Ch 11 · Lesson 6Esperanto · Chapter 11 · Lesson 6 · Grammar primer
Esperanto hodiaŭ: online
, , , : where the speakers are online, and the internet words built from pieces you already know.
The short version
/ - download / upload
Why?Hide
Esperanto met the internet the way it meets everything: with affixes. is a net, a net-place (a website), to pour out (download), to pour towards (upload). The community built its digital vocabulary out of parts you already know, which is the language keeping its founding promise.
has no country, so it lives where its speakers meet: online, at a few hundred events a year, and in the spare rooms of hosts who will put a fellow speaker up for free. None of it will come and find you. All of it takes you the moment you turn up.
| Where | What it is | Word to know |
|---|---|---|
| , Discord | group chats, every day | |
| Vikipedio | the encyclopedia, 300,000+ articles | Vikipedio |
| free stays with speakers | | |
| congresses | a week, once a year | |
| weekend meetings | dozens a year, everywhere | |
La reto: the words
means net, and the online vocabulary is built on it from pieces you already have:
| Word | Built from | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| root | net, the internet |
| -- | a website |
| | |
| -- | to browse |
| root | to chat |
Nobody approved in a committee: it is the place suffix on , and you could have built it yourself. Two verbs come from , to pour:
.- I want to download the album..- She uploaded her film.
In chat you will see elsxuti and alsxuti: the x-system, a way of typing the hatted letters on any keyboard. It is input, not spelling, as typing Esperanto explains. That is also why this page's address says hodiaux.
Where the speakers are online
Where the (chatting) happens:
| Place | Good for |
|---|---|
| busy groups by topic and country | |
| Discord | voice practice, younger crowd |
| r/, much of it in English | |
| large groups, older crowd | |
| .net | courses and forums for learners |
| u | an app showing speakers near you |
| independent news about the movement |
.- We chat onevery evening.
Vikipedio, the Esperanto Wikipedia, has passed 300,000 articles: more than many languages with a state and a school system behind them. A large share are short stubs about villages and species, and the editors are a few hundred people, not thousands. For a learner it is still the biggest body of free, plain prose in the language. Read the article on something you know well: you will guess most words, and the rest stick.
Vikipedio.- I read about my town on Vikipedio.
Music and listening
The label of record is Vinilkosmo, founded in 1990 by Floréal Martorell near Toulouse. Its catalogue runs from folk to rock: music and films has the acts worth starting with.
For speech, listening to Esperanto lays out a ladder from short daily news pieces to long podcasts. A podkasto is a podcast: a straight loan, which shows that Esperanto borrows like any living language.
podkaston .- I listen to an Esperanto podcast on the train.
Going further: The numbers and the rest of the guide, when you want them. This lesson does not need them.
Practice
Practise this lesson
7-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
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