Esperanto: Frequently Asked Questions

There is plenty of more information at  http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html !

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for soc.culture.esperanto and esperanto-l@netcom.com
Last Modified: 23 June 1999

This posting attempts to answer the most common questions from those new to the newsgroup soc.culture.esperanto (or the corresponding mailing list esperanto-l), or to the language Esperanto itself. Please send suggestions, corrections and complaints about this FAQ to the maintainer, Yves Bellefeuille <yan@storm.ca>. Post questions about Esperanto in the newsgroup or send them to the mailing list, not to the maintainer.

Because of the increasing internationalization of the net, I have attempted to make this FAQ as relevant as possible to readers in various countries. It's still somewhat biased in favour of the US, though.

This FAQ is available as follows:

Usenet: Posted once a month in Usenet group soc.culture.esperanto. (Also gatewayed to mailing list esperanto-l; see section 16).

WWW: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
The FAQ can be downloaded in text format from this location.

FTP: at rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs/esperanto/faq/

E-mail: Send a message to:
mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu   with the following contents:
send faqs/esperanto/faq/part1
send faqs/esperanto/faq/part2
quit

PART I: THE LANGUAGE ESPERANTO

1. What is Esperanto?

2. How easy is Esperanto to learn?

3. Where does Esperanto's vocabulary come from?

4. What about Esperanto's grammar and word-order?

5. How many people speak Esperanto?

6. How can I use Esperanto once I've learned it?

7. Where do I find classes, textbooks, etc.?

8. How come Esperanto doesn't have <favourite word or feature>?

9. What are some common objections to Esperanto?
How do speakers of Esperanto respond to them?

10. Are there any famous Esperanto speakers?

11. What about other "artificial" languages like Loglan, Ido, etc.?

12. What are PAG, PIV, PMEG, PV, TEJO and UEA?

13. How do you say "I love you" in Esperanto?

PART II:
ESPERANTO, COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET

14. How can I type and display Esperanto's accented characters?

15. How can I represent these characters in E-mail or on Usenet?

16. What Esperanto material is available on the Internet?

17. What Esperanto material is available on other (non-Internet) on-line services?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART I: THE LANGUAGE ESPERANTO

1. WHAT IS ESPERANTO?

Esperanto is a language designed to facilitate communication between people of different lands and cultures. It was first published in 1887 by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof (1859-1917) under the pseudonym "Dr. Esperanto", meaning "one who hopes", and this is the name that stuck as the name of the language itself.

Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than national languages, since its design is far simpler and more regular. Also, unlike national languages, Esperanto allows communication on an equal footing between people, with neither having the usual cultural advantage favouring a native speaker.

Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them: Esperanto would be used as a neutral language when speaking with someone who doesn't know one's own language. The use of Esperanto would also protect minority languages, which would have a better chance of survival than in a world dominated by a few powerful languages.

2. HOW EASY IS ESPERANTO TO LEARN?

For a native English speaker, we may estimate that Esperanto is about five times as easy to learn as Spanish or French, ten times as easy to learn as Russian, twenty times as easy to learn as Arabic or spoken Chinese, and infinitely easier to learn than Japanese. Many people find that they speak Esperanto better after a few months' study than a language they learned at school for several years.

A knowledge of Esperanto makes it much easier to learn other foreign languages, and there is some evidence that it is actually more efficient to learn Esperanto first, before learning other languages, rather than to study foreign languages directly. For example, one may become more fluent in French by first studying Esperanto for 6 months and then studying French for a year and a half, rather than studying French for two continuous years. The reason may be that Esperanto's regular grammar and word formation and flexible syntax makes it easier to understand other languages' grammar and rules.

3. WHERE DOES ESPERANTO'S VOCABULARY COME FROM?

About 75 % of Esperanto's vocabulary comes from Latin and Romance languages (especially French), about 20 % comes from Germanic languages (German and English), and the rest comes mainly from Slavic languages (Russian and Polish) and Greek (mostly scientific terms).

The words derived from Romance languages were chosen to be as recognizable as possible throughout the world. For example, the word "radio", although technically Romance, is now used internationally. Someone knowing only Russian and looking at a text in Esperanto would immediately recognize perhaps 40 % of the words, without even having studied the language.

Esperanto is phonetic: every word is pronounced exactly as it is spelled. There are no "silent" letters or exceptions.

4. WHAT ABOUT ESPERANTO'S GRAMMAR AND WORD ORDER?

Even more than its vocabulary, it is Esperanto's grammar and rules which makes it exceptionally easy. Unnecessary complications have been eliminated: there is no grammatical gender, the word order is relatively free, etc. The rules have also been simplified as much as possible: there is only one verb conjugation, all plurals are formed the same way, a prefix can be added to any word to change it to its opposite (good/bad, rich/poor, right/wrong), and so on. Thus, after perhaps 30 minutes' study, one can conjugate any verb in any tense. This is a tremendous simplification compared to national languages.

Esperanto's flexible word-order allows speakers from different language families to use the structures with which they are most familiar and still speak perfectly intelligible and grammatically correct Esperanto. This also makes Esperanto an excellent translator of such different languages as Chinese, Japanese, Latin, English and French.

5. HOW MANY PEOPLE SPEAK ESPERANTO?

This is a very common question, but nobody really knows the answer. The only way to determine accurately the number of people who speak Esperanto would be to conduct a world-wide census, and of course this has never been done.

However, Professor Sidney S. Culbert of the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, has done the most comprehensive survey on language use ever attempted. He has conducted interviews in dozens of countries around the world and tested for "professional proficiency", i.e. much more than just "hello, please, goodbye".

Based on this survey, Prof. Culbert concluded that Esperanto has about two million speakers worldwide. This puts it on a par with "minority" languages such as Lithuanian or Hebrew. For more information on this survey (partly in Esperanto), see

http://www.rano.demon.co.uk/nombro.html

The results are also published in the _World Almanac and Book of Facts_.

[There's a lot of debate over how many people speak Esperanto. Sometimes there is a tendency to exaggerate the number of Esperanto speakers, or, on the contrary, to minimize it. I've seen numbers ranging from 100 000 to 8 million. Prof. Culbert's estimate has two advantages over any other I've seen:

1. The method is sound. Doing a world-wide survey is the only valid way to estimate the number of Esperanto speakers, but it's so difficult that Prof. Culbert is the only person who has ever attempted to do so, to my knowledge.

2. The study attempted to find out how many people speak *all* languages, not just Esperanto. We can see whether the results obtained for other languages make sense; if they do, then the result for Esperanto is probably as valid as any other.

In short, Prof. Culbert's estimate that two million people speak Esperanto around the world is the most accurate answer we're likely to get. -- Ed.]

Some parents teach Esperanto (along with the local language) to their children; it is estimated that perhaps a thousand people speak Esperanto as a first language.

6. HOW CAN I USE ESPERANTO ONCE I'VE LEARNED IT?

Here are some of the many different ways people use Esperanto:

- Esperanto is an ideal second language. Many adults want to learn another language, but don't have the time or energy to learn a national language.

- Correspondence. Write to people in a dozen countries without learning a dozen languages.

- Travel. Esperanto can be used to see the world. There are lists of Esperanto speakers willing to host other Esperantists in their own house or apartment for free.

- International understanding. You can't be friends with people if you can't talk to them! Esperanto helps break down the language barriers between countries.

- Meeting people from other countries, especially at conventions, or when Esperanto speakers from other countries come visiting. (It's also a good way to meet interesting people from your own country!)

- Joining the world. Esperanto is a way to treat everyone on our planet on the basis of complete equality, meeting them half-way. No more trying to communicate "uphill" for one side.

