http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/ en-us 2007-06-07T21:22:41-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000483.php Today I heard, for far from the first time, the expression "... ambaŭ ... kaj ..." used for "... both ... and ..." This is an Anglicism and should be avoided. The correct expression is "... kaj ... kaj ...", as in Mi nokte rigardas sur la ĉielo kaj planedojn kaj stelojn. At night I look at both planets and stars in the sky. The problem is, of course, that we learn ambaŭ as the Esperanto equivalent of the English... Esperanto Don Harlow 2007-06-07T21:22:41-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000424.php I often run across people using ŝanĝi as though it were intransitive — in a sentence such as la situacio *ŝanĝis rather than la situacio ŝanĝiĝis or li ŝanĝis la situacion. We tend to do this because in English we often (though certainly not always — compare to kill and to die, for instance) tend to use exactly the same forms for transitive and intransitive verbs with related meanings. One does not do this in Esperanto; each verb has a... Esperanto Don Harlow 2007-03-30T22:11:37-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000419.php I note that many American Esperanto speakers translate "to note something" (as "to take note of something") as noti. noti basically means to make a semipermanent record of something, either on paper or in one's memory or whatever. "To note" meaning "to take note of something" is rimarki, and we should remember this.... Esperanto Don Harlow 2007-03-21T19:48:29-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000414.php In a recent review of Ronald Cecil Gates's short mystery novel Mortiga ekskurso (Fatal Excursion), reviewer Donald Broadribb of Australia asks (translation is mine): I noticed, while reading the work, that the recent custom of using forms such as -atis, -intas, -intis etc. leads to the appearance of verb forms intentionally omitted from Esperanto by Zamenhof: the perfect, the plusquamperfect, the imperfect et al. Is this a genuine enrichment of the Esperanto verb system? I'm not sure. Conservatives have been... Esperanto Don Harlow 2007-03-15T16:47:27-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000377.php I've been entering some old (1991 and thereabouts) short stories from the column Por komencantoj in the magazine El Popola Ĉinio onto the internet, and I was really astonished by the large number of verbs ending in -iĝis and the rare number of "compound forms" in estis -ita, which would primarily be used for those raised in a European language for the same thing. Which one should we use and what's the difference? Simply put, both of these, when applied... Esperanto Don Harlow 2006-12-31T07:54:40-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000311.php 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... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-04-05T10:23:46-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000305.php 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. The last sentence should be... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-22T19:15:14-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000304.php Read aloud the following sentences. If you don't understand the first two, go back and review previous lessons. 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. Here's a quick and dirty attempt to show an English speaker how to pronounce this last sentence: en byeh-loh-STOH-koh lah loh-jahn-TAH-roh kohn-SEES-tahs... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-12T10:07:51-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000302.php Read the following, out loud. Make sure you understand the first sentence; if not, go back to the previous lessons and figure out what you don't remember. The second sentence ... well, do the best you can with it. 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. You should immediately recognize the meaning of the new sentence as: I did [something] in... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-08T15:30:41-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000301.php As I said last time, today we'll combine all three propositions that we've read so far into a single sentence. Here it is. Read it aloud and try to understand it. La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis. The main addition here is the little expression al kies efektivigo, which the author has attached to mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon to hook it in with... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-06T11:47:48-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000300.php Once again, read the following three propositions out loud. Make sure that you can understand them without translatint them into English. If you have trouble with any of them, go back and look at Lesson 1 for the first line, Lesson 2 for the second line, or Lesson 3 for the third line. La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco. Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon. La ideo neniam min forlasadis. Now we're going to combine two of... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-05T20:44:32-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000299.php La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco. Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon. La ideo neniam min forlasadis. Please read the above aloud. You should have no trouble with the pronunciation (there are no new sounds or letters in this lesson). You should also understand the first two lines without having to think of their English equivalents. If not, go back and look at lesson 1 for the first line or lesson 2 for the second line. Now... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-02-03T13:24:15-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000297.php La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco. Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon. Read both the above sentences aloud. Do you thoroughly understand the first one? If not, go back and check out the previous lesson. There are only two new letters/sounds in this lesson: t and v. These are both pronounced very much as they are in American English: the t in talk and the v in valley. A pseudo-English spelling of the new sentence would be:... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-01-27T17:31:37-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000296.php La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco. This is the first proposition (not sentence) from L. L. Zamenhof's famous "Letter to (Nikolai Afrikanovitch) Borovko", in which he describes the mental processes that led him to Esperanto. This set of lessons will take us through that document; by the time you finish, you should have a thorough knowledge of Esperanto's structure, though perhaps not of its vocabulary (which requires more study). Note: This is probably the toughest lesson... Zamenhof Letter Lesson Don Harlow 2005-01-24T15:53:04-08:00 http://www.harlows.org/don/esperanto/archives/000111.php I did intend to talk about changing endings (one of Esperanto's most unusual, and useful, characteristics) this time, but I decided that, first, let's add one new ending to our repertoire. This is -A, which you attach to a root that shows that it is describing something. In English, we call this an adjective. In Esperanto, grammarians call it an adjektivo (which means ― you guessed it! ― adjective), but many people just call it an A-vorto (which means A-word).... Esperanto Don Harlow 2004-04-11T11:07:36-08:00