What should my next foreign language be? (considering 45 languages so far, I’d appreciate help adding others)
Should I learn Esperanto?
How can I learn a foreign language? (evaluating your aptitude for self-study, classroom study, study abroad etc.)
Which program should I use to learn a new language? (still very sketchy)

Considering the audience of this blog, you may also like Which non-English movie should I watch?

I now found a book that seemed to know me better than I know myself. It also had an instant wowing effect on everybody else I know with the above-mentioned issues. The book is called “Refuse to Choose!
“, written by Barbara Sher, and after devouring it over Christmas break I can recommend it to everybody here. The book reveals more about yourself and puts you at ease with who you are, but since that was not much of a problem for me, I found another part most rewarding: the part where the author provides lots and lots of helpful tips and techniques to enable you to pursue your dreams. From where and how to start via time management techniques to how to finish projects that deserve to be completed (or that your boss/school requires), there’s a lot of helpful content.

Refuse to Choose!: Use All of Your Interests, Passions, and Hobbies to Create the Life and Career of Your Dreams

Since it’s so crucial to understand agglutinated words quickly and to be able to come up with some yourself without much thinking, I’ve decided to post some exercises here for you to improve your understanding of Esperanto affixes. These are taken from various lessons of a free German Esperanto course and translated obviously. Send your answer to an Esperanto-speaking friend or wait for me to post sample solutions. I suggest you don’t do all the exercises at once but take a break after each one and spread the whole thing out over several days.

—

Lesson 1 taught the different word endings, -eg- (amplifies the
meaning), -in- (for females) and -ej- (place).

Exercise 1: translate the following Esperanto words to English:
peto, amika, beli, ripeto, nei, nuno, nuna, petego, benkego, ina, knabo.

Exercise 2: translate the following words to Esperanto:
school (place of learning), super easy, the regret, linguistically
(derived from “language”), tomorrow’s (as an adjective!), duty
(derived from “must”), the farewell.

Lesson 2 taught -ul- (for a person), mal- (opposite) and ek- (start
to do), as well as the ability to use these as word roots.

Exercise 3: translate these using affixes only: person, female person,
to start, the start, the opposite, the place, opposite (adjective!),
very

Exercise 4: translate postmorgaŭ and antaŭhieraŭ

Lesson 3 taught compound words, and re- (again/back), -ajx- (thing),
-igx- (become), -ist- (profession), -et- (weaken the meaning).

Exercise 5: translate: tea glass, light grey, apple pie, ĉiutago,
tuttaga, ree, aĵo, eta, poŝtaĵo, enamiĝi (en-am-iĝ-i), vorteto,
elaŭtiĝi (el-aŭt-iĝ-i), laŭtiĝi, mallaŭtiĝi, reverdiĝi
(re-verd-iĝ-i), kontentiĝi.

Lesson 4 taught -il- (tool), -ant- (person currently doing sth.),
-igx- (making words intransitive)

Exercise 6: translate: brochure (inform-), sender, participant, to get
dressed, order form (mend-), to have fun (amuz-), to be interested,
questionaire, the seeing person.

Lesson 5 taught ge- (both genders), -i- (for many country names), -an- (member), -ad- (gerund, long-lasting), -ar- (collection).

Exercise 7: using the affix system, build at least one new words from
each of the following: rumano, sviso, svedo, hispano, edzo, amiko,
loĝi, kisi, gazeto, Berlino.

Exercise 8: translate plimultiĝi, plirapidiĝi, vesperiĝas, mateniĝis,
proksimiĝi, enlagiĝi, elakviĝi, multegaj, la kialo, espero, la
esperanto, pollingve (pol-lingv-e), malpli, sunbrilo, ĉiama,
remalfermo, instruado, la malkompreno, sunleviĝo, malleviĝo, studado,
gratulanto, la plimultigxo, eraro, celo, restaĵo, kundancado, domano.

Lesson 6 contains a grammar summary, nothing new there.

