Small Review of a Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne

I liked the book a lot; this was the first book by Jules Verne that I’ve read and I think this was a good start – I want to read other books by this author. “The Mysterious Island,” “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon” are some of this author’s other titles that I want to read, among other books in French, and I hope to do a review for all of them. A Journey to the Center of the Earth is very funny. The main characters are Axel (the narrator), the professor Otto Lidenbrock (Axel’s uncle) and Hans (the Icelandic guide) who aids the two Germans to arrive at Mount Sneffels, which is located at the entrance to the tunnel that ends up in the center of the Earth – according to Arne Saknussem, an ancient Icelandic scholar, whom professor Lidenblock likes and admires. The professor is a very peculiar person, he is super curt, abrupt and not very gentle; so there are many lines that sound very impolite towards his nephew, but the nephew, you can notice, is, naturally, already used to the manners of his uncle and doesn’t get offended by his curt words. The professor, by the way, doesn’t ever lose his hope that Arne Saknussem hasn’t lied to them and that the center of the Earth is really how he has said and that they’ll succeed in their goal of finding it. Axel doubts it very much, but the uncle always has an explanation for all the questions made by the nephew. “You see that it is nothing and that the facts, following their

habit, have just denied the theories” (Chapter XXV). The professor’s determination is, at times, amusing, because he gets to the point of being imprudent. Below are a couple instances: “Oh well, Axel, my uncle says, that’s that, and the most difficult part is done. – How so, the most difficult part? I exclaimed. – Without a doubt, now we just need to descend! – If you look at it that way, you are right; but at the end, after having descended, it’ll be necessary to climb back, I imagine? – Oh! that doesn’t bother much! (...)” (Chapter IX). “It is allowed you to be shut, Axel, when you want to talk out of reason.” (Chapter XXV). The professor also seems to make a lot of use of luck and chance. It seems that he isn’t afraid of dying in the journey, as long as arrives at his goal of finding the center of the Earth. “Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur” (Chapter XI). “And whatever road fortunes throws our way, it must be followed.”¹ ¹Our translation. The book also presents us with beautiful descriptions of the things the three travelers find in the subterranean terrains, as Axel calls it sometimes. “The undulations of these infinite mountains, which their layers of snow seemed to render foaming, called to my memory the surface of an agitated sea. (...) Where the land ended, where the waves began, my eye hardly distinguished” (Chapter XVI). Here are some other quotes that I also find beautiful. “I hardly thought about the sun, the stars, the moon, the trees, the houses, the cities, all the terrestrial superfluities of which the sublunar being has made a necessity. In our quality of fossils, we couldn’t care less about these useless wonders” (Chapitre XXV). “Science, my boy, is made of mistakes, but mistakes which it is good to make, because they take us bit by bit to the truth” (Chapitre XXXI). “If at each instant we can perish, at each instant we can also be saved” (Chapitre XLII).

[26/05/2022] [by u/iguerr] [Translated from French by the author] Small Review of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I DECIDED TO TRY AND DO A SMALL REVIEW/ COMMENTARY FOR THE BOOKS THAT I READ IN FRENCH AS A WAY OF PRACTICING. I JUST FINISHED RECENTLY READING A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE WORLD BY JULES VERNE AND WILL DO A SMALL REVIEW.

What if there was a language ...

written by u/iguerr

Have you ever felt like you weren’t being heard well enough? That there was something in your communication that just wasn’t enough to have people hear or pay attention to you? Have you ever remarked that you seem to need to change your communication code to adjust to that of a dominant group in order to be seen and heard? That you needed to change your language in order to be heard, because there simply was no one who understood or cared to understand your language?

That’s a feeling very familiar to pretty much anyone who didn’t happen to be born in an anglophone country. Those people are –or should I say, We are – in most cases, bombarded with things telling us time and time again how very important English is, how very important it is for us, and for our success in whichever career we choose, to learn it. This often leads to the forming of a worldview in which one’s own native language (and culture!) is seen as less, in favor of English (and its culture!) being seen as superior.

What if there was a language…

…that aimed to (help) solve this issue? What if I told you that you are not alone! And that many, many, many other people around the globe have felt the same over the past century and that many of them have come together to try and build an egalitarian bridge in international communication!

Those hoping people believed that we need to see each other as equals

in being part of the one humanity, instead of being part of different countries – and the way to do that is to connect in an equal and democratic way. That does not, in any way, mean to make one forget one’s origins in favor of seeing oneself solely and “a citizen of the world,” forgetting that one still is a citizen of one’s country, state, city, and whatever else. Quite the opposite! Those hoping people believe that, being citizens of the same world, we have to care about (and take care of) the place where we come from, because it is part of the world, therefore, it is important. That’s the main teaching of Esperanto. “But why” –you might be thinking to yourself as you read this– “would we need another language to do that when English is already doing that job very well, thank you very much?” Well, I can’t say you’d be alone in this; many others would agree with you. But the answer for that question –which is very valid, mind you– is very simple. English is not neutral, or egalitarian… …or, if I’m quite honest, very easy to learn. English is a very irregular language. Having received many influences from many sources and not having patterns very intuitive in the treatment of those influences, this language can present itself to be quite a challenge to many –if I’m not bold enough to say most– people in the world. But English’s irregular nature is not the main or biggest issue with its being our current lingua franca, there is yet one bigger issue. The English language performs the hodiern imperialism remnant of the foundation on

which our society was built. Taking a look at the history of how America (and that word here means the continent, not any single country –I will get back to this in a moment–) was colonized allows us to see very clearly how language plays a very important part in the dominating of a people. The European travelers who arrived at the New World hastily made efforts to erase the native peoples’ cultures and their languages were at the forefront of that. A language is the way you name the world around you; Those hoping people believe that, being citizens of the same world, we have to care about (and take care of) the place where we come from, because it is part of the world, therefore, it is important. a language is a way of seeing the world. And therein lies a very delicate issue. When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest. Its way of seeing the world will be dominant, and the other peoples of the world will have to adjust their world views to that of the dominant people. Allow me to speak in more practical terms – as says an old expression in my native language, Portuguese, It’s necessary to give names to the bulls and it means to say that we have to call things by their names, lest we lessen the seriousness of a situation due to the inopportune use of euphemisms. So, to give names to the bulls, currently we have the United States as the most influential country in the world and its language is, naturally, also the most influential in the world. That leads us –the other peoples of the world– to see ourselves having our perception of the world molded by that of the most influential country in the world, which can be quite tricky and mess with one’s own identity. Here’s an example.

Portuguese is the official language of, amongst other eight counties, Brazil; and Brazil is, as I assume you probably already know, located in America. The word for America in Portuguese is América, and the word for American is Americano. You can probably already see where I am going with this, so I will try to not take much longer. If Americano refers to one who comes from America and Brazil is in America, naturally Brazilians are Americans. However, if you’re ever in Brazil and you hear anyone say the word americano, it is almost certain that that person will be referring to one who comes from the United States. And it is yet more almost certain that that person probably doesn’t see themself as americana. Why is that? Because they have learned to

see the world from the perspective of an English speaker, even if they aren’t one themself.

This reminds me of an episode in which a situation like this happened in an almost embarrassing way. The host of the Brazilian version of the Dutch reality show Big Brother was announcing to the Unitedstatian viewers that the platform in which the show was streamed was now established in the United States. The host then mentioned that “now you can access it over there in America'' which got me thinking, “If America is there, I wonder if maybe I’m floating around the Atlantic Ocean all this time and haven’t noticed it.”

Not recognising where you are in the world – that’s the power that a language can have.

“But we use English for globalization” –you might insist– “and that is about interchange between countries through the internet.”

You would not be wrong in that argument, simply misguided. Globalization is not fully practiced as it is in theory, and conveniently so. Globalization is the idea of things assuming a global nature – our very experience as humans on this planet being, seen under the scope of being in connection with the experiences of other humans in other parts of the world. And that implies horizontality, meaning that everyone would be interested in knowing about everyone else.