- Literature. The world's masterpieces have been translated to Esperanto, including the Kalevala and works by Garcia Marquez, Saikaku, Shakespeare, Gibran, Brecht, Tagore, Kawabata, Dante, and Mickiewicz. Many works have been translated to Esperanto which are not available in one's own language.

- Hobbies, especially collecting stamps or postcards, or discussing any subject with people in other countries.

7. WHERE DO I FIND CLASSES, TEXTBOOKS, ETC.?

For US residents, the Esperanto League for North America is the best and most reliable source for Esperanto materials. They offer a free basic correspondence course (by snail mail, but see below for an E-mail course), and may be offering a more detailed and advanced paid correspondence course. They have an extensive catalogue of books, including texts, reference, fiction, poetry, cassette tapes and audio CD-ROMs. Their address is:

Esperanto League for North America
Box 1129
El Cerrito CA 94530, USA

tel. 1-800-ESPERANTO (1-800-377-3726) toll-free (USA and Canada) for a free information package tel. (510) 653-0998

E-mail: elna@esperanto-usa.org
WWW site: http://www.esperanto-usa.org/

A more immediate source of texts, especially for those with access to a university, is your local library. The quality of the books will vary widely, of course, but most of the texts, even the older ones, will provide a reasonable general introduction to the language.

One exception, mentioned here only because it was surplused to *many* libraries around the US, is the US Army's "Esperanto: The Aggressor Language", which is more of a curiosity than a useful textbook. This book was prepared to make military exercises more realistic by having the opposing forces speak different languages, as would be the case in a real war. The soldiers playing the role of the aggressor were taught Esperanto, hence the strange title. Unfortunately, the book is extremely poor and contains a great many mistakes; in addition, its emphasis is on military terms, not on everyday vocabulary.

The problem with most old texts is that they are... well... old! Their presentations can seem very bland and old-fashioned, and their "cultural" information about the Esperanto community will often be hopelessly out of date. One recent US textbook is Richardson's "Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language". It is available from ELNA and perhaps some libraries.

Another book, "Teach Yourself Esperanto" by Cresswell and Hartley, is a very useful introduction to the language. The "Teach Yourself" series can often be found in ordinary bookstores.

Another good, if a bit old-fashioned, textbook, "Step by Step in Esperanto" by Butler, has recently been reprinted and is available from ELNA. Still another book recommended by more than one participant is "Saluton!" by Audrey Childs-Mee. This is entirely in Esperanto, with many pictures.

Wells's two-way "Esperanto Dictionary" is a good choice for beginners. This dictionary is in the same series as "Teach Yourself Esperanto" and is also often available in ordinary bookstores. For a more thorough treatment, see Butler's one-way "Esperanto-English Dictionary", and Benson's one-way "Comprehensive English-Esperanto Dictionary".

Free Esperanto courses by E-mail are available in several languages. Typically, these have 10 lessons and teach a vocabulary of a few hundred words. The system is the same as for traditional correspondence courses: the instructor sends a lesson; the student does the exercises and sends them back; the instructor corrects the exercises and sends the next lesson.

In English:
Free Esperanto Course
http://www.iki.fi/pacujo/esperanto/course/
Marko Rauhamaa <marko.rauhamaa@iki.fi>

In French:
Cours gratuit d'esperant
http://www.southern.edu/~caviness/cge/CGEquoi.html
Ken Caviness <esperanto@southern.edu>

In German:
Kostenloser Esperanto-Kurs
http://www.esperanto.de/sprache/kurse/kek/
Steffen Pietsch <kek@esperanto.de>

In Chinese:
Mianfei Shijieyu Kecheng
http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee/esperanto/cxinaj-pagxoj/kurso-informoj-gb.html
ZHONG Qiyao <zhong@accton.com.tw>

In Russian:
Andrej Ananjin <andreo@esperanto.msk.ru>

Other languages are also available; see http://www.esperanto.net/veb/lerni.html for a list.

 Macintosh owners with HyperCard and MacinTalk can take advantage of an introductory HyperCard course on Esperanto. This can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/hypercourse.dir/  (See under "FTP archives".)

Each summer, San Francisco State University and the University of Hartford (Connecticut) offer a curriculum of Esperanto courses, in which one may participate at beginning, intermediate, or advanced levels. These courses are available for credit or on a non-credit basis. They are widely considered to be one of the best opportunities to learn to speak Esperanto "like a native", and draw students and faculty from around the world.

San Francisco State University:

Ellen M. Eddy
11736 Scott Creek Dr SW
Olympia WA 98512
USA
tel. (360) 754-4563
E-mail: eddyellen@aol.com
information at http://www.best.com/~donh/Esperanto/sfsu/

University of Hartford:
tel. (800) 234-4412 or (860) 768-4978

Other institutions offering Esperanto courses on a regular basis include:

In France:
Chateau Gresillon, 49105 Bauge, tel. 02 41 89 10 34

La Kvinpetalo, rue de Lavoir, 86410 Bouresse, tel. 05 49 42 80 74

In Poland:
Dr. Ilona Koutny, Linguistics Institute, Adam Mickiewicz University, ul. Miedzychodzka 3-5, 60-371 Poznan, tel. 61 861-85-72,
E-mail: ikoutny@main.amu.edu.pl

Jagiellonian University, Krakow. Contact: Maria Majerczak, ul. Armii krajovej 7 M, PL-30-150 Krakow, tel. 12 638-14-49

In Sweden: Karlskoga Folkh"ogskola, Box 192, 691 24 Karlskoga, tel. 0586-64600,
E-mail: info@fhsk.karlskoga.se

In Switzerland: Kultura Centro Esperantista, C.P. 311, 2301 La Chaux-de-Fonds, tel. (032) 9267407

In the following countries, you may contact the national Esperanto organization to receive information on courses, buy books, etc.

In Australia: Australia Esperanto-Asocio, 9 Ballantyne Street, Thebarton SA 5031, tel. (08) 8443-8997
http://www.esperanto.org.au/
Book Service: c/o T. Elliott, PO Box 230, Matraville NSW 2036, tel. (02) 9311-2246

In Brazil: Brazila Esperanto-Ligo, C.P. 3625, 70084-970 Brasilia (DF), tel. (061) 226-1298 E-mail: bel@esperanto.org.br, http://www.esperanto.org.br/
Book Service: Same as above

In Canada: Kanada Esperanto-Asocio, P.O. Box 2159, Sidney BC, V8L 3S6 http://www.esperanto.com/kea/
Book Service: 6358-A, rue de Bordeaux, Montreal QC, H2G 2R8, tel. (514) 272-0151, E-mail: esperanto@sympatico.ca

In China: Cxina Esperanto-Ligo, P.O. Kesto 825, 100037 Beijing, tel. (010) 68326682
Book Service: El Popola Cxinio, P.O. Kesto 77, 100037 Beijing

In France: Unuigxo Franca por Esperanto, 4 bis, rue de la Cerisaie, 75004 Paris, tel. 01 42 78 68 86
Book Service: Same as above

In Germany: Germana Esperanto-Asocio, Immentalstr. 3, 79104 Freiburg, tel. (07 61) 28 92 99
E-mail: gea@esperanto.de, http://www.esperanto.de/gea/
Book Services: M. Fuehrer, Am Stadtpfad 11, 65760 Eschborn,
and Rolf Beau, Saxoniastr. 35, 04451 Althen,
E-mail robo.espero@t-online.de

In Italy: Itala Esperanto-Federacio, Via Villoresi 38, 20143 Milano, tel. (02) 58 100 857
Book Service: Cooperative Editoriale Esperanto, same address as above

In Japan: Japana Esperanto-Instituto, Waseda-mati 12-3, Sinzyuku-ku, JP-162-0042 Tokyo-to, tel. (03) 3203 4581
E-mail: jei@mre.biglobe.ne.jp
Book Service: Same as above

