While Esperanto isn’t a particularly commonly spoken language (about 2,000,000 speakers worldwide, of whom 1000-2000 speak it as a first language), and of course isn’t tied to a particular nation, it seems like this could be a little more of a money earner for the site to help subsidise the production of courses for other languages. While Esperanto isn’t as popular among learners as a language that’s actually tied to a nation, it is certainly popular enough, and there is very little competition. Once Welsh is tied into the SSIBorg system, it’ll also make it easier to get people who don’t necessarily speak English to learn to speak Welsh too 
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We’re certainly very open to the idea - we’ve got another round of testing starting soon with the SSiBorg, and then probably in the spring we’ll be assessing where we’ve got to with that and seeing if we’re ready to cast the net a bit wider… 
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Well I happen to kinda speak Esperanto and so does @Deborah-SSi, so I’d say there was a pretty reasonable chance of some movement in that direction at some point 
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Huh. That would certainly make creating such a course easier…
Two million speakers worldwide? The great majority of whom are (or rather, have been have been!) learners?
That sounds pretty popular to me! 
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True; but compared with Polish or Italian? I had originally meant to type “Spanish or German” rather than “a language that’s tied to a nation”, but thought that those examples were a little too obvious.
I certainly wouldn’t mind learning to speak Esperanto; it would be interesting to learn to speak a conlang, and it’s yet another international language based community that I can join (since we’ve somehow managed to create an international community of Welsh speakers here ).
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Oh aye, you are right there. Much smaller than big state languages. But important to remember that most languages are rather small affairs, and the great majority of them are tied to nations. Even some state languages eg Icelandic may have fewer people learning it than that - unless there are far more Icelandic learners than native speakers!
The other thing of course is that we could also create DiruIonenLaKimra (SSiW) in Esperanto. A lot of Esperanto speakers become interested in learning other languages so I’m sure there would be interest in learning ‘a Celtic language’ which would lead to more international awareness of SSi and how successful the method is.
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Indeed .
In particular, people who speak Esperanto but don’t speak English; potentially giving us future tourists who speak Welsh but not English, which makes the Welsh language more valuable to businesses.
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Ooh, clever! I like the idea!
“P’nawn da! Ga i …”
“Sorry, mate, you’ll have to speak English.”
“Sed bedaŭrinde mi ne parolas la anglan!”
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I would love to be a fly on the wall to see their faces in that situation!
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Quick question; I’ve been going through the SSi script from the Spanish course to basically come up with exercises for gradually getting better at using Esperanto, and very quickly I found something that google translate wasn’t giving me a useful answer for: the “I had better” pattern. The closest I’ve been able to find is something along the lines of “eble pli bonus se mi” (“perhaps it would be better” is as close as I can think of to a rough English translation). Is there anything closer that fills roughly the same meaning?
Also, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in the language between “I have done”, “I did” and “I was doing” (though the latter might better fit “mi estis fari”) - is that right?
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In Warsaw I came across the history of the Polish Jew who invented Esperanto, L L Zamenhof, incidently one of the few Jews on our tour who died a natural death. Our tour guide explained about the number of hours needed to become proficient in various languages. (I never see the number for Welsh.) Esperanto? 150. Sigh.
I’m not sure why exactly, but I would say "Mi devus … " - “I had better go” - “Mi devus iri”. It feels like it conveys the same idea to me.
Often there isn’t a lot of need to distinguish. Something is in the past and that’s that, but you can add more meaning if you feel you need to, for emphasis for example.
Mi faris - I did
Mi jam faris - I already did, but it feels more like “I have already done” in conversation
Mi estis faranta (or Mi farantis) - I was doing
Are you going to the Esperanto Congress in Edinburgh in May?
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I will be in Wales and will not have sufficient money, so no, I will not. I was under the impression that “Mi devus” was more “I should”, though I suppose that can cover “I’d better”.
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Strictly speaking “I should” is the general translation, you’re right, but thinking of situations when you would say it, I think it probably conveys "I’d better " as well. If I think of anything better, I’ll post it for you
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I’m not entirely sure that “I’d better” expresses anything different from “I should” in English… does it? Perhaps it has a slight additional implication that, not only is it something you should do, but also there might be negative consequences for you if you don’t? In any case, it’s not the kind of distinction which necessarily has to exist in any given language, I guess.
Just to throw in another suggestion though, how about something like Estus pli bona, ke mi… or Estus bona ideo, ke mi…?
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I’d better implies negative consequences for not doing it. For example, if I find something that doesn’t belong to me, I should hand it in somewhere. If I don’t want poor grades, I’d better study.
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Estas kimra-Esperanta kurso nune se vi povas lerni pri ĝi de la Brita Esperanto Asocio