Jen mia konfesio — confession time for me.
Like many other students of Esperanto before and after me, I started with the well-worn postal course (if you live in the United States, you can sign up for it via Esperanto-USA's website). Back in the fall of 2005, when I decided I was daft enough to try la Internacia Lingvo, I had a (somewhat foolish) personal goal to ace the course by year's end.
Foolish, yes, but I did complete the course by year's end. And I did eventually receive an atestilo (certificate) for my efforts.
And then for some time, I foolishly let things slide.
Too many other things crowded for attention inside my head — my supermarket job, the mindless scrolling thru social media in general, and my failed effort to create a video channel devoted to traditional storytelling and the performing arts.
And then there were the occasional naysayers. They included a dear storyteller friend, now long gone and long forgotten by the world (or so it seems). And a member of my Unitarian Universalist congregation who, at a New Year's Eve party, was of the absolute conviction that Esperanto itself was dead — or at least it was to him.
While so many people have helped me come around to my original sense that Esperanto is indeed something worth learning and using, the one soul who brought me back to the realm of the gesamideanoj is not just an Esperantist but also a live-streamer —in Esperanto and English — on Twitch. (There is more to this story, but it will require me to introduce you properly to them later.)
Suffice it to say that seeing how Esperanto has found a home on Twitch, however humble, was enough to convince me to try one more time.
Back in 2005, the textbooks that were available were of little use to me in terms of developing and enlarging my impoverished personal vocabulary, much less get a firmer grip on grammar. Enter the completely upgraded Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto by Tim Owen and Judith Meyer (Hachette–Hodder & Stoughhton, 2018, available from Librejo Esperanta). While not without some proofreading and typographical errors — not to mention the idiosyncrasies of UK English that some Yanks may not immediately grasp — it does offer more current vocabulary than its predecessors, along with a gradual easing in of the major grammatical points.
Not that I would want to yeet my laminated tabelvortoj chart anytime soon... nor do I intend to.
(This post is a work in progress / process and will probably be expanded and revised eventually.)
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