In Russia: Rusia Esperantista Unio, P.f. 74, 367000 Mahackala, tel. (8722) 630643,   Moscow office: P.f. 57, 105318 Moskva, tel. (095) 2437456, (095) 9239127
E-mail: junusov@dagestan.ru,
http://www.openweb.ru/koi8/esperanto/reu.htm
Book Service: Same as Moscow office

In Sweden: Sveda Esperanto-Federacio, Vikingagatan 24, 11342 Stockholm, tel. (08) 34 08 00
E-mail: sef@esperanto.se
Book Service: Same as above

In Switzerland: Svisa Esperanto-Asocio, Jurastrasse 23, 3063 Ittigen (Bern)
Book Service: Kultura Centro Esperantista, C.P. 779, 2301 La Chaux-de-Fonds

In the UK: Esperanto-Asocio de Britio, 140 Holland Park Avenue, London W11 4UF, tel. (0171) 727-7821
E-mail: eab@esperanto.demon.co.uk, http://www.esperanto.demon.co.uk/
Book Service: Same as above

World Esperanto Association: Universala Esperanto-Asocio, Nieuwe Binnenweg 176, 3015 BJ Rotterdam, The Netherlands, tel. +31 10 436 1044
E-mail: uea@inter.nl.net,
http://www.uea.org/
Book Service: Same as above
Book catalogue available online in WAIS format at:   wais://wwwtios.cs.utwente.nl/librokatalogo

These are just some of the countries with Esperanto organizations; many more are listed at   http://www.esperanto.net/veb/land.html

8. HOW COME ESPERANTO DOESN'T HAVE <FAVOURITE WORD OR FEATURE>?

Although Esperanto is a planned language, it has developed well beyond the point at which some authoritative person or group can dictate language practice, however great the temptation may be to "tinker" with the language. For example, many people are critical of the presence of a feminine suffix and absence of a corresponding masculine suffix, and have suggested masculine suffixes (-icx, -un, -ucx, -ab), neutral pronouns (sxli, hi, ri), and/or re-interpretations of familiar words such as redefining "frato" (brother) to mean "sibling". But there is no single individual or committee that will simply dictate changes such as these before they achieve general use.

Just as with any other language, the only way for such novelties to attain acceptability is for them to be used in correspondence, literature, and conversation by a growing number of people. If you see a genuine lack in the language's existing stock of roots and affixes, you may propose a new coinage and see if it catches on. Be warned that such neologisms are often controversial and will meet with criticism in proportion to the extent to which they break with the "Fundamento de Esperanto" (the language's canon) or to which they are redundant to the existing language. You should expect to receive the same reaction as if you were proposing a new word or feature for your own language.

9. WHAT ARE SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO ESPERANTO? HOW DO SPEAKERS OF ESPERANTO RESPOND TO THEM?

(I am indebted to Ken Caviness for preparing this material. Quotations have been edited.)

Isn't English spoken world-wide already?

Don Harlow:   Interestingly, while English was spoken by about 10 % of the world's population in 1900, and by about 11 % in 1950, it is today spoken by about 8.5-9 %. The corollary is that, for better than 90 % of the world's population, it is *not* the de facto means of international communication.

David Wolff: English is a very difficult language to learn unless you've been immersed in it since birth. English spelling is said to be more difficult than any other language except Gaelic. English grammar, although it may be fairly simple, is riddled with exceptions. Verbs are very often irregular. Many people just aren't going to devote several years of effort to learn it!

English has gained its present stature because of the current economic and political power of English-speaking countries. In the past, every super-power has briefly seen its native tongue used internationally: France, Spain, Portugal, the Roman empire. In fact, one of the main reasons why Esperanto was never adopted by the League of Nations was that France blocked efforts to adopt it. At the time, French was "the international language", and France expected it to stay that way forever. They were proven wrong within twenty years.

Konrad Hinsen: Although many people all over the world study English and often think they speak it well, the number of people who can participate in a non-trivial conversation in English is very small outside English-speaking countries. Knowing English may be sufficient to survive as a tourist in many places, but not for more.

Sylvan Zaft:   One Chinese Esperanto speaker described Esperanto as a linguistic handshake. When two people shake hands they both reach out halfway. When two people speak Esperanto they have both made the effort to learn a relatively easy, neutral language instead of one person making the huge effort to learn the other person's difficult national language and the other person making no effort at all except to correct his/her interlocutor's errors.

Esperanto isn't a real language, is it?

Ken Caviness:   Yes, actually it is. You see, it's been used in all conceivable circumstances for over 100 years. Whatever you have to say, you can say it in Esperanto.

Yves Bellefeuille: It's said that Umberto Eco, before he started supporting Esperanto, once said in class that Esperanto isn't a real language "because you can't make love in Esperanto". A girl later wrote to him and said, with some embarrassment, "I'm sorry, Professor, but it *is* possible to make love in Esperanto. I've done it." Personally, I don't believe it. I mean, I don't believe she actually said so. Oh, forget it. ;-)

Wouldn't any universal language break up into dialects?

Ken Caviness:

(1) Esperanto is intended to be your *second* language, so it remains relatively intact: people primarily create slang, idioms, etc., in their native language.

(2) Esperanto is intended for cross-cultural use, therefore use of too many colloquialisms, etc., jeopardizes your chances of being understood (which is presumably your intention). This acts as a stabilizing influence on the language.

Konrad Hinsen:   Regional dialects appear when people communicate mostly with their geographical neighbours and rarely with people from further away. Dialects tend to disappear when long-range communication dominates (as can be observed in many parts of the world after the introduction of radio and television). There is also the not insignificant observation that Esperanto has not formed any dialects in its more than one hundred years of existence.

Can an artificial language have its own literature?

Duncan C Thomson:   Esperanto has just as much literature (original, not just translated) as any other language of a similar number of speakers. Just because you haven't heard of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Have you heard of Auld, Szathmari, Kalocsay? Galloway, Gray, Kelman? None of them, probably, but you would probably not be as quick to claim that Scotland did not have a literary culture.

[Several tens of thousands of books have been published in Esperanto; the library of the British Esperanto Association has 30 000 volumes. There are about 100 periodicals of some importance, plus countless local bulletins and newsletters. At one point there was even a daily newspaper in Esperanto! I have no idea how they managed to distribute it to the subscribers in a timely manner. -- Ed.]

Isn't Esperanto "too European"?

Joseph Voros: The argument seems to always come down to the difference between agglutination and separate roots. Or "Eastern" and "Western" style languages, broadly speaking (I know it's an over-simplification). Some people think every concept needs its own root, others are happy to begin with some basic set and modify. Two incompatible systems of thinking.

I consider Esperanto to be a good compromise between "Western" root-based thinking and "Eastern" agglutinative thinking (again, very roughly speaking). Having a Hungarian background, I delight in the simple elegance of Esperanto word-building. [Unlike just about every other language in Europe, Hungarian is *not* Indo-European; it comes from a completely different language family. Thus, it is as unrelated to Esperanto as English is to Arabic, for example. -- Ed.]

I think there is something for everyone in Esperanto, no matter what your linguistic background, and that this is one major reason why it is the most successful of the auxiliary languages.

Sylvan Zaft: The other night I was having dinner here in the Detroit area with Koralo Chen, an Esperanto speaker from China whose home is very close to Hong Kong. I presented this objection to him. Koralo Chen replied that he had often heard this objection but that it made little sense to him. In his part of the world the major languages are completely unlike each other. Knowing Chinese doesn't help with learning how to speak Korean or Japanese, for instance.

I can see why this objection makes good theoretical sense to some Westerners, but it makes no sense at all to those Chinese who, like Koralo Chen, need not a theoretically perfect but very practical language to learn for international communication.

Should we create a language with words from all around the world?

Manuel M Campagna:   The International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) researched this point scientifically, and came up with the conclusion that while there are 6 170 languages in the world (not including dialects) AT THIS TIME, there is no evidence that a language with one word from each language would be more popular. Indeed it would be an unworkable hodgepodge.

David Poulson:   This objection has been handled at length by Prof. Pierre Janton. In brief, there are two major facts to take into account. First of all, there are thousands of languages in the world and if Esperanto attempted to create its vocabulary from even 10% of them you would simply get a language which would be very difficult to learn for everybody instead of the real Esperanto which is relatively easy for all.

Secondly, the world-wide spread of Euro-American science, commerce, technology, geopolitics, entertainment, etc., has meant that many  technical terms from "Western" languages have entered the vocabulary of many other languages too. So, in fact, the European basis for Esperanto's vocabulary is a lot more international than appears at first sight.

However, the whole argument is really irrelevant because the internationalism of Esperanto -- or of any other planned language -- cannot reside in its vocabulary for the reason just mentioned.

In fact, what makes Esperanto a truly "international" language (as distinct from a "world" language like English) is its extraordinary semantic flexibility which allows speakers from different language families to translate their own thought patterns directly into Esperanto and produce something which is perfectly intelligible and grammatically correct.

Isn't Esperanto hard for speakers of non-Indo-European languages?

Manuel M Campagna: Non-IE speakers thank you for your protective attitude, but they can and do fend for themselves, and Esperanto is very popular in Hungary, Estonia, Finland, Japan, China, Vietnam... The current [1995-1998] president of the Universal Esperanto Association is a Korean university professor of *Economics*. The most attended international meeting in *5000 years* of Chinese history was the 1986 Universal Congress of Esperanto in Beijing, being the largest both by the number of delegates and the number of countries represented.

10. ARE THERE ANY FAMOUS ESPERANTO SPEAKERS?

***

*** I hope to expand this section, but I guess I could do

*** worse than to start with some Nobel Prize winners! ;-)

***

Nobel Prize Winners:

Sir William Ramsay (Chemistry, 1904)
Awarded the Nobel Prize "in recognition of his services in the discovery of the inert gaseous elements in air, and his determination of their place in the periodic system". Participated in many Esperanto conferences and meetings.

Sir Joseph J. Thomson (Physics, 1906)
"In recognition of the great merits of his theoretical and experimental investigations on the conduction of electricity by gases".   Vice-President of the International Esperanto Science Association.

Alfred Hermann Fried (Peace, 1911)
"Founder of _Die Friedenswarte_" (a peace publication).
Author of an Esperanto textbook and contributor to the magazine _L'esperantiste_.

Charles Ribert Richet (Medicine, 1913)
"In recognition of his work on anaphylaxis". Active Esperantist.

Daniel Bovet (Medicine, 1957)
"For his discoveries relating to synthetic compounds that inhibit the action of certain body substances, and especially their action on the vascular system and the skeletal muscles". Learned Esperanto as a first language.

Reinhard Selten (Economics, 1994)
"For [his] pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games". Author of two books in Esperanto on games theory.

11. WHAT ABOUT OTHER "ARTIFICIAL" LANGUAGES LIKE LOGLAN, IDO, ETC.?

People create languages for a variety of purposes. J.R.R. Tolkien's languages of Sindarin and Quenya, for example, were created partly as a recreation, and partly to fulfil a literary purpose. Many languages have been created as international languages; only Esperanto has continued to grow and prosper after the death of its originator.

Many of the people who have attempted to promulgate international languages more "perfect" (i.e., more "international", more "logical", or whatever) than Esperanto have failed to understand that -- given a certain minimum standard of internationality, aesthetic quality, and ease of learning -- further tinkering not only fails to substantially improve the product, but interferes with the establishment of a large community of speakers. A language like, say, Interlingua might be (by some individual's criteria) "better" than Esperanto, but in order for it to be worth uprooting the established world of Esperanto and creating an equivalently widespread world community of Interlingua speakers, it would have to be visibly and profoundly an improvement over Esperanto of prodigious proportions. No international language project has yet produced such an obviously ideal language.

In the net community, one of the best known planned language projects is James Cooke Brown's Loglan (and its revised offshoot Lojban). While some enthusiasts do see Loglan and Lojban as competitors to Esperanto, the languages were conceived not as a tool to facilitate better communication, but as a linguistic experiment, to test the Whorf hypothesis that a language shapes (or limits) the thoughts of its speakers. They are thus deliberately designed to bear little resemblance to existing human languages. While Loglan and Lojban are unlikely (and, by design, perhaps unsuited) to succeed as international languages, both are interesting projects in their own right.

The address to write for Loglan information is:
The Loglan Institute
3009 Peters Way
San Diego CA 92117
USA
tel. (619) 270-1691
E-mail: loglan@compuserve.com

For Lojban, contact:
Bob LeChevalier, President
The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane
Fairfax VA 22031-1303
USA
tel. (703) 385-0273 (day/evenings)
E-mail: lojban@lojban.org
http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/
http://www.lojban.org/

Those interested in Mark Okrand's "Klingon" language can join a mailing list; to subscribe, send a message to:
listserv@kli.org
consisting of the body line:
subscribe tlhingan-hol Your_Real_Name

There is a general "constructed language" (Conlang) mailing list; to subscribe, send a message to:
listserv@brownvm.brown.edu
consisting of the body line (not subject):
subscribe conlang

There is also an "auxiliary language" (Auxlang) mailing list. The difference between this list and Conlang is that Auxlang deals more particularly with languages designed to enhance international communication, such as Esperanto. To subscribe, send a message to:
listserv@brownvm.brown.edu
consisting of the body line (not subject):
subscribe auxlang

Finally, fans of Tolkien's language creations can join a Tolkien-language mailing list. To subscribe, send a message to:
tolklang-server@dcs.ed.ac.uk
with the following subject line or body line (either will do):
subscribe tolklang Your_Real_Name

As for our own Esperanto newsgroup, many readers are interested in other planned languages, and discussion of these can often be informative and interesting. But politeness dictates that "Esperanto-bashing" in an Esperanto forum is inappropriate and should be avoided.

12. WHAT ARE PAG, PIV, PMEG, PV, TEJO AND UEA?

As with other groups, there are some common acronyms that come up from time to time here.

PAG: Plena Analiza Gramatiko, an analysis of Esperanto grammar. It is not authoritative, and many people will disagree with some of its conclusions, but it is the most detailed reference work to date on Esperanto grammar.

PIV, PIV-S: Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, a very complete Esperanto dictionary (i.e., it is entirely in Esperanto) containing not only the officially recognized words, but many more that are in general (and not so general) use. Some of its entries are dubious, but it is a highly useful reference work. PIV is now quite expensive. It was published in 1970, with a supplement in 1987 ("PIV-S" means "PIV with Supplement"). A new edition is currently being prepared.

PMEG: Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko, an analysis and commentary on Esperanto grammar. Available online at
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/pmeg.

PV: Plena Vortaro. PIV's little brother, so to speak; it was written in 1953 and contains fewer technical terms, neologisms, etc.

TEJO: Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo, the World Organization of Young Esperantists. Members of UEA under 30 years of age are automatically members of TEJO. TEJO publishes a bi-monthly magazine called "Kontakto" and a quarterly newsletter called "TEJO Tutmonde", and sponsors the annual international youth congress (Internacia Junulara Kongreso, or IJK).

UEA: Universala Esperanto-Asocio, the World Esperanto Association. It publishes a monthly magazine cleverly titled "Esperanto", produces a "Jarlibro" (yearbook) containing information on national and special-interest Esperanto organizations and contacts, and sponsors the annual international Esperanto congress (Universala Kongreso, or UK).

13. HOW DO YOU SAY "I LOVE YOU" IN ESPERANTO?

"Mi amas vin."

There are several WWW sites with lists of ways to say "I love you" in various languages. Try
http://www.dina.kvl.dk/~fischer/alt.romance/language.html http://personal.inet.fi/koti/krista.hauhio/feelings.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PART II:
ESPERANTO, COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET

14. HOW CAN I TYPE AND DISPLAY ESPERANTO'S ACCENTED CHARACTERS?

Esperanto has six letters with accents: c, g, h, j, and s can have a circumflex accent (^), and u can have a breve accent (similar to the lower half of a small circle).

All modern operating systems, word processing programs, etc., can handle these characters. Usually all that is required is to type some combination of keys to represent them. However, "dumb" terminals generally cannot overstrike accents with arbitrary characters, and so cannot display Esperanto's accented characters, or any other language with accents.

Macintosh:
(Thanks to Arnold Victor and Dmitri Horowitz for preparing the following information.)

Fonts with Esperanto's accented characters are available for use under Mac OS. Due to the lack of a generally accepted standard encoding, several encodings are currently in use; however, ISO 8859-3 (also called "Latin-3") is becoming more and more common. Apple has proposed a different standard encoding called "MacEsperanto".

To type Esperanto's accented characters conveniently, use an Esperanto keyboard layout. Each encoding corresponds to a particular keyboard layout; thus, if you are using a Latin-3 font, you must also use the Latin-3 keyboard layout.

Fonts are installed as follows:

- Quit all applications first.
- Put the Esperanto font files in the Fonts folder in the System Folder.
(Or drag-drop the font file on the System Folder icon and it will automatically be placed in the right folder.)

Keyboard layouts are installed as follows:

- Quit all applications first.
- Put the keyboard layout file in the System suitcase in the System Folder. (Or drag-drop the keyboard layout file on the System Folder icon; when the dialog appears, confirm that you want the file placed in the right folder.)

To use Esperanto fonts in an application, do the following:
- Use the Keyboard control panel (under Control Panels in the Apple menu) to select the appropriate keyboard layout. Esperanto keyboard layouts are usually symbolized by a green star or by the Esperanto flag (a green flag with a star in the upper left corner).

- Choose an Esperanto font with the same encoding as the keyboard layout in the application.

With most keyboard layouts, including Latin-3, the accented characters are typed by pressing the Option key together with the letter to be accented. For example, Option and lowercase c will type the accented letter c^, Option and uppercase C will type the accented letter C^, and so on. With some keyboard layouts, the accented character u^ is placed under Option-w.

You can check the location of the accented characters as follows:
- Make sure the appropriate keyboard layout is selected.
- Open the Key Caps desk accessory in the Apple menu.
- Select an Esperanto font with the same encoding as the keyboard layout from the Key Caps menu.
- Check the keyboard layout displayed with the Option key, with the Shift key, and with both the Option and Shift keys pressed. A keyboard menu will let you switch between keyboard layouts more conveniently. It appears on the menu bar to the left of the application menu, which is itself on the outer right. It can be recognized by the small flag which shows the selected keyboard layout.

With Mac OS version 8, a keyboard menu appears automatically when more than one keyboard is selected in the Keyboard control panel (under Control Panels in the Apple menu).

If you are using Mac OS version 7.x, you must install a system extension to have the keyboard menu. A shareware extension called "Outboard Keyboard" (5 USD) can be downloaded as part of the package Carpetbag from
http://www.jwwalker.com/pages/carp.html

Install it as follows:
- Put the extension in the Extensions folder in the System Folder. (Or drag-drop the keyboard layout file on the System Folder icon; when the dialog appears, confirm that you want the file placed in the right folder.)
- Restart the computer.

Esperanto fonts with matching keyboard layouts can be downloaded from http://www.esperanto.be/FontE.hqx
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/fonts.dir/
http://www.indigo.ie/egt/earra_bog/apple/
http://www.indigo.ie/egt/emono/em8859.html

The following resources are useful when using Esperanto in Internet applications:

- Plug-in tables for the popular mailing program Eudora which allow you to send and receive messages in MacEsperanto, Latin-3, and Code Page 853. Bitmap fonts and a keyboard layout are included. See ftp://mirror.apple.com/mirrors/info-mac/comm/inet/mail/edr/eudora-esperanto.hqx

- A detailed description of how to convert Unicode TrueType fonts from MS-Windows to MacEsperanto. The fonts are freely available from Microsoft. See ftp://mirror.apple.com/mirrors/info-mac/info/convert-esperanto-fonts-14.hqx

DOS:

WordPerfect 5.1 natively supports Esperanto's accented characters. To display the Esperanto characters, select the 512-character screen from the Setup menu: do Shift-F1, 2, 1, 5.

To type an accented character, type Ctrl-V and the code (including the comma) as listed in the file CARACTER.DOC:
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Letter: C c G g H h
Code: 1,100 1,101 1,122 1,123 1,126 1,127
^ ^ ^ ^ - -
Letter: J j S s U u
Code: 1,140 1,141 1,180 1,181 1,188 1,189

You can also type Ctrl-V followed by the character and the accent mark; for example, Ctrl-V, C, ^, gives C-circumflex. However, there is no breve on the keyboard, so u-breve cannot be done this way.

Lowercase circumflexed j looks lousy in most fonts, so many users prefer to use a regular j and overstrike a circumflex accent: Shift-F8, 4, 5, 1, j, ^ (you may have to press the ^ key twice for the symbol to appear), Return, Return, Return.

Your editor finds it convenient to use a macro called Alt-c to type c-circumflex, Alt-g to type g-circumflex, and so on. The letters can then be converted to upper case if desired by using Block (Alt-F4, or F12) and then Switch (Shift-F3, 1).

If you wish to type and see the accented characters with a program that does not natively support them, for example, a text editor, then you can use the freeware programs VGA-ESP and Klavint.

VGA-ESP makes the 12 accented characters available on the monitor. The only requirement is to have an EGA, VGA or Super VGA video card -- any computer bought after 1985 should be fine.

Klavint provides an easy way to type these characters in applications that don't support them natively. Once Klavint is installed, you can type the accented characters by using the semi-colon key. For example, ;c will give the letter c^ and ;g will give the letter g^. Other options are also available, as explained in the documentation.

VGA-ESP and Klavint are available at
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/software.dir/iloj.zip
Source code in assembler is provided; the programs are copyrighted but free.

Windows 3.1 and Windows 95:

Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 are very similar in this respect, so we'll deal with them at the same time, indicating any differences.

Many fonts with the necessary accented characters are available at http://www.esperanto.be/tiparoj.html
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/fonts.dir/

To view True Type fonts without having to install them, use the freeware program Trowser, available at
ftp://ftp.ntu.edu.au/pub/fonttools/trows101.zip

Esperanto fonts are also included with the commercial program WordPerfect for Windows.

To install new fonts under Windows 3.1, go to the group Main, open Control Panel, then open Fonts. Choose "Add", indicate the font's location, and choose OK.

Under Windows 95, go to the Control Panel and open Fonts. In the File menu, choose "Install New Fonts", indicate the font's location, and choose OK.

Another option is to use the freeware program Supersigno, which automatically adds the necessary characters to your existing fonts. This program is available at ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/software.dir/ss41zip.exe

To type the accented characters, use the "Character Map" program, located in the Accessories group. Choose your font, then click on the character. You can either use Double-Click, Copy and Paste to copy the character to your application or, more simply, use the keystroke combination indicated in the bottom right corner of the Character Map display.

