Esperanto Language Blog

Greetings from snowy Burg in Spreewald! So, why would I be writing you from a youth hostel in the middle of the Spreewald (Spree forest)? Because I’m currently attending one of the largest Esperanto youth meetings in the world, JES (Junulara E-Semajno, Youth Esperanto Week). If you want to learn about the history of JES, you can read my blog post Celebrate the New Year in Esperanto. This year there are over 300 participants from over 25 countries at JES!

On the track in the Berlin main train station, we had the pleasure of meeting Kimo, previously a member of the band Esperanto Desperado. In the end, we had a group of 10 people in our travel group to Cottbus! That worked particularly well, since we had two 5-people train tickets, Brandenburg-Berlin-Ticket which included the regions of Berlin and Brandenburg, so we could all travel for 5,20€ each.

When we changed to the bus in Cottbus, it was amusing to see so many of my Esperanto friends there! When you travel to and from Esperanto conferences, it can almost feel like you’re approaching Esperantoland, because you hear Esperanto from more and more people around you. In fact, on the bus to Burg, over half of the passengers were speaking Esperanto!

Once flying to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil after the Universala Kongreso (Universal Esperanto Congress) in 2002, I came across some Esperanto speakers I’d never met before and shocked them by saying “Pardonu” (Excuse me) as I passed by! In the end, they ended up helping me a great deal since my host in Rio was unavailable the first night I was there. They helped find me a place to stay for the night with Sylla Chaves, a famous Esperanto author in the city!

Anyway, let’s get back from winter in sunny Brazil back to winter in cold, snowy Germany. We arrived, registered and grabbed some food (vegetarian and vegan options also available). Then the show began while we were still eating! Well, two local politicians welcomed us in German with an Esperanto translation. It was quite amusing at one point as someone from the event organizers gave a very elaborate thank you with lots of details and formalities which was then simply translated to Koran dankon! (Heartfelt thanks!)

A local politician watches Kimo play

Then Kimo surprised us all by coming out and putting on a great concert! Despite his gray hair, he was much more youthful than many of the younger crowd who sat in the audience. He got everyone singing with classic hits like Ska-Virino (Ska woman, lyrics). His most popular song was probably Sola (Alone, lyrics) Both sounds can be found on Esperanto Desperado’s Album titled Brokantaĵoj (used merchandise) published by the Esperanto music company Vinilkosmo (CD, download).

Then we joined Pete Lypkie in the trinkejo (bar, literally: drinking-place) for a nice evening of chatting with old and new friends as well as spontaneously playing a game of flicking beer bottlecaps across the table which ended up with me spilling some of my beer on the table. But, no use crying over spilt beer! If you want to read Pete’s account of the same day, you can check it out on his lifelong language learning blog at Language Fixation. Come back soon to read more about this event!

Dank’ al Bernardo pro lia traduko en Esperanto!

Welcome to Part One of my series on the early history of the Esperanto Wikipedia!

Today, in the Esperanto community, I am most well-known as the Founder of the Esperanto Wikipedia. But, how did this come to be? Well, one day I was speaking with a dear friend of mine, Scott Moonen, who was trying desperately to convince me that wikis would be the next big thing that went something like this:

Scott: Wikis are websites that anyone can edit and you can link to another page on that wiki by just typing a page with two capital letters that looks like this: CamelCase.
Chuck: Yeah, but who’s going to want to do that? I mean, the page is ugly… there aren’t even any images!
Scott: That’s the beauty of it. It’s just pure text… much easier to work together that way.
Chuck: Meh, sounds lame, but I’ll check it out.
Scott: I’m tellin’ ya, this is the next big thing, you should jump on it now!
Chuck: Sure it is…

According to Wikipedia in April 2001:
A big, boring, rectangular state.

