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Peppa Pig in Esperanto - let's crowdfund

by lernulo2, April 17, 2023

Messages: 41

Language: English

lernulo2 (User's profile) April 17, 2023, 8:47:53 AM

My point of view
Esperanto can have an educational boost if modern children's television series are available in Esperanto - think of parent-child education and maybe teenaged autodidacts. In my opinion, Peppa Pig is currently the best children's television series for the first steps in second language learning and is therefore the best television series for the Esperanto community to invest in.

Steps for teaching another language via children's television series
I live in the Netherlands. I have taught my 3-year-old daughter quite a bit of English by watching Peppa Pig together the following way and I would like to do the same with Esperanto.

Level 1:
1. I pause the video.
2. I translate a word or part of a sentence to our native language (repeating the English words several times).
3. I ask my kid to repeat a few of the new English words. (I don't ask her to translate anything.)
4. If she gave it a good try, I press play. (Otherwise, I go back to step 3.)

Level 2:
1. I pause the video.
2. I ask my kid to translate one, two or three English word to our native language.
3. If correct, I press play. If incorrect, I repeat "level 1".

Level 3:
1. I pause the video.
2. I ask my kid to translate (a part of) an English sentence to our native language.
3. If correct, I press play. If incorrect, I repeat "level 2".

Notes:
- Pressing the pause button too often disturbs the vibe, so don't stop at each new word.
- After having watched a few episodes, go back to previously studied episodes for rehearsal and...
- Also allow your kid to watch studied episodes without interruption, just for fun (but of course this also helps learning).
- When she was 3 years old, we did this 45 minutes every day, or maybe 2 times 30 minutes (after breakfast and before dinner). Now my daughter is 4 years old and goes to school. At school days I avoid this "intensive learning program" but sometimes we still do this about 30 minutes before dinner - not in the morning anymore in order to save energy for school. In the weekend we do use the morning for language learning like this - not always, but quite often.

Incredible speed and fun
Her enormous speed of learning has surprised me. We're currently using these steps for "Llama llama" and “Ada Twist, scientist” as well, to continue learning on a higher level. When I ask her "Shall we learn English now?" she absolutely loves to do that.

Idea: let's crowdfund an Esperanto version of Peppa Pig
Peppa Pig is in Netflix's daily top 10 in the Netherlands every day - I've shared the idea to use it for (English) language learning with several parents now and they have adopted the idea. What if an Esperanto version of Peppa Pig existed?

I don't know much about the television industry yet - I'm just putting the idea out here and I would love to get this done in cooperation with others.

Metsis (User's profile) April 17, 2023, 10:12:18 AM

Excellent idea, there is just one issue. A tv series is an artistic work and as such everything you see and hear is copyrighted. Now the copyright laws vary between countries, but since you mentioned that you live in the Netherlands, you are subject to the EU laws, which protect the copyright owners. My understanding is that you may do what you currently do within you family, but you may not distribute in any form any derivate work, i.e. work based on someone else's work, without getting explicit permission. This getting usually involves some monetary transactions. But I might be work, I ANAL.

Altebrilas (User's profile) April 17, 2023, 11:28:09 AM

And you have to be patient, because getting permission requires a lot of time. Specially if someone involved dislikes esperanto.

lernulo2 (User's profile) April 17, 2023, 11:36:19 AM

The idea is indeed to create an official voiceover in cooperation with:
- the company that currently holds the copyright(s),
- people that speak Esperanto fluently,
- people who have experience with setting up crowdfunding,
- etc.

I know this will not be a one-year project, but rather 5 year - I don't know.

SlavikDze (User's profile) April 18, 2023, 9:39:51 PM

"Peppa pig" estas certe tre interesa animaciaĵo.
Sed probablas, ke pli tradukinda estas la serio "Smeŝariki/Kokoriki", kiu, ŝajne, estas pli senc-hava kaj, krome, interesa ne nur por infanoj, sed ankaŭ por adoltoj.

lernulo2 (User's profile) April 22, 2023, 9:47:03 PM

This post is a response to SlavikDze's message of 18 April.

I've given Kokoriki a try
The first episode - called "The bench" - contains words like "mojo", "pinkified" and the character Wally recites a poem that is not at all suitable for teaching children new words in a nice context. When I hear a sentence like "His hippo must be stuck in the mud, so to speak", I don't see how this can be better to let children become aquainted with a new language: there are layers of abstraction there, that are not helping at all. I would also avoid melancholy in children's series.

The second episode, called "A Prince For Rosa", starts with reading parts of a book with sentences like "when you're around, said the princess to the knight, my heart does flip-flops of unbridled joy in my royal rib cage". Then the character Rosa feels miserable and cries, while starting a conversation with a bird that says "no one understands being lonely like a big loud grumpy crutch in the Old Crow". Instead of calling this more "senc-hava", I would say this does not make any of the kind of sense I am looking for.

Compare that with Peppa Pig
In the first episode, called "Muddy puddles", most sentences are as simple as "If you jump in muddy puddles, you must wear your boots" and "George has found a big puddle" while the video also shows what is said. This helps children to understand and remember words and word groups easily. It also helps them to formulate their own sentences.

