Radaro Report 2021-02-15

This is an experimental section of the newsletter where I, Quintyn, world-renowned editor, discuss an Esperanto related topic. For this edition, it covers the use of the word in Esperanto “Jen”.  For those of you who don’t know, this word corresponds roughly to the English “Here’s____” or “This is ____” or if you want to get old-timey, “Behold!”. It’s a handy word that cuts down on the amount of time one has to spend saying some form of the word “esti” when speaking Esperanto. Instead of saying “Tiu estas Chuck” when introducing someone, you can say “Jen, Chuck”. Or you’re throwing a pen to a friend who just requested it “Jen mia plumo” instead of  “Tio estas mia plumo”.

I do appreciate having a word that’s so handy in a language that doesn’t use contractions and often has a way of being a bit longer than its English counterpart. It’s not just Esperanto that does this, so do other languages like Italian’s “Ecco” from Latin’s “Ecce” (for those of you who study Latin in high school, the name of a popular textbook, “Ecce Romani” literally means “Behold, Romans!”). While words in English which once served a similar function, such as “Behold!” (I feel that always including an exclamation mark after this word is necessary) or “Lo!”, are becoming obsolete, I urge the readers of this website to try to use such words more in their everyday speech, both in English and Esperanto. Save the brute awesomeness of “Behold!” and “Lo!” and coax its existence back into minds of the English lexicon. And don’t let English’s habit of dropping handy words like these cause you to make lesser use of “jen” in Esperanto.