Read aloud the following sentences. If you don't understand all but the last, go back and review previous lessons as required.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj. Ĉiu el tiuj ĉi elementoj parolas apartan lingvon, kaj neamike rilatas la aliajn elementojn. En tiu urbo pli ol ie la impresiĝema naturo sentas la multepezan malfeliĉon de diverslingveco kaj konvinkiĝas ĉe ĉiu paŝo, ke diverseco de lingvoj estas la ĉefa kaŭzo, kiu disigas la homan familion.
We have three new sounds in this lesson.
ŭ is pronounced identically with the English w. It generally appears immediately after the sound of a, where the two sounds together give us the ow in how now, brown cow. So kaŭzo is COW-zoh.
ŭ can also appear after e; the two together have the sound of ayw in wayward but without the y in the middle. Try saying: Eŭropo ( ehw-ROH-poh). This combination is fairly rare, however.
ŝ is much the same as the English sh in shut or hush. Try paŝo (PAH-shoh).
z is also very similar to the English z in zebra or buzz. Try pronouncing multepeza (mool-teh-PEH-zah) and, again, kaŭzo.
Here's a sort of semi-English indication of how to pronounced our new sentence:
ehn TEE-oo OOR-boh plee ohl EE-eh lah eem-preh-see-JEHM-ah nah-TOO-roh SEHN-tahs lah mool-teh-PEH-zahn mahl-feh-LEE-chohn deh dee-vehrs-leen-GVEH-tsoh kahy kohn-veen-KEE-jahs cheh CHEE-oo PAH-shoh, keh dee-vehr-SEH-tsoh deh LEEN-gvohy EHS-tahs lah CHEH-fah COW-zoh, KEE-oo dee-SEE-gahs lah HOH-mahn fah-mee-LEE-ohn.
Let's take another look at our sentence for today:
En tiu urbo pli ol ie la impresiĝema naturo sentas la multepezan malfeliĉon de diverslingveco kaj konvinkiĝas ĉe ĉiu paŝo, ke diverseco de lingvoj estas la ĉefa kaŭzo, kiu disigas la homan familion.
There are quite a number of new words in this sentence.
urb' is a name for a group of people living together in a collection of buildings, some of them homes, some of them commercial. In English we would usually say town. urbo can also refer to a city or a village, but there are ways of creating new words that more precisely describe these concepts, if you find it necessary to do so. Exercise: how would you say urban in Esperanto?
impres' is the action of strengthening the memories one has of something; in English we say impress. What does La urbo impresis min mean? Remember the suffix -iĝ-? What do you think Mi impresiĝis de la urbo means? How about La urbo lasis al mi feliĉan impreson? As far as impresiĝema, we'll have to come back to that a little later in the lesson, when we meet the suffix -em-.
natur', as in English, can refer either to the general concept of nature (the outdoors) or to the tendency within one's own spirit to behave in certain ways.
sent' is the action of feeling, but only spiritually or in the heart; don't confuse with feeling with one's fingers, etc.
mult' can cover either the English many (in which case it's usually multaj) or much. As we will note elsewhere, Esperanto does not distinguish verbally between matters which are countable and matters which are not; since they don't seem to overlap to any extent, this is quite reasonable.
pez' refers to weight, the measurement of the force with which a mass is attracted by a gravitational field. Of course, it has metaphorical meaning as well, as here.
feliĉ' is the feeling sento that hits us when everything is going right: happy. Note that there are a couple of other words to cover the English happy when its meaning is more passive; he was happy to be with her would use feliĉa, but he was happy to get out of the wreck with his life would use a different word (kontenta for those interested).
konvink' means to bring someone else around to one's way of thinking, or, simply, to convince. Li konvinkis min; mi konvinkiĝis.
paŝ' is basically the distance between two feet when one is walking. This is a pace in English, or ― more dangerously ― a step (since step, again, has several different meanings).
ĉef' indicates, essentially, most important: main, chief. It's also used as a prefix. You'll often encounter it in the word ĉefurbo. Which do you think is the ĉefurbo of California, Los Angeles or Sacramento? WARNING: it doesn't necessarily mean biggest.
kaŭz', the reason that something happens, the cause.
hom' indicates a thinking, sentient being, a person. Traditionally, this is a member of the species homo sapiens (hence the word in Esperanto); Esperanto speakers, like most of the rest of us, have not yet had to decide whether to extend such concepts beyond our own species or not.
famili' refers to a close group of several beings, usually (though not necessarily) human, usually (though not necessarily) of both sexes, usually (though not necessarily) sharing DNA: a family. Zamenhof here uses the term in a somewhat wider sense, which includes more than a billion human beings (had he written this today, the figure would have been closer to seven billion).
There's one word in this sentence that diserves a short, separate note. That word is: estas. Its meaning: here, is Elsewhere, it might be am or are. If you give it different endings, it can be was, were, will be, would be etc.
The meaning is pretty much the same in Esperanto as in English. Actually, the word as three different meanings:
(1) Something is described by something (Mi estas feliĉa);
(2) Something is identical with something else (... diverseco de lingvoj estas la ĉefa kaŭzo ...);
(3) Something is a member of a particular class, or a subclass of that class (Mi estas homo).
The last one may suggest a violation of Esperanto's general rule of free word order. When you're describing something, there's no problem (Feliĉa estas mi is as easily comprehensible as Mi estas feliĉa). When you're identifying two things, the order is also unimportant (... la ĉefa kaŭzo estas diverseco de lingvoj ...). Even when you're showing a member of a group, word order isn't all that important, as long as it's obvious that one of the two parties is a single individual (Homo estas mi). But if you're showing a subclass, you have to assume that the person with whom you're communicating is aware of the hierarchy of classes, just as you are. Zamenhof wrote leono estas besto (a lion is an animal); he could have written besto estas leono (an animal is a lion), but only if he knew that the other party already knew that lions are a subclass of animals.
Just a word to the wise.