All My Languages

Have you ever noticed that writers of the past often had a far better command of the English language than we do? One reason is that for centuries, across all of Western Civilization, becoming educated meant learning Latin and Greek. So the writer educated that way could step outside of his native English (or German or French) to walk around in a different language for a while. If you have ever thought that C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien had a way with words that you did not, it’s probably because those men were educated when learning Latin and Greek as part of basic education was still a thing.

During my lifetime, language teaching has gone from a grammar-emphasis, which explained how the language was supposed to work but made you memorize irregular verbs, to a ‘conversational’ approach which made you memorize whole sentence since you weren’t required to learn the grammar to make up your own sentences correctly.  In either method, I got cynical about language learning as a kid when I realized all the kids in all the schools were taking French, German or Spanish but there were zero books in the local bookstores in those languages. Therefore, not many of the language learners were learning enough to even attempt to read a book in the languages they were learning. (By contrast, when I did my year abroad in Germany, I was able to buy an English-language autobiography of Harpo Marx that I had been seeking in vain back home.)

GERMAN was the first language I learned, since my maternal grandparents were immigrants from Germany and my mother’s very first language was German, though she was not that fluent as an adult. She taught me a couple of prayers in German, and how to count in German. I took German classes in school when I could, and took many German classes in college. I have read numerous books in German, since I learned the secret of finding an interesting book, starting reading, and writing down a list of the words I was unsure of. When I had ten or more on the list, I got out my German-English dictionary. Before long I was able to read more fluently without looking a lot of stuff up.

ESPERANTO was a language I always wanted to learn ever since I learned about it in my Golden Book Encyclopedia. I didn’t get the chance until I saw Teach Yourself Esperanto, a textbook for English speakers, in a bookstore in Germany during my year abroad. I worked my way through the first four chapters of the book and then was able to read stuff in Esperanto. Esperanto is an invented language designed for international use with no irregular verbs and simple grammar. A person can learn Esperanto in about 1/10^th the time that it would take that person to learn French or some other national language (like German or Russian.) Esperanto is a highly resented language since so many people fear having to learn it, and so there are rumors that Esperanto died out in 1920. But since there are current podcasts, shortwave radio broadcasts, and books, blogs and web pages in Esperanto, I kind of suspect it’s still around.

SERBIAN or SERBO-CROATIAN is the language of some local friends of mine. I started studying it because it is a Slavic language but the words are pronounced exactly as written, unlike Russian. It’s hard, but I have the Book2 book and have downloaded the free audios that go with it. (I have audios for German speakers learning Serbian, and for Esperanto speakers learning Serbian, so I am reviewing my other languages when I do my Serbian.

LATIN is something I have been interested in since later childhood, and I have a bunch of language learning books for Latin in the house. This year I decided to add Latin to my official language rotation. I already had the Lingua Latina books, and purchased the audios of it in Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation. I listen to Vatican Radio’s weekly podcast in Latin (I also listen to the Esperanto, German and Croatian podcasts.)

MY LANGUAGE WEEK

Over a year ago I decided on a three-day language rotation for German, Esperanto and Serbian. I would listen to podcasts in the daily language and do other language work. For Serbian I also listened to my Book2 audios daily since I am still learning at a beginner stage.

This year I added Latin into the rotation. So now I have 4 languages instead of 3. In either case, my language days rotate around the days of the week. Since I write down the day-of-the-week in the language of the day in my calendar, it helps in learning the days of the week in each of my languages.

Some weeks I am more diligent in my languages, some less. Which is the way I am. But I think that regularizing my languages review keeps me more up-to-date in the languages. My German knowledge, particularly, had been declining since my college years since I don’t use it much. Now I think I am getting my German back.

DOES FOREIGN LANGUAGE REALLY HELP?

It’s not really possible to know. If I’d had a duplicate me, and we had decided that one of us would pursue language knowledge and the other would not, and that we would both write, maybe by now we could tell if the language-learning-me wrote better than the non-language-me. Maybe. Because the non-language-me would have had to have done something while I was fiddling about with languages, and maybe that something would improve the writing, too. And we would have different life experiences from the moment of our duplication, and that alone might account for differences in writing skill.

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CHRISTIAN WRITERS OF SCI-FI/FANTASY you are welcome to join the Facebook group: Christian Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers https://www.facebook.com/groups/366357776755069/ for writer networking (sorry, no book promos allowed since there is a separate group for that.)

Seven Conlangs for Writers

A conlang is a constructed language— an invented language. J. R. R. Tolkien famously invented the Elvish language, and thought of language construction as his secret vice.

I’m fond of conlangs, but prefer to use ones constructed by someone else to making one up myself. It’s a lot of work, and for a writer, you will only use your conlang to create a few names and perhaps a stray word or phrase or two. So it’s always an option to use a conlang ‘off the shelf’ if you can find one that suits your purpose.

