hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0186.txt

Episode: 186
Title: HPR0186: Vulgar Esperantist part 1
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0186/hpr0186.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 13:11:28

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Welcome to the Volga Estrant.
The Volga Estrant is a series in which we will learn together every day Esperanto.
The title of the series, the Volga Estrantist, is not speaking of the modern sense that is speaking of the word vulgar in the traditional sense, meaning a common language, the common of the people.
And what I mean by that is that we're not concerned with any kind of low level grammatical issues or debates of semantics or anything like that.
We're just interested in learning Esperanto on a level and in a way that we can use Esperanto on an everyday basis to better communicate across national and cultural and linguistic barriers.
Because that is what Esperanto is all about.
This is episode one, intro to Esperanto.
Esperanto was invented probably about, let's say, a hundred years ago.
And the idea behind Esperanto at the time was invented by, I believe, a Jewish German man who saw a need for some language that could be understood across, like I said, in the intro, national and cultural and linguistic barriers.
So the point of Esperanto is that no matter what you speak natively, there could be one language that everyone learns as their second language.
And this second language could be Esperanto.
And so obviously that right there brings in a common denominator.
And automatically everyone will be able to speak this language together.
And whereas you might think, well, yeah, but English is kind of the unofficial second language now.
So many countries around the world, people have learned English, it's kind of a business language, it's political language, it's serving the same purpose.
And while this may or may not be true, it's obviously a debatable point.
There's a lot of, there's a certain amount of weight that comes along with learning a certain language from a certain culture as your second language.
For instance, if you go to France, and this is just, everyone picks on the French, but I'm just, I'm using this because this is my personal experience.
Go to France, you're going to find a lot of people not necessarily wanting to speak English.
You might speak English, you try to speak to them in English.
And they will, I think admirably, attempt to get you to speak French so that it's not an assumption that, yes, English is the other language that we all speak.
And you see the same kind of resistance, although sort of almost from opposite way here in the States, in the United States, you'll see a lot of, there's kind of the classic, you know, there's a classic American line, you know, learn to speak the language.
You know, you're in America, learn to speak American, that kind of sentiment, you'll see that a lot.
And so you see people coming in from Mexico or from South America, and they might not know English that well.
And so even though while Americans are typically considered economically better off than Mexico and parts of South America, and in theory, Americans would be able to have the resources to learn a second language, especially something that is as significant as Spanish being just right on the same continent as they are.
You're finding a lot of Americans not learning Spanish and a lot of Americans resisting the need to learn Spanish, even though there's sort of an obvious advantage to knowing a second language, they don't want to learn it because by principle, they feel that since it's their country, they shouldn't have to learn any other language to accommodate someone coming into the country.
So obviously there's a lot of kind of weight and political debate and linguistic pride and cultural pride in a language.
Now if you take, if you bring in a third party, something that has no origin in a country or a group of people, such as Esperanto, which is a man-made language, sprung from just simply the desire to communicate no matter what everyone else speaks for their first primary language.
It is an intentional, neutral second language. That eliminates a lot of that kind of discontent about, well, why do I have to learn your language? You should have to learn my language.
So how do you easier maybe to agree that we won't learn either language? We'll just learn this third language, Esperanto.
That's kind of the rough idea, at least how I see it. There's probably other takes on Esperanto. There's certainly I know a more linguistic following, sort of an interest in just the idea of an invented language rather than a manufactured language rather than an organic language.
So you've got lots of different takes. I'm not a linguist, so I can't really bring a whole lot to that discussion.
My purpose for learning Esperanto is to be able to learn a neutral language that will be able to be spoken to other Esperontists regardless of their primary tongue.
I think that's neat. I think the ideal is neat. And I don't know Esperanto that well. So when I say that we are going to learn Esperanto together, it truly is we're going to be learning Esperanto together.
I've studied it for a little while, but I'm by no means fluent in it. And so I'm going to be learning more or less along with you.
And I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who know a lot more about Esperanto than I do. There are linguists out there who will know a lot more about grammar and a certain structure and the conjugation and tenses and everything like that, a lot more than I do.