Exercise 9: build new words with all affixes currently known. Use the
root words kanti, juna, doni, legi, trinki, lando, skribi, botelo,
lerni, rugxa, viro, granda, and build as many words as you can. When
you’re done, make sure that you have at least one example of each of
the affixes introduced so far (yes it’s possible!). The ones
introduced so far are: ek-, ge-, mal-, re-, -ad-, -aĵ-, -an-, -ant-,
-ar-, -eg-, -et-, -ej-, -igx-, -il-, -in-, -ist- and -ul- .

Lesson 7 taught the participles and -igx- (for passive), -ig- (to
make, transitive), -id- (child), -ebl- (possibility), -ajx- (for food)

Exercise 10: translate malsatantoj, kontraŭuloj, dormanto, ĝustigo,
remalsekiĝi, malplimultigi, pendigi, pendigita, respeguliĝi,
plilarĝigebla, nepagebla, retrankviliĝinte, surteriĝi, egaligi, krome,
ebla, homaro, revulo, malordigi, ordigita.

PARTICIPLE/AFFIX EXERCISE: add the right endings
– Mi surbret____ la aĉet____ libron. – I put the bought book on the shelf.
– En la ven____ semajno ŝi edz____. – In the coming week she will
marry (= become a wife)
– Pro troa lac____ Maria liber____ hodiaŭ de sia ofico. – Because of
strong fatigue Maria took a day off work today (= freed herself…)
– Inform____ sian patrinon, Frank iris en la kinejon. – After
informing his mother, Frank went to the cinema.
– Ating____ la landlimon, ni ĝust____ niajn horloĝojn. – Before
arriving at the border, we adjusted our watches.

Lesson 8 introduced pra- (fore-), dis- (dissemble), bo- (in-law), eks-
(former), fi- (morally bad), -ind- (worthy), -estr- (boss), -op- (how
many people), -em- (likes to do or often does), -ec- (property or
character trait)

Exercise 11: using only the affixes (no other word stems!), translate
the following: ancestor, away from each other, to leave a company or
club, morally bad, to lead, the property, to be worthy, the
desire/inclination to do something.

Lesson 9 introduced the entire rest of affixes: -ism- (ideology),
-obl- (multiples), -on- (a part of a number), -um- (whenever nothing
else fits), mis- (in error), -acx- (bad appearance or in a bad way),
-end- (something still left to do), -er- (a part of something), -ing-
(retainer or support), -uj- (container or tree), -cxj- (making
nicknames for men), -nj- (making nicknames for women)

Exercise 12: translate (sometimes using more than one word): four
times as much, a third, two fifth, guide incorrectly, to talk bad
about somebody, a book to be read, cake crumbs, wallet (from “mono”)

Exercise 13: translate to English: ujeto, aĉaĵo, arano, disigi,
eksigenda, fiega, etiĝi, estrino, ilaro.

Exercise 14: explain in Esperanto: paperujo, hundaĉo, programero,
sonorilo, besteto, taskaro, saĝulo, kuracilo

The 10th lesson is just a summary with a big boring text-translation
as an exam. So this is it – completing all these exercises should have
given you a much better grasp of the affix system.

Hope it helped!

For just a few days, this iPhone app is now priced at only 3 Euros / 4 dollars, as we’re preparing to send out a free upgrade to 50 lessons. Once the upgrade has been approved by Apple, the regular price will go up to 5 Euros, so get this app now – you’ll never see it that cheap again!

Get it now!

To get a taste of Esperanto & the culture

Get answers to all your questions about Esperanto at Esperanto.info – and feel free to send me any questions if they aren’t answered there. Also read Volte’s account of her Immersion in Esperanto-land.

A quick introduction to some parts of Esperanto can be found at Wikibooks: Quick and Dirty Guide to Esperanto. Not very serious, but surprisingly good at teaching the key grammar concepts of Esperanto is the page How to Talk Dirty in Esperanto (not for minors). I also sometimes do a 1-hour introductory lecture (next: at the Expolingua Berlin) which empowers the audience to play with the language themselves.

To Study Esperanto

In terms of materials for studying Esperanto, Lernu wins any competition hands-down of course. Not just do they offer 12 free high-quality multimedia courses online, they also have a library of exercises, grammar explanations, vocabulary collections and of course texts. For intermediate students and those who want to study Esperanto the way Tolstoy did, I highly recommend reading texts and forum posts at Lernu with the help of the in-built pop-up dictionary that will allow you understand any item of vocabulary immediately. That way, no text will be too high level for you. I am successfully using this technique for Chinese as well, with the Wenlin software.

