Esperanto

I have a patient that has that listed as his preferred language. So we have “preferred” and “required”. Required means that we have to have a translator that we provide. Usually through an iPad. Preferred means pt can speak English but prefers say Spanish or in this case “Esperanto “. I saw it and had to look it up. Laughed inside. Then had to ask what he would prefer. So he wanted that. So had to look on our iPad translator service. Has like over 70 languages. Not that one.
he had the balls to be ****ed.
 
So I posted recently about my Finnish grandfather who spoke lots of languages. He was potentially the admiral-general of Denver, CO Esperanto in the later years of his life (maybe 1940-1960s). I literally have not heard this word uttered since I was a kid and my grandma mentioned it. Is this still alive?
 
benyflyguy said:
I have a patient that has that listed as his preferred language. So we have “preferred” and “required”. Required means that we have to have a translator that we provide. Usually through an iPad. Preferred means pt can speak English but prefers say Spanish or in this case “Esperanto “. I saw it and had to look it up. Laughed inside. Then had to ask what he would prefer. So he wanted that. So had to look on our iPad translator service. Has like over 70 languages. Not that one.
he had the balls to be ****ed.
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If the patient demands to go that route, I would make it as difficult as possible for him. Or ask him to bring in a translation book, and go.....slow.....as....hell in conversation. He's doing it just to be a dick. When in Rome.
 
As I recall, Esperanto was supposed to be a "universal" language so that people could speak to one another and understand one another worldwide. I've been told it is fairly easy to learn, as some of the stumbling blocks (like irregular verbs) are not used. When I was in college, many of the language professors wore badges that said "I speak Esperanto."
 
I speak Esperanto like a native :)
 
Esperanto is like the metric system.
If God had intended us to use the metric system, he wouldn't have given us the cubit.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Except, of course, the metric system is actually useful in daily life.
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It is, actually. I have to do engineering calculations in both English and SI units, depending on which side of the world I happen to be working, and the math in SI units is a whole lot easier.

What isn't simpler is knowing what standard design parameters are off the top of your head. I know that a standard filter loading rate is 3 gpm/sf. I have to think about 8 m/hr even though I can do the math in my head to get the diameter.
 
flyingron said:
I speak Esperanto like a native :)
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I was very surprised a few years ago to find out that here are actually people who speak it as a native language. Only a few hundred of them, but still.
 
172andyou said:
I was very surprised a few years ago to find out that here are actually people who speak it as a native language. Only a few hundred of them, but still.
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Where do they live? I can't picture a group that small being raised with Esperanto as their native language.
 
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GaryM said:
Where do they live? I can't picture a group that small being raised with Esperanto as a their native language.
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Well, they live on the island of Esperant, of course. That is what makes them Esperanto.
 
Morgan3820 said:
Sounds like a solution in search of a problem
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I mean, not being able to communicate across languages is a pretty big problem. Having a universal language, instead of having to learn the language of every country you visit or do business with, is a solution to that problem. Just turned out to be English instead of Esperanto.
 
172andyou said:
I mean, not being able to communicate across languages is a pretty big problem. Having a universal language, instead of having to learn the language of every country you visit or do business with, is a solution to that problem. Just turned out to be English instead of Esperanto.
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And before English was French
 
benyflyguy said:
I have a patient that has that listed as his preferred language.
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Interestingly it was actually a physician who constructed the language. I’m guessing he didn’t find many patients who spike it.

Languages were obviously a passion for him - he spoke quite a few, and he had constructed another language earlier.
 
Morgan3820 said:
And before English was French
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Is that true? I've never read anything to suggest that any language ever in history was as widely spoken as english today. The colonial languages, primarily english, french, spanish - then dutch, portuguese and others - were common in colonial areas, but did they ever dominate second language acquisition the way english does today?
 
It is my understanding French was the common language for diplomats in the 18,19th centuries.
 
You know, circling back to the forum, common language probably didn't matter as much until we had airplanes. Travel from country to country, outside Europe anyway, took weeks. Airplane travel was as much an improvement in communications as transportation in and of itself. To me, the faster the communications is, the more important a common language is.
 
When I was a kid , the older girls spoke "Pig Latin" .
A few years back I happened to stop to visit an old friend who's wife was fluent in "Pig Latin".
She still spoke it with other lady friends of the era.
70 years of comunicating with the other ladies so that the husbands had no clue as to what they were saying .
 
Morgan3820 said:
It is my understanding French was the common language for diplomats in the 18,19th centuries.
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Yes.

And WWII changed that —not just for diplomacy but also for business and science.

Before WWII, scientific papers were published in the local language. The three big ones were German (Einstein’s famous early papers), French and English. All three languages were spoken at the famous Solvay physics conference of 1927 (with Einstein, Curie, and a bunch of Nobel laureates).

After WWII pretty much every scientist wanted to publish in English, or Russian. Then Russian fell to the wayside after the Iron Curtain fell, and just English was left.

I attended one conference around 2005 in Ukraine. English was the official language of the meeting, but I was one of only two non-native-Russian speakers. The other guy, an Italian, got fed up listening to talks in incomprehensibly faltering English and went home, leaving just me. So then I gave a lot of thought to leaving the room as well, just to see how long it would take for the locals to end their misery and switch to Russian.
 
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A few years ago, I had the 'opportunity' to attend a local meeting of business owners in our district of Saigon, Vietnam. Most of the companies of course were Vietnamese, but there were quite a few Korean companies as well (mostly building contractors.) I was the only American in the room of a few hundred people.

The Koreans generally couldn't speak Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese generally couldn't speak Korean, but many were able to communicate with one another in English.
 
For those of you curious what Esperanto sounds like, here’s a video clip of the movie “Incubus” (1965) with a young William Shatner and co-Star speaking Esperanto:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhgl7wL8h-8

To me, it sounds like a mixture of Italian and Spanish (but I don’t speak either of those languages)
 
ChopAndDrop said:
To me, it sounds like a mixture of Italian and Spanish (but I don’t speak either of those languages)
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Yes.

Spanish with a very simplified grammar and system to express tense.
 
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