What conlangs are available for writers to use? Usually it’s the ones that were invented as auxiliary languages for international use. Conlangs like Klingon or Tolkien’s Elvish are the intellectual property of the creators.

Here are 7 known conlangs that are available for writers to use, since they are/were IALs (International Auxiliary Languages) and in most cases, are older IALs.

• Esperanto. Invented  in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof. The most successful IAL, there are books published in it, shortwave radio broadcasts given, and annual Esperanto conventions. It is recognizable as a European language and people who speak one of the Latin-derived languages like Spanish, Italian or French can often understand Esperanto sentences without learning the language. In my Destine series, Esperanto is the primary conlang used by the Terran Fleet.
• Ido. Invented in 1907 by Louis Couturat. This was intended as ‘reforms’ to Esperanto, in part by getting rid of the ‘ugly’ Esperanto words with Germanic or Slavic roots and replacing them with Latin-origin terms. Today Ido is well known mainly to Esperanto speakers. There is still an Ido movement, but it is small. Ido is recognizable as a European language, and an Esperanto speaker can mostly understand Ido. It may be considered an Esperanto dialect. In the Destine series, the main use of Ido is on worlds where two dialects of conlangs are considered desirable, often spoken by differing tribes or social castes. It is also spoken widely by people who resent having to learn Esperanto but must deal with Esperanto-speaking people.
• Universalglot. Invented in 1868 by Jean Pirro. This language predates Esperanto, but never had clubs or a movement, or even a translation of the Our Father. It looks like a European, Latin-based language. In the Destine universe, Universalglot is the preferred Trade Language of the powerful Konju race. Since Konju people mostly cannot learn languages after childhood, many people learn Universalglot to trade with the Konju.
• Solresol. Invented in 1866 by Jean Sudre. Solresol is rather famous for being a language based on the musical notes of the scale. You know, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si…. Each of the seven possible syllables of Solresol has a corresponding musical note, color, number, hand sign (sign language) and glyph. What’s not to love about that? It is a very alien-looking language, but in longer Solresol utterances it might even be recognized by clever readers as Solresol, since the language is still sometimes mentioned in books and other information sources. In the Destine universe, Solresol is used by a few alien races, often in a rudimentary way, and is also used as a secondary Trade Language by musicians and artists. The alien Tsanan race, who have the form of balls of colored light, love Solresol since they can match their body colors to the syllables of Solresol.
• Amerysk. Invented in 1974 by Paal-Erik Filssunu. Amerysk was invented by an American Odinist, and I got a mimeographed booklet on Amerysk from an Odinist friend. I have not been able to contact the creator of Amerysk and have been in contact with another speaker only fleetingly, many years ago. I put the booklet up online in various places many years ago. I’ve also been adding words to the language for some time and posting it on a blog. Amerysk is a Germanic language, like modern English, old Anglo-Saxon, and German, Swedish, Yiddish and the like. In the Destine universe, Amerysk is commonly spoken in regions on the planet Mayflower, and by small human groups elsewhere. There may be aliens who prefer it, as well. It’s fairly common as a second or third language for the elders of Amish communities in space, since it is related to their German dialect.
• Slovio. Invented in 1999 by Mark Hucko. Slovio is a pan-Slavic language. The creator says that if you know Slovio, you can communicate with all the world’s Slavic language speakers— Russian, Polish, Croatian…. It may be true, but if you say something to a Russian in Slovio and he understands it, he will answer in Russian, which you won’t understand fully. It is a Slavic-sounding language and can be written in both Roman (like English) and Cyrillic (like Russian) alphabets— which is kind of like Serbian which uses both alphabets. In the Destine universe, Slovio is preferred by Slavic-language speakers. A few minor alien races use it, too.
• Volapük. Invented in 1879 by Father Johann Martin Schleyer. Volapük was the first IAL to get a following, and clubs, and a movement. It’s a complicated language, though. Many Volapük clubs became Esperanto clubs when Esperanto was published and gained a following, since Esperanto is easier to learn. But maybe the complications of Volapük were necessary to make people believe that a made-up language could really be spoken, and could be used to translate ideas. There was a reform of Volapük in about 1930, but it’s still complex. Though the words are actually based on English words, they are distorted— ‘animal’ becomes ‘nim’— so it can serve as a completely alien tongue in fiction. There are a small number of Volapük speakers today, and a Europe-based Volapük organization. In the Destine universe, Volapük is preferred by the tyrants ruling the Alliterist worlds. A few alien races use it, too.

So, these are some of the actual conlangs which can be used by the modern writer. If you need a few names or magic words or an alien curse word or insult, these are possible sources.

