Hello there,

I'm new (to the forums and the language), so bear with me. I'm still glowing with a feeling of accomplishment from figuring out the regristration - and subsequently finding the 'New topic' button.

The basics of me:
I'm from Oklahoma.
I have studied Spanish for two years.
I have been studying Esperanto for two days as of today.

I have a few questions to start with. First of all, I've been using this program. I'm currently on lesson four in it. Does anyone know if it's a legit language teacher, or am I wasting my time? Either way, does anyone know of something else (either as a supplement, because I want to learn all I can, or in its stead)? I read that Esperanto is the language of 'no exceptions,' yet they seem to change the pronunciation of 'o' ('ah' at the end of the word and 'oh' everywhere else). Other than that, the vowels seem to match up with Spanish.

I've been using this dictionary when I have need of one. Is there a better one out there?

Next, what is the convention for the letters not available on the qwerty keyboard? The program afore-mentioned used 'gx,' 'cx,' 'ux,' etc. Is that pretty much the standard?

And, finally, is this quote right?

'Li, kiu ne konas duan lingvon, ne konas lian lingvon.' -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It's supposed to say something along the lines of 'He who does not know other languages does not know his own.'

Thanks in advance, and I look forward to learning from you guys!

Adeori:http://www.kurso.com.br/bazo/index.php

That's the Pereira course. I have never examined it at length but it is generally considered good material.

I read that Esperanto is the language of 'no exceptions,' yet they seem to change the pronunciation of 'o' ('ah' at the end of the word and 'oh' everywhere else).

This has to be the pronouncer's fault. There is no such phenomenon in Esperanto. Vowels are the same everywhere. Allophones are of course accepted.

Next, what is the convention for the letters not available on the qwerty keyboard? The program afore-mentioned used 'gx,' 'cx,' 'ux,' etc. Is that pretty much the standard?

That's many speakers' preferred way of rendering those characters. The only official one (called the Fundamental method) replaces ĉ with ch, ĝ with gh, ĥ with hh, and so forth; ŭ loses its brevis altogether (so ĉirkaŭaĵo would become chirkauajho). Many consider this method inferior, while others still prefer it because it looks more "natural" than the x-method (iksometodo), due to the latter's abundance of x's (cxirkauxajxo).

There are ways to get the accented letters even when you do not have them on your keyboard; on GNU/Linux you might want to look for SCIM and m17n-contrib; on Windows, there is Tajpi.

'Li, kiu ne konas duan lingvon, ne konas lian lingvon.' -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Replace "lian" (his) with "sian" (his own) and you are good. Also you might want to replace "Li" with "Tiu", to avoid having to specify a gender altogether. ("Tiu kiu ne konas duan lingvon, ne konas sian lingvon").

Good luck with your learning.

mnlg:That's many speaker's preferred way of rendering those characters...

I saw another topic recommended Ek, so I tried it, and it works great. Also easy to turn on/off as needed.

mnlg:"Tiu kiu ne konas duan lingvon, ne konas sian lingvon."

Would 'oni' work in place of 'tiu'? It seems more appropriate. 'One who does not...' as opposed to (my dictionary's translation), 'That one who does not...'

Adeori:I saw another topic recommended Ek, so I tried it, and it works great. Also easy to turn on/off as needed.

Ek! is very good; I used it for a long time with satisfaction. Recently I switched to Tajpi which improves it a little. Ek! hasn't been updated in ages, and it does not work in a few applications.

Would 'oni' work in place of 'tiu'? It seems more appropriate. 'One who does not...' as opposed to (my dictionary's translation), 'That one who does not...'

"oni" does not exactly mean "one" but "an underfined subject". "oni diras, ke li estas riĉa" carries a meaning close to "it is being said that he is rich". The word "onidiro" roughly means "gossip", "rumor".

That said, "oni" would work with a little rearranging; "se oni ne konas duan lingvon, do oni ne konas sian lingvon" (or just "la sian"). Personally however I tend to minimize even such cases and I would perhaps go with "se iu ne konas duan lingvon, do tiu ne konas sian lingvon". By using correlatives, you imply a stronger link between the subjects of the two sentences (tiu-kiu, iu-tiu). In the previous example it could be argued that the two "oni" do not represent the same individual.

Adeori, welcome to the forum! I hope you stick around and finish learning the language. Keep at it for a few months and you’ll be able to speak with people around the world!

Here’s another way of phrasing Goethe’s quotation in Esperanto:
Kiu duan lingvon ne konas, tiu ne konas la propran.

Hey, Adeori, are you anywhere near OKC? We have our Esperanto meetings in Midwest city every month, and we'd be glad to talk to you on the phone, get you hooked up with some good materials, and walk you through some things to help you get off to a good start. I live in Pauls Valley, which is just a little over an hour away from where we meet.

Polaris:Hey, Adeori, are you anywhere near OKC? We...meet.

I live in the Tulsa area, so a bit far from that. When school starts back up, my schedule will be limited (debate, AP classes, outside studies, etc.), so other forms of communication might be possible, depending on the time. Most of the time I communicate with emails, because it requires less coordination time-wise, though you also don't get the audio.