Almost all Esperanto fonts use the Latin-3 coding. Here are the keystrokes for these fonts. In all cases, press and hold the Alt key, type the code using the numeric keypad (not the numbers on the top row of the alphabetic keypad), and release the Alt key.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Letter: C c G g H h
Code: 0198 0230 0216 0248 0166 0182

^ ^ ^ ^ - -
Letter: J j S s U u
Code: 0172 0188 0222 0254 0221 0253

Under Windows 3.1, you may find it easier to use the Recorder application (in Accessories) to create macros for these keystroke combinations. Recorder is no longer included with Windows 95, but you can copy it from a Windows 3.1 installation and run it under Windows 95. Remember that Recorder must be running to replay a macro.

Here's how to create a macro that will automatically type c-circumflex when you press Ctrl-C. (These instructions are adapted from the on-line help for Recorder.)

1. Position the cursor in the application where you want to start recording the macro.

2. Switch to Recorder.

3. From the Macro menu, choose Record.

4. In the appropriate boxes, specify a macro name (for example, c-accent) and the shortcut key (Ctrl-C). You can also type a description, if you want.

5. To begin recording the macro, choose the Start button.

6. Type the keystrokes for c-circumflex (Alt-0230). [This only works for me if I type the keystroke combination twice. I have no idea why. -- Ed.]

7. To stop recording, click the Recorder icon, or press Ctrl-Break.

8. Select the Save Macro option and choose the OK button.

9. From the File menu, choose Save As and save the macro.

Another way to type the accented characters is to use the freeware program Keys, available at http://iap.ethz.ch/users/szp/keys/
This program provides a convenient way to remap the keyboard. Yet another option is to use the program Supersigno mentioned above, which also provides an easier way to type the accented characters.

[To do: Evaluate and add Ek, available at http://www.esperanto.mv.ru/Download/ek.zip for Windows 95/98.]

Unix:
(Thanks to Konrad Hinsen for the following information.)

It is sometimes possible to install a font with Esperanto's accented characters on a Unix system not using the X Window System, but the procedure to do so is different for each Unix system and possibly for each terminal type. Look in your documentation, or ask your system administrator. In the case of Linux, there is a fairly standardized procedure if you are working on an EGA/VGA screen. Check the documentation of the command setfont, which is part of most Linux distributions.

If you are using a Unix system with X11 (by far the most popular windowing system for Unix), you must install a text font with ISO 8859-3 encoding (also known as "Latin-3"). Several such fonts are listed at
http://www.esperanto.be/tiparoj.html

A good font set is
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/fonts.dir/adobe3.tar.gz
which contains ISO 8859-3 versions of the Adobe fonts Courier, Times, Helvetica, and New Century Schoolbook in several sizes. It also contains installation instructions.

Once you have installed an appropriate font, you must tell your programs to use it. Most X11 programs, e.g. xterm or emacs, accept the option "-fn fontname" to specify the font to be used. X11 font names can be rather long and complicated; use the program "xfontsel" to select a font and obtain its full name. Note that some older Unix programs are not "8-bit clean", which means that they do not recognize characters with codes over 128 as letters. Such programs cannot be made to work with ISO 8859-3 fonts, but neither with the common ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) fonts used for Western European languages.

To write in Esperanto, you must also be able to type accented characters. Unfortunately, this is a much more difficult problem. The X11 input system is, well, rather messy, and details differ between versions and vendors. Another problem is that different keyboards are used in different countries, and that you probably want to keep all the characters on your keyboard accessible. So there are two problems: deciding how you want to type the additional characters, and persuading X11 to arrange the keyboard correctly.

Basically, the options for typing Esperanto characters are:

1) Via some unused keys or key combinations. Keys that are often unused are the function keys or the shifted numeric keypad keys. Assigning the Esperanto characters to such unused keys is rather straightforward, and will be explained below.

2) Via the standard keys plus a modifier. Modifiers are keys such as Shift, Control, Meta, or Alt. The Shift combinations are usually all taken, and Control, Meta and Alt are used by many programs for command entry, so in most cases this option is difficult to realize.

3) Via the compose key. X11 supports the entry of accented characters via a special "compose" key. Unfortunately, many programs don't work correctly with the compose key, and most X11 implementations support it only for the ISO 8859-1 character set. You may be able to work around these obstacles, but no general recommendations can be given.

The first option is implemented as follows:

1) Create a file called .xmodmaprc in your home directory, containing the following lines:

== File .xmodmaprc ====================================================

! Define Esperanto accented characters on shifted function keys

! ccircumflex

keysym F1 = F1 ae

! Ccircumflex

keysym F2 = F2 AE

! gcircumflex

keysym F3 = F3 oslash

! Gcircumflex

keysym F4 = F4 Ooblique

! hcircumflex

keysym F5 = F5 paragraph

! Hcircumflex

keysym F6 = F6 brokenbar

! jcircumflex

keysym F7 = F7 onequarter

! Jcircumflex

keysym F8 = F8 notsign

! scircumflex

keysym F9 = F9 thorn

! Scircumflex

keysym F10 = F10 THORN

! ubreve

keysym F11 = F11 yacute

! Ubreve

keysym F12 = F12 Yacute

== End of .xmodmaprc ==================================================

2) Execute the command

xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprc

To have this command executed automatically, you must put it into a special file, which might be called .xinitrc, .xsession or something else; you will have to ask your system administrator for assistance.

The keyboard definition shown above will put the 12 special Esperanto characters on the 12 function keys when used together with the Shift key.

***

*** I'd like to add information on other operating systems,

*** especially OS/2 and Windows NT. Please contact me if you wish

*** to help with this.

***

TeX and LaTeX:
(Thanks to Edmund Grimley-Evans for this information.)

TeX and LaTeX are professional typesetting systems, available as free software for most computers. Though they are not always easy to use, they are extremely flexible; they are the standard tool for typesetting scientific articles and are often used for complex typesetting in the humanities.

With TeX or LaTeX any diacritic can be applied to any character, so it is no harder to produce c-circumflex (\^c) than e-acute (\'e), say. A large number of "style files" exist to facilitate the use of particular languages; "esperant.sty" and "espo.sty", available at ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex209/contrib/misc/
and elsewhere, both allow Esperanto's diacritics to be entered as "^C ... ^u", and the same convention is used by the Babel package for LaTeX2e which supports about 30 language, including Esperanto.

The programs produce "^j" by putting a circumflex onto a dotless j. Although TeX's default Computer Modern font has a dotless j (\j), most commercial fonts, including those that are built into laser printers, do not. There is a work-around, available as "dotlessj.sty", that involves blanking out the dot on an ordinary j; see http://www.rano.demon.co.uk/dotlessj.html

Note that the Babel package does not include a hyphenation table for Esperanto so it is usually best to discourage automatic hyphenation (\hyphenpenalty=5000) and specify the hyphenation of particular words where required (\hyphenation{Esp-er-anto}).

15. HOW CAN I REPRESENT THESE CHARACTERS IN E-MAIL OR ON USENET?

Accented characters are not included in standard, 7-bit ASCII. Since only 7-bit ASCII can be reliably transmitted over the net, this leads to problems when trying to use Esperanto in E-mail and Usenet news. These problems are not unique to Esperanto; all languages with accents have them.

Two approaches are possible: using ASCII to represent the accented characters, or using 8-bit codes and sending them somehow over the net.

Using Standard ASCII:

There are two major work-arounds to represent Esperanto's accented letters using standard 7-bit ASCII: using the letter "h" to represent the circumflex, and using the letter "x" to represent all accents.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ -
Esperanto letter: c g h j s u

"h" method: ch gh hh jh sh u

"x" method: cx gx hx jx sx ux

The "h" method is canonical in Esperanto since the "Fundamento de Esperanto", which forms the basis of the language, expressly provides for it. Note that "u with breve" is represented by "u" alone, not "uh".