The problem is that I was looking for an Esperanto podcast. I could not find one. I pitched an Esperanto podcast to a couple of people who did speak Esperanto, and I simply could not get it to occur.
Couldn't get the talents necessary together to make that happen. And so I decided to just do one anyway. Do it myself. And anyone who wants to learn along with me is certainly welcome to do so.
So if you've got any comments, constructive criticism, anything like that, please do let me know after each episode if I'm mispronouncing something or if I'm misidentifying a certain class of words.
Please do tell me it's a great way to learn for everyone.
So since this is the first lesson, let's just kind of start with some of the real basics.
And this is some of the stuff that when I saw it, it made me excited about Esperanto because it showed me how easy this was going to be to learn.
And it's quite true. It is quite easy to learn. So let's just do some vocabulary. And from this vocabulary, I think we're going to learn a little bit extra about the language.
So since you're listening to a podcast, I'm going to assume that you've acquired the podcast by means of a computer and the internet, and you're probably listening to it on some kind of digital device.
So let's assume that we have some common denominator of interests in computers.
So we'll start with some computer terms in Esperanto.
So Computello is computer.
Computello is computer's plural.
Computello is computer. Computello is computers.
So a computer screen, a crano screen, a crano.
Now what do you think the plural of that would be? Right, a cranoi.
So a crano is screen. A cranoi is screens. So you're getting the field forward already, I'm sure.
Nouns end in an O in Esperanto. If it's a noun, a person plays the thing. It ends in an O.
Wonderful thing about Esperanto is that there are no genders, gender endings or anything like that.
Spanish and French and Latin, you've got, well certainly Latin, you've got the masculine and the feminine and the neuter endings.
Spanish, you have various feminine endings and masculine endings in French.
All these languages decide, as far as I can tell arbitrarily, that an object is either masculine or feminine.
And you need to know what it is and then every verb that you use in relation to it needs to match that.
Or not verb, but adjective needs to match the gender, everything like that, right?
Not in Esperanto. If it's a noun, it ends in an O. It's a really simplified thing. It's quite nice.
So, a crano screen, a cranoi screens, clavaro, keyboard, clavaroi, keyboards.
Intereto, internet. That's kind of cool. Let's think of some others.
Okay, so programaro. Now what would that be? Programaro would be a program, right? Or an application.
So now let's take programaro. And let's assign some, maybe some adjectives to it.
So let's say, libera programaro. That would be free programming or free software.
Fafila programo. Easy application. Easy software. Easy program.
Bona. Programaro. A good program. A good application.
Vuta. Smarter. Clever. Programaro.
So from this, you're already probably seeing that adjective, indian A.
So again, no matter what, doesn't matter what the, the noun is, what the noun, you know, there's no gender.
So it's just, it's going to indian O and the adjective is going to be ending in an A, no matter what.
It's a very handy way of breaking things down because you don't have to worry about anything except is it a noun or an adjective.
And usually that's a pretty easy thing to decipher. Even for someone like me who, I really don't know that much about grammar, I know what an adjective is versus a noun.
So, libera programaro would be free software. Fafila programaro. Easy software. Bona. Good. Ruta. Smart.
That's R-U-Z-A. Ruta. Smart. Clever.
Okay, so if it's programaro is the, is the actual program, the actual noun version of the, you know, the software application.
How do we get a program? Programme. That is P-R-O-G-R-A-N-I. Programme to program.
What do you do on a clavaro keyboard? Type E to type. And that is T-A-J-P-I. Type E to type.
What do you do to something that you've typed? Printy to print. Okay, so from this you're probably gathering that verbs in their infinitive form.
And that's a big fancy word meaning when the verb is just kind of to do, you know, to print, to type to program. That's called the infinitive.
So the verb in that form in this most basic to verb form ends in an I. Now obviously there are going to be other endings for verbs because you don't always say to type.
You'll say other things like typing, typed, things like that, past and present, tenses and ways of commanding someone to type, things like that.
There are other endings for verbs, like it's a little bit more complex, but if it's the infinitive form, so if you're saying that you're going to type, it would be, you know, type E, ins and I.
