18
The Leĝo de Tonjo is a humorous law mocking the fact that a large portion of conversations in Esperanto end up getting derailed by a discussion about grammar. The original text of the law is:
Ju pli reta diskuto en Esperanto longas, la probableco ke ĝi deflankiĝos al diskuto pri gramatikaĵoj aŭ pri la uzata vortigo des pli (asimptote) proksimiĝas al 1.
A ...
18
I'm sure there are several factors at play - including confirmation bias, since there are some Royal Jerk Esperantists out there - but to the extent to which it's true that Esperantists are friendlier, two big factors come to mind.
1 - Self Selection. The people who learn Esperanto often learn Esperanto because they're interested in learning about other ...
17
Here are seven important names that immediately come into my mind (ordered by how important I consider their current or very recent contributions to be):
Katalin Kováts, the leader of edukado.net, a web platform for teachers of Esperanto with a lot of useful material. She invests an incredible amount of time and energy into edukado.net, without any ...
16
The origin of the use of green can be traced back to Dr. Zamenhof. In 1911, he wrote:
About the origin of our green star I no longer remember very well. It seems to me that Mr Geoghegan drew my attention to the colour green, and from that time I began publishing my works with a green cover. About one brochure, which I quite by chance published with a ...
16
We discussed that question here:
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/15562777
I said that if you put Esperanto on your resume, the response at an interview (if you get one) will certainly be "what the heck is that?".
A few people replied that they got their current jobs thanks to having Esperanto on their resume.
For my part, I have it listed at the top of ...
15
Mi fakte scias, kiu estas Liza. Mi eĉ renkontis ŝin plurfoje. Sed mi ne povas doni pli da detaloj pri ŝia identeco.
Ŝi pentras bildojn, ĉar ŝi estas artistino.
La kantisto transiris al aliaj artoformoj.
Pri la cetera temo prefere ĉiu aŭskultanto elpensu sian propran klarigon.
14
The Esperanto Wikipedia article about the flag happens to have a section about this.
There is no official color, and various organizations and people have used various shades of green for the flag and other Esperanto symbols, including #009900 (in the website Flags of the World as well as the SVG file found in Wikimedia Commons), #007D13 (TEJO), #37A93A (...
13
George Orwell doesn't appear to have hated Esperanto, though he seems to have feared the potential for abuse found in a universal language.
He was exposed to Esperanto through a friend of his aunt, Eugene Adam, who was, according to Robert Plank, "so enthusiastic about Esperanto that he did not willingly speak any other tongue." Plank continues:
There ...
13
The UK is so big, that there is not its one and only purpose. People go there for various reasons.
For example
Meet their Esperanto friends from all over the world. Many Esperanto speakers have their Esperanto speaking friends spread around the globe. UK is the one event in a year, that allows them meet all or many of them face to face.
Get to know a ...
13
I can think of a few reasons:
They are not using Esperanto words on purpose. Esperanto uses a lot of Latin roots, so there are often similar-sounding words with similar meanings in Latin and other romance languages that may have been used as inspiration. For example, "ludo" and "ludi" are Latin, according to Google. (Obviously does not apply to your first ...
13
En 1907 svisa Esperantisto René de Saussure proponis la internacian monunuon "spesmilo". Ĝi estis dividebla al "spesoj" (mil spesoj = unu spesmilo). Ĝis la komenco de la unua mondmilito (do ĝis ĉirkaŭ 1914) ĝi estis uzata de la Ĉekbanko Esperantista en Londono, kaj de kelkaj aliaj bankoj en Britio kaj Svislando. Ĝia valoro estis ligita al oro: 1 Spesmilo ...
12
Saluton kara! Chuck Smith, the coordinator of the Duolingo course, responded to a similar question in the Facebook group for Duolingo Esperanto Learners:
It's definitely used more in Esperanto than English and we wanted to reflect that in the course. Looks like we succeeded! :)
You can use kara for everyone you feel part of the same group you are. This ...
12
I'm a big fan of La Sekreta Societo de Esperantistoj. They specialize in T-shirts and stickers. I have their stickers on my laptop and my car.
You can also order supplies from the Esperanto USA bookstore, the EAB bookstore, or the UEA bookstore.
Additionally, Cafe Press, Red Bubble, and other online shops are known to carry Esperanto merchandise as well.
12
Yes. The Esperanto Wikipedia does contain well-written articles, but that does not mean all articles are well written. According to my experience, language quality in the Esperanto Wikipedia is mostly quite OK, but not perfect. For improving your language skills, it is mostly usable.
12
There is Somera Esperanto Studado particularly interesting for beginners, as it has a focus on learning, courses in the morning, other stuff in the afternoon and evening.
Further more I'd recommend to people in their twenties to check out the two summer meetings FESTO and IJS as well as the winter meeting JES
Note that these are all European ones. I am not ...
