Esperanto Language Blog

Now on the heels of the Read more or die challenge, some language enthusiasts are looking for a new challenge. But wait, what was the read more or die challenge? The basic idea came from a problem that many language learners face… there’s never enough motivation to read in languages that you haven’t learned that well yet. It’s hard to read when you’re not that familiar with the language, interrupting the reading to look up a word in a dictionary occasionally. Also, when you’re reading slower, a text tends to need to be even more interesting to hold your attention, since it can often feel more like work than pleasure.

To solve this issue, Lan’dorien came up with the idea to have a contest where anyone can sign up and everyone tweets when they’ve read pages in a foreign language and then you can see how many pages your friends are reading compared to you. I even know some people who created a Twitter account for the sole purpose of this contest! This brings in the competitive spirit and also motivates you to keep up, so you don’t fall too far behind your friends. Participants I’ve talked to have all seemed to have quite a lot of fun and have made significant progress in their foreign language reading when they normally wouldn’t have found time to do it.

Photo by Erling A (License: CC BY 2.0)

As I mentioned earlier, this challenge is now coming to an end and those participants are foaming at the mouth for another challenge. Well, now you can study any language you want and indicate the number of minutes you’ve spent studying! Feel free to use audio and video materials (yes, watching a movie in your target language counts!), books or software. The only pre-requisite is that you need to be a beginner in the language (at most lower intermediate B1 level) in your target language. I obviously can’t participate with Esperanto, so I’ll be working on my Polish!

To sign up, just send the following tweet:

@6WCBot I want to #register to study #Esperanto intensively in May. #Transparent blog reader; working #full-time.

This will automatically add you to the Transparent Language learning team, so you can compare yourself with other people who read this blog! Of course, if you want to focus on another language, change #Esperanto to the language of your choice. It’s recommended to add whether you’re currently employed #full-time, #part-time or #free, so you can compare your results with people who have a similar amount of free time. Sign up today and represent yourself in our community!

• More information about the Twitter bot
• Contest high scores list

Berlin and Brandenburg

Just last week, we launched our new website for the Esperanto Association of Berlin and Brandenburg (EABB). As a quick geography lesson, Germany is made up of 16 federal states of which due to its population, Berlin is one of these federal states. Brandenburg is a federal state which curiously completely surrounds Berlin. Due to this political phenomenon, many local associations support both of these regions in their activities.

I want to present this, because I’m proud of our accomplishments and would like to show it off to the rest of the world, and because I think it could give you some inspiration to create or improve the local Esperanto website where you live. You can see local websites for Esperanto groups in the USA. We developed it in WordPress, so that we could have a team of people who could edit the website at any time to update it with news about current activities. In any small organization, the webmaster does not always have spare time due to vacation or professional activities, so we wanted to make sure the website wasn’t dependent on any one person.

New Esperanto website for Berlin

My main goal with the new website was to help visitors of Berlin and foreign Esperanto speakers to be able to easily see what’s currently happening here. That means whether they are looking to attend a large event, visit a small group or participate in an Esperanto course, we want this information to be available at the simple click of a mouse. This way people can plan their visits better and new residents can quickly and easily get involved with the community. I kept hearing stories of foreign Esperanto speakers who’ve moved to Berlin and couldn’t understand the structure of activities here.

While we have eight active Esperanto groups (!!) in Berlin and Brandenburg, when I first moved to Berlin I had trouble discovering information about them. Gandhi says to “be the change you want in the world,” so I joined the EABB board and am working to modernize the flow of information to our members. People should be able to get their information the way they want, whether that be a website, email, RSS, Facebook, Twitter or postal mail.

How active is the group in your region? Have you tried to contact Esperanto speakers nearby? Even if you’re just a beginner, I would highly encourage you to seek out other people learning and speaking Esperanto in your area. Just knowing one other person near you, can be a huge help in giving you the motivation to keep going! Is there any way you could improve your region’s activities? In any case, What Esperanto activities are happening where you live? Just leave a comment and let me know… I’d love to hear from you!