The "x" method is a recent coinage and first appeared among computer users; it is used only on the Net.

The following arguments are made in favour of the "x" method:

- The "h" method is ambiguous. Is the letter "h" really supposed to be there, or is it supposed to represent an accent? The letter "x" doesn't exist in Esperanto, so there is no ambiguity: any "x" in an Esperanto text must represent an accent. Rebuttal: This kind of confusion never happens in practice. "Flughaveno" can only be the Esperanto word for "airport", since "flug^aveno" isn't a word.

- The "x" method is more suitable for machine treatment of text (sorting, indexing, etc.). In Esperanto, letters with accents are different from letters without accents: the alphabet is A, B, C, C^, D, etc. Since "x" is very close to the end of the alphabet, sorting algorithms will almost always put the accented letters in their proper alphabetical order. Rebuttal: These are highly specialized needs.

People who must make their texts machine-treatable can use whatever method suits their requirements, but this is irrelevant for the vast majority of Esperanto speakers.

The "x" method was very popular in the early years of the net, but the "h" method has clearly been gaining ground recently, as more "ordinary" Esperantists (as opposed to professional computer users, etc.) have started using the net. Either method may be used with confidence.

The "x" method is perhaps more suitable for beginners, since it removes all ambiguity, so that a beginner won't try to look up "flug^aveno" in the dictionary.

Other methods are also used, such as typing a circumflex accent (^) before or after the accented letter, but these are rarer.

These work-arounds should only be used when one is restricted to 7-bit ASCII. It is wrong to use them when the real characters are available. All word processing programs can handle the accented letters correctly; most typewriters (especially electronic typewriters) can also do so. It is also wrong to use these work-arounds when hand-writing.

Using 8-bit Codes:

Esperanto is covered by the 8-bit encoding known as Latin-3 (ISO 8859-3:1988). Since 8-bit codes usually cannot be reliably transmitted over the net, some "data massaging" is necessary.

For E-mail, a standard known as MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extension) converts 8-bit characters to 7-bit ASCII for transmission, and converts the message back to 8 bits upon reception. Many E-mail programs can do this conversion automatically; however, users with shell accounts (especially students) often cannot see MIME messages properly. For this reason, one should ensure that the recipient's system supports MIME before sending messages in this format.

The use of MIME in Usenet is neither specifically permitted nor expressly prohibited. Most newsreaders can't handle postings in MIME, so it is best not to use it in Usenet.

Some users post messages in soc.culture.esperanto and other Usenet groups using "raw" Latin-3 codes, without attempting to "protect" them with a 7-bit encoding. This has lead to some heated discussions between those who say that they can receive the original 8-bit Latin-3 codes, and those who say that they often (or always) receive gibberish.

Even if the codes are transmitted properly, they can only be viewed as Esperanto characters if a Latin-3 font is used; users whose language requires the use of an incompatible 8-bit font (e.g. Russian and Japanese) will have problems viewing these characters in any event.

Esperanto's accented characters are covered by the incipient "wide character" standard Unicode (ISO 10646-1:1993), so these problems will be solved if and when Unicode is widely adopted and implemented. Unicode is a widely endorsed 16-bit character code covering all languages, including non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese and Japanese.

Recommendations:

For everyday use, it is probably best to use either the "h" method or the "x" method, both for E-mail and for Usenet news. These methods are widely used and recognized, and both work well in practice.

If one is sure that the recipient can handle MIME messages, then this format can be used for E-mail.

No satisfactory 8-bit solution exists today for Usenet. Either the "h" method or the "x" method should be used for Usenet news.

16. WHAT ESPERANTO MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET?

Usenet:
The main Usenet newsgroup devoted to Esperanto is soc.culture.esperanto. It has an estimated readership of several tens of thousands. The group's charter specifies that postings may be in Esperanto on any topic, or about Esperanto in any language (e.g. informational postings or requests for information).

The preferred language of soc.culture.esperanto is Esperanto. Beginners are ESPECIALLY ENCOURAGED to post in Esperanto, or maybe bilingually in Esperanto alongside their native tongue. The complete text of the charter is available at:
ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/soc/soc.culture.esperanto

If you are cross-posting articles to other newsgroups, please do NOT post in Esperanto, unless English (or the usual language of that newsgroup) is also included, preferably as the primary language. Aside from being rude, such postings have tended to create a lot of unwanted cross-posted response traffic, usually of an anti-Esperanto inflammatory nature. Similarly, while it may sometimes be appropriate to mention Esperanto in other newsgroups, continued discussion of Esperanto in inappropriate groups like comp.lang.c will generate more heat than light, and should be avoided.

For those who cannot read the newsgroup, there is a "news to mail gateway" which sends the postings to subscribers by E-mail. All correspondence related to the mailing list should be sent to:
esperanto-l-request@netcom.com

Every message sent to the mailing list is forwarded to soc.culture.esperanto, and every article from soc.culture.esperanto is forwarded to the mailing list. Thus, if you are reading the newsgroup, you do not need to be on the mailing list.

To UNsubscribe from the mailing list, again send a message to: esperanto-l-request@netcom.com

The newsgroup is also gatewayed to the FidoNet echo Esperanto (see below under FidoNet).

Incidentally, the link between the newsgroup and the mailing list means that mailing list members will sometimes see strange messages having nothing to do with Esperanto, caused when some lackwit cross-posts a message to all the soc.* newsgroups. These people do not read the newsgroup anyway, so replies sent to the mailing list (rather than the original sender) will not reach them.

The newsgroup alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc should deal in principle with Esperanto instruction ("UU" stands for "Usenet University"), but it is little used in practice. Still, it is an appropriate place for beginners' questions, information on learning Esperanto, etc.

The two groups just mentioned -- soc.culture.esperanto and alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc -- have existed for several years. Very recently, some new groups have been created in the alt.* hierarchy. Because of the rules which apply to that hierarchy, alt.* groups are often created without any real need and with no clear purpose.

There is some traffic in alt.talk.esperanto, mostly articles cross-posted from soc.culture.esperanto or other groups.

There are also several groups in the newly-created alt.esperanto.* hierarchy, but their propagation is poor and they are hardly used, except perhaps for alt.esperanto.beginner.

In short, soc.culture.esperanto (and its corresponding mailing list) is appropriate for all posts in or about Esperanto. If desired, questions about learning Esperanto, help for beginners, and the like may be posted instead in alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc or, perhaps, in alt.esperanto.beginner, but they are still entirely appropriate in soc.culture.esperanto. It is probably best to ignore the other groups.

FTP Archives:

The following FTP archive has a major Esperanto collection:
ftp://ftp.stack.nl/pub/esperanto/:

esperanto-texts.dir: Texts in Esperanto
fonts.dir: Esperanto fonts for Macintosh, DOS, Unix
hypercourse.dir: HyperCard course for Macintosh
introductions.dir: General information about Esperanto
other-tongues.dir: Comparisons between Esperanto and other auxiliary languages
software.dir: Programs related to Esperanto
word-lists.dir: Dictionaries and glossaries

An FTP archive is also being prepared at
ftp://ftp.esperanto.org/
but was not yet set up at the time of writing.

WWW:

There is now A LOT of material about Esperanto on the Web. Here are some resources which should help you find what you want.

Mult-lingva inform-centro (Multilingual Information Centre):
http://www.esperanto.net/

Information on Esperanto and links to Esperanto resources in 35 languages.