12
Swear words in any language are emotionally charged and are, as you say, highly intertwined with a language's culture. Some languages use religious imagery (Sweden: "jävlar!" Québécois French: "Tabernacle!") and some use sexual imagery (Polish: "kurwa!", Italian: "Che cazzo!").
Any language also invents milder forms of these, so as not to "name the devil": ...
11
Esperanto can be found in many places.
Certainly people use Esperanto at Esperanto events and online, but it is also used in other places.
The Chinese government has an Esperanto news service and when I visited China I was able to get an audio tour of the Forbidden City in Esperanto.
You can use Esperanto to travel cheaply with the Pasporta Servo.
...
11
Where do people use Esperanto?
I have personally used it to move furniture around town, steer a boat, cook, talk about the best way to get back home and avoid the rain during a bicycle tour...
I have used Esperanto to discuss career opportunities, plan investments, playing with kids...
I use Esperanto with my friends in chat (telegramo) where we've ...
11
It's a reference to "la interna ideo", which Zamenhof described like this: "La interna ideo of Esperanto, which is in no way obligatory for any individual Esperantist, but which [...] is and always should be key during Esperanto Congresses, is this: with a neutral linguistic foundation, that barriers between peoples be removed and that people become ...
10
There are a lot of bookshops and publishers from which you can order Esperanto books. Given that sending costs can depend on how far you live from the location of the bookshop of publisher, I will always mention which country they operate from.
The bookshop with the greatest choice of Esperanto books is certainly the Libroservo de UEA in the Netherlands. ...
10
The Univerala Kongreso brings together the biggest number of Esperantists, including many of the most active and most experienced ones. It has a lot of program:
Organizational program: Major Esperanto associations meet up to organize their activities, discuss their plans for the future. This also involves more boring tasks like discussing an update to the ...
10
It seems to be based on personal experience. Here are several links that give some background:
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/orwell-esperanto1.html
http://www.englishlanguagefaqs.com/2013/06/what-is-esperanto-and-why-did-george.html
And [a]pparently, Orwell, during his down-and-out phase in Paris, had to accept a room in the lodgings of a cousin. ...
10
You can find a list of featured/good Wikipedia Esperanto articles down here
Featured articles (Elstaraj artikoloj)
Good articles (Legindaj artikoloj)
10
Yes, there are many Esperanto Wikipedia meetups. Those are usually organized as a part of Esperanto congresses, or sometimes, as a part of Wikimanias (e.g. https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetups/Esperanto). Once there was Esperanto Wikimania in 2011 with 80 participants(https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanta_Vikimanio)
10
No, not to my knowledge.
In my opinion, the closest thing we have to such a count is the number of Esperanto learners on Duolingo: currently over 500,000 with over 1,000 new learners per day. With the launch of other Esperanto courses, we should reach 2 million learners by 2018 and 10 million by 2025, thus in some way fulfilling Zamenhof's "promise" from ...
10
Mi pensas ke ĉiuj kiuj spertis la eŭropan junularan Esperanto-movadon dum la lastaj dek jaroj povas atesti ke pluramemuloj abundas kaj sufiĉe malfermas. Kaj ke estas kreskanta tendenco.
Se nia muziko iel kulpas pri tio mi ne povas juĝi.
Mi mem pensas ke la plej grava klarigo estas la vezika strukturo de Esperantio. Oni aperas en unika aranĝo kun unika ...
10
Something like this is best answered by someone who works at an Esperanto library. I am not sure, but I can give you a list of contenders. I don't own these books, so I can only judge by the reported number of pages.
The standard translation of the Bible has a total of 2255 pages, 1760+495, in the Inko edition (which uses the normal format of a paperback ...
9
The board of the Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA, is the specific organization that decides where the congress takes place. They make the decision based on proposals by local/national organizations. You can read more about the decision-making process in an article on Libera Folio:
http://www.liberafolio.org/2014/bonaero5
"Fine de la kunsido estis ...
9
A gufujo is a room at an international Esperanto (usually youth) meeting, in which various teas are served in a calm atmosphere during the evening and at night. It was invented as an alternative to a bar, strictly without smoking or alcohol. The usage of candles contributes to the calm atmosphere. There is usually either no music or only calm music in the ...
9
Ekzistas grupo kiu nomiĝas Egalecen kaj ili multe aktivas pri feminismaj temoj. De ilia retpaĝo:
Ni estas kolektaĵo de Esperantistoj, kiuj celas blogi pri pluraneca feminismo en Esperanto. Ni esperas, ke per nia blogo ni povas antaŭenpuŝi Esperantujon al la nivelo de socijusteca komunikado kaj interkompreno de aliaj neesperantaj feminismaj rondoj.
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible