16 JUN 2006

 

 

 

Dearest Grace:

 

Again, THANK YOU so very much for your kind hospitality. Though we never made it to your real home (which sounds to be very modern and attractive), we certainly had a fine experience during our escapade through your larger home, Beijing. I have no doubt that these few hours will long linger in my memory. Without your help, I would never have been able to enjoy that lovely lady at the apartments, for example. Please try really hard to get her to possibly instigate an Esperanto group in her complexes, so she and I, along with some of her braver souls, can communicate during my next visit. Esperanto, I am not sure if you know that, can be learned by most anyone in less than a year. Any of the club members in Beijing, young or old, would be glad to help facilitate their learning of at least the basics. The E-o table of correlatives alone is worth the trouble of learning.  At http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/correlatives.html Don Harlow has a good summary of basic grammar and the table of correlatives. Please honor his copyright request.

 

You, as a linguist, are bound to fall in love with this language as others have with our background, and not as a language of itself, but as a vehicle for teaching other foreign languages.

 

If the proof of the pudding, as we say, is in the eating, then E-o is good pudding. At the meeting, several of the members were as new to Esperanto as I was/am, yet we had no trouble holding a lively conversation. I was so excited, you have no idea. Prior to last Saturday, I had never really used Esperanto in an actual conversation with strangers. All I had done was what I suggest the learners in our E:P:N classes do at the beginning and end of everyone of their session: read, ponder, and then translate a proverb or saying into that language, followed by a solicitation of feedback from relatives or friends. In my case, I always used my dance students to get a feedback from. It found it fascinating to discover how many ways there were of interpreting famous sayings. In the field of selling, I’ve determined that the degree of one’s understanding of these differences determines the degree of one’s success.

 

Grace, I gave Mr. WEN Jingen one of my books for you and some printouts of a typical 3-way dialog with a “fly on the wall” giving a blow-by-blow description of what is happening. Please contact him at 68994740 (office) or 82273068 9 (home) to arrange a pickup and visit. He will guide you to find a club member you deem to be most suitable for helping these people at the complexes. Instinct tells me that the bubbly lady who showed us around will be a permanent part of whatever manages to mature through this study. I’ve had the pleasure to work with a teacher here in Orlando who could qualify as her (spiritual) twin sister. Their vivaciousness and true caring is rare to say the least. I’ve always admired these beautiful souls, along with angelic people like you and me, of course. J

 

Grace, in reference to the text in the sheet protectors: I like that format because it allows one to be there (virtually) while contrasting thoughts and feelings are being expressed. This format would also help some of the “conversational English” teachers, especially those still too young to have more than one point of view. I think students at all levels deserve better.  They need a teacher who has learned the craft of comparing and contrasting opposing points of view.  If you could somehow develop your thesis on the value and impact of forensic trialogues, it would be a godsend to the project. Even the dialogs from the award winning TV series back in the late 50’s titled “The Advocate” could be included in your corpora. They were phenomenal dialogs.  Each compelled you to cast a verdict in his/her favor, thereby leaving viewers with the dilemma of having to choose.  It was back then that I formed my first opinions on the E:P:N theorem, noticing that whenever the twelve jurors were comprised of (what appeared to be) more E’s and P’s than N’s, they generally were unable to reach a verdict. Let’s talk.

 

IMPORTANT!

 

If you wish that something be kept confidential, please indicate that clearly. For the sake of the study, open discussions are the better choice, but I will honor anyone’s request for privacy . . . on anything.

 

I look forward to hearing from you after you make contact with Li (if I remember her name correctly). You must be the judge about whether to first meet with Jingen or go there first and get some sort of response to the suggestion (of them, or at least her, learning a little Esperanto before my next visit). Next week I will start the same approach with oldsters in an apartment complex here in Orlando. My intent is to then take at least one of them with me on my trip to show, first hand, that anyone, at any age, can learn to communicate, when they pick the right medium.

 

Have a great day!

 

Enthusiastically,

 

Joe

http://mylnn.net

 

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