For the finer points of grammar, those not covered by the introductions available at Lernu, I’m happy to say that the Esperanto world’s definite grammar reference is available online completely for free: Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko.

To determine which words to teach, that is which words are the most useful to beginning students of Esperanto, I often refer to the list of Easy Esperanto roots according to the magazine Kontakto. The bold entries are the most basic, the non-bold ones still come up fairly often. I find this so useful that I even created an Anki vocabulary deck featuring at least one entry for every bold word root, along with the English translation, related words and sample sentences. The words are sorted into categories such as “Basics” or “Feelings”, so that you can disable the categories you don’t need right now. To get this word list and start studying, open Anki, navigate to File > Download > Shared Deck and look for the “Esperanto 101″ deck. For my students I also created a version that features myself pronouncing every entry, so that they could improve their Esperanto pronunciation and test their listening comprehension. If anybody else wants that deck with recordings, send $10 to sprachprofi@gmx.net and I will forward it right away.

To Use Esperanto

Once you’re at a certain level in a language, the most sure-fire way to improve is by using it. No more excuses, no more simplified stuff – just jump into the cold water already!

I always recommend attending an international Esperanto meeting, because there are few things as beneficial as immersing yourself in an environment where everybody speaks Esperanto and doesn’t share another common language. Even for beginners it can be very worthwhile, as most meetings offer Esperanto classes at the same time, so you could attend classes in the morning and then spend the afternoon, evening and night having fun with Esperanto speakers from around the world. After seven days or so in Esperantio, many report that they are dreaming in Esperanto. Eventoj.hu lists many Esperanto events.

Now is also the time to dive into Esperanto literature. My favourite work, especially for beginners, is Fajron Sentas Mi Interne (skip the antaŭparolo on that page, it contains too many spoilers). Lernu also uses the novel Gerda Malaperis as a course for intermediate students, and they offer a lot of Brother Grimm fairy tales in Esperanto with annotations. Once you’re ready for the real thing, have a look at Don Harlow’s index of Esperanto literature online, or just get some books from the libroservo at the next Esperanto event. Mail-ordering from Esperanto-USA (for North Americans) or the Universal Esperanto League (for everybody) is also a possibility.

And don’t forget to enjoy Esperanto music! You can start to get an overview on this page (though some well-known bands didn’t want to submit samples there) or just look on Youtube, there is tons of it. In terms of internet radio, there are also several Esperanto radio stations where you can practise listening comprehension and discover new songs.

If you want to watch some movies in Esperanto, there isn’t much of a selection yet because no city could support an Esperanto cinema. However, Esperantists are busily subtitling movies now and at Esperanto events you will typically get to see a different subtitled movie every night. For home use, you can also download subtitles for a number of movies from the Verda Filmejo or DivxTitles. There’s also another site with other movies, but I forgot the link. Anyway this is a great chance to watch foreign movies that may not have been translated into English. Short films with Esperanto subtitles (or even Esperanto voices) can be found at Dotsub.com.

I wish you success in your studies and use of Esperanto.
Hope to see you in Esperantio sometime!

Informative, biased

The movie left me with mixed feelings. Without doubt it was good to learn more about what happened to America since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, because I missed out on quite a bit of the news. The stories of the door & window factory, of the movement to move back into cleared houses, the various protests, all those either did not make the news in Germany or flew under the radar.

It’s not a secret that Michael Moore’s „documentary“ movies are supposed to do more than just inform people though. And that is where the problem starts. The movie “Sicko” proposed a clear alternative to the current American health care system: the European one. Without going into the details and pros and cons of either having the government run all health care as in some countries or just creating a public-run health insurance company to compete with the commercial ones as in others, Moore’s film set out to prove that the current American health care system needs reform and painted a glowing-but-not-incorrect picture of how things run in Western Europe.

What is your aim?

