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Has Anyone Here Used the Pasporta Servo?

 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto Post Reply
17 messages over 3 pages: 13  Next >>
doviende
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
languagefixatio
Joined 5774 days ago

533 posts - 1245 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese

 
 Message 9 of 17
05 July 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged 
Take a look around for the threads with more resources for Esperanto. There are a bunch of helpful websites. Also, I strongly recommend Sprachprofi's Anki deck ("Esperanto101") that is available via public download in the Anki flashcard program. I just finished going through all the cards in it today, and every word in there is very helpful.

Edited by doviende on 05 July 2010 at 11:45am

1 person has voted this message useful



Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6258 days ago

2608 posts - 4866 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 10 of 17
05 July 2010 at 1:20pm | IP Logged 
brian91 wrote:
Thanks for the replies. Last night I ordered an old Teach Yourself
Esperanto book for about £10 on amazon, and I'm
hoping that Esperanto will be the easiest language I've ever had he privilege of
learning. :D

It probably will be. For Esperanto, don't discard Lernu.net because it's the most
complete language-learning website I have ever seen, hosting a dozen different
multimedia courses plus resources on grammar and vocabulary and texts with on-click
translations for intermediate students. If you register, you can get a free
"lingvohelpanto" (language helper), a real person who will correct your exercises and
answer your questions.

I made an overview of the most important Esperanto resources at

http://www.learnlangs.com/blog/2009/11/08/for-those-interest ed-in-esperanto/

. Once you're half-way through your course I also recommend working through the affix
exercise at
affixes/">http://www.learnlangs.com/blog/2009/12/30/practise -esperanto-affixes/ .
Mastering the affixes is essential for fluency.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 05 July 2010 at 1:20pm

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Fasulye
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Moderator
Germany
fasulyespolyglotblog
Joined 5635 days ago

5460 posts - 6006 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish
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 Message 11 of 17
05 July 2010 at 2:36pm | IP Logged 
I have quite some positive experience with using "Pasporta Servo". I was a guest in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Wallonia/Belgium and in Denmark. I am a sociable person who speaks Esperanto fluently and who prefers having personal contacts with the population in foreigen countries. Host families take a guest for 2-3 days by using Pasporta Servo. Of course it can't be longer because it's about hosting unknown people. The success depends on how good the relationship is between the guest and the guest family.

For me it's easy to make contacts with unknown people and I'm open-minded to any kind of culture, so I enjoy such way of travelling a lot. I haven't used "Pasporta Servo" for travel anymore for years due to lack of money.

Only once I made a negative experience, where I was a guest of a working man, who came home late, so I was left alone the whole day long in a foreign city, where I had no contacts. In this situation I felt very lonely. If I use "Pasporta Servo", I want to speak Esperanto all day long (so make use of an "immersion" situation) and I want to socialize and communicate with my guest family. I appreciate, if they give me some guiding in a foreign town or city.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 05 July 2010 at 3:37pm

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brian91
Senior Member
Ireland
Joined 5232 days ago

335 posts - 437 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 12 of 17
12 July 2010 at 1:09pm | IP Logged 
Sprachprofi wrote:
I stayed with Pasporta Servo hosts in Stockholm and Montreal; it was a great experience. You
should really ask my boyfriend though (e-mail through chucksmith.de), he's an American who travelled all over
Europe and Brazil with Pasporta Servo.


Okay, it took me a while but I finally emailed him today. Thanks! :D ''And now we play... the waiting game'' -
Homer Simpson.
1 person has voted this message useful



amuzulo
Newbie
Germany
chucksmith.de/
Joined 6098 days ago

4 posts - 9 votes

 
 Message 13 of 17
12 July 2010 at 9:46pm | IP Logged 
brian91 wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:
I stayed with Pasporta Servo hosts in Stockholm and Montreal; it was a
great experience. You
should really ask my boyfriend though (e-mail through chucksmith.de), he's an American who travelled all over
Europe and Brazil with Pasporta Servo.


Okay, it took me a while but I finally emailed him today. Thanks! :D ''And now we play... the waiting game'' -
Homer Simpson.


Well, I thought instead of answering your email, I'd post here to let everyone benefit from it. I spent 6 months
travelling through Brazil and Europe in 2002 using it and it worked quite well. I only had a problem in one city...
Prague, I guess because the wife of the Esperanto speaker answered and we couldn't communicate enough to
make each other understood, so I moved on to somewhere else in the Czech Republic. Also, if you travel long-
term, people will tell you, "Oh, you should meet so-and-so in this nearby city."