So it happened, I took a senior Computer Science class which focused on the then-in-2001 hot topic of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) which basically means anything where the main content is user-created, rather than the old-fashioned hierarchical system with an editor who chooses what content goes into the system. That year, I chose to do my senior project on wikis. During my research, In April 2001, I came across the WikiPedia (founded in January 2001)! Man, what a joke that was. Someone is trying to use a wiki to create an encyclopedia. How cute! Hmm, here are the states and I see there’s no article yet for Pennsylvania. Well, that’s easy, I can start that one, and I wrote, “Pennsylvania is a big, boring rectangular state.” That was my first edit on Wikipedia.

After that I didn’t really give it much thought. Then, somehow in September I heard about it again. Ok, let’s see how this joke is coming along. Click. Click, click. Click, click, clickety, click, click. You know the Wikipedia syndrome. Just can’t stop reading, jumping from topic to topic… this blew my mind! How can this joke of a website that I saw in April actually be working?! Even in September there was very little vandalism and people were taking this project very seriously.

I'm eating some Wikipedia. Yummy!

After seriously contributing for about a month, I noticed there were other language projects in Wikipedia. The popular ones: Spanish, Polish, German… hmmm, Japanese and Russian writers can’t even type their own language, but have to use codes instead, since the software doesn’t support their scripts. Ugh. Oh look, there’s Esperanto, that cool international language I’ve been learning since February! Click. Tio cxi Wikipedio estas en Esperanto. This Wikipedia is in Esperanto. That was it. For those who can read Esperanto, you’ll even notice the two errors in the Esperanto text.

Well, that’s how I found (Eo: trovis) the Esperanto Wikipedia. On the next part of this series, you can read about how I founded (Eo: fondis) the Esperanto Wikipedia!

Zamenhof: the man who started it all

Some may argue that Esperanto doesn’t have a culture, because there aren’t paintings, sculptures, holidays, etc. But wait, there is a holiday! Well, December 15 is celebrated the world over as Zamenhof Day, because that is the birthday of the initiator of Esperanto: L. L. Zamenhof. Some people have wanted to change the name to the Day of the Esperanto Book, since they feel that Zamenhof’s role in Esperanto is overemphasized and can seem cultish to “outsiders.”

Most clubs will have their largest party of the year around Zamenhof Day. In Berlin, people come from nearby cities to enjoy a complete weekend of festivities. There you can see films with Esperanto subtitles, hear lectures and also concerts. On Saturday, there will be a walk through the city. The best part of the entire time though is seeing people you haven’t seen for a long time. That’s why this year there will be two locations… one for the program and one area just to chat with friends. Last year around 100 people attended the Zamenhof party here.

But, what if you don’t live in a big city?! Well, some people celebrate it with others on Twitter or Facebook. There is the Worldwide Twitter Action for Esperanto which is an attempt to make Esperanto a trending topic on Twitter… basically tweet anything in or about Esperanto and add #Esperanto to your tweet! If you’re not feeling creative, the group even made a page of sample tweets! Read more details in Esperanto on Libera Folio. On Facebook, you can find the Hug an Esperanto Speaker Day which is yet another fun way to celebrate the day.

Google Doodle: December 15, 2009

Who knows what could happen? Last year, Google even published a Google doodle with the Esperanto flag. That started as an Esperanto-USA campaign by American Esperanto speaker, Tim Westover to write Google. I have to admit that I was skeptical at first, but very pleasantly surprised when I first saw it appearing on google.co.jp (considering time zones start over there first)! Then it was a nice experience as hour after hour we saw it on other national sites. As I once heard, “There has probably never ever been a day in history where so many people saw the Esperanto flag.” Most Esperanto sites reported getting around seven times their normal amount of traffic.

Anyway, if you’re alone and don’t feel like celebrating online, you could take this day to catch up with an Esperanto friend around the world you haven’t heard from in a while. Or you could grab that Esperanto book off your shelf which you keep meaning to read. No matter where you are, you can surely find some way to remember how Esperanto has opened your world’s horizons and the new experiences it’s given you. In any case, I wish you Ĝojan Zamenhoftagon! (Happy Zamenhof Day!)