Now, you may begin to wonder.

WHY ARE WE EVEN STUDYING THIS?

there are the reasons based on personal gain, I suppose.

- to gain more knowledge so that we can get good jobs and earn lots and lots of money!!!!

but it just doesn't seem right, does it?

yes, when we applied, it MIGHT have been for that reason, but not anymore, or for me, at least.

A great variety of reasons were explored when we discussed this during our first lesson.

Some of them are:

We're surrounded by Malay-speaking countries. Naturally, it would seem quite disadvantageous if we were to speak only English. Communication is of utmost importance in order to form a cohesive society, whose bonds have now been stretched, limited by our geographical borders and even some politicians. Singapore has already been disadvantaged as our political system and economic activity is more stable, and hence we are not as similar to the other Southeast Asian nations as they are to each other. This is practically a necessary requirement.

We need to learn more about other cultures and accept them. How would YOU feel being an oddball? Being a Chinese-dominated society in a Malay-dominated region, we are somewhat distant and unrelated to the other Southeast Asian nations. Since we can't BECOME them, then we'll have to UNDERSTAND them and leave it at that. That's about the best we can do.

We need to be better equipped for our future. Of course. We wouldn't take a course on this if we couldn't use it to benefit the region. Studying this knowledge will allow us to learn more about the region and then we can put this knowledge to good use in the future, hence benefitting the region.

and those three are basically the main reasons why I think the RSP was set up in the first place.

Also, I seem to vaguely remember Ms Lee asking us to research on Esperanto during our first lesson.

So here it is:

Esperanto - is by far the most widely spoken consructed international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L.L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means 'one who hopes' in the language itself. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding. Esperanto has had continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers for over a century. By most estimates, there are approximately one thousand native speakers. However, no country has adopted the language officially. Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio broadcasting. Also, there is an Esperanto Wikipedia that contains over 100,000 articles as of June 2008.There is evidence that learning Esperanto may provide a good foundation for learning languages in general. Some state education systems offer basic instruction and elective courses in Esperanto. Esperanto is also the language of instruction in one university, the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj in San Marino.


Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

WOW.

imagine another english.

imagine having to learn 3 languages.

english, chinese, esperanto

maybe even malay

that'll be scary but what I don't understand is how such a language could die out. Even when the Japanese invaded China during World War II and forced the Chinese to speak Japanese, the Chinese never fully gave in. To this day, the Chinese language is one of the most powerful languages, and it is one of the more ancient scripts as well. It never died out, and became stronger after enduring such obstacles.

So why did Esperanto die out? After it was declared to be the world's second language, I thought that maybe there would be a surge to learn it. But instead, it just fell off a cliff and vanisheddisappeared.

sometimes mysteries aren't meant to be solved.

so I guess I'll just leave you to decide for yourselves.

and apart from that, I realise that we learnt this major new word in our first lesson.

its called

Assalamualaikum

oh wow the longness of this word! its arabic, and the proper reply is wa'alaikumsalam.

Some information on the word is:

As-Salāmu `Alaykum (السلام عليكم) is an Arabic spoken greeting used by Muslims as well as Arab Christians and Jews. The term Salam in Arabic means "Peace". The greeting may also be transliterated as Salaam 'Alaykum. It means "Peace be upon you". The traditional response is wa `Alaykum As-Salaam, meaning "and upon you be peace."

This type of greeting is common in the Middle East and Africa; its Hebrew counterpart greeting is Shalom aleichem and in Maltese is Sliem ghalikom.

The greeting is almost always accompanied by a handshake.

In Arabia the greeting is associated with two or three light kisses. On the Indian subcontinent, the saying of Salaam is often accompanied with an obeisance, performed by bowing low and raising the right hand till it is in front of the forehead. In Indonesia, greeting is usually accompanied by a kind of two-handed "handshake". None of these is derived from Islamic custom, but they are based in cultural traditions.

Many Turkish people, including more Secular and non-religious people, say "Selam" as an equivalent to "Hello" or "Hi".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assalam_alaikum

and another word

Shalom

its not too long haha :D its hebrew

Shalom (שָׁלוֹם) is a Hebrew word meaning peace, completeness, and welfare and can be used idiomatically to mean both hello and goodbye. As it does in English, it can refer to either peace between two entities (especially between man and God or between two countries), or to the well-being, welfare or safety of an individual or a group of individuals. The word is also found in many other expressions and names. Its equivalent cognate in Arabic is salaam, sliem in Maltese, Shlomo (ܫܠܡܐ) in Syriac-Assyrian and sälam in Ethiopian Semitic languages from the Proto-Semitic root S-L-M.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalom

and also, the classic malay one

Selamat sejahtera

see?

they all mean the exact same thing.

basically, they all translate to peace be with you

and for example, the other variations also sound alike

its exactly like ESPERANTO

like an international second language but with lots of twists around the words.

it just shows how the different societies were linked, even in ancient times. After all, they couldn't have developed these shocking similarities without interacting. maybe the ancient world wasn't as underdeveloped as we thought.

MY EVERYDAY NEED`