Science-fictional languages & Esperanto

In older science fiction, it was assumed that future people of different cultures would speak to one another in Esperanto, or in a fictionalized version of it. Esperanto is a real-world invented language created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, which is highly simplified, and can be learned by an English-speaker in about 1/10th the time it would take an English-speaker to learn French. It is also a language which largely lacks idioms which cannot be literally translated, such as saying ‘I am blue’ in English to mean ‘I am sad.’ (The English translation of the German sci-fi series, Perry Rhodan, has future slang terms with Esperanto roots, even though that’s not in the original German text.)

In early science fiction, Esperanto was new linguistic technology which seemed to scream ‘futuristic.’ That impression has changed, in large part because so many people on the planet don’t want to have to learn the international language Esperanto when they have already learned Chinese, Arabic, Spanish or English as their international language. It is commonly said that Esperanto has ‘failed.’ But since it has gone from just-an-idea with one speaker, Dr. Zamenhof, in 1887 to a language estimated to have 2-4 million speakers and maybe more who could recognize the language and communicate in it on a basic level if they had to.

A later idea of how future people would solve the interplanetary language problem was a ‘universal translator’ device like used on Star Trek. The Star Trek device could start translating without hearing a word of a new alien tongue, as far as we could see on the show. But in the real world, translation by computer is hard. There are always mistakes. Would YOU like to create a treaty with the Klingons using only a ‘universal translator,’ or would you opt for using bilingual beings as translators so they could catch the mistakes and ambiguities?

There has also been the idea that in the future, English or a version of English will be the interplanetary universal language. On Earth, our experience has been that a country with great military and economic power can induce foreign peoples of less power to learn their language, as the British Empire spread English and English-learning around the world. But our experience on Earth has also been that the most popular international language doesn’t stay so popular forever. Greek was an international language in the ancient world, and was learned by educated persons in many nations from Egypt to Israel to Rome. As Greek national power waned and Roman power grew, Latin became an international language. It continued to be an international language for a long time because the Church was centered in Rome, and the Catholic Church still uses Latin for international communications purposes. (There used to be an ATM machine in the Vatican with Latin instructions!) Later French became the language of diplomacy, and only later did English start being used for international purposes. In the future with the growing power of China and of the Muslim world, perhaps Mandarin Chinese or Arabic may have a turn at being the most popular international language.

Adopting a created language like Esperanto is a different sort of thing. It does not belong to any one nation on Earth, and it is highly unlikely that if Esperanto moves out into the interplanetary world that any Esperanto-speakers will claim it belongs particularly to Earth. Like other created international languages, it belongs to the people who have taken the trouble to learn it in order to communicate better with others. It may seem that Esperanto or other similar languages moving into common use would require loads of people (and space aliens) to become more idealistic. But actually, it is pragmatic. I learned Esperanto well enough to read it by spending 2 month studying a book on it in my spare time while I was in college. This is a short investment in time as language-learning goes. Imagine how an international or interplanetary project would be enhanced by asking (or ordering) the participants to spend the small amount of time it would take to learn to communicate with others in Esperanto.

Esperanto is not the first created language ever made as an international language. There were many such projects before Esperanto, such as Universalglot or Volapuk. Volapuk actually had a following and language clubs at one time! After Esperanto, there were languages such as Ido (an Esperanto dialect) and Interlingua. There are also languages like Slovio, a pan-Slavic language.

In the future, a new international or interplanetary language could arise that is no relation to Esperanto, but has similarities in easy of learning. It’s possible that English speakers might meld English word roots with a simplified, Esperanto-like spelling system and grammar to create a new language easy for those who already speak English as a first or second language. Or Chinese speakers, or Arabic speakers. Now that Esperanto and other simplified languages have been created, the principles are available to anyone.

What about Klingon for an international language on real-world Earth? There used to be internet rumors of how an English-speaking Star Trek fan had communicated with a Japanese Star Trek fan in Klingon. As a massive fan of Star Trek, I looked into that. I wanted to translate a few simple sentences into Klingon. But I found that Klingon had no words for the key words in my sentences, like ‘cat’ and ‘rat.’ And no mechanism for creating new words, which Esperanto has. And since Klingon is the intellectual property of Paramount Pictures, who hired the man who made up the Klingon language, we really can’t use it for an international language without permission. So an Esperanto club in Poland can’t transfer its loyalty to Klingon as an international language, as Volapuk clubs transferred their loyalty to Esperanto once Esperanto was invented, because Klingon isn’t in the public domain!

