isa-normaladvance-1909-00036

Description:	36THE NORMAL ADVANCErounding them according to the one they havethe most intercourse with.Concerning Esperanto itself the reason forits wonderful progress during the last fiveyears is given as its simplicity. Any one havingan average common school education should beable to read the language after studying theprinciples for two or three hours. The alphabetconsists of 28 letters, 5 vowels and 23 consonants. The English letters Q, W, X and Y havebeen omitted and supersigned letters addedwith the C, G, H, J, S and U. With 12 exceptions the pronunciation is the same as inEnglish. But the beauty of it all is that eachletter has but one sound. Any little pocket dictionary in English will give 6 sounds for thevowel A and from 2 to 4 sounds for each of theother vowels. It is indeed a pleasure to knowthat A is always as the A in father, that I isalways the EE in seen and U like the OO infool.In word pronunciation each vowel takes asyllable and the accent is always on the lastsyllable but one (penultimate.) Tra-i-re, kon-fir-mi, res-pek-ti, sek-vas, etc., etc.There are no silent letters to act as stumbling blocks in spelling and pronunciation thewords are spelled exactly as pronounced andpronounced exactly as spelled. Gar-den-la-bor-ad-o, mar-ve-tur-ar-to, kresk-aj-o.Esperanto has this peculiarity: it is made upwholly of root-words. Roots that never changetheir meaning except through the use of a prefix or suffix. These roots are chosen from thelanguages of the world according to their fitness. An eminent authority, Dr. D. O. S.Lowell, after an examination of 2,446 words inEsperanto gave out the following results: 88per cent., occurred in the French, 85 per cent.,in Italian, 83 per cent., in English, 76 per cent.,in German, 64 per cent., in Latin and 42 percent., in Russian. Accepting this as authorityit would be twice as difficult for a Russian tomaster Esperanto as the Frenchman. TheEnglishman would have to learn 17 words ofevery hundred in Esperanto but we must remember that Esperanto cannot begin to havethe words to express its meaning that wTe employ in English. There are no separate wordsto express the female, to express words of opposite meaning it is all done by the prefixes andsuffixes.Now just a word as to prefixes and suffixes.Of the former we have in use at present 14,of the latter 24. These never change in meaning or form so when once knownthey are always known. If you have the idea BOY(knabo) and wish to express GIRL the suffixIN is used (knabino.) If the idea GOOD(bona) is to be used with its opposite BAD,the prefix MAL- is used (malbona.) NE- isused as a negative, RE- to repeat -AR denotesa collection or group as, VORTO, a word,A^ORTARO, a collection of words, a dictionary. IL denotes a tool, as TRANCI to cut,TRANCILO, a knife. There is no limit to theuse of these prefixes and suffixes except clearness, KAT-ID-IN-ET-O, a tiny female kitten.Grammatical termination is another pointin favor of Esperanto. Of these we have four(1) For the part of speech (2) number (3)case and (4) tense. In general it may be saidthat the termination O shows the word to bea noun, the termination A that it is an adjec-tive, E shows grammatical adverbs. The terminal letter J denotes that a plural is expressed:KNABO, boy—KNABAJ, boys. The accusative case is showrn by the terminal letter Nwhich always follows the plural sign (J) whenever both are used together. MI VIDAS LAKESTON, I see the box MI VIDAS LAKESTOJN, I see the boxes. The simple tensesof the verb are shown by AS for the present, ISfor the past and OS for the future. The participle also plays an important part in theuse of the Esperanto verbs.The whole grammar is grasped in a moment. To be sure the better your education inother languages the more rapid advance willbe accorded you in Esperanto.The official organ of the Esperanto Association of North America is the AMERIKA ES-PERANTISTO, published in Chicago. Thisjournal has done immense good to the Esper-
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/34066
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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