Introduction :
This course in the international language Esperanto is for English speaking students and is intended to permit a very high degree of competence as soon as possible (ASAP). If the reader wishes to follow an introductory course to permit him (or her) to gain some knowledge of the language then Ian Fantom's Esperanto Viva course is more suitable.
The title Esperanto A.S.A.P. (As Soon As Possible) is intended to indicate that this book is aimed at intelligent readers who are serious in their intent to gain a reasonable grasp of this language quickly and are, therefore, prepared to make a considerable effort on their part. No language, even Esperanto, is easy to learn! It is certainly not aimed, however, at linguists. The author is very much a non-linguist.
Using this book a working knowledge of written Esperanto should be rapidly achieved. (Spoken Esperanto is a different matter and cannot be learnt from a book. See Chapter Two for Advice on this important aspect of the language).
At the end of each chapter exercises are set, solutions are given in a special section. It is hoped eventually to give vocabularies (both English-Esperanto and Esperanto-English). In order to make new words clearer red print is used for Esperanto words and black for English. Also to help with the remembering of new words we shall refer to similar words in English (or sometimes other Western languages). The abbreviation used in this context are E: (English), F: (French), G: (German), S: (Spanish), I: (Italian), L: (Latin).
Accents in Esperanto:
One major problem for Esperanto on the Net is the accents used in Esperanto (supersignoj). It is not that computers cannot deal with them- I have written this course in book form using a computer, the word processing software Lotus Word Pro and a modified font Verdana Eo. No- the problem is that the publisher and reader of items of the net must have their computers using the same system- and there are literally thousands of different possibilities. If one tries to read something written by another system one often gets just gibberish! It would be far better to omit accents altogether than produce illegible pages. Of course, one cannot blame Zamenhof as there were no computers when he published the language.!
(* Fortunately it is quite easy to get your computer to produce the accents. A free program can be loaded from the net which modifies the True-type fonts on your computer e.g. turns Courier into Courier Eo etc. I only use one such modified font, having converted Verdana (which was already on my system) to Verdana Eo. Then to produce an accented Esperanto letter is easy. The program to effect this miraculous change is available from (free of charge- so perhaps a thank you letter would be appropriate ) from http://www.pnc.com.ay /~blinky/supersigno/index.htm.). Another free program which permits the use of accents in E-Mail exchange (as long as both computers have the program) can be found at (it is a 20 minute download) http://www.borderline.f9.co.uk.
Other options recommended in EAB Update 14 (septembro 2001) are : (for Microsoft Word only) from w. walker, from J.Finkel and from G.Zsigri (costs $30).
However back to the problems of the Internet! Six Esperanto letters carry accents- these are not just modified versions of the unaccented letters but separate letters in their own right. In an alphabetical listing the accented letter always follows the unaccented one. Notice that the U carries a hook whilst the others have circumflexes.
How do we cope in the real world with viewers using many different types of computer and various fonts? There are three solutions in common use
(a). Print the ˆ sign before, or after, the letter e.g. ˆ c or cˆ . I have decided to use this system with the accent before the letter. (ˆ c, ˆ j etc). I would much prefer to use the correct accented letter but this is simply not possible and still be legible to all. Also it is possible to produce a circumflexed U (rather than a 'hooked' U) in most fonts- and I shall also use this (Û and û).
(b). Follow the letter to be accented by a 'h' e.g. sh instead of ^s. This has the problem that the letter actually exists in Esperanto and there is chance (admittedly one in several millions) that this could produce confusion. Thus fi^so would become fisho- which might be a different word. This is so unlikely that I was unable to find a simple actual example. Perhaps some reader might find one and let me know.
(c). The above problem disappears if we replace 'h' by 'x' (which, of course, does not exist in Esperanto. This is the system many people (including me in the past in my E-Mails) use. It looks strange at first but one soon gets use to it. e.g. šafo (a sheep) becomes sxafo. I find it acceptable for short passages (e.g. E-Mails) but that it ruins fluency of reading in long passages and so I have decided to use method (a) in this course.
Please note that the course was originally in book form and each chapter depends on knowledge from previous chapters. It is therefore a good idea to work through them in numerical order. Clicking the chapter number in the Contents Table below will take you to the relevant place.
Good luck!
PS. I have just met a new system, called the Nova Help-Alfabeto (NHA) intended for use in situations where accents are not possible- particularly in E-Mailings. I think it is an excellent system and may yet use it in my E-Mails.
(*Although I would prefer w here)
(In the first row, of course, we need to have the correctly accented letters).
The advantage of this system is that these new letters (or letter combinations) correspond more closely to the actual sounds of the Esperanto. The disadvantage is that it makes reading the Esperanto (with the abundance of 'y' -for example in all plurals -oy instead of the usual -oj) a bit strange at first (but no more so that the use of x-). I do not think that it is a good idea for beginners, however, as they will not find any Esperanto text that they read from other sources using it- hence I shall not use it in this course.
CONTENTS OF THIS COURSE: ENHAVOJ DE LA KURSO
Click the chapter number button in the table to visit the relevant page.
Klaku la numeron de la ˆcapitro en la tablo por viziti tien.
Lastfoje ^san^gita: la 1an de januaro, 2007
Esperanto ASAP- Chapter 1
