Merradean Pettit, teacher and parent

I first encountered Esperanto as a parent of children attending a school that had adopted it as a school-wide language. In principle, I thought that it had an excellent philosophy of promoting global dialogue via a neutral language that was relatively easy to learn. I watched my kids grasp the language and begin to enjoy using it for simple sentences. I applied for, and was granted, a scholarship to the national annual conference in Adelaide in 2004. In 2005 I accompanied my child to a trip to a Swiss school that also learnt Esperanto. As our only common language it was amazing to watch the kids language skills grow in this immersive environment and great to watch them using it in play together. I was hooked and at the end of my teacher training accepted a positon teaching Esperanto. I found that the students retained vocabulary as some of it was familiar to them. This is because it is constructed from a Germanic and Latin base. This quick acquisition of basic words gives children the incentive to keep learning the language. Travelling with 9 students to the National Conference in Hobart provided them with the immersion experience that saw these students skills develop to the point where they all completed the Baza examination.  Quite a few past students have reported that learning Esperanto has helped them in further language acquisition as they become familiar with grammar terms such as prepositions. When learning languages such as Spanish, Italian or French, students were already able to read many of the common words as they are familiar to them. To me, it makes sense to teach the world a common second language that is relatively neutral and quite easy to learn. It would enable more people to be able to converse, especially with the technology we have today. It might even encourage more exchange programs around the world,where our children to form bonds across cultures. Under ideal circumstances, I believe that Esperanto could become the language of peace

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