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Chuck Smith – a new Esperanto blogger at Transparent Language Posted by on Nov 18, 2010 in Esperanto Language


Chuck Smith

Welcome back to the Esperanto blog at Transparent Language!  I’m a new blogger here, so I’d like to quickly introduce myself.  I’m Chuck Smith, originally from the United States, but now living in Berlin, Germany.  To give you a taste of what you’ll be seeing from this blog, I started learning Esperanto in February 2001, then that summer attended Esperanto meetings in San Francisco and New York.  Later that year I combined a trip to visit the largest board game fair in Essen, Germany with a visit to a local international Esperanto meeting nearby in Krefeld while staying with an Esperanto host!

Later that year, I started the Wikipedia in Esperanto which now has over 125,000 articles and has led an important role in the multilingual development of the project in general.  The following summer, I got tired of living the corporate life in a cubicle and decided to take off for a month to Brazil to visit the International Youth Congress (Internacia Junulara Kongreso – IJK) and then the Universal Congress(Universala Kongreso – UK).  After that, I spent 5 months backpacking through 14 countries in Europe, staying with Esperanto speakers for free along the way!

While staying with friends in Belgrade, Serbia, I was invited to be the TEJO volunteer in Rotterdam for a year.  There I worked alongside the most fluent Esperanto speakers in the world as I answered letters from members, worked with other European organizations and helped promote Esperanto worldwide.  We regularly would meet twice a day for a kafopaŭzo (coffee break) where we would discuss everything we were working on as well as just to take a break from the office work.

After that I worked for 3 months in the Calgary Esperanto Center in Canada, helping to promote Esperanto locally as well as teaching the advanced Esperanto class.  Unfortunately the center is no longer around, but its professionalism and ideals have always inspired me to a higher level of Esperanto activism.  After this whirlwind of Esperanto activity, I returned to my life as a computer programmer, except now I work as a freelance iPhone developer.  I stay active with Esperanto as I’m the current president of the local Berlin Esperanto Youth and write this blog for Transparent Language to share my knowledge with the world!

With my work here for the local Berlin Esperanto Youth, I hope to inspire you with our activities which you could also use in your local club.  This year we have plans to go out for a picnic, have a communal cooking evening, show movies with Esperanto subtitles, and play board games.  Not every activity will appeal to everyone, so we try to keep things varied to attract different people on different days and keep the club vibrant.

In the coming months, I’ll be writing more about a lot of my experiences as well as trivial tidbits of Esperanto culture, news about upcoming events, how to speed up your Esperanto learning, and more!  I look forward to discovering what you’d like to read most and keep you up-to-date with everything happening in the Esperanto world.  Til next time – Ĝis la revido!

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About the Author: Chuck Smith

I was born in the US, but Esperanto has led me all over the world. I started teaching myself Esperanto on a whim in 2001, not knowing how it would change my life. The timing couldn’t have been better; around that same time I discovered Wikipedia in it’s very early stages and launched the Esperanto version. When I decided to backpack through Europe, I found Esperanto speakers to host me. These connections led me to the Esperanto Youth Organization in Rotterdam, where I worked for a year, using Esperanto as my primary language. Though in recent years I’ve moved on to other endeavors like iOS development, I remain deeply engrained in the Esperanto community, and love keeping you informed of the latest news. The best thing that came from learning Esperanto has been the opportunity to connect with fellow speakers around the globe, so feel free to join in the conversation with a comment! I am now the founder and CTO of the social app Amikumu.


Comments:

  1. BrnLng:

    Congrats / Gratulojn pro novajxoj, karulo!

  2. Penny Vos:

    Good on you, Chuck!
    I’m a teacher who discovered Esperanto when we were specifically looking for a widely-used language that could be learned in less than 300 hours.
    I learned it to teach it and the experience has been remarkable!
    After 10 years of doing that, I started designing a teaching program that enables any elementary school teacher to learn with the class, to fluency, in as little as 100 hours.
    This gives children confidence and skills to achieve a higher rate of mastery of the official Australian target languages after-wards.
    We hope that it will become part of our National Curriculum as a flexible basis for learning whatever languages become important throughout each child’s life.

  3. chucksmith:

    Hi Penny,

    Thanks for your hard work teaching in Australia! It would be interesting to see your curriculum sometime!

    Also, if you could tell other Australians about this blog, I’d greatly appreciate it!

    Best wishes,
    Chuck

  4. Rodolfo I. Vazquez.:

    Hi there!

    Congrats my friend for your ‘new baby’ =) . I’ll be coming back over and over very often since I couldn’t find any Esperanto club here in Monterrey, Mexico. Who knows? Maybe after a while learning it I might be able to open one myself, you’ll see. I was just reading about Esperanto not long ago and I am sooo interested now.

    Gxis baldaux!

    Rodolfo.

  5. Milan:

    Saluton Chuck,
    estas bona ree scii pri vi post tiom da jaroj. Mi sxatis vian mencion pri nia urbo. Cxi tie nun funkcias Kalgaria Esperanto-Rondo, ni kunvenas cxiusemajne kaj ni bone memoras pri vi.
    Bonan sorton en viaj E-agadoj!
    Milan