I had no idea until first thing this morning when a colleague stuck a speech bubble on me with the word 'tere' on it (tere, a greeting hello or hi in estonian). that it was european day of languages today. so I went to the web site of the national centre for languages to find out more.The European Day of Languages is:
A Europe-wide celebration of all the world’s languages A day to kick-start language learning A chance to raise awareness about the value of language skills
A Europe-wide celebration of all the world’s languages A day to kick-start language learning A chance to raise awareness about the value of language skills
so as the language I had been given was estonian, I thought I would have a look at some estonian web sites, I was drawn to a particular site for no real reason other that I like the way it looked and worked. I have just spent a while looking at homeart.
3 comments:
Thank you for teaching me my first (and only) Estonian word!
My contribution is "Saluton", an Esperanto word. Learning languages is certainly a good thing, but a neglected question is: which language should I learn? I hope you’ll allow me to make the case for learning Esperanto, the planned international language. It has its speaker population scattered over the globe. The Esperanto Association of Britain is offering a free postal course in the language. Details (and the first lesson) are available from Esperanto Association of Britain,
Esperanto House
Station Road
Barlaston
Stoke-on-Trent
ST12 9DE
Tel: 0845 230 1887
e-mail: eab@esperanto-gb.org
I agree with Bill. This new language deserves serious attention!
I hope that the "European Day of Languages" will encourage many people to learn a new language. Especially in the United Kingdom where the interest in learning languages seems to be declining.
You may know that four schools in Britain have introduced Esperanto, the neutral international language, in order to test its propaedeutic values?
The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester. Why not extend this project to other countries as well? Further academic appraisal is essential.
An interesting video can be seen at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670
Otherwise http://www.lernu.net might help ?
I seem to have opened up the Esperanto debate, by simply posting about tere (hi in Estonian). Bill & Brian you are most welcome. I might not share your obvious belief in Esperanto, but I am more than happy for you to comment.
I was going to say that I believe that language is organic and by its nature evolves over many, many years rather than an academic creation over a couple of generations, but then BSL (sign language) is a development only standardised in recent times, however sign language is not global french signing is different as is American, for that matter even within the UK sign language varies from region to region, as the spoken word does.
That said pleased to have you guys here.
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