„Capitalism: A Love Story“ however does not have such an easy solution for a better America. There are many different solutions or ingredients proposed:

• some time before the 2nd world war (exact year unknown) when the USA had a 90% tax rate for the super-wealthy, along with universal health care, a good pension system and similar achievements that have since been lost
• the German / French / Italian / Japanese systems
• relying on politicians to combat this, and pressuring them if necessary
• demonstrations
• sit-down strikes
• squatting in houses
• winning over local law enforcement or sent-in law enforcement
• overthrowing the company management / the crooks at Wall Street and the corrupt politicians

The last one, especially in combination with Moore’s call to give government the right to seize assets „for the common good“ and the choice of L’Internationale (classic Communist rally song) in a watered-down translation for an ending music, made me shiver. It is not clear if Moore advocates Socialism in the sense of Communism or just Socialism in the sense of the Social Democratic parties of Europe, but if it’s not what he meant, he should have done more to distance himself from Communism.

Weak points

Also, his example of the company run by majority vote does not convince me. Even if the blue-collar workers have the same understanding of product management, marketing etc., not putting a spike into the wheels, there is still the matter of what happens if somebody needs to be hired, promoted or fired. This would almost certainly turn into a popularity contest – when did the best [singer / dancer / cook / businessman / ...] ever win a reality show by popular vote?

The example of the company where everybody, including the manager, earns the same salary, is less preposterous but also wouldn’t fly with me, because if somebody went to university, spending a lot more time and money on education before being able to start making money, it is natural that he should earn a higher wage, to make up for that expense. Anything else would mean that the surest way to get rich is to drop out of high school and start working as soon as possible.

How it works over here

Obviously I am biased, growing up and living in Germany, but I believe that German-style or French-style (or possibly Japanese-style) Social Democracy is the way to go. That is a capitalist democracy where everybody is still paid according to the amount of work he does, entrepreneurship is rewarded and companies are expected to pursue profit and nothing else, but the government keeps a check on them to prevent excesses. Excesses such laying off workers with barely a notice, withhelding wages, preventing them from forming unions, using coercion and threats, allowing banks to raise mortgage downpayments by 200% and the like. By the way, if families lost their home because of a foul play that should not have been possible, I’m all for letting them re-take it without ANY compensation to the banks. However, if they used the money to buy a new car and now can’t afford the normal downpayments, that’s their fault.

Another part of the government’s job according to Social Democracy is to ensure everybody, regardless of sex, age, opinions, education, ability or even willingness to work, will have health care, the chance to further their education and enough money to pay for rent and food and other basic needs (but he won’t have money to spare for anything beyond that if it’s his own fault he doesn’t have a job). It would be unbecoming of a first world nation to let anybody starve, no matter the reason he’s in that predicament. Germans pay tax rates that are significantly higher than what Americans pay, but it is with the understanding that this is all they need to do to guarantee a safety net for anybody who might fall on hard times, including foreigners who are living and working here. Germans are very reluctant to donate to local NPOs because of this understanding. You are much more likely to receive donations if you collect money for a literacy project in Africa than if you were to collect money for a literacy project in Germany.

Of course people are happy to take advantage of the safety net themselves [to the max, even if they wouldn't need it,] if they ever lose their job or fall ill – or for their education, since all education, including universities [in almost all parts of Germany] are free. If you studied at an American university, it is likely you have amassed tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, of student debt because of the outrageous tuition fees. I estimate it would take me many years to pay the equivalent amount of money in taxes, and even then it would be in tiny everyday rates rather than one giant sum looming over me like Damocles’ sword. I’d say the system is already working for me.

Harnessing the energy

The safety net, along with the idea of the government as a supervisor and regulator of business, are what allow us to harness the energy that is capitalism and take advantage of it without falling prey to it. In my opinion, the root of America’s current problems is that people were expecting businesses and individuals to diverge from the profit motive, to give up the idea of making the largest possible profit in favour of morality. Most individuals are probably ready to do that, some to a greater extend than others, but there are some crooks who won’t. Companies are a lot less likely to do that, and the larger they are, the worse (though in the USA they tend to show more altruism than in Germany, probably because of the public’s exspectations). If you make an immoral but profit-raising decision at a large company, such as those health care industry workers looking for reasons to deny people the care they need in „Sicko“, or laying off lots of workers while your company is earning record-breaking amounts of money, you can often hide your shame in anonymity and quite possibly expect a raise in salary or promotion. It’s how the system works; all the incentives point that way. The profit motive will be second to none.