The first few episodes have a very low pace, but later on the episodes get more energetic/cheeky. For example, see season 6 episode 2 "Desert Island".

I hold my point of view
I've watched all episodes of season 1 until 6 with my daughter and most episodes multiple times. I can recite parts of many episodes and I have experienced how useful it can be for language education - I am very convinced that a translation of Peppa Pig is worth much more than Kokoriki. Even as an adult I would use Peppa for my first steps in language learning exactly because it is so basic.

lernulo2 (User's profile) July 11, 2023, 3:09:23 AM

EDIT: the discussion about Peppa continues at the bottom of page 4.

I’M OUT. I WON’T FUND THIS. EDIT: maybe I will.

I believe that one day an international auxiliary language will become a required subject around the world, but also that it will not be Esperanto. (EDIT: It might however be an Esperantido, a slightly reformed version of Esperanto.)

EDIT: because of Altebrilas's reaction below, I now think Esperanto might be reformed and creating a new language from scratch might not be needed. Therefore, the following paragraph does not exactly express my current opinion anymore:
I hope that during the next decades big amounts of money and time are invested (by charitable foundations) in the development and testing of new international auxiliary languages. The subject “interlinguistics” should be financially attractive for talented people and, later, using the newly created language should be made profitable for companies and when companies use it, others will follow and it will be profitable without stimulus. A platform like lernu.net for learning the new language from all national languages is required, so that needs investments too. I’ve really enjoyed the course “La teorio Nakamura”. For kids such a course is needed too. Translating stuff from the current world language (English) to the next is becoming easier via deep learning / artificial intelligence. Scientific publications and “much of the internet” included.

When ”the universal second language” is used around the world for hundreds of years, it means a reduction of study time for billions of people and a reduction of costs for many countries. Of course some people will have final exams in national languages too, but that should be a choice.

Why I don’t believe in a world wide adoption of Esperanto or Ido:

Esperanto:
- Esperanto is not gender neutral. There should be a non-ambiguous neutral form. Only an “ino” suffix is not acceptable.
- the accusative N hinders acceptance. (EDIT: although I still think that the accusative N hinders acceptance (at first it looks and sounds silly), I now don't think it is a bad rule and it may very slowly grow acceptance.)
- adverbs and adjectives should not have plural (and accusative) forms. EDIT: adverbs (E-vortoj) don't copy plurality.
- Roots can be replaced, but the things mentioned above, cannot, because the Esperanto community is held together via a promise not to deviate from the grammar of the Fundamento. That was logical in the time of Zamenhof, but it hinders getting rid of a few rules now. A world language that changes (improves) slightly once per 100 years seems no problem to me if those changes are universally adpoted via teaching in schools around the world.

Ido:
- the arrogance and negativity of its promoting websites is ridiculous, stating that ido is “the best language” and “the easiest to learn” (easy to disprove). The arrogance was also part of the initial works by the creators, speaking of “the civilised world”, etc. They also disproved of “made up words”, but those can make a language better. Why did they feel the need to replace Espetanto’s “i” ending of verbs? That is used in - for example - Croation, Bosnian, Serbian. Why be critical of everything?
- Ido should not have messed up the table words (correlatives): regularity is important.
- where Esperanto has igi for “making, producing, etc.”, Ido has too many subtly different suffixes for this.
- maybe intensively using a prefix like “mal” is just fine. It saves a lot of study time!

Note that I did not mention Esperanto’s character set as a reason to not believe in its adoption: the characters are already part of UTF8 and to make the use of the characters easier requires willingness from powerful companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple to provide easy and standard support for this.

Altebrilas (User's profile) July 11, 2023, 4:52:56 PM

1. Zamenhof ne kreis Esperanton por havi monon. Tiukaze li pli oportune fariĝus kuracisto en riĉa kvartalo kaj ne laciĝus kreante lingvon.

2. Esperanto mem evoluos post sia oficiala adopto.

Mi dubas, ke akuzativo restos deviga: kiel trudi ĝin al homoj kiuj ne uzos ĝin? Ĝi estas redunda kiam la frazo estas laŭ SVO-ordo, kaj iĝos iom post iom kaduka en tiu kazo.

Pri seksismo, eblas uzi "ge", "ri", "ŝli", ktp. , kiel oni povas konstati en tiu-ĉi forumo. Homoj por kiuj tio estas grava daŭre uzos ilin.

Pri alfabeto, la komputilaĵoj ĉiam estas fine adaptitaj, sed kelkajn jarojn prokraste. Intertempe, oni povas uzi x, h, ktp. kiam ĝia tajpado ne facilas. Ne indas perdi energion pro tio.

Post la fina sukceso, eble estos alfabeta reformo, sed la decido ne plu apartenos al ni. Ĝi verŝajne dependos de la kostoj. La projektoj ne mankas. Tio, kio gravas, estas konservi literaturon. Multaj naciaj lingvoj foje reformis sian alfabeton, sen kadukigi literaturon. La eldonistoj nur represis ilin laŭ la reformita alfabeto.

