💾 Archived View for tilde.team › ~smokey › logs › 2022-08-14-esperanto-dive.gmi captured on 2023-11-14 at 08:11:45. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I was never much of a foreign language person. In school I excelled in literally every subject but the various foreign languages I was forced to take (german and spanish). Frankly, learning different languages never came naturally to me and I considered it a waste of my time. Just one of those things that never meshed that well with me.
I first discovered esperanto proper about a month ago. It had gently floated into my subconcious through @martin's subtle indoctrination tactics of mentioning it every once in awhile on station. A few gemnaught-esperantist made a buzz a bit ago on various aggregation feeds which helped too.
My initial reaction was:
"English is the 'common tounge' in all practicality, and I already natively speak it so whats the point of learning anything else?" Is a thought that passed my mind almost instinctively, perhaps defensively.
Well, on second inspection this seemed a little close minded and impuslive. So I promised I would take a fair gander just to broaden my horizons. I looked it up on gemipedia and liked what I saw.
As I get older, I begin to see the value in participating with communities and trying new things. As traveling is something I want to do, learning a backup language certainly becomes more appealing. Interacting with people of different cultures becomes much easier when both parties consent to learning a simple language on equal grounds. Many thousands if not hundreds of thousands people speak it. which is small compared to other languages. Fortunately Im a bit of an underdog supporter, which is partially why i like gemini. The small communities tend to be some of the last bastions of genuine human interaction and community for community sake.
Plus, for people like me whom bi-linguality does not come easy, perhaps a simple to learn and malleable language built for that express purpose will suceed in sparking a proper interest where my schooling failed. Esperanto promises to be many things I find appealing idealogically, and practically.
I wanted to learn more about the first hand experiences of esperanto from fellow geminauts. Beginning with martin. Digging through their blog I found this:-
Zamenhof Day & A summary of esperanto
This is as good of a hook that could be concieved of by a mortal man. Seriously, if this doesnt get you hyped to learn a new language you have no pulse.
Digging even further into the wilds I found a few other post accounting not-so-great experiences with the community over at learnu
The Two Esperantos and Why You Shouldnt Learn Either Of Them
As far as I can easily summerise, the rants boil down to some very vocal and opinionated people at learnu claiming to have objective authority on the language and its rules of engagement. Gramar-Nazis who make up rules just to arbetrarally enforce them to make themselves feel big perpetually arguing with everyone and everything. My favorite quote that sticks with me:
And now the viewpoint is clear: "*Fuck Zamenhof. Fuck the Fundamento (I haven't even read that shit). What matters is how my tiny group of internet Grammar-Nazi-Assholes are using the language! WE ARE THE AUTHORITY damn it! WE have established the grammar! We've always dreamed of being able to throw our weight around like a big fish in a small pond, and we've finally found a pond small enough: Esperanto!*"
These post do make some great points, and provide some nice counterbalance to the squeaky-clean image martin presents. Enough to temporarally question my desire to learn the language. "The Two Esperantos..." One is particularly convincing. These negative accounts point to a small-but-vocal subsection of the community that gets a dopamine rush from arguing. It sounds familiar...
I am reminded of the gemini mailing list when it was still active. While gemini was and still is a great and humble project to be a part of full of many diverse and intelligent people willing to be open minded to new conventions and ideas, the mailing list was anything but.
Pig headed, authority obsessed armchair developers all trying to throw their weight around, arguing till they were blue in the face that gemini needs this feature or that revision or some implimentation. I legitmately remember when solderpunk announced his return during fall of last year on the mailing list, someone actually had the gall to send something along the lines of
Youve been inactive from the project too long, therefore you no longer have the right to be the BDFL
I was so embaressed for the guy that I couldn't look at the reply emails undoubtly evicerating this fool off the face of the mailing list. I didn't stay for long after that, the mailing list was literally killing my desire to interact with gemini. If the mailing list were a large part of ones involvement with gemini, its easy to see how you could come away with the conclusion the whole project was full of spec-nazis.
And now the viewpoint is clear: "*Fuck (Solderpunk). Fuck the (RFC) (I haven't even read that shit). What matters is how my tiny group of internet (Specification)-Nazi-Assholes are using the (protocol)! WE ARE THE AUTHORITY damn it! WE have established the (specs)! We've always dreamed of being able to throw our weight around like a big fish in a small pond, and we've finally found a pond small enough: (Gemini)!*"
Same little fish, different pond. Small communities like gemini and esperanto will always attract a subsection of these kinds of people. The know-it-all smart alecs who get a rush from throwing their weight around on the internet through percieved 'authority'. Its not a gemini or an esperanto thing, its a human psychology thing.
The solution? Do not engage with these people. Do not adknowledge their authority or give it a chance to manifest through argumentation. Dont even look at their writings. Realize that these are the vocal minority who will always taint an otherwise enjoyable experience if you choose to interact with them. Find another community of people to socialize with, a few select people of similar intellect for you to have a proper conversation that is more like a co-operative dialog than an argument. Use the language/technology to develop personal connections.
I used to write essays worth of comments on youtube, arguing with people about this and that. One day, I realized that it was a waste of my time and energy. Every now and then im still tempted to argue against the stupidity and negativity, to lay into a random internet person with my intellectual 'authority'. But such efforts never yield fruits besides temporary catharsis, only more fustration and negativity in the world. And also arguing for arguments sake is just an asshole thing to do.
This process of intellectual development is a thing commonly refered to as "growing up", some people undergo such processes and some people will forever argue about nothing with other nobodies because it enables their raging superiority complexes.
One thing stressed is that the Fundemento Is the esperantist one and only canon gospel, everything else is arbetrary and subject to interpetation. I like books, and I can get down with reading one. So I found a copy on libgen.is and got to work reading last night.
The Fundemento was jarring at first but I quickly understood. The first ~40 pages are all a quick manual of the languages conventions translated into the 5 main languages of the EU during the time. On one hand I appreciate the inclucivity of 5 different translations, on another its a hassle to flip to the english manual and back to an excersise from an ereader. Perhaps I will print the english manual out.
One of the finest luxuries of 21st century technology is e-readers, at least to bookle lovers like myself. Sure, nothing beats the viceral weight and texture of a high quality hardcover, but the practical benefits of having one device capable of instantly calling your entire collection, and having an on-demand dictionary is useful. I wanted to see if someone made an esperanto to english dictionary for my kobo. Sure enough, there are afew
Mobilereads Fourm Post For Dictionaries
Glossary Builder: Ali Jahanshiri, Wordcount: 20,543
Esperanto_English_Dictionary.kobo.zip
Glossary Builder: Marcos Franco, Wordcount: 19,782
Apparently Ereader dictionaries are more complicated than I thought. Because I use the koreader software sideloaded onto the kobo, these kobo formatted dictionaries wont work. I needed a dictionary formatted in stardict. After searching and searching, I finally found some dictionaries that work on koreader.
Esperanto To English dictionary tarball
to install a dictionary on koreader, connect device and go to .adds/koreader/data/dict/ and unzip the files into a folder with the name of the dictionary
Thats about as far as I have gotten in my esperanto persuits. Currently its a small interest thats slowly growing. If I can one day send a fellow esperantist a paragraph long email and understand the reply, I will consider that a definitive victory. Perhaps esperanto will spark a love of languages, perhaps it will be just another fading interest. We shall see.