus" it seems that fluent Esperantists consider the pronounciation and usage in the film to be rather poor. Still, I think "Incubus" is a good thing for Esperanto. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has been inspired to learn more. about Esperanto because of having seen "Incubus." Many people consider Esperanto to be a dead language, but judging from the number of young people registered on Lernu! that may not be the case.

In re: "Incubus".

I saw a very funny Comedy Central News segment, where one of the "reporters" showed the movie to a small Esperanto group.

For one thing, I was surprised that the "reporter" apparently spoke quite a lot of Esperanto. He might have just rehearsed what to say, but it seemed good. What was funny was the Esperanto group totally tore the movie apart, especially William Shatner's acting and use of Esperanto.

Learn Esperanto, and, you too, can make fun of William Shatner around the world!

Shawna

I saw that long ago, or one similar. They asked Shatner about it...and the line that had me on the floor laughing was something to the effect of

"Weren't you afraid of typecasting? you know...being known only as 'that esperanto actor.'"

I've not seen incubus, but did shatner speak it with a lot of dramatic pauses in between the syllables? *grin*

Shawna:In re: "Incubus".

I saw a very funny Comedy Central News segment, where one of the "reporters" showed the movie to a small Esperanto group.

For one thing, I was surprised that the "reporter" apparently spoke quite a lot of Esperanto. He might have just rehearsed what to say, but it seemed good. What was funny was the Esperanto group totally tore the movie apart, especially William Shatner's acting and use of Esperanto.

Learn Esperanto, and, you too, can make fun of William Shatner around the world!

Shawna

I started to learn esperanto when I heard about it per geografian lession! So, I went back at home and go to inside of Internet . I looked, though and decided to learn it! After one month I started to speak goodly, I searched friends from another lands, began to commune with their and it helped for me really! Now I time to time repeat words of esperanto! It helpo not to forget them! . So it really well language, I hope that esperanto will became a second language after english

awake:I saw that long ago, or one similar. They asked Shatner about it...and the line that had me on the floor laughing was something to the effect of

"Weren't you afraid of typecasting? you know...being known only as 'that esperanto actor.'"

I've not seen incubus, but did shatner speak it with a lot of dramatic pauses in between the syllables? *grin*

Here's a sample from the film. Apparently the director declined an offer of getting Esperanto pronounciation lessons for the cast, on the basis that, since Esperanto is so easy, surely you wouldn't need to practice pronouncing it?

i just wanna say thanks to our good old friend LL zamenhof for making such a spectacular language!

I heard about Esperanto a long time ago when I was at School. It was in the days of the EEC and the EU was just really forming. I remember there was some talk about Esperanto being the unified European language with the ECU as it's currency! (yes they were going to call it that before the name Euro came along)

Just recently I was talking about travel on a budget with someone and a distant memory of the Pasport de Servo popped into my head (not sure from where - my brain is weird sometimes!), and I had to go and look it up to remind me what it was - which led me back to Esperanto.

Anyway - ever since then I was hooked, I have a train journey of over an hour each way between the Gold Coast (where I live) and Brisbane (where I work) and use the time to study Esperanto on my laptop using the "Kurso de Esperanto" (highly recommend this) and other books/courses I have found on the net. I have recently discovered this site on the advice of my tutor from the free correspondence course.

I have a son who is 1 year old and I hope to teach it to him as soon as I am proficient enough. I'm sure my wife thinks I am a little crazy - but that hasn't stopped me taking up projects in the past

Anyway - no offence to the English speakers here - but I hope to frequent this particular forum less and less in the coming weeks!

Steve

ps. If anyone uses Linux on their PC - check out the lastest Ubuntu (6.06), the esperanto support is very good, you can even have the whole user interface in Esperanto if you want! I might switch to this mode soon to give me some extra practice!

When I was 10, my neighbor (who was elderly) died and left our family some books. In them was an old schoolbook from the 1920's or so, and in it had an Esperanto Song:
La hundido krias bau wau wau
La katido kiras miau miau miau
La ŝafido krias baa baa baa
La infano krias maa maa maa!

I thought it was the cutest thing. I found a book on Esperanto in my library and dove in. I've been learning on and off for the past 20 odd years.
I am reacquainting myself with it, I've rejoined ELNA, subscribed to Monato and am now reading "Lasu min paroli plu".
I have always read it well, but now I need more practice in writing and speaking.

Bonan vesperon:

From the original post:

"Why did you start learning (Esperanto)? What did you hope to get from learning it? Were your expectations met? Did you find any unexpected benefits...or unexpected challenges?"

I came to la internacia lingvo after discovering how frustrating it can be to learn an Asian language (in my case, Japanese) without support or future purpose. Worse, I was "spinning my wheels" on Japanese for almost three years. By contrast, it has taken me one full year to firmly grasp Esperanto. And as a writer, I can already see some practical use for this new-found knowledge: I can easily see myself as a translator for our regional storytelling and poetry community, so that they might reach a global audience they might not otherwise know exists!

Philip David (saintjames)
2006.10.14-15

I fell in love with Simlish (the mostly gibberish spoken by the "Sims" (computer game for anyone who doesn't know)). I have had a vague interest in so called "Conlangs" for a while and figured I might develop something based on Simlish.

But then common sense got the better of me. Developing a language - even one you simply develop as a hobby - is a lot of work (and for no gain apart from your own pleasure).

Also, for some years, I've been quite ashamed at my relative lack of being able to speak another language. People say that the English are lazy when it comes to learning other languages. Actually that isn't quite fair. Speakers of other human languages would be just as lazy if other nationalities were as keen to learn their particular language. (My experience of many countries is that you go there and you can't stop them trying out their English on you).

I learnt a very little French at primary school - but the school didn't really do it seriously. Later in my school life, there was Latin - but the course was rubbish. And I also learnt Russian for 5 years. This course was more sensible, but then I never used it, so I've forgotten most of what I learnt.

In adult life I've had the need of travelling to Holland quite a lot. I thought about maybe trying to learn Dutch. But many Dutch people are very good English speakers (too much watching the BBC channels on the TV) and even the Dutch themselves say that anyone else bothering to learn their language might as well be crazy.

Even more recently, I've acquired an English friend in Austria. I go there sometimes. I can speak a very few words of German. But it isn't what I regard as an easy language even though English is part of the same family of languages. And, in any case, my friend's partner speaks English very well and the language in the house is English.

Anyhow, having recovered from my silly idea od developing Simlish, I decided to look at Esperanto. And it seems to be easy. I haven't been studying it for 2 weeks yet and I can read quite a lot of it. Indeed, with a dictionary and quite a bit of determination, all of it.

Learning to write and speak it is harder. It seems that is easy to learn an Esperanto word and, through the system of affixes, learn many words. Going the other way and trying to find direct equivalents for English words - well - it works of course, but it doesn't reveal the many words you can say with one root in Esperanto.

I did toy with the idea of Mondlango - but it doesn't seem to have caught on. Esperanto may not be perfect, but it works and is being used.

Nick