Having said that, Pasporta Servo is a great way to start making friends abroad. I remember going to Taipei for a
conference and then discovered all the Esperanto speakers in that city were busy, so I ended up staying with
someone from Azerbaijan in a small city called Pingtung in the south... something I never would've considered
doing without Esperanto. I could go on and on, but yes, it really is that easy, but you have to be flexible around
other people's schedules.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There's also quite a difference between staying with college students and families.
Typically, the college student will give you a key and you have more freedom, but you end up doing more stuff
alone... with a family it's more likely they will want to have meals with you and want you to follow their schedule
more... "When will you be home?" I've found both experiences to be quite pleasant though.

Also, you might enjoy reading about Amanda Higley's 16 month Pasporta Servo trip and her experiences along
the way. http://web.archive.org/web/20060927160513/http://www.tejo.or g/ps/ps/ps_aventuro1999.htm In
any case, if you have any more specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them. :)

Edited by amuzulo on 12 July 2010 at 9:53pm

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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6944 days ago

4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 14 of 17
13 July 2010 at 6:05am | IP Logged 
brian91 wrote:
For that matter, has anyone here used couchsurfing.org?


I've used it quite a bit and have been getting a lot more out of it than just a place to crash. For example on my trip to Finland I got in touch with local couchsurfers who in turn invited me to the countryside to spend Midsummer's weekend with them and their friends and families. It was a real treat and something that really made my learning of Finnish come alive. There have also been a few instances while couchsurfing in other areas where my host's/hosts' English or French was so bad that it turned out to be more effective to communicate in other languages that I've studied or been studying (e.g. German, Hungarian, Polish) even if I didn't consider myself to be fluent in them.

Pasporta Servo from what I can tell can accomplish the same thing but has the "filter" of requiring a certain competency in Esperanto from everyone involved in order to function properly (or at least to distinguish it from Couchsurfing, Hospitality Club or BeWelcome). Naturally the membership pool in Pasporta Servo is much smaller than that of other hospitality networks.
5 persons have voted this message useful



lackinglatin
Triglot
Groupie
United States
randomwritingsetc.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5768 days ago

62 posts - 146 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Modern Hebrew
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 15 of 17
31 October 2010 at 2:10am | IP Logged 
I used it this summer on the spur of the moment at the end of a month long trip in France. I found places to stay in Grenoble, Bern, and Zurich--and that string of experiences ended up being one of the highlights of the whole trip.

I stayed with a retired history professor, who ended up buying me a bottle of Chartreuse Verte, as well as opening up a nice bottle from his wine cellar. Then I stayed with a guy who had, several years prior, taken a year and a half off from life to bike from Switzerland to *Australia* (*not* Austria, yes Australia), and had been speaking Esperanto from 10 years. Meeting him profoundly affected my life. He also saved me; I was stuck in Bern at the last minute, and with just 6 hours notice before, he accepted me gladly--something that I imagine would be rare to find in Switzerland... Nice as the Swiss are, they don't seem to be fond of last-minute planning. ;)

The last meeting, in Zurich, was good, but short. I would have spent two nights there, but I got caught in Bern, so... That was that.

I also used couchsurfing, and enjoyed the experience... But Esperanto build a bond that is significantly more personal, you know? It's something special. Getting to go around meeting them feels almost like a pilgrimage to your home country, while you grew up in a foreign land, or something. (Perhaps I'm just projecting; I never felt at home in my native land...)

It was one of the reasons I learned Esperanto in the first place, and I certainly wasn't disappointed. I remember one of the stories that inspired me was a guy who lived for a year and a half in Europe on just a couple thousand dollars and Pasporta Servo. Spoke it like a 'denaskulo' by the end, I hear. I think I copied the story somewhere on my blog at one point, if you search it: randomwritingsetc.blogspot.com

Best of luck!
4 persons have voted this message useful



Sierra
Diglot
Senior Member
Turkey
livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6912 days ago

296 posts - 411 votes 
Speaks: English*, SwedishB1
Studies: Turkish

 
 Message 16 of 17
31 October 2010 at 10:11am | IP Logged 
This is so incredibly cool.

I have no particular interest in Esperanto in and of itself, but this is just
awesome. I took a homeless dude to breakfast once and he told me this long story
about a secret society of hobo artists who would gather on street corners and under
bridges and trade their drawings and poetry and collaborate on projects and stuff. I
suspect he was largely making it up, but this kinda reminds me of that. Esperanto is like
a secret travelers' code. Whooooa. Who knows, by the time I get to a satisfactory
level in Turkish, this may have worked its way far enough into my brain that Esperanto
will be on my hitlist.


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