Interestingly (or not), Google apparently translates the word “Esperanto” as “Darby,” or so I gather from the translation of the People’s Almanac excerpt. That is:
“La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto rapide kaj facile. Esperanto estas la moderno, kultura lingvo por la internacia mondo. Simpla, fleksebla, praktiva solvo de la problemo de universala interkompreno, Esperanto meritas vian seriozan konsieron. Lernu la interlingvon Esperanto.”
translates as
The intelligent person learns the lingua Darby quickly and easily. Esperanto is the Moderno, a cultural language for the international world. Simple, flexible, praktiva solution of the problem of universal understanding, American deserves your serious konsieron. Learn the lingua Darby.
Darby?
Interesting…I know Spanish, and I was able to translate that pretty much immediately. Then again, I could probably have figured it out if I only knew English.
English: Darby-speaking countries
Esparanto: Esperanto-parolantaj landoj
…
Might simply be an inside joke from one of the Google Translate developers? Or perhaps a joke submitted by an Esperantist via a word-list of some kind? I guess it could be some kind of error, too.
Googling on “Esperanto to english”, I found this online translation program.
It translated the original from the column to:
Given that the translation is identical, including the same non-translated words and the same subtitution of “Darby”, it appears to me they are just using google translate.
I don’t know why you have that marked as ungrammatical. You are quoting and then translating a sentence fragment. Of course it isn’t going to read like a full sentence. However, if you look in the context of the original sentence, “the lingua Darby quickly” is perfectly grammatical. “An intelligent person can learn the language Esperanto quickly and easily.” “… the language Esperanto quickly…” is just a clipped bit from that statement.
Similarly, the next bit is also a sentence fragment, and thus one cannot judge the grammar of the excerpt on its own.
I just meant that the fragment was not a full sentence that, in and of itself, followed the grammatical rules of the language. If others disagree, or feel I used the word “ungrammatical” in error, I have no issue.
What? That can’t possibly true. Oh, you probably also mean the United States. Right? Europe, and the U.S. That’s the world right there.
Oh, and of course Canada – our little brother to the North. Did you know they’re actually an independent country? It’s so cute, they even have their own flag!
American (and Non-Spanish) speaker here. No problemo.
Hmmm, wish I needed an easy language credit at a liberal arts college…
Thought: I wonder if there’s an Esperanto accent? Being a made-up language, I’d bet the answer is "That’s the beauty of it – everyone gets to speak it in their own accent! A Brit can add an Intrusive R, a Canadian can throw in an “Eh?”…
…and an American can say “Hey, I can figure out the Starbucks menu in any country without learning another language.”
ps, anyone else trying not to remember the C. Estes Kefauver Memorial High School yearbook (Dacron, Ohio)?
The wide-angle photo of the Esperanto Club was captioned “Left to right: Mrs. Hampster, advisor”.
An increasing number of words in English are now derived on the spot, as needed, from the international scientific vocabulary. Which is Latin and Greek, So, really, Latin and Greek are not dead languages, they were just sleeping.
Drive by any public building and look at the signs out front. Schools are called attendance centers, jails are called correctional institutions, and hospitals are community medical campuses. The dump is a recycling and disposal facility, and the pound is a canine reclamation and redistribution enclosure.
A future time traveler from ancient Rome, after another few decades of this foolishness, will have no trouble understanding those signs, without bothering to learn troublesome words like school, jail, hospital, dump and pound.