As writers, if we like the interplanetary-language concept as a plot device, we are free to create our own interplanetary language— language inventing is a legit hobby now and there are web sites that may help you— or you can used Esperanto (or Volapuk or Universalglot) as a pre-fab language in your work. Since they are international languages meant for use, they were all ‘born’ in the public domain, and are old enough that they would be in the public domain now anyway.

Esperanto is the best developed international language. There are free Esperanto learning websites and cell phone apps like Duolingo, there are still a few Esperanto shortwave broadcasts, and even more broadcasts in Esperanto on internet radio— including one on Vatican radio. Also, the Bible has been available in Esperanto from early on. The language’s creator, Zamenhof, was a Polish Jew and spoke Hebrew as well as many other languages, and he translated the Old Testament. Here is a sample: ‘En la komenco Dio kreis la chielon kaj la teron.’ [Genesis 1:1]  The New Testament was translated by the British Bible society, and the Deuterocanonical books— the books in Catholic Bibles that modern Jewish and Protestant Bibles don’t have— are also now available. So the Esperanto Bible— especially the Zamenhof-translated Old Testament— is a treasure trove of grammatically proper Esperanto stuff to quote.

I might warn other language geeks: don’t give out long solid blocks of text in Esperanto or your own fictional language or any language other than English (or whatever other language you are writing in.) It will confuse or annoy many readers, while using a word or phrase or two may be able to be ignored by people who don’t like that sort of thing. Sometimes, less is more!

Story prompts:

1. Imagine a futuristic story in which language diversity is a problem. How will your characters solve the problem? How will they get others to agree to their solution? What will be the drawbacks and benefits of the solution your characters choose?
2. A major corporation builds a massive factory or mine or something, and has to get workers from many linguistic groups. The corporation hires linguists to create a simple language for the corporation workers to use with one another. Over time, children are born from ‘mixed marriages’ among the workers who use the (copyrighted) corporation-owned language as their primary or only language— and they can’t leave to work for other corporations because they cannot use their native language without corporate permission!
3. Your characters believe that Esperanto (or another interplanetary language) is evil and threatens the survival of other languages and their related cultures. Languages like Chinese and English and German are dying out the way American Indian languages are dying today (many Indian languages in the US have only a handful of elderly speakers left alive right now— when they die, the language is dead, without any native speakers.)

Teach Yourself Esperanto book

Esperanto-English dictionary

Why German (Protestant) Bibles are bigger than English ones #Bible

Recently I finished reading the book ‘Why Catholic Bibles are Bigger’ by Gary G. Michuta. It tells the story of some Old Testament books not found in many ordinary Protestant Bibles. These books are called the Deuterocanonical books. Protestants today call them Apocrypha, which confuses these books with a whole set of ancient books such as the Gospel of Thomas.

An interesting point is that the Protestant reformers did not remove these books at the time of the Reformation. Martin Luther, who started the Protestant Schism and translated the Scriptures into his native German, translated the whole Bible, including the Deuterocanonical books, which he questioned. He also disliked the New Testament books of James, Hebrews, and Revelation. But he translated them anyway, and when I bought a Martin Luther translation of the Bible in Germany, it had ‘die Apokryphen’ tucked away in a special section between the older Old Testament books and the New Testament.

In England, the famous King James Version translation of the Bible included the Deuterocanonical books. But the KJV Bibles I grew up with lacked these books. Why, if the KJV translators took the trouble to translate them?

It started in 1804, when the British and Foreign Bible Society was formed. They did not have a high opinion of the Deuterocanonical books. Plus, it was cheaper to print Bibles without them. They decided to cut funding to foreign Bible societies that were printing complete Bibles with the Deuterocanonical books left in. There was a controversy for some time over this, since the foreign Bible societies being helped often did not want to provide people with partial Bibles. But in time British opinion hardened against the Deuterocanonical books and no Bibles would be printed in any language that contained the Deuterocanonical books. There were some that feared these books taught ‘popish’ doctrine and might make people Catholics.

Interestingly, this tradition of the English Bible society affected the Esperanto translation of the Bible. The English and Foreign Bible Society did the translation of the New Testament, L. L. Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto and a Jewish man, translated the accepted books of the Jewish Bible— which does not contain the Deuterocanonical books. Since the English and Foreign Bible Society did the printing, Esperanto Bibles containing the Deuterocanon were not available until recently.

Although I am now a Catholic, even when I was Protestant I didn’t believe that the British Bible Society was an authority chosen by God to make the final decision as to which books are in the Bible. I felt that since the early church, including the Apostles, seemed to favor the Septuagint, a Greek language Old Testament translation which included the Deuterocanon, that was a good argument for those books being included in the Bible. Why, if they were bad books, wouldn’t Jesus have had something negative to say about them rather than making reference to them?

If you have any curiosity about how it got determined which books are in the Bible, Michuta’s book is a good place to get started. His ‘Selected Bibliography’ includes works by Protestants as well as Catholics.