Moore, in this movie, appears to suggest that we should discard this motive as evil and base our economy on something else (A politbuero deciding what to produce? Coercion?). As far as I know, all substitutes have failed to provide even a small share of the mutual prosperity we can achieve through capitalism. It’s just a matter of figuring out the best way of preventing the pursuit of profit from crossing the boundaries of what is moral and just. Germany hasn’t found the perfect way yet either, as scandals can attest, but at this point in time it’s weathering the crisis better than the US, both from an economic and a human point of view.

I’m really grateful to the creator of the cross-platform vocabulary trainer Anki and the creator of the Hanzi statistics plugin, which allowed me to learn this many characters and to keep track of the number – a great motivator for me.

The characters I know split as follows:

By HSK Level
Basic: 99.75%
Elementary: 86.97%
Intermediate: 44.31%
Advanced: 20.6%

By frequency:
1 – 500: 100.0%
501 – 1000: 94.8%
1001 – 1500: 78.6%
1501 – 2000: 51.8%
2001 – 2500: 35.8%
2501 – 3000: 19.4%
3001 – 3500: 8.2%

Neato!

I love being able to recognize most of the characters in the subtitles of the Chinese Romance of the Three Kingdoms TV series. I’m already on episode 41, so that’s 30 hours spent watching Chinese with Chinese and English subtitles. Actually a lot more because I tend to re-watch, and I’ve also watched some future episodes that were recommended to me. Studying Chinese has become a really fun activity, I’d love to spend entire days on it. Alas, I have to work and also prepare a trip to the states, starting next Wednesday.

My study of Spanish consists exclusively of classes with Edufire teacher Enrique, who has mastered the art of giving conversational Spanish lessons in a way that has students talk most of the time and right from the very first lesson. Obviously I had heard the odd Spanish expression before, for example “sabes” or “no hablo espan~ol”, and I can draw on my knowledge of Italian, Latin, Esperanto and French (in order of usefulness). However, I haven’t looked at any grammar book, vocabulary list or lesson, just taken these classes with Enrique, maybe eight or ten of them.

One thing is that I’m getting a feel for the nature of Spanish, as reflected in my guesses becoming more and more accurate. Today I still guessed “sesanta” instead of “sesenta” for 60 and was totally wrong with “estade” instead of “verano” for summer, but when I said “a causa de los esclavos… or something”, totally expecting to be corrected, I was correct!

However, the real reason I’m calling this a milestone is because during today’s one hour lesson, we had quite a natural conversation, touching upon various things from tonight’s language party to my upcoming trip to the states, previous trips we both did, what we think of various cities, and so on. Normally there is at least one point during the lesson in which Enrique has to bring up a new topic in a rather abrupt way, or ask several less-than-related questions to make me practise a certain point of grammar that I got wrong, but today the conversation was coherent for a full hour and I never felt as good about expressing myself in Spanish!

What I love most about Go is its surreal elegance. The rules are as simple as you could wish for, hardly more difficult than those of Tic Tac Toe, yet the game they create is so profound that you could (and some do) study it full-time a whole life long.

At every point, you have a choice between more than a hundred legal moves. This makes the game a natural target for AI research, since brute-force calculation is not an option. Humans however see slow, clunky moves, fast, swift and maybe even too reckless moves, ugly moves and moves of a zen-like beauty.

Go is a game I cherish, even if I can’t give it as much time as it deserves. If you would like to learn this beautiful ancient game, try the Interactive Way to Go or check out one of my lectures tomorrow: for Americans or for Europeans.

Finally, here are some of my favourite quotes about Go:

“Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double entry accounting.”
– from Shibumi , bestseller by Trevanian

“While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.
– Edward Lasker, chess grandmaster

“That play of black upon white, white upon black, has the intent and takes the form of creative art. It has in it a flow of the spirit and a harmony of music. Everything is lost when suddenly a false note is struck, or one party in a duet suddenly launches forth on an eccentric flight of his own. A masterpiece of a game can be ruined by insensitivity to the feelings of an adversary.”
– Yasunari Kawabata, The Master of Go