The Tao of Esperanto

That’s a picture of me by the way. A true artists impression.

Quite a few years back I started studying many languages. I devised my own system of learning them and decided to write a book about it. That book lies buried deep within the recesses of my hard-drive and hasn’t seen the light of day for many seasons.

So I put up part of the system on my website. (I believe I am the only superhero with his own website.) If you would like to take a look at it, it is here. There is however, only one major problem with the venture.

I suck at learning languages!

and besides, I never cultivated the persistence or discipline at doing what I, myself was advising.

So it would have been the case of selling a language program while utterly sucking at it, at the same time. Not exactly a virtuous formula. Hence, I dropped it.

Saying all that I would like to tell you a little bit about this other language that I got half way decent at. It’s called Esperanto and is a constructed language, or conglang in short form.

It was developed in Poland by a doctor in the 1870’s for there was war all around him at the time. He postulated that if everyone could speak and understand each other, it would reduce conflict.

He noticed that most natural languages are very difficult to learn due to their irregularities and complex voicings. So different communities had difficulties communicating, leading to conflict.

So he did something about it. He developed, what is often considered, one of the easiest languages in the world to learn.

What’s nice about it, is that there is a pretty large community of people who speak it, some even natively and there’s a wonderfully large corpus of literature written in it. Over 100k Wikipedia articles have been written in it, for example. There are YouTube channels, music, festivals, the whole lot. There are speakers in every country. Pretty fantastic if you think about it, especially for a “failed” project. For one of the projects goals was to have the whole world speak it and that hasn’t happened yet.

So I have this little idea. And I will post it here regularly (we hope).

The idea is this:

I have this beautiful copy of The Toa Te Ching of Lao Tzu translated by Brian Browne Walker.
(Please buy this book, whether your into the language part of it or not. It really is wonderful.)
I will translate a verse at a time, into Esperanto.
Each verse will be analyzed.
Difficult words / translation issues discussed.
There are 81 verses. Not too long. Not a simple walk in the park either.
As these posts come past you, meditate on the words and what they are saying about the beyond.
Feel the emotion, visualize the scene. Internalize this most beautiful of poems.

Welcome to the Tao of Esperanto!

I greatfully (mi dankeme)
acknowledge (agnoski)
the wind and rain, (la vento kaj pluvo,)
the snow, the sun, (la neĝo, la suno,)
each and every one (ĉiu kaj ĉiu)
of the trees, the water (de la arboj, la akvo)
singing under the (kantante sub la)
ice of frozen (glacio de frostigita)
rivers, the (riveroj, la)
mountains (montoj)
and valleys, the (kaj valoj, la)
cold ground and the (malvarma tero kaj la)
warm grass, the (varma herbo, la)
light and the (lumo kaj la)
darkness, the (mallumo, la)
creatures, (vivaĵoj,)
poetry, friends, (poezio, amikoj,)
the gift and (la donaco kaj)
mystery of my (mistero de mia)
life, the eternal (vivo, la eterna)
Tao

Perhaps you will want to learn it too!

And That’s,

The Vikid Truth

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