I personally prefer the KJV Bible when I read the Bible in English. For some years I used my old KJV Bibles along with a copy of just the KJV ‘apocrypha’ in paperback form. I now have a leather-bound complete KJV Bible for my personal Bible reading.

Let your light so shine/Via lumo lumu antaŭ homoj

Every Sunday Catholics and many Protestants hear the same set of Bible readings, all over the world.  This is from the readings for today, in two languages. (Don’t worry, the second one is in English.)

Esperanto,

13  Vi estas la salo de la tero; sed se la salo sengustiĝis, per kio ĝi estos salita? ĝi jam taŭgas por nenio, krom por esti elĵetita kaj piedpremita de homoj.

14  Vi estas la lumo de la mondo. Urbo starigita sur monto ne povas esti kaŝita.

15  Kiam oni bruligas lampon, oni metas ĝin ne sub grenmezurilon, sed sur la lampingon; kaj ĝi lumas sur ĉiujn, kiuj estas en la domo.

16  Tiel same via lumo lumu antaŭ homoj, por ke ili vidu viajn bonajn farojn, kaj gloru vian Patron, kiu estas en la ĉielo.

English, King James Version

13  Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.

14  Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.

15  Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.

16  Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

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The King James translation is one of the greatest works in the English language. It contains the full text of the Bible, not just an abbreviated version of the Old Testament like many modern Protestant translations have. I have read that if all the copies of the King James Bible vanished, it could be reconstructed almost completely from the Bible quotations in other English works.

Many proverbial expressions that are well used in the English language originated in the King James Bible.  There are three of them in this passage alone: Salt of the earth, light of the world, let your light so shine before men. As writers, it is well to know the origin of these common phrases.

In the phrase “Let your light so shine before men,” the word ‘men’ is used in its meaning of “men and women.” In 1611 when the KJV Bible was published, modern feminist jargon had yet to be invented, and so the translators were free to use “men” instead of the ugly and less effective feminist jargon alternatives like “personkind” or “humankind.” (In English, words of one or two syllables pack more of a punch than words of three or more syllables.)

The best writers in the world ‘let their light so shine before men.’  That is, they don’t hide their ‘light’— their knowledge, both spiritual and secular, and their very selves— in order to seek popularity by being just like all the other writers. Hiding your ‘light’ makes your writing seem bland and boring and just like every other second-rate writer. The writer who shares his ‘light’ and his self with readers is going to be a one-of-a-kind writer and can stand out from the crowd.

An Esperanto-language blog from Nepal

Bona esperanta blogo estas ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ La aŭtoro estas Razen Manandhar, el Katmando, Nepalo.
OK, maybe you’d rather I blog in English?

Let me tell you the story of Razen Manandhar from Kathmandu, Nepal. He is a blogger— and he blogs in the international language, Esperanto. I have followed his blog, off and on, for years. While reviving my own Esperanto blog, I decided to check on his. He’s still active. So on my ‘kaj la hundo’ blog in Esperanto, I wrote about his blog. And since I’m being lazy today but still wanted to post in THIS blog, I decided to cheat a bit and blog about the same thing.

Here is my blog post for today from ‘kaj la hundo.’

A good blog in Esperanto is ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ The author is Razen Manandhar from Kathmandu, Nepal.

Razeno says:

“Welcome to my blog. In my Esperanto-blog, I show to the world that our international language indeed lives today, and you can find it also in Nepal. You will find short articles about Nepal, its culture, society and my personal life. And I without fail give my personal opinion about the Esperanto-movement in my country.

 

And here is the Esperanto version, in case you are interested:

Bona esperanta blogo estas ‘Razeno blogas Esperante.’ La aŭtoro estas Razen Manandhar, el Katmando, Nepalo.

Razeno diris:

“Bonvenon al mia blogejo. Per mia Esperanto-blogo, mi montras al la mondo ke nia internacia lingvo ja vivas hodiaŭ, kaj ĝi troviĝas ankaŭen Nepalo. Vi trovos artikoletojn pri Nepalo, tiea kulturo, socio kaj mia persona vivo. Kaj mi nepre donas mian personan opinion pri Esperanto-movado en mia lando.”

The cool thing about Esperanto is that you can get in contact with people from distant countries on a more equal level. Razen Manandhar speaks English, and has an English blog somewhere or other. But if I only communicated with him in English, he would be having to speak to me in MY language— an unequal relationship. But when we are both trying to communicate in Esperanto, we have BOTH laid aside our native language and learned another language, Esperanto, so we would be able to communicate with one another.

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Daily Writing Habit:

After having three good days of doing my daily 8-minute timed writing session (and more), I slipped up yesterday. Got all caught up in the IWSG blog hop, and also in tending my Esperanto blog and Facebook page, and did not get to my writing session at ALL.