What happens is not quite that. The reality is that the whole world occupies itself of consuming what is produced in the English language, by English speaking countries, especially the United States.

“So English is the devil itself, is it?”

You, possibly a native English speaker, might be inquiring. And no, not at all, of course. As I mentioned before, America’s colonisation is a very good illustration in history of how languages are tools and in so being, can be used for good or evil. English was not the language used in Central and South Americas, and yet, the colonisation of those portions of the continent was no less cruel and abominable; Portuguese and Spanish were the main languages in those cases and likewise, were used to commit foul crimes against the native peoples.

Getting our focus a little away from America and taking a look at Europe, a while ago it had French as the regent lingua franca, and I am sure many people had a lot of struggles with dealing with French’s irregular phonetics. But being obligated to learn it either way because it was a means of social ascending and not mastering it meant, naturally, having less prestige.

So, as you can see, the issue lies in a fact aforementioned and subsequently quoted – “When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest.”

And that’s where Esperanto comes in – however long it may have taken

As exposed, the issue with a natural language that is still alive being an international lingua franca is that the natural language never had the intention of being egalitarian in the first place. And that’s where Esperanto comes in.

For a quick context on how the

idea for Esperanto came to be: its creator, a Pole man called L. L. Zamenhof, lived in a city that was undergoing a moment of critical conflicts between different groups. Those groups, he noticed, spoke different languages and that made him wonder about how big a part the lack of a common, egalitarian language that was easy for all to learn played in the conflicts.

From there he had the idea of creating such a language. The core of Esperanto’s ideal is the idea of it having a very simple grammar and syntax, so that it is easy for everyone to learn, and of it being a language of all. Having been created, it is not the native language of any country, which makes it a language of the whole of humanity. It is a commonly shared conception –no matter how much scholars of linguistics may beg to differ– that a language is owned by those who speak it natively, meaning that Brazilians would have more propriety over Portuguese than a Chinese, for example, and simultaneously, the Chinese would have more propriety over Mandarin than I, a Brazilian; and so on. Esperanto doesn’t leave any room for such considerations, as no country has it as its native language, so no one has more propriety over it than someone else. Esperanto is a language of all and for all.

Its creator, L. L. Zamenhof, spoke a few languages and studied a handful of others in order to get what is the most simple and logical of each language family and combine it all into one intuitive grammar. The result is that you can easily identify the similarities between Esperanto and natural languages, even recognizing where Esperanto got some words from. For example, if you’re a speaker of a romance language, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty recognizing the Esperanto word “libro¹”; or if you are an English speaker (which I assume you are, if you got this far into this article), you’ll be able to easily recognize the word “tablo¹”.

The word “frato¹” means “brother,” the word “fratoj¹” means “brothers.” If you are a German speaker, I expect you to not have much difficulty inferring that the words “fratino¹” and “fratinoj¹” mean, respectively, “sister” and “sisters.” And even less difficulty I expect you to have in inferring that the word “gefratoj¹” means “siblings.”

If you are neither a romance language speaker nor a German speaker, I trust these words still were easy enough to understand. ¹IPA: /ˈtablo/, /ˈlibro/, /’frato/, /’fratoj/, /fra’tino/, /fra’tinoj/, / ge’fratoj/ “So Esperanto is easy because it has an easy vocabulary?”

You might be meaning to ask me. Well, no, of course not. A language is not a dictionary. And that means that a language is not made only of a grouping of words. There’s still syntax, of course, to care about, and grammar, and semantics. But these are all also very easy to grasp. If you either don’t believe me and want to see it for yourself, or do believe me but would still like to see it for yourself just to be sure, you are in luck, because a comrade of mine, a teacher that goes by the name Ikvero, has been in touch with the editors of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course to learn their ways and create a KwikEsperanto (which is not how the course is actually called) course, published right here, on your known and loved Quibbler.

