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Native Esperanto as a Test Case (...) | ||
Tags: Native Language | Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| jean-luc Senior Member France Joined 4966 days ago 100 posts - 150 votes  Speaks: French* Studies: German | Message 25 of 43 20 October 2011 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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The same way you become native in a language other than the one(s) officially spoken in your country ?
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5387 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 26 of 43 20 October 2011 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
There is a difference between artificial languages and natural languages. As people learn Esperanto as a native language (from childhood), linguists want to see how the language will change to become a natural language, and in doing so, they hope to develop a more accurate model of how languages evolve, or what kind of universal rules apply to languages. Although I haven't yet read the entire article, it seemed to imply that L2 speakers of Esperanto had already made the language natural because L1 speakers didn't change the language in a significant way. That is extremely interesting -- when I studied Linguistics, it was generally accepted that a language was not a natural language until it had L1 speakers, but now it seems that a critical mass of L2 speakers would have the same effect. 3 persons have 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 27 of 43 20 October 2011 at 10:14pm | IP Logged | ||
It's exactly through people murmuring it around you as an infant that you become a native speaker. Thousands of people have spoken Esperanto natively, because at least one of their parents speaks to them primarily or exclusively in Esperanto through their infancy and early childhood. There are also gatherings of children who speak Esperanto; last weekend, I was with several Esperanto-speaking families, and watched about a dozen children play together - in Esperanto. Some of the families had 3 generations of Esperanto speakers present. Esperanto also has a very distinctive atmosphere, culture, and history. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 43 31 October 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged | ||
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I have only had one major experience with spoken Esperanto, namely the Universal Congress in Copenhagen in July this year. And I listened to many excellent speakers without knowing whether they were native Esperantists or just very accomplished later learners. However with those few that were expressly mentioned as native speakers I noticed that they often were slightly harder to understand because they spoke less distinctly and less 'bookish' - which however also was the case with some participants who weren't pointed out as native speakers. Maybe the best speakers - native or not - just are so familiar with the language that they forget that we aren't all at their level - which also can be the case with native speakers of other languages.
That being said I found it surprisingly easy to get into the habit of understanding Esperantean speech, even though I only spent four days at the congress. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Colin R. Diglot Newbie Australia Joined 4757 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto | Message 29 of 43 23 November 2011 at 12:48am | IP Logged | ||
A good point. When Bergen contrasts verb use in Standard Esperanto and Native Esperanto, he doesn't address the question of how common compound tenses (with esti and a participle) actually are in Standard Esperanto. Did he assume they are frequent, simply because the grammatical rules permit them? Even in written Esperanto, my impression is that compound tenses are distinctly less common than in English. The word "jam" (already) is a simple and very frequent way of expressing completed action without using a compound tense. And this usage goes back to Zamenhof himself. An example from his writing, cited in the Reta Vortaro entry for "jam" is "Ĉu vi jam trovis vian horloĝon?" Literally "Is it the case that you already found your watch?" Edited by Colin R. on 23 November 2011 at 12:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 43 23 November 2011 at 1:31am | IP Logged | ||
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The most common compound tenses would have been a compound past tense and maybe a plusquamperfectum if Zamenhof hadn't disallowed them (NOT *mi havas/havis farita). The combinations with the auxiliary verb esti plus a a passive participle have a passive meaning, and it is apparently too complicated for the speakers to use combinations with esti and the active participle to reestablish an active meaning except as a parallel to the English continuous verbal forms. So the simple past tense has to bear the whole burden of references to past actions and states. But this is OK - one of the signs that you are getting accostumed to Esperanto is that you stop lamenting about the lack of diversity in the past tense forms. . Edited by Iversen on 23 November 2011 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5853 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 31 of 43 23 November 2011 at 7:39am | IP Logged | ||
You have to differentiate between: 1. Mi estis leginta libron pri astronomio. (active form) 2. La libro pri astronomio estis legita. (passive form) In spoken Esperanto you hear for 95 %: Mi legis libron pri astronomio. Yes, it's true that Esperanto tends to avoid compound tenses. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 23 November 2011 at 7:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6709 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 32 of 43 23 November 2011 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||
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I actually did differentiate between the two - even to the extent that I didn't write about the 'past' participle and the 'present' participle as you mostly do in the Romance and Germanic languages, but about the 'passive' and the 'active' participle. The reason is of course that both participles have forms for the past, the present and the future.
If you are in the philosophical mood you can actually wonder why the compound perfect and pluperfect have become to popular in the Romance and Germanic language because they must be the result of a quantum jump in the interpretation of an already fairly complicated construction. It is clear that "I am coming" means "I am in-the-state-of-walking", and Esperanto extends this to the past and future (mi estis veninta/estas venanta/estos venonta .. and occasionally other combinations to the chagrin of purists). But the precursor of "I have come" must originally have had the meaning "I have something-that-has-come" ... myself, of course. It is clearer with a transitive verb: "I have watched TV" -> "I have TV in-the-state-of-having-been-watched", with "watched" as some kind of object predicative. Which almost is the same as saying that somebody watched TV sometime in the past, and from that point onwards 'have' + the past/passive participle could start eroding the territory of the simple past. Well, Zamenhof built a system based on 'esti' plus one of the two participles, but deliberately excluded the use of 'havi' as an auxiliary verb. Esti + active participle (-nta) could without further ado assume the usual role, which in English has become a mainstay of the verbal system (the 'continuous' tenses), and 'esti' + passive participle (-ta) could equally easily become a passive construction. But there was no perfect or pluperfect in the system to compete with the simple past tense on -is. And native esperantists and advanced esperantists won't have any problem with that. It is just one of those quirks that can make beginners stumble. Edited by Iversen on 23 November 2011 at 10:09am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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