So today, I did my timed writing session FIRST. I only did 2 eight-minute sessions, but it’s a start and I hope to do more later today.

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Cats:

When I put the kittens out on the porch so I could get things done, I was pleased to note that kitten Alvin went out on his own for the very first time. I guess he’s having fun playing on the porch and in the yard like a big kitty.

IWSG: Reviving my 2006 blog in Esperanto

This is a post in the Insecure Writer’s Support Group blog hop. Join at: http://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html

My latest ploy to avoid having enough time to work on my WIP is reviving my oldest blog— one from 2006. At that time, my main blog was called ‘Moreover the dog went with them’, after a line from the Biblical book of Tobit. (If you don’t have Tobit in your Bible, you need a better Bible. Tobit was in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Bible Jesus and his disciples used.)

In addition to Moreover, I started a second blog in Esperanto, the international language. It’s called ‘kaj la hundo iris kun ili’, which is the Biblical phrase from the Esperanto Bible.

Esperanto Bible

I have not posted in ‘kaj la hundo’ in years, but lately I decided to start again. The reason is that I am working on a science fiction novel in which Esperanto is the common language of the Terran Empire and also used as an intercommunication language by aliens, because it’s such an easy language to learn. Using Esperanto as a futuristic language used to be far more common in science fiction, but today’s science fiction writers are convinced that difficult English will be the One True Terran Language in the future. Not very logical, but…..

My revival of the ‘kaj la hundo’ blog is currently concerned with providing links to Esperanto learning material for English speakers. Here is the link, in case you want to have a look: http://kajlahundo.blogspot.com/  I welcome comments on any of the posts there in any language. Well, OK, if you are going to comment in Chinese or Swahili I won’t understand it a bit, but I welcome the comments anyway. 😉

I especially hope to find readers for that blog interested in learning a little Esperanto. Studies show that Esperanto can be learned in 1/10th the time it would take to learn another European language. So it’s a quick way to get a second language into your brain.

More recently I started a Facebook page in Esperanto called ‘La Sankta Biblio en Esperanto.’ As you may have guessed, it’s about the Bible. I try to regularly post verses or groups of verses from the Bible in Esperanto. I usually give the English as well, and for single verses a few other languages. I use the web page Jesus Army Multilingual Bible to help find the verses in different languages. Here is the link to La Sankta Biblio en Esperanto: https://www.facebook.com/sanktabiblio/

I’d really like it if language geeks and Bible geeks would ‘like’ that Facebook page and share it with their friends. Thanks!

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Kitten Picture of the Day

My cat Julianne— the orange one— got pregnant this spring and had to have an emergency caesarian. All of her kittens died. During the grief period Julianne needed to cuddle a kitten, so I handed her the youngest cat we had— seven month old Norbert (who is a girl kitty.)

Julianne has got over losing her kittens, and she’s grown a lot. She was so tiny at two years old the vet thought she was a pregnant kitten. But now she’s almost as big as her brother and kitten-daddy Derek. Perhaps being neutered let her grow more.IWSG

Writing a haiku every day for twenty years — in Esperanto

Stephen D. Brewer didn’t start out to be an internationally known Esperanto-language haiku poet. He didn’t even know much about haiku at first– just what most of us learn about haiku in school. But now he is the author of three books of Esperanto haiku. (What is Esperanto? http://esperanto.org/us/USEJ/world/index.html)

What started him out was that he heard of Esperanto, an invented international language, and thought the concept was cool. He learned it, but then got too busy to practice it much. So, haiku. A haiku a day— not serious haiku at first, but an effort. Which led to learning more about haiku, and publication, and authorship. Persistence paid off.

I don’t write an Esperanto haiku every day. In fact, I’ve only ever written one haiku in Esperanto, plus two free-verse poems— with English translations, of course. But I am trying to write a poem every day— if not haiku, then senryu, sijo or free verse. This morning I wrote my first tanka— another Japanese form, like haiku.

This is how becoming a writer happens. You write every day— even if it’s something you don’t think anyone wants to read. Even if you are an Aspie or autistic and you don’t think you can ever communicate anything with others very effectively. But you keep it up, year after year, building your skill, and then the day comes when you can look back on a record of achievement.

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Want to learn to write haiku in Esperanto? Go to the Lernu! web site for free Esperanto lessons. http://en.lernu.net/ When you have studied for three months or so, buy Wells’ Esperanto dictionary and The Haiku Handbook by William J. Higginson, and get started. If you want to share some of your best Esperanto haiku, you can come back to this blog and post it as part of a comment on a poetry-related post. Or you can post it on Twitter using hashtags #Esperanto and #hajko so Esperanto speakers can find it.

tamburina danco/Fortnight for Freedom day 1

Fortnight for Freedom— a time of fasting and prayer for the restoration of Religious Freedom in the USA.

