Our English-and-Esperanto novel is at last out. Information about it is here.
It’s a story on facing pages, so that by perusing it you learn a language – the most widely used, and rationally designed, of international languages. You don’t have to grind through grammar and exercises. One way to learn French is to read a massive French novel, though it may not teach you the pronunciation. Esperanto is much easier than French, and its pronunciation is regular, so a short novel is all that’s needed!
Long, though, has been its time in gestation. At least as far back as 2016 I had the idea. A young woman is lost, somewhere deep in America, weeping, and answering her would-be helpers in a language they don’t know. How did this come about?
Contriving the plot may have taken a week or two; what has taken years is perfecting the Esperanto translation. “Being enthusiastic about Esperanto but not well practiced in it” (to quote the preface), I got long-distance help from three experts, and credit is theirs for the Esperanto text.
Almost more than writing the story I enjoyed putting together the appendix, “About Esperanto.” You could call it a grammar, but grammars of other languages have to be many, many times longer, riddled with footnotes and tables and exception. Describing Esperanto is like a song.
“Klara Lingvo” is what the lost girl’s would-be helpers take to be her name; she is trying to tell them that she is speaking the “clear language.” She comes within seconds of being deported as an undocumented alien, before the humble hero of the story rescues her by learning her language – rapidly!
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
Fascinating.
My only exposure to Esperanto was back at school when our Latin teacher Fr McEvoy devoted a few days’ lessons to teaching us the basics. As schoolboys are wont to do, we spent the next few weeks conversing with each other in simple Esperanto, much to the incomprehension of those around us.
We certainly appreciated the clarity of its structure and grammar.
Please don’t spoil the suspense, but I’m curious how you contrived a monolingual Esperanto speaker!
She speaks also her native language, Flentawian, but you have to find out what that is. She has had to learn Esperanto.