Kiam Esperanto estos plenkreska, ĝi flugos per siaj propraj flugiloj, sed ni ne plu decidos pri ĝia evoluo: Estos la leĝoj de lingvistiko kaj ekonomio kiu tajloros ĝian estontecon.

lernulo2 (User's profile) July 11, 2023, 8:26:54 PM

That is an interesting point of view - you expect Esperanto to reform AFTER its official adoption.

I would expect that Esperanto can only be adopted after it has been reformed.

For example “Mi ne havas blua haroj.” looks modern, while “Mi ne havas bluajn harojn.” does not have a chance to become part of education curricula around the world.
EDIT: I learned that the Esperanto grammer allows the phrase "Miaj haroj ne bluas", just like "Kiam ni estis junaj" can be rewritten to "Kiam ni junis" (="When we were young"). This way one can sometimes ommit "ugly parts" of the language. I also developed acceptance for the choice to copy the plurality to adjectives: the reasoning exists of 2 parts:
1. Other languages, including the English language, have this too. Think of the difference between "much and many". Phrases like "A few people may dislike Esperanto, but many love it" ommit the noun "people" the second time and not copying the plurality would make the sentence less clear. Esperanto translation: "Eble kelkaj homoj malŝatas esperanto, sed multaj amas ĝin".
2. To make a language easier to learn and extremely regular, it's straightforward to copy the plurality to all adjectives instead of some. Also in combination with table words like "tiuj, ĉiuj, iuj" it seems quite nice - it may even be easier to pronounce "ĉiuj belaj frazoj" than "ĉiuj bela frazoj".
END EDIT.


And even if I change the word order - “Blua haroj mi havas.” - it seems no problem to me, because hairs cannot have me (or, probably better: we could agree on the meaning of certain word orders).

I cannot imagine the world-wide adoption of a language with an accusitive N (also for all nouns). I am afraid it should change before it can attract more people.
EDIT: one thing I didn't know at the time of writing this post, is that the accusitive N for the direct object allows the Esperanto speaker to use the simplest tense with all word orders. I consider that an interesting advantage. For example:
English:
- "These efforts were coordinated by Philip, who leads the working group."
= "Philip, who leads the working group, coordinated these efforts."
Esperanto:
- "Ĉi tiujn klopodojn kunordigis Filipo, kiu gvidas la laborgrupon."
= "Filipo, kiu gvidas la laborgrupon, kunordigis ĉi tiujn klopodojn."
Notice that in English, "were coordinated" changed to "coordinated", while in Esperanto, the verb "kunordigis" did not change.
In my native language, "Dutch" from the Netherlands, for a long time I feel like we make a mess of tenses (it's a bit like English). Switching to and from passive froms "without intending to describe the time more specific" feels like not understanding when to use the right tense, while actually the word order forced me to do it. I don't know yet what I prefer. Esperanto, however, has all the possibilities in this case:
- Ĉi tiujn klopodojn kunordigis Filipo, kiu gvidas la laborgrupon
- Ĉi tiuj klopodoj estis kunordita de Filipo, kiu gvidas la laborgrupon.
- Ĉi tiuj klopodoj kunordiĝis de Filipo, kiu gvidas la laborgrupon.


The reason that I said that I don’t believe that Esperanto can become the universal language is because a change to the fundamento would mean that it is not Esperanto anymore, but an Esperantido. Most parts of the language are, in my opinion, genius and a rellief, because they require less brain power than other languages do.

I would have faith in adoption if we decide to use for example “Esperantido-2023” that only has the following changes:
- adverbs and adjectives don’t copy plural ending of what they describe: “blua haroj”. EDIT: adverbs don't need mentioning because they, E-vortoj, don't copy plurarlity.
- the accusitive N becomes optional: “mi ne ŝatas piedpilkado”.
- all human and animal nouns become neutral (both male and female), for example the “eno” ending is required for male forms just like “ino” is required for female forms:

patro (=parent), patreno (=father), patrino (=mother)

junuloj (=young people), junulenoj (=young males), junulinoj (=young females)

urbestro (=mayor), urbestreno (=male mayor), urbestrino (=female mayor)

bovo (=cattle), boveno (=bull), bovino (=cow)

Etc.

Altebrilas (User's profile) July 12, 2023, 9:50:22 AM

Etc.

That is the point. Anyone can imagine any reform, optimal according to his own logic. History of Esperanto movement shows evidence that many reforms were proponed (among others by Zamenhof himself) but they never got a consensus.

For instance, some people proponed the suffix -iĉ to play the same role as your -en. I suppose that some have other ideas. Why not a feminine prefix similar al vir- ?

Reforms are too controversial. It is better to let the language evolve by itself, with as few reforms as possible, and only for preventing it it to get inconsistant when several forms are in competition.

But I have good news for you: adverbs don't have plural endings.
Li kuras rapide, ili kuras rapide
Ŝi estas terure bela, ili estas terure belaj.

Only nouns, adjectives and pronouns have plural forms. okulumo.gif

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