Poem shared at Poetry Pantry #257 at Poets United (which is not, actually, an English football team).

poem                                                         translation
tamburina danco                              tambourine dance

en la pin-arbaro                                        in the pine woods
la fraulaj tamburinoj                                the unmarried tambourines
dancas kamparan dancon                       dance a country dance
kaj esperas                                                 and hope

sed la fraulaj                                               but the unmarried
tamburoj                                                     drums
vendas drogojn                                          sell drugs
al la pluveroj                                              to the raindrops
kaj tute ne                                                   and don’t at all
rimarkas                                                      notice
la tamburinojn                                           the tambourines

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Notes:

The poem this week is in Esperanto. This was inspired by a suggestion in Sandford Lyne’s Writing Poetry From the Inside Out, that foreign-born poets translate the keywords into their own language. No, I am not a native of the mythical Esperantujo [Esperanto-land] nor is Esperanto my native language. But I love playing with words and I don’t always care what language I get them from.

The Esperanto poem contains a word play that cannot be translated. Esperanto uses a lot of affixes— suffixes and prefixes— to build words. One common affix is -in- which indicated female gender. So— hundo is dog, and hundino is a female dog.

The word for ‘tambourine’ is tamburino, which reminded me that the word for drum is tamburo. One could interpret the word tamburino as ‘female drum’ although the -in- in tamburino has nothing to do with female gender. But I took the interpretation of tamburino as female drum and ran with it.

Esperanto Information: http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html

Free language lessons in Esperanto: http://en.lernu.net/

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Fortnight for Freedom

I am a convert to the Catholic faith. (Yes, I know that gay women are supposed to LEAVE the Church, not join it. I’m independent that way.) And so when the Catholic bishops announce an annual period of prayer and fasting for religious freedom, and my Catholic internet buddies participate, I mark the occasion on my blog.

A lot of people don’t get why religious freedom is an issue for Catholics (and others) because many people don’t know what religious freedom is. There have been political figures who’ve called on Catholics and other Christians to change their basic beliefs and replace their Bibles with rewritten versions that conform to the politicians’ core beliefs. And yet they don’t admit that what they are doing erases the traditional concept of religious freedom.

You may agree or disagree with this concept— after all, thoughts are still free, since thoughts are hard to detect and punish. But if you want a little more info on Fortnight for Freedom, here is the link: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/fortnight-for-freedom/

This blog will be covering the Fortnight for Freedom. I’m hoping to blog each day about it, and also include links to other people’s Fortnight for Freedom blog posts.

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Poetic Resources:

New Poetic Market: Magdalena Lamont: Poetry from the Other Side is an online poetry ‘zine currently accepting submissions. Here is the submission information: http://linalamont.blogspot.com/p/submit-poems-here.html

Facebook page for Sijo Poetry: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sijo-Poetry/392044370990201

Goodreads poetry group Poetry Readers Challenge: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/28172-poetry-readers-challenge  Group encourages members to read and review 20 poetry books a year. If you have a poetry book of your own out, you perhaps know how vital it is to get the book reviewed on Goodreads and Amazon.com. This group makes it easier for that to happen.

Diable! Swear-substitutes for Sci-Fi Writers

Imagine this: you are writing science fiction. Your character swears. You don’t— or don’t want to do it in your fiction. What do you do?

One method is to translate the swears into a suitable science-fictiony language. After all, English-speaking people don’t get as upset at characters exclaiming “dreck” or “merde” as they do if those same characters had used the English equivalent (sh-t).

My favorite science-fictiony language to use for this is Esperanto— an international language created in 1887 by Polish oculist L. L. Zamenhof. Back in the early days of science fiction some authors mentioned Esperanto as a language of the future. Others had a language with names like ‘Standard’ or ‘Terran Standard’ that seemed pretty Esperanto-like.

Esperanto was used in the English translation of a German sci-fi series, Perry Rhodan. The Esperanto was a source of futuristic slang. In Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series, Esperanto is the language used by many of the characters and a few Esperanto words are used— such as bastardachfiulo, a construction that’s portrayed as ‘the worst thing you can call someone in Esperanto.’

There are two ways the clean-fiction writer can use Esperanto to translate swears. One is to translate the bad word directly— ‘the devil!’ being translated as la diablo! or simply diablo!  The other way is to find a non-swear-y equivalent of the swear and translate that. So, instead of ‘the devil’ you might say ‘the enemy’— la malamiko or malamiko. You might use both methods depending on the intensity of the swear.

