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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7027 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 351 23 December 2006 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Not be be overly offensive here, but is it really worth the time to learn? How many people actually speak it, and how likely is it you will ever encounter one who does? Has anyone here ever used it to talk to a foreigner when no other common language could be found?
I tend to view Esperanto as Klingon, a constructed language used by a select few enthusiasts. OK, I am a Star Trek geek, but even I will not waste my time learning Klingon! If Esperanto is your "thing" go for it, but it seems really impractical, in my opinion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6915 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 351 23 December 2006 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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According to their own website, around one million speak Esperanto.
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| T0dd Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6555 days ago 17 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French | Message 3 of 351 23 December 2006 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Whether learning Esperanto is a waste of time depends on a lot of things, including what you like to do with your time, and what you hope to get out of learning a new language.
I learned Esperanto 20 years ago. I haven't regretted it. I'll tell you what I got out of it, and I'll leave it to others to judge whether I've wasted my time. The first thing I like to mention is this: Esperanto is the first and only constructed language to outlive its creator, acquire a global speech community, and generate its own culture and literature. As such, it's a unique achievement in human history, and I get some gratification out of being part of that. Although it's unlikely that you will randomly encounter Esperanto speakers (you might do so without knowing it, though), it's possible to seek out and find them in most places in the world. It's true that it's even easier to find English speakers in most places in the world, but English speakers are less likely to want to get to know you, to befriend you, to invite you into their home, just because you speak English. But when you meet Esperanto speakers in your travels, you meet people with whom you share a special affinity. They are the kind of people who, like yourself, have made to conscious decision to extend a "linguistic handshake" by learning Esperanto. The next point is surprising to many people. It was surprising to me. Esperanto is a *pleasing* language. Spoken well, it is pleasing to the ear (visit Radio Verda). More importantly, it is very satisfying to use Esperanto's expressive resources. Its word-making aspect is very powerful, and can be used to great effect. It's no coincidence that writers, *real* writers found it a suitable medium expression, from a very early point in its 120 year history. There is a considerable body of original and translated literature in Esperanto. Interestingly, most Esperanto translations are done by people who are native speakers of the source language, in contrast to the usual situation where it's native speakers of the *target* language who do translations. The main point, however, is there is plenty to read in Esperanto. I studied French for four years in high school. I took courses in college. I lived in Paris for three months. I *still* study French, and use it when I can. And my French is....okay. After a year of very part-time study of Esperanto, culminating in a three-week university course, my ability to read, write, and speak Esperanto was considerably better than my ability in French. Indeed, I could easily write this message in Esperanto. To do so in French would be a challenge. "Has anyone here ever used it to talk to a foreigner when no other common language could be found?" That's an interesting question. For one thing, it suggests that one would only want to use Esperanto when no other common language could be found--which isn't the case at all. But to answer it...yes, it is often so used. I've used it in that way myself on any number of occasions. The first time I had this experience was when I had only been studying Esperanto for about three months. I wasn't exactly fluent. I met a woman whose husband was in town for a month or so to take part in some scientific research. They were Chinese. He spoke English, but she didn't. She did, however, speak Esperanto. In fact, she was one of the readers for Radio Beijing's Esperanto broadcast. That was my first experience of the sort, having no "safety net" language, and it was very transformative. I remember thinking "This really works!" My next such experience was with a Haitian gentleman who also spoke no English. More common are cases where there were others who *could* speak English, but felt more comfortable speaking Esperanto. And why shouldn't they feel more comfortable? In Esperanto, nobody has the feeling of "speaking uphill" to a native speaker. So...is Esperanto "impractical"? I can't answer that for anyone but myself. Thanks to the internet, I read and write Esperanto every single day, and am part of a network of friends that spans the globe. When I visit other countries, I find out in advance if there are Esperanto speakers there, and I usually make an effort to contact them, and the result has usually been a very non-touristy experience. Although I have not used it, the Pasporta Servo is a list of people who offer free lodging to Esperanto speakers. Some people travel around the world this way. I can't comment on Klingon, because I haven't studied it. 70 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7027 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 351 24 December 2006 at 12:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thank you TOdd for that very informative post. I admit you have piqued my curiosity about Esperanto. I may have to give it a try. I will also check out the website mentioned above by Jeff.
