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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5675 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 121 of 351 03 December 2009 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||
Except that many idioms take many years of exposure to learn. There are likely thousands of idiomatic expressions in most spoken languages. So, you really can study hard and practice and absorb grammar and vocabulary and talk merrily for years - that is "do everything right" - and still slip up on idioms that natives have picked up throughout their lives. Maybe Esperanto hasn't had enough history yet for thousands of idioms to infuse themselves into the language, and so this makes it easier to avoid surprising the natives. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6476 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 122 of 351 03 December 2009 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
That's the kind of utterance I meant. Not when you're screwing up on grammar, vocabulary or even word usage, though these are difficult in their own right, just those cases when nobody can give a reason other than "it sounds weird". As for Esperanto acquiring these problems when there are more native speakers - Esperanto is not supposed to have native speakers, so I don't see this becoming a problem. Most Esperanto speakers also respect the idea of keeping Esperanto neutral. However, Esperanto native speakers turn up when mother and father come from vastly different linguistic backgrounds, met at an Esperanto meeting, now try to learn each other's language but obviously still find it easiest to communicate with each other in Esperanto. There are many cases of international marriages among Esperanto speakers, which is why it got the nickname "edzperanto" among some. (edz-per-anto, something like spouse-helper) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5992 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 123 of 351 03 December 2009 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, this has already happened over the last hundred years of usage. There are some ways of saying things that are common now that were not common 50 years ago, or 70, or 100. The other ways are still "correct" and allowed, but for experienced speakers they apparently sound a bit "old". There have also been some big changes in what has been considered "correct" that weren't actually in Zamenhof's original proposals. See Claude Piron's article Evolution is proof of life (und auch auf Deutsch), which details some of these changes over time. 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 124 of 351 03 December 2009 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I largely agree with what's been written over the last couple of pages, but there are a few caveats.
Esperanto does have a certain amount of fixed forms and changes, as doviende has said. People will occasionally correct uses of old forms, in my experience, though they'll usually just accept them. This isn't a problem in practice, as far as I've seen. I once ran into an example where two fluent speakers refused to accept a grammatically correct but unusual form of a word usually used in a different form as a fixed phrase. Quite a few words including affixes are more or less bound to fixed interpretations as well - a trancilo, or 'cutting tool', is always a knife, not scissors (but a 'trancilego', or big cutting tool, isn't a fixed word in the same way, and can be used for things like scythes). There are preferred ways of saying things, but Esperanto is much more open to new coinings and personal stylistic choices than any other language I'm aware of, which makes it quite a lot easier to express yourself not only understandably, but correctly. Claiming that anything logical goes isn't true with most speakers I've met, unfortunately, but it's still closer to this ideal than any other language I'm familiar with. Esperanto has quite a lot of idioms, some coined by Zamenhof. I haven't seen them cause many communication problems. Lastly, while most Esperanto speakers I've talked to think that most native Esperanto speakers have parents from the same linguistic background, Wikipedia claims otherwise.
"One generally imagines, that this (native Esperanto speakers) most often occur in families in which the parents speak different languages and met each other at Esperanto conventions. There are indeed a lot of these families, but it has nonetheless been shown, that slightly more often both parents of native Esperanto speakers have the same native language. (In some international pairs one doesn't speak in Esperanto with the child, because one wants instead to provide the parental languages; otherwise sometimes the couple lives in a country with more languages and one fears to supersaturate the children with a total of 4 languages). 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5992 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 125 of 351 03 December 2009 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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perhaps a bit off-topic, but for those curious, there appear to be at least two different verbs in Esperanto that can be said using "cut" in English, although I suppose that English "snip" or "shear" can't be done with a knife either.
tondi : to clip, shear, cut (with scissors); tondilo = scissors tranĉi : to cut (with knife); tranĉilo = knife 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5535 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 126 of 351 03 December 2009 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
"Success" in terms of Esperanto would mean it becoming widespread as a second, not a first, language. In any case, the speech of native speakers is not normative in Esperanto, and is often just as influenced by the language they grew up surrounded by as that of any other Esperanto speaker. Native speakers of Esperanto represent a small minority of the speaker population, and I think it unlikely this would change substantially even if Esperanto became more successful and widespread. Another point is that Esperanto is used for intercultural communication - you use it to speak to people who don't speak your language. This means there is always a strong pull towards saying things in as clear and internationally understandable way as possible. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5915 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 127 of 351 03 December 2009 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
I may have misinterpreted your "doing everything right" to mean "didn't say anything wrong in that particular situation" while still being told you didn't say things right, sorry for the confusion. What I mean is that if you're in a situation where you've said something that's just "not how we say things", it's an honest mistake, and one that will hopefully be corrected - but it's not "doing everything right" in terms of that particular thing you said. And let's face it, if native speakers think there's something a little off about something we've said, then usually that means there is. There aren't always reasons, which is why we need to observe how the language is used, and do things that way, no matter how much sense it might make to us to say things another way, and work within the boundaries of the language we're speaking. Of course it takes ages to learn all the idioms of a language (if that's even possible) but if you avoid using idioms you've never heard from a native speaker, then you're not going to slip up on an idiom - you knowledge will consist of "things I know are correct" and gaps, no category for "things I think might work, sort of, I'm not really sure". If you need an idiom you don't know then you will simply be missing that piece of information, a native speaker might have something to perfectly fill that slot to fit what they're trying to say, whereas someone who's been studying and using the language for years might still not have come across it and made that expression part of their active vocabulary. If we're in a situation where an idiom to express a certain concept is clearly lacking but we need to say something, then we can either rephrase somehow, or we can try something that makes some sort of sense even though we haven't observed native speakers express themselves in that way (one of my main language pet peeves). If you go with the latter then yeah, you might be told "we don't say it that way", and rightly so if you were wrong - then it's simply a correction of something you said that was incorrect. If you had previously observed that idiom used correctly by native speakers then you might've been able to come up with the right one, but if not, then all we can really do is continue to observe and keep trying to add more of these things we'll need to our own vocabulary, and hope for kind treatment if we do say something wrong. So yeah, sorry for the misunderstanding. Hope we're on the same page. Edited by Lizzern on 03 December 2009 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5930 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 128 of 351 03 December 2009 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
Another thing I find remarkable is that Esperantists have managed to keep the language free of exceptions to its grammar rules, and I'm a little curious as to how this happened. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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