Swear words may be divided into 4 categories— blasphemy, near-blasphemy, crude vulgarity, and minced oath. Let’s look at what can be done in each of these categories.

1. Blasphemy swears are ones that take God’s name in vain, or uses words like ‘God!’ or ‘Jesus!’ as swear words rather than as names to be used prayerfully and respectfully. No matter what your own religious beliefs are, this usage is considered swearing of a particularly morally bad kind within the English-speaking world. A direct translation of these words would be ‘Dio!’ or ‘Jesuo!’ A less direct use is to use the word ‘heaven’ as a substitute for the name of the Ruler of heaven. In Esperanto that would be ‘ĉielo!’ but to avoid the use of the circumflex (the cap on the letter ‘c’) we can use the alternative: ‘chielo!’

2. Near-blasphemous swearing consists of words and phrases like ‘damn!’ or ‘Go to hell!’ which are semi-blasphemous in that they, in speech, usurp the right that God alone has of deciding who will, in fact, be damned to hell. These words also are extremely uncharitable. Merely mentioning the name of the devil in swearing isn’t as wicked, but it still isn’t very polite language. ‘Damnu!’ or ‘Dio damnu!’ are words/phrases in the ‘damn’ family, while ‘iru al la infero!’ (Go to hell!) ‘infero!’ (hell) and ‘infera’ (hellish) are in the ‘hell’ family. Milder versions might use the word ‘kondamnu!’  (condemn!) as a damn-substitute. For ‘hell’ we might use ‘diablujo’ (which means ‘devil’s place’ or ‘devil’s location’). Or if we want to make it still milder, we can substitute ‘malamiko’ for ‘diablo’ and we will have ‘malamikujo’ as a hell-substitute.

3. Crude vulgarity can be relatively mild terms such as bastard or bitch (when applied to a human female), or it can be the hard-core swears, sh-t and f-ck. It also includes crude slang terms for private anatomical parts. When I was young, these terms rarely appeared in books, and the hard-cores not at all— not even in pornography books! We need to be careful about how we substitute for the worst swears in this category, out of charity for people who are trying to get over a bad swearing habit. For the mild terms, bastardo means ‘bastard’ and the still-milder term malbonulo (‘bad guy’) can substitute. ‘Bitch’ translated literally yields hundino (female dog) and as the term is more usually used, inaĉo (shrew), also spelled inacho.  For the time-dishonored phrase ‘son of a bitch’ we can use the word inaĉido or inachido which would mean ‘offspring of a low-class female.’ There are Esperanto words for the ‘big 2’ swears in this category— ‘merdo’ for sh-t, ‘fiku’ for f-ck. There is good reason to avoid these terms, even translated. For myself, I might use ‘merdo’, but never the other. For a less swear-y version of merdo, use sterko, which means ‘manure’.

4. When I was middle-school-aged I went to a wonderful Christian school, San Jose Christian, and had a teacher, Mrs. Stark, who taught her pupils about the evils of the minced oath. These swears are words which sound like a type 1 or 2 swear, but are not the swear itself. It’s bad because the person using it has actually got the swearing-intention in his head, but at the last second substitutes a more civil word. Examples are ‘heck’ for ‘hell’, ‘darn’ for ‘damn’, ‘gosh’ for ‘God’, and ‘Jeez’ for ‘Jesus’. You see the problem here. By modern tastes, these substitutes are absurdly mild and often laughable. And yet it still offends. Some Evangelical publishers do not allow these minced oaths— first because they still have readers who would raise ‘heck’ over them, and second because of the laughability factor.  A similar type of swear substitute are the words used on television when they are playing a movie or cable TV show that uses class 3 swears that the network doesn’t allow— we hear ‘fricking’ or ‘froozing’ for f-ck, ‘spit’ for sh-t, and ‘mother-loving’ for mother f-king. The annoyance factor with this is high.

In Esperanto there are also 2 affixes which can be used to create swear-substitutes. The prefix fi- adds the meaning of ‘morally shameful’ to any word. The suffix -aĉ0 or –acho means ‘bad’ in a shabby, broken-down kind of sense. With an Esperanto dictionary and a little knowledge, you can use these affixes to create words to order.

To learn Esperanto:

Lernu! website provides free Esperanto lessons: http://en.lernu.net/

A good book is Teach Yourself Esperanto: http://www.amazon.com/Esperanto-Teach-Yourself-Revised-Edition/dp/0844237639

Wells’s dictionary is a good 2-way dictionary: http://www.amazon.com/English-Esperanto-English-Dictionary-Edition-Christopher-Wells/dp/1595691499

Peter Benson’s dictionary is a comprehensive English-to-Esperanto dictionary: http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-English-Esperanto-Dictionary-Peter-Benson/dp/0939785021