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How easy is Esperanto really? | ||
Tags: Esperanto | Difficulty | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5072 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes  Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 25 of 40 23 October 2011 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You could mark verbs for their subject, like in any natural language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jean-luc Senior Member France Joined 4966 days ago 100 posts - 150 votes Speaks: French* Studies: German | Message 26 of 40 23 October 2011 at 2:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Could you detail that ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5062 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 27 of 40 23 October 2011 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
How can you compare a useless category of gender with useful and functional accusative case? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6445 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 28 of 40 23 October 2011 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Getting laughed at is quite rare - I'm not sure I've ever been laughed at due to Esperanto. I know people who have it as a fairly significant part of their CV, so that's also doable. Some proponents are very embarrassing - but find anything with more than a thousand proponents where that isn't the case. It's not as easy to find books or physical CDs as in larger languages, unless you travel, but there is plenty of music and literature online, and plenty available through mail order. There's a fledgling movie industry of sorts - there are some movies in Esperanto, and there's an Esperanto film festival, though it's for very short films. And once you know a few people who speak it, or go to a couple of events, there's no lack of people to speak it with; bootstrapping that can't be done by standing in your local bar and hoping to find a speaker, but it's not a big deal.
PIV has too many Gallicisms, but it's still pretty good - and it diverges sharply from French at times, even on cognate roots. No language seems to really have a 'definitive' reference for vocabulary (there are so many fields where so much new vocabulary is introduced so quickly). Basic roots have been established by Zamenhof, and over 100 years of use, and they're not controversial. The places where there are conflicts over vocabulary are ones where having more native speakers wouldn't help much, frankly. As for the 'bona lingvo' vs neologisms argument, it's quite similar to the arguments in several national languages about either importing loan words or making up calques and equivalents out of the roots from the local language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5072 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 29 of 40 23 October 2011 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This doesn't work quite well in English or in French since many verb forms are/sound the same, but in Bulgarian, for example, you can arrange the word order in almost any way as long as the subject and object aren't the same number and person. In Bulgarian any of the following word orders would be (theoretically) correct and mean the same thing, although only really the first, second, and fifth scenarios come naturally: I help the girls. I the girls help. Help the girls I. Help I the girls. The girls I help. The girls help I. There's no reason why Esperanto couldn't loosen some of its reliance on cases in exchange for some moderate verb conjugation to reach this effect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Enriquee Triglot Groupie United States esperantofre.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5341 days ago 51 posts - 125 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto, English | Message 30 of 40 23 October 2011 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Do English speakers ever attempt to explain all the "drawbacks" of the English language? Should I had to stop learning English when I started to see some of them? As soon as I discovered Esperanto, I went on to study the language. A few weeks after starting I began to use it: reading books and contacting people in many faraway countries, including China and USA ... by paper mail. I even had the chance to speak the language in a country-wide convention that happened near my house, only two months after my beginning. I based my learning in the usefulness of Esperanto. Never occurred to me that I had to find the possible "drawbacks" first. My only source for studying was a book loaned from the public library ... and returned before the 28-day expiration. This happened in 1959. I have been using and enjoying Esperanto during 52 years. I never found any drawbacks: The language is much easier to learn and use that any other language.
Which is the one for English? Maybe Cambridge, Oxford, The American Heritage, Webster, Macmillan, Collins, Macquarie, dictionary.com, thefreedictionary.com, ...? Enrique 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Enriquee Triglot Groupie United States esperantofre.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5341 days ago 51 posts - 125 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto, English | Message 31 of 40 23 October 2011 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
There is a big reason: You cannot change a language. If I could change a language, I would start with English. Spanish and French could also benefit with many changes ... Esperanto was tried more than 10 years before publication and during 124 years after publication: it is easy to learn and works well. I know that certain concepts are difficult to grasp. Still, learning to use the language takes a small fraction of the time it takes to learn other languages. The changes that you propose have been already proposed hundreds of times. At least one of them "succeeded" and the result is called "Ido" ... which is not easier to learn than Esperanto. "Ido" and many reformers occasioned much damage to Esperanto, mainly getting people to reject the idea of learning an easy to learn language for international communication. Enrique 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5062 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 32 of 40 23 October 2011 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
First of all, you suggest to change one ending "n" for many en dings for conjugation. Then, it does not solve the problem in sentences, where both the subject and the object are third person singular or plural. Then, it is used to distinguish between location and direction. There are some other uses of the accusative. When I first read about Esperanto case system, I was impressed how simple and efficient it is. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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