RAPIDEO – KLASO 1

LA KURSO PER KIU VI RAPIDE LERNOS ESPERANTON (ESPEREBLE)!

by Professor Ikvero

Saluton al ĉiuj! Mi nomiĝas Ikvero kaj mi estos via Esperanto-instruisto!

If you can’t understand anything I’ve just said, don’t worry, you will very soon (and that is not meant to sound as a threat, although if pretending that I’m threatening you with teaching you Esperanto is something that helps your learning, you’re free to take it that way!).

If you are here, I assume you read Iguer’s article and that it worked! So welcome, welcome to the first edition of RapidEO, the course through which you will Kwikly©2 learn Esperanto¹!

Without further ado, let’s dive right into it!

Let’s begin taking a look at Esperanto grammatical rules. Let’s dive into ALL– OF– THE–… sixteen of them? Yes, that is not a mistake; only sixteen of them. Although that can be debatable, it is, nonetheless, a nice way of illustrating how simple this language is. Before we begin, let’s check out the Esperanto alphabet so that we can know and understand all 28 letters and their sounds. Then, we can get to the first three rules. Esperanto-Alfabeto

The alphabet of Esperanto has five vowels; they are: Aa, Ee, Ii, Oo and Uu. The 23 consonants are: Bb, Cc, Ĉĉ, Dd, Ff, Gg, Ĝĝ, Hh, Ĥĥ, Jj, Ĵĵ, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Pp, Rr, Ss, Ŝŝ, Tt, Ŭŭ, Vv and Zz.

You have probably noticed that the letters Qq, Ww, Xx and Yy are not included.

And you must be wondering how to pronounce all of these weird letters. Worry not, the phonology of Esperanto is very simple: each letter has one sound and one sound only; each sound is represented by one letter and one letter only. Below you’ll find the letters along with their IPA transcriptions. If you are not familiar with IPA, you can go to the attachments section, by the end of this article, to find the ATTACHMENT I, which has a link to a platform called Lernu!, which is a very big and vastly used platform for Esperanto-learning. There, you’ll find a page with audio tracks for each sound, as well as a word to exemplify!

1The author is not making any real promises and therefore can’t be held judicially responsible for any frustrations readers might feel in the face of not successfully learning Esperanto with this correspondence course.

2The author has not consulted with his legal team before mentioning this trademarked brand. The author, quite honestly, doesn’t actually have a legal team. And so the author dearly hopes that including the copyright symbol should be enough to avoid any lawsuits.

TABLE 1 VOWELS

Letter Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu IPA /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

Letter B b C c Ĉ ĉ D d F f G g Ĝ ĝ H h Ĥ ĥ J j Ĵ ĵ K k IPA /b/ /ts/ / ʧ/ /d/ /f/ /g/ /ʤ/ /h/ /x/ /j/ /ʒ/ /k/ Letter L l M m N n P p R r S s Ŝ ŝ T t Ŭ ŭ V v Z z IPA /l/ /m/ /n/ /p/ /r/ /s/ /ʃ/ /t/ /w/ /v/ /z/

TABLE 2 CONSONANTS

Might seem confusing, but trust me, it’s only a matter of getting used to it. Once you get the gist of it, the letters and their sounds will flow naturally.

Now that we know the alphabet and how to pronounce each letter, let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the rules of Esperanto.

One: there is no indefinite article.

Some languages have many articles. Some, like French, have one for masculine singular – le; one for feminine singular – la; and another for both masculine and feminine plural – les; and that’s only for the definite ones! Or my own native language, which has o, os, a, as3. Or even German, which has three articles in the nominative, which assume other forms for each of the other three grammatical cases4 of the language.

English is simple, it has two articles only: one indefinite (a, which can become an for phonetic reasons) and one definite (the). Esperanto is simpler: it has one single article (la), and it is definite. Indefinite articles? Throw ‘em away, you don’t need all that complication in your life! If you want to talk about something indefinite, just don’t define it, it’s as simple as that.

So we have → la kato meaning the cat; Whereas → kato means a cat or simply cat. Similarly → la hundo means the dog; Whereas → hundo means a dog or simply dog. So if I say to you → Mi havas prob-

3In order: masc. sing., masc. pl., fem. sing., fem. pl.