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| Fajro Diglot Newbie Argentina Joined 6610 days ago 3 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto Studies: English | Message 5 of 351 24 December 2006 at 3:38am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, if you use it.
Between 20000 and 10 million? :-P How many people speak esperanto? (esperanto FAQ)
I used it to talk to a foreigner when other common language could be found.
Is not the same. Esperanto is a "neutral" Internacional Auxiliary Language. See: http://www.2-2.se http://www.esperanto.net http://www.lernu.net 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hoogamagoo Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6557 days ago 14 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto | Message 6 of 351 24 December 2006 at 10:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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My personal experience sugggests that it's less of a waste of time that a lot of other natural languages.
I knew about Esperanto as an international auxillary language for a long time and, but I never really imagined that it would be useful so I didn't bother looking twice at it. I grew up in Colorado, so I got exposure to some Spanish occasionally, I took three years of French in Junior High and tried to self-study Italian for a while as an adult. At this point I can lie in each language with the following statements: Je comprends La Francais; Io capisco L'Italiano; Yo comprendo Espanol. ...and that's about it. I don't even know how to ask for a beer. Then somebody gave me a self study course book in Esperanto and I was startled to find out how easy it was. By page 50 in about one hour I realized that I could already communicate better in Esperanto than I could in French after three years of French. I wasn't going to giving any speeches, but I could definitely maintain a correspondence with a pen pall and not sound like I was simply practicing my language skills. The hardest part was finding other speakers locally so I could practice, but there's a small club that gathers regularly around here. Once I feel that I can think, speak, read and write in Esperanto as fluently as I do in English (which I feel like I'mm rapidly approaching), I will finally have that one fluent second language that makes such a difference to learning other languages. In short, I use Esperanto as a training tool, really. I mean, yes, I know people who use Esperanto to communicate with people on the other side of the globe, and people who travel with it just because they want to see the non-touristy side of the world, and find the good restaurants where the locals eat, but I just wanted a springboard for understanding other languages. Also, I find that I like reading letters to the editor in magazines from a non-english-speaking perspective that aren't just from linguists. So, for me, French, Italian and Spanish were all a waste of time because they didn't stick (maybe in a another year I'll go back to one of those subjects and they'll stick better, I hope), but Esperanto definitely was not a waste of time, simply because it stayed in my head. Oh yeah, one other thing -- most of the second language English speakers that I know who speak Esperanto, express themselves FAR better in Esperanto than in English. 16 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| T0dd Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6555 days ago 17 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: French | Message 7 of 351 24 December 2006 at 8:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In my message above, I mentioned that it is satisfying to use Esperanto's method of word-building. It's an aspect of Esperanto that encourages creativity in expression. I don't claim that other languages lack this capability, but Esperanto, by its very nature, gives speakers great freedom as to how they express themselves.
For example, I recall being in a conversation and I wanted to say that something was puzzling. The trouble was, I couldn't remember the Esperanto word for "puzzle." It happens to be "enigmo," so "puzzling" would have been the adjective form of that word, "enigma." But you know how it is when you form a mental block on a word. I just couldn't recall it, so instead I used "kapgratiga." That word is a compound that consists of the root "kapo", which means "head", plus the verb "grati", to scratch, and the suffix "-ig", which makes a verb causative---plus the adjectival ending 'a'. Thus, "kapgratiga" means "head-scratch-causing", which may or may not be a word that others are used, but was understood immediately. Now, someone learning English could say "head-scratch-causing" as well, but it would sound bizarre. In Esperanto, this sort of thing is how we express ourselves and play with the language. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6774 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 8 of 351 24 December 2006 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It seems to me someone might only understand that if their own native language correlates confusion to head-scratching. A Japanese-Esperanto speaker probably wouldn't have understood, and thought your problem was giving you a skin condition. (Which sort of gets back to the point, raised in another thread, of spoken Esperanto actually being a creole between the prescriptive language and the speaker's native language.) Edited by Captain Haddock on 24 December 2006 at 11:12pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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