Today I have Christopher R. Mihm with me, the director of Attack of the Moon Zombies! After reading my interview with Dave Rutan, one of his Esperanto translators, he also wanted an interview with me. Now find out why he had to have an Esperanto version of his movie and learn about his fascinating inspirations!

Attack of the Moon Zombies is certainly an interesting title! It reminds me of the title Snakes on a Plane in a way… so, how do zombies get on the moon?

All my movies are 1950s-style new “old,” good “bad” movies, thus the title is both highly descriptive but also era-appropriately over-the-top! In my film, the title creatures aren’t of the “rotting undead” type, instead they’re actually plant monsters. Since back in the 1950s, they knew so little about what to expect in space (since we’d never been there), it allows me to do some truly out-there ideas and plots. In this film, an alien plant is found in a cave on the moon. Once it’s brought into the protected atmosphere of the fictional lunar base featured in the film, it releases spores that instantly kill anyone who come in contact with them. Then, they take over the host body and use it like scaffolding on which to replicate and reanimate the person’s remains.

Is this meant to be more of a serious horror movie or more of a comedic tribute to old horror movies?

It’s definitely not meant to be a serious horror movie but it’s not necessarily a parody of those old films. Instead, it’s a serious tribute to those old films. And, because it’s treated so seriously, it becomes more-or-less a comedy! It’s hard to describe but part of the fun of watching those old 1950s B-movies is how serious they treated the material. Even though it’s painfully obvious to us now that the monsters are guys in rubber suits, people back then found them frightening as heck! The difficult line I’m trying to walk with my films is to make them as dead serious (pun intended) and authentic as I can while not being such a slave to authenticity that all the fun is removed!

I noticed that your film is in black and white. Why did you choose this approach?

From a basic perspective, simple authenticity to those old classics. Also, since my movies are filmed on digital video, I never feel like you can get the color to look like true film. So going black and white, I feel, allows my films to look much more “film-ish” than most low-budget indie movies filmed digitally.

Did any of your inspiration come from William Shatner’s appearance in the infamous cult film Incubus, released in 1965?

I would say Incubus definitely influenced including Esperanto in the new film. As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I love all things William Shatner. But even I have a hard time getting through Incubus! If nothing else, I’d love for Attack of the Moon Zombies to outdo it!

That’s really interesting! My sources actually told me that you’ve just finishing dubbing (!) the movie into Esperanto. What gave you the idea to dub the movie into Esperanto? Is there some reason that this film would be particularly interesting to Esperanto speakers?

At first I thought doing an Esperanto subtitle track would be sufficient. However, as I got further into it, it became much more interesting to me to go that extra mile of having a full Esperanto audio track. After approaching the translation team about making that a reality, it just kind of fell into place! If nothing else, I just really wanted to add my film to that very short list of films that include full Esperanto audio. One of the things that definitely will make my film interesting to Esperanto speakers is that we used real Esperanto speakers as voice talent. Thus, the pronunciation should be correct and of a much higher quality than something like Incubus. It’s a fun, little movie. Honestly, it’s my best to date. I think it could easily be used as a fun teaching tool!

Official movie trailer in Esperanto

Using real Esperanto speakers is definitely preferred over using plant zombie Esperanto speakers… that’s for sure! How do you plan to distribute the movie? Will you show it in film festivals or theaters? Do you have a DVD release date yet and are you accepting pre-orders?

I self distribute all my films through my website. I have a series of screenings set up throughout the year in various theaters and venues. My movies being so niche, most film festivals just aren’t interested — something I learned the hard and expensive way. That’s not to say there are no film fests out there worth trying to get into, it’s just not something I see as that important (or worth my money). The DVD will be available the day of the premiere (May 25th) and I will soon be taking preorders at the website.

So, we just have to wait about a month, nice! Is there anything else you’d like to share?

If you’re a fan of 1950s B-movies, I promise you’ll love my films! I self-distribute all my stuff so I creatively live-or-die solely through web sales. If you or someone you know might be interested in the type of films I make, please don’t hesitate to check them out at my website!

Thank you very much for all this information. Now I really can’t wait to see moon plant zombies speak Esperanto!

Update: Pre-orders for this DVD are now open at sainteuphoria.com.