Lists of Esperanto associations with WWW pages:
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/land.html

Links to national Esperanto organizations with WWW pages. In Esperanto, but each country is represented by its flag, so it should be easy enough to find the information you're looking for.

http://www.esperanto.net/veb/org.html
Links to international Esperanto organizations with WWW pages. In Esperanto.

http://www.uea.org/
Home page of the World Esperanto Association and of the World Organization of Young Esperantists. In Esperanto and English.

The following pages are entirely in Esperanto:
"Yellow Pages":
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/flavaj-pagxoj.html

List of Esperanto resources on the Web. Maintained by Martin Weichert. Much of the information in this section of the FAQ is taken from the "Yellow Pages".

Virtual Esperanto Library:
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/
Links to information about Esperanto, organizations, culture and science, and computers. Maintained by Martin Weichert.

See also the usual WWW search services, for example Yahoo at:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/
Linguistics_and_Human_Languages/Languages/Constructed_Languages/
International_Auxiliary_Languages/Esperanto/

If you're feeling adventurous, try simply searching for "Esperanto" with Alta Vista (700 000 references), Infoseek (25 000 references), or  Deja News (48 000 references using "Power Search").

Mailing Lists:
Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.esperanto is available as a mailing list. See under "Usenet", above.

Other mailing lists include:
BJA-LISTO: On planned languages with a social base, or "social interlinguistics". To subscribe, send "subscribe bja-listo your_name@your_address" to majordomo@helsinki.fi. See also the WWW pages at
http://infoweb.magi.com/~mfettes/bja-angla.html
http://infoweb.magi.com/~mfettes/bja-listo.html

DENASK-L: Esperanto as a home language or first language. Most active subscribers seem to be parents raising their children in Esperanto. Mail to Jouko Lindstedt <jouko.lindstedt@helsinki.fi> to subscribe. See also the WWW page at http://www.helsinki.fi/~jslindst/denask-l.html

ESPER-L: General discussion in Esperanto. To subscribe, send "subscribe esper-l" to listserv@vm.ege.edu.tr.

VERDVERD: About ecology. To subscribe, send "subscribe verdverd your_name@your_address" to listserv@tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl. Maintainer:
Andrzej Zwawa <zb@zb.most.org.pl>.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC):
Channel #esperanto: Tuesday, 15:00 - 17:00 UTC, and Monday, 3:00 - 6:00 UTC
Esperanto instruction: Thursday, 2:00 UTC

Other Internet Resources:
Enrique Ellemberg <enrike@aol.com> coordinates an Esperanto penpal service. For more information, see http://members.aol.com/enrike/eksang.htm http://members.aol.com/enrike/ekspeto.htm
or send mail to Enrique.

Some libraries have on-line listings of their Esperanto holdings. On the Internet, try:

Library of Congress, USA (550 titles):
http://lcweb.loc.gov/catalog/telnet locis.loc.gov
Limited hours during week-ends

University of California, USA (640 titles):
telnet melvyl.ucop.edu

Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands (475 titles):
http://opc.ubn.kun.nl/cgi-bin/wwwlibmenu
telnet opc.ubn.kun.nl
username "opc"

Universitaet des Saarlandes, Germany (535 titles):
telnet opac.ub.uni-sb.de

Internationales Esperanto-Museum Wien, Austria
(18 000 titles, of which about 1000 are currently listed in the on-line catalogue): http://www.bibvb.ac.at/verbund-opac.htm

17. WHAT ESPERANTO MATERIAL IS AVAILABLE ON OTHER (NON-INTERNET) ON-LINE SERVICES?

Several Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) provide Esperanto services.

In North America:
USA: Microdot BBS, (812) 944-3907, New Albany, Indiana (near Evansville)
Part of the WWIV network of BBS systems. WWIV systems may subscribe to the Esperanto group "La Samideanoj".

USA: Satronics TBBS, (215) 464-3562 (1200-2400 bps 8-N-1), (215) 698-1905 (28 800 bps 8-N-1)
Sysop: Mark F. Miller <Mark.F.Miller@mail.tju.edu> Has an Esperanto forum. No telnet or WWW access. Satronics TBBS is a non-commercial, community-supported BBS.

In South America:
Brazil: EducNet BBS, +55 61 347 24 83; area no 5 is in Esperanto Sysop: Erasmo Gagliardi <gagliard@brnet.com.br>

In Europe:
Netherlands: Esperantlingva Bultenejo Saluton!, tel. +31-53-4326886. FidoNet 2:283/323. Sysop: Wim Koolhoven <wim@saluton.iaf.nl> Devoted entirely to Esperanto.

Italy: AGORA' telematiko, Torre Argentina Societa' di Servizi S.p.A.
tel. 39-6-6892828 (10) 300/1200/2400 MNP5 N81 39-6-6832366 (10) 300 > 9600 MNP5 N81 V42 V42bis USRobotics 1421 (Easy Way Itapac)
Itapac NUA 26500016 (32) 1200 N81 S71 DNIC 0222
Tymnet login: agora (16) 2400 N81 S71
Internet telnet: agora.stm.it
Sysop: "Esperanto" Radikala Asocio <E.R.A.@agora.stm.it>

FidoNet:
International echo: ESPERANTO (same as Usenet group soc.culture.esperanto), Mario Mueller, 2:241/200.9

Dutch echo: ESPERANTO.028, Wim Koolhoven, 2:283/323

Portuguese echo: ESPERANTO_36, Ze Manel, 2:361/1 (Or Fausto Karvalo, 2:361/1? Still works?)

Common, partly in Russian: ESPERANTO.RUS, Anatoli Gulidov, 2:5020/388.1

Courses, for speakers of Russian and Ukrainian: DR.ESPERANTO, Va Milushnikov, 2:465/101.2

Bitnet:
The mailing list ESPER-L mentioned above is also available in Bitnet.
Send "subscribe esper-l" to listserv@trearn. (Use this address only if mailing from a Bitnet account. If mailing from an Internet account, use the address listserv@vm.ege.edu.tr, as mentioned above.)

Minitel, France:
3615 ESPERANTO (1,27 FRF/min):
General information, contacts, upcoming events
3614 CNX*#ESPERANT (0,36 FRF/min):
Discussion group, personal mailboxes
3614 CNX*#JEFO (0,36 FRF/min):
Reserved for members of JEFO (French Organization of Young Esperantists)
3614 PING Online chat and mailbox service in four languages (French, Esperanto, Italian, and English)
3614 RIBOUREL "300 pages about/in Esperanto"

Compuserve:
CompuServe Information Service (CIS) has an Esperanto board in its Foreign Languages Education Forum. CIS subscribers can type GO FLEFO for further information.

Prodigy:
There is an Esperanto forum in the section "Foreign Languages".

America On Line (AOL):
America Online has about 140 members whose list of interests include "Esperanto", but no specific Esperanto forum exists.

GEnie:
GEnie has some discussion of Esperanto in the Public Affairs Roundtable board, Category 15 -- International Affairs, Topic 29.

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This FAQ was written by Mike Urban <urban@netcom.com>. It was brought up to date and is now maintained by Yves Bellefeuille <yan@storm.ca>.

Principal contributors:
Ken Caviness <caviness@southern.edu>,
Alan Gould <agolincs@agolincs.demon.co.uk>,
Edmund Grimley-Evans <edmundo@rano.demon.co.uk>,
Don Harlow <don@donh.vip.best.com>,
Konrad Hinsen <hinsen@cnrs-orleans.fr>,
Dmitri Horowitz <horowitz@xs4all.nl>,
Arnold Victor <arvimide@mars.superlink.net>,
Martin Weichert <martinw@cs.chalmers.se>, and
David Wolff <dwolff@world.std.com>.

(Helmut Lasarcyk homepage / March 2001)