4If you are not familiar with what grammatical cases are, see ATTACHMENT II in SOURCES.

lemon, meaning to say that I have a problem; You may answer → Mi vidas la problemon, meaning I see the problem.

And that’s it for articles.

Two: all nouns, or substantives5, end in -o.

Those who come from romance languages –which (mostly) have -o as a marker of masculine– might be frowning, but as you may have already guessed, there are no grammatical genders in Esperanto. So the ending in -o doesn’t have anything to do with gender!

The plural in Esperanto is a bit different. It doesn’t use the addition of an “s” like many languages do. The plural in Esperanto is formed by adding a -j at the end of the word.

Yes, a -j. I know it seems crazy; I used to think so, too, when I was learning it. But I came to quite like it, because this way it is very difficult for one to confuse a word in the singular and one in the plural! The marking of plural comes after the -o that marks that that word is a substantive. So a substantive in the plural will end in -oj. If we go back to the sounds of the letters, we’ll remember that the letter “j” in Esperanto sounds like a semivocalic “i”. So the ending -oj sounds like what each of the syllables of the word “yo-yo” would sound like if read backwards.

Now that we know that all substantives end in -o, let’s get back to the alphabet real quick. The names of the letters are, naturally, substantives. And if every substantive ends in -o, so do the names of the letters! Or at least, the consonants. The vowels are already their own name. So let’s take a look again at the alphabet, now looking at their names (and IPA transcriptions):

TABLE 3 CONSONANTS

Bo Co Ĉo Do Fo Go Ĝo Ho Ĥo Jo Ĵo Ko /bo/ /tso/ /ʧo/ /do/ /fo/ /go/ /ʤo/ /ho/ /xo/ /jo/ /ʒo/ /ko/

Lo Mo No Po Ro So Ŝo To Ŭo Vo Zo

/lo/ /mo/ /no/ /po/ /ro/ /so/ /ʃo/ /to/ /wo/ /vo/ /zo/

5Here on after to be referred to as the latter.

Three: all adjectives end in -a.

Once again, not a gender marker, simply a syntactic one. If you spot a word ending in -a in a sentence, rest assured that that is an adjective. Spot the word ending in -o next to the adjective, and you have the substantive being described by said adjective.

Also, adjectives can come by either side of the substantive, although it is more common for you to see them coming before, just like in English. So:

Granda problemo or Problemo granda Bela kato or Kato bela

Rapida hundo or Hundo rapida ☞ A big problem

☞ A pretty cat

☞ A fast dog

and so forth.

One behavior that adjectives have different in Esperanto than what they do in English, is that they must always agree with the substantive in number. This means that adjectives will gain a plural form when describing a substantive in the plural. The good news is that the form is the same as the substantives: addition of a -j. So:

Grandaj problemoj or Problemoj grandaj Belaj katoj or Katoj belaj Rapidaj hundoj or Hundoj rapidaj

and so forth. ☞ Big problems

☞ Pretty cats

☞ Fast dogs

I believe that’s enough information for today!

I hope I managed to spark your interest in that beautiful and cool (and ridiculously easy) language. See you again in the next issue with another Esperanto-klaso! And here I believe that a friendly reminder is in place that Esperanto is available on Duolingo from English, French, Portuguese and Spanish6!

Lastly, if in the meantime you want to contact me, I’ll be happy to hear from you! I am not on many social media myself, only on Tumblr, where my username is Ikvero. But Iguer happens to also be my personal assistant and will gladly pass on any messages you have for me! He is u/iguerr on Reddit and iguer#6744 on Discord!

Ĝis la revido!

SOURCES

ATTACHMENT I: Wikipedia page on grammatical cases: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case>.

ATTACHMENT II: Lernu! page on the Esperanto alphabet and its sounds: <https://lernu.net/gramatiko/skribo>.

6The author (unfortunately) is not being paid to advertise to Duolingo, Inc., but he sure does hope that one day Duolingo, Inc. will offer him a position.