U-T-E, U-V-I, to use. And so things like Uzu, Libera programaro, use free software.
The U ending on a verb is the commanding form. I know there's a term for that slipping my mind right now, but when you're telling someone to do something, it's a U instead of the I.
So if you're a manager and you've got a lot of programmers working for you, you would go out onto the floor and yell at them and tell them programaro. No, you would tell them programaro.
So you would just take the program E, drop the I and put a U on the end, and that is telling them to program, go program, programaro.
So as you can see, Esperanto is pretty simple in a lot of ways, and to be honest, it doesn't get a whole lot more complex than what we're doing right now.
The endings stay very, very consistent. They're not things that are going to change a whole lot. I mean, they'll change depending on what tense you're using them in.
But in terms of worrying about complex gender issues and exceptions, there just aren't any. If you've ever studied French, I know there are a lot of, well, in Latin, there are a lot of exceptions to a lot of the different rules.
Well, in English, I mean, give me a break. There are so many exceptions in English. You've got all these conjugation rules for your verbs, and then you've got all these different verbs that just happen not to follow those rules.
And that drives a new learner crazy. I mean, a lot of times it drives a native speaker crazy.
Think of how, how few of the exceptions we really know ourselves, when to say lie and when to say lay, and, you know, the plural of mouth and moves and things like that, just so many different exceptions, making no apparent sense.
But in Esperanto, it was designed from the beginning to contain none of these exceptions. It is simply a very standard way of doing things. One rule that it is give, if they give you one rule, it's going to be that way no matter what.
It's a really fantastic way to learn a language because once you learn the concept once, you basically will never have to forget it.
So let's review what we've learned in terms of concepts in this first episode.
Nouns, N in an O, plural nouns, N in an OJ, and the J is pronounced as a Y. So Computelloi, that's actually spelled K-O-N-P-U-T-I-L-O-J, Computelloi.
That's a J at the end, so it looks like Computelloi, but it's Computelloi, J is pronounced as a Y in Esperanto.
We've learned that A is the ending for all adjectives, and that's kind of easy to remember for me because A, adjective, A, adjective, A, adjective, you just start with the same letter, right?
So Libera is free, Fatila, Easy, Bona, Good, Rootsa, Smart, Clever.
Verbs in their infinitive form, so that's that basic kind of, here's the verb, and infinitive form starts with Ns in an I, programming, two program,
type E, two type, printing, two print, Utsi, two use, simple as that.
The bonus lesson was the U ending, which is the commanding verb form, so program U, go program, type U, go type, print U, go print, Utsu, use Utsu Libera program,
Utsu Libera program, use free software, simple as that.
As long as you can remember that some of the basic ideas and study some vocabulary, you will be making rudimentary Esperanto sentences in no time, just like we've done right now.
So go out and find a good vocabulary list online, unfortunately I do not have one to refer you to right now, although I guess the defective site right now to learn Esperanto on or from is LearnU.net.
Now what do you think LearnU means?
L-E-R-N-U, so it's the U ending, right?
So that's the commanding, and then learn, probably means Learn, so that's LearnU.net, so it means Learn.
See how easy Esperanto is? It's just phenomenally easy. LearnU.net.
Check that out, it's kind of a weird layout, the site doesn't have big flashy buttons everywhere, you just have to dig around, but there are vocabulary lists in there.
And then if you just go to the bookstore and look for books on Esperanto, you will find good instructions on Esperanto as well.
But hunt around online as well, you'll find good vocabulary lists that you can start using. LearnU.net is definitely a very good source for all that kind of stuff.
And yeah, just dive right in, it's pretty easy when you start. You'll see pretty quickly how simple it all is.
It's a very exciting language, and it'll be cool to know it because you never know.
You meet all kinds of people in the strangest places who actually speak Esperanto.
It seems to be kind of big among the geeky crowd as well, so if you are into computers, programming, things like that, you'd be surprised how many of these programmer types actually do study Esperanto.
So check it out, try it out, and the next lesson we'll just start plowing through Esperanto lessons. Simple as that. It'll be fun.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.
Thanks for joining me on the vulgar Esperantist.