Every couple of years World Esperanto Association (UEA) makes a statement at United Nations to pay more attention to linguistic inequality and (at least a couple of years ago) to consider teaching Esperanto as per UNESCO’s recommendation in 1985. Usually nothing happens out of it. UEA is an NGO registered with United Nations, but there are many NGOs and many things they ask for.
Now, I have just discovered that there is an internet petition to United Nations to recognize Esperanto as the international language.
I have read Science Fiction stories based around physics, chemistry, biology and computers. But I have not seen one before based around linguistics. For all I know there are many of them out there and I just wasn’t interested before.
I am interested now, and so I really enjoyed “We Have Always Spoken Panglish” story by Suzette Haden Elgin (via Esperanto blog entry). I especially enjoyed the in-jokes such as
Exactly a month ago, I went to a Exactly a month ago, I went to a for my alma mater in New York. At it, there was a presentation by Ms Melanie Hardman, who is an Innovation Director for PepsiCo.
After the presentation I taked briefly to Melanie and asked whether PepsiCo looked at advertising or sponsoring events in virtual worlds such as Second Life. I explained how the presence in SL worked really well for American Cancer Society and how the prime mover advantage was still available in that space.
One of my conversations was commented on by Dr Anton Chuvakin. I had replied to him in his comments, but unfortunately he keeps reposting the article to new services without bothering to address the reply, so I am putting it here as a central reference.
Basically, Anton (if I may call him this) thinks that the universe of choices around log file discussion is not just
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I have the news and it is good. I have passed my Teaching Certificate (Part 1 Unit 1). In a retrospect, the flashcards themselves did not help much, but the process of putting descriptions into the flashcards did. So, it was indirectly helpful after all.
My weekest point was marked to be the description of positioning and formations. Not surprising, considering that they are described in a text form, but to understand them one has to imagine them visually.