Lyrics in Esperanto

Well it's been hard to find out what Paolo's been up to lately - from what I can tell he is extremely busy with finishing his album, Gnoseological Paradigms. He has been promoting it in Italy, and trying to decide on artwork to go with it etc. Hence all my tangents into language and Esperanto. These tangents have turned out to be of more relevance than I had first thought though...

Busy as he is, Paolo has been keeping an eye on this blog and was very interested in the response from the Esperanto readers, who have kindly commented and offered insights into Esperanto, language in general and places I can get started with it, which has been great [thanks everyone :-D).

He told me that he was intrigued to find out more about Esperanto; that it had such a great following and that there was such a lively debate about it's existence and it's future. He was also interested in it from a linguistic point of view and he was pretty enthusiastic about the potential for including a song or songs in Esperanto on his next album - as some of you may or may not already be aware, Paolo experiments with many different languages and linguistic concepts in his music. He wondered whether there were any other musicians or writers using Esperanto as their principal medium - does anyone know?

He told me that his next album will include a song in Bahasa Indonesian, which is another artificially-created language which is also spoken by quite a few people. Esperanto seems like a logical choice and ripe for further investigation!

So as soon as I have finished training my replacements at work, and gone on holiday to Devon, I'll be able to give my study of Esperanto (and all the issues surrounding it) much more attention. So there will be more Esperanto for me come August!

If anyone is interested in finding out more about Paolo's take on language, linguistics and music, [and if you haven't already] why not check out the YouTube videos below, where he talks about it more eloquently than I ever could - [although please bear in mind that neither of us wrote the subtitles, which are ok but not perfect! x]

I think I bit off more than I can chew with my Esperanto post...?

I think if I continue investigating language, lingusitcs etc. I'll be biting off more than I can chew. I have a degree in English but that was a while ago now and I definitely don't have the most informed mind when it comes to these things - good reason to find out more, I guess.

It won't stop me, but I guess if I'm going to put myself out there I will stick to the maxim, "There are no stupid questions" and then hopefully I can navigate the blogsphere ok. Anyway, I'm all for being educated, so feel free all to put me right :-D

I quit my job this week, and from August I will have a lot more time to devote to starting my new business, promoting Paolo's music and learning more about language (including Esperanto, which sounds REALLY interesting - more than I had thought it would be actually), music and all sorts. I hope to resume my study of Italian and, if it proves possible, I think I'd quite like to have a shot at learning Esperanto. (Although as I have an active toddler zooming around, this could be rather ambitious! Nothing wrong with ambition I guess!)

So lots of things I want to achieve - I'm impatient to get going but will have to do things piecemeal until then.

Paolo is very busy right now - too busy to give me much stuff to blog about so I will continue to blunder through the subject matter his music has opened up to me, finding out things for myself in the mean time.

Anyone who fancies pointing me in the direction of particularly simple Esperanto learning tools (ideally online), I'd be very grateful. Of course I can research things for myself, but a little direction from those who know is never a bad thing. Thanks also to all the people who commented!

Esperanto - a changing [but not evolving] language?

My previous post had a comment from someone I don't know [thanks for stopping by Bill, it's lovely to know that someone has read something I wrote, especially as I only just started this blog! :-D]

He wanted to chat about Esperanto, and why not? I do remember that people used to [and may still] laugh at Esperanto. I think that much hilarity seemed to come from the fact that it was a 'made up' language - but what's wrong with that - aren't all languages 'made up'?

Anyway...he wrote:

"I am confident that people can and do succeed in intervening consciously to ensure the survival and expansion of particular languages. The birth and growth of Esperanto are examples. As most people know, Esperanto is a planned language which belongs to no one country or group of states."

Nothing wrong with a planned language in my opinion. No problems there then. He talks about the use of Esperanto and includes a link to http://www.esperanto.net/ and I have visited it and will go back for a more thorough inspection when I get time [more time, more time NEED more time!] but his last comment has me befuddled a bit:

"Esperanto continues to change - the word evolve seems to imply inevitability, so I won't use it."

Which brought me up short and confused. I thought that the word evolve meant to change gradually, over time. I suppose there are Darwinian connotations and maybe that's what he means by implied inevitability. But what's wrong with inevitable change in language? And anyway, maybe I'm being really obtuse [in which case please forgive me,] but isn't change inevitable in all languages? Even constructed languages?

And either way, what's wrong with the concept of inevitable change in language? I find it reassuring to know that as we change, our language will inevitably change to accomodate and reflect that. Maybe I'm just splitting hairs, or missing the point or, I don't know, failing in some way.

I genuinely don't know - I'm not trying to be cute or clever I just don't know. But inquiring minds want to know! Bill, if you're still reading, please do tell! :-D