But there were other, more subtle effects, as well. In addition to speaking more Esperanto than they might have otherwise, I believe the American students in particular ended up speaking a different kind of Esperanto. American Esperantists very often fall into the habit of blithely translating American terms directly into Esperanto without realizing that these "translations" are frequently nonsensical. For instance, the term "komuna kolegio" is immediately understood by any American Esperantist but can be quite baffling to people from other countries, since a "community college" (as the term is used in the U.S.) is actually neither "komuna" nor a "kolegio," and in fact the very concept of a community college requires some explaining in most other countries. Many Americans catch on very quickly to these subtleties once they are in an international environment where the American way of doing and saying things is no longer assumed, and it was just this process that I observed happening among the American participants in the courses. By the end of the three weeks, their Esperanto appeared to be more international and less noticeably American in style.
More surprising, perhaps, was the effect that the diversity of students had on the content of the classes. This was particularly apparent in my advanced class, where I discussed the semantics of verbs in Esperanto and how this relates to their transitivity. It was necessary to be fairly precise about the meanings of verbs, in a way that dictionaries often are not. We thus needed to rely on our own experience with how particular verbs are used in order to come up with the type of definition that we needed. This turned out well, primarily because the class itself was in effect a representative sample of the Esperanto-speaking community. If any of us were too influenced by our native language in thinking how a particular verb was used, the other students could serve as a corrective. This even applied to how we evaluated definitions in dictionaries like Plena Ilustrita Vortaro, for instance. We occasionally saw definitions that did not seem to conform to actual usage, and if we were able to reach consensus on this among the members of the class, we could be confident that we were accurate in our assessment of international usage. This of course would have been much less possible in a class of mostly Americans.
It seems clear, then, that the overall learning environment was enhanced by the great diversity among the students, probably in more ways than I have indicated here. Diversity should be encouraged in planning future university-level Esperanto courses.
Grant Goodall (ggoodall@utep.edu) is Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics, U. of Texas, El Paso.
Many other items dealing with Esperanto literature appear in the volumes on national literatures and general literature. Authors writing in Esperanto are normally included under the literatures of their individual countries and are cross-listed in the index. General literary criticism appears in the general literature volume. Further items on literature and linguistics that simply happen to be written in Esperanto are published in the appropriate sections of the bibliography. The CD-ROM cumulative version of the bibliography offers classified references to several thousand publications on Esperanto and interlinguistics. Both the printed version and the cumulative CD-ROM version are available in major research libraries and many members of the MLA subscribe to all or part of the printed bibliography. The bibliography is also available for on-line searching through OCLC and on the Internet through SilverPlater.
The chapter editors are Humphrey Tonkin, of the University of Hartford, U.S.A., and Detlev Blanke, of Humboldt University, Germany.
A volume of Esperanto-related papers from the journal Language Problems & Language Planning is now available. Although LPLP never specialized in articles on Esperanto, many were published over the years. Because the journal was not widely distributed, especially in its early years, many of the present articles have been difficult to find. A limited number of copies of the volume have been purchased by ESF for free distribution to libraries. Address queries to ejl@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu. The volume contains the following articles:
For more detailed information, contact: Dr. Katalin Smidéliusz +36-94-312-248 (fax) or smidik@rik.bdtf.hu.
The preferred language of the list is Esperanto. "We made this choice with some reluctance," write list managers, "since there are undoubtedly many people with an interest in interlinguistics who are not proficient in Esperanto. On the other hand, we feel that the quality of the list will be higher if all the participants have first-hand experience of the subject matter, as well as access to the considerable literature in Esperanto."
The following topics are currently open for discussion: The linguistic description of Esperanto; the sociology of the Esperanto community; the description and development of the global (inter)linguistic system; the relationships between Esperanto and other linguistic movements or trends (e.g. minority languages, linguistic rights, English as an international language); the applied linguistics of Esperanto; the social and linguistic development of other planned languages with a speech community. The list is NOT intended for discussion of planned language projects which do not have a social base, nor of proposed reforms in Esperanto.
Readers wishing to subscribe to the list should send to Majordomo@Helsinki.Fi an e-mail message containing the single line "subscribe bja-listo your@full.address" (without quotes and with your full address in place of "your@full.address"). The list administrator is Jouko Lindstedt (Jouko.Lindstedt@Helsinki.Fi). More complete information is available at http://esperantic.org/ced/bja-listo.htm.
The possibility of "radio" broadcasts being distributed over the Internet solves problems of broadcast scheduling, since the broadcasts take the form of downloadable computer files. Such distribution is also independent of traditional broadcast limitations of weather and distance, since the medium is the World Wide Web. (Thus the Polish Radio Esperanto broadcasts to North America, for example, represent a very substantial increase in the number of potential listeners, especially in Western regions.) The principal negative aspect of web broadcasts is the comparative unavailability of appropriate computer equipment in many parts of the world. Email correspondence (in Polish or Esperanto) concerning the Esperanto broadcasts may be addressed to pettyn@radio.com.pl.
Esperanto Studies and Interlinguistics.
Esperantic Studies Foundation.