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My English teacher really hates Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6571 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 65 of 194 08 November 2007 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Remush, are you trying to argue Esperanto is not glaringly European? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 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 66 of 194 08 November 2007 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I personally think that Esperanto is 'somewhat' (not 'glaringly') European, and it's good this way: Esperanto's grammar is unlike the grammar of Romance or Germanic languages and its simplicity and logic will be appreciated by everybody. Only the vocabulary is Euro-centric. And this is not a disadvantage but an advantage for everybody, because the majority of the world's population already knows a European language: not just people in North and South America and Australia but also people in Africa typically speak at least one European language. In Asia there are not quite as many people as elsewhere, but learning European languages is still incredibly popular there. Also, Esperanto's vocabulary is so versatile that very few word stems actually have to be learned. For example, it's a common estimate that knowing 500 word roots are enough to express basically anything in Esperanto and most of the rest are just synonyms of words that could be created from those roots. And what's the alternative? The fairest language would take word stems from every single language in the world. On a regular-sized vocabulary, that results in about 2 word stems per language and a lot of quarreling about which language really common words like "and" are taken from. Assuming that you have a chance to understand words from 10 languages due to languages you studied and cognates, that still results in a language whose vocabulary is 99% incomprehensible to you and everybody else. And if you try to invent every word a priori, the vocabulary of the new language will be 100% incomprehensible to everybody. I prefer giving the majority of the world's population, and the vast majority of the people likely to learn a second foreign language, an advantage that will make the lingua franca even easier to learn for them, rather than maintaining fairness at the price of making the lingua franca very hard for everybody. The main quality of a worldwide lingua franca should be that it's easy. So far, Esperanto doesn't hear this criticism of being too "European-centric" from anybody except Europeans. There are flourishing Esperanto movements in Japan, China, the entire former Soviet Union area, Iran, Brazil, Togo, Benin... and forum members from India, China and Russia personally confirmed in their language learning blogs that Esperanto was very easy for them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Art Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6536 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 67 of 194 08 November 2007 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sprachprofi, there are some fallacies in your post:
1. So far, Esperanto doesn't hear this criticism of being too "European-centric" from anybody except Europeans. There are flourishing Esperanto movements in Japan, China, the entire former Soviet Union area, Iran, Brazil, Togo, Benin... and forum members from India, China and Russia personally confirmed in their language learning blogs that Esperanto was very easy for them. How can you hear criticsim from those who are members of the Esperanto movement and who know Esperanto already? You can hear criticism mostly from those who failed to learn Esperanto due to its "European-centric" nature. 2. I prefer giving the majority of the world's population, and the vast majority of the people likely to learn a second foreign language, an advantage that will make the lingua franca even easier to learn for them, rather than maintaining fairness at the price of making the lingua franca very hard for everybody. You are assuming that the world needs the lingua franca. That is wrong. The vast majority of the world population doesn't need it at all. You are assuming that the world is a fair place. That is wrong. The world is just the world. There is no specification of it where it is said "the world is a fair place". 3. Esperanto's grammar is unlike the grammar of Romance or Germanic languages and its simplicity and logic will be appreciated by everybody. You are assuming that the grammar is the cornerstone of any language. That is wrong. And you are assuming that a simple grammar of a language would easy to learn that language. But learning a langugae isn't about the learning of the grammar! And by the way, this forum shows that it is possible to learn a language even without the grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| remush Tetraglot Groupie Belgium remush.beRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6270 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes Speaks: French*, Esperanto, English, Dutch Studies: German, Polish | Message 68 of 194 08 November 2007 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
OK let's take them one by one:
What is the the highly determined Indo-European way of seeing? If the following remarks are examples of it, then Esperanto is definitively not. If it is, it's not for those reasons.
There is no gender of words in Esperanto (Eo), but it is possible to explicitly mark a person as feminine in case one finds it is useful. This gives the possibility to people whose language requires to know what gender a person is, to do what they feel is correct in Eo as well. So they don't need to change their way of thinking.
This is over-simplified. An action may be done by an agent or just be. Ex: it rains. What is this it that rains? Eo: pluvas (no it; just rains). An action may be described further by what I'll call here complements of information or by ... my god! There are so many things to explain and the only words we have are adjective, subject, complement, adverb, preposition, object. These are the words we use to describe a language like English. They are not really useful to describe Esperanto; only to just give you a (wrong) idea. I'll retry. Complements may be introduced by a preposition. If a complement is not introduced by a preposition, then it must be marked otherwise (by an added -n). All this proves that le solution taken by Zamenhof to describe his language was probably the most efficient:
The best try to explain what we call the "grammar" is Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko. In general, the aim is to allow enough flexibility so that people do not have to change their way of thinking and word order when they speak Esperanto Note that objects may be introduced by a preposition.
A lot more things are flowing from other things than masculine but only if necessary.
This is an Indo-European approach of the grammar. There are more types of actions. See -as -os -is but also -i -u -us -ado. The use of tenses is different from English, I think it is more Chinese-like (for what I read about Chinese).
I don't know what exactly he means. Yes and no, from what I can understand.
Not with all the baggage. Read my answers at Esperanto is insufficiently neutral etc... Generally our languages were influenced a lot by French, and previously by Latin, itself influenced by Greek. That why you have such a large amount of words coming from ancient Greek.
The problem is that people analyse Esperanto with their own eyes. Better to look at the world with Esperanto eyes when you speak Esperanto. So rubbish... don't you agree? Anyway thanks for not asking an ideological question, at last! Edited by remush on 08 November 2007 at 7:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 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 69 of 194 08 November 2007 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I am not talking about members of the Esperanto movement. The language learning logs for example were posted by people who only just started to learn Esperanto, who therefore are on the verge of finding out for themselves whether Esperanto is too difficult, and they said it wasn't, despite the European elements. Also, I mentioned the large Esperanto movements in non-European countries as evidence of a lot of people there appreciating Esperanto and being able to learn Esperanto, they are not criticizing it. Even when talking about Esperanto to people outside the Esperanto movement in China, they didn't criticize it for being somewhat European. The only people I ever heard that criticism come from (in forums and otherwise) were people that shouldn't be worried because they themselves speak a European language. And the people who did try Esperanto in China confirmed to me that Esperanto was easier for them than English.
Now we're talking philosophy: what do people want, what do people need, what are they ready to do for it... I don't think the world is fair, but I believe it should try to be, and I am ready to contribute to that. You of course are free not to do so. But I ask that you allow people to decide for themselves if they need an easy lingua franca. You might be surprised by the result. For example, in the early 20th century a lot of poor, uneducated Russian workers learned Esperanto, because they felt an immense desire to make international contacts and not being scholars they didn't have the chance to develop fluency in Latin or French. In 2004, a lot of Chinese told me that they are learning Esperanto for much the same reason: to have international contacts even though they weren't able to master English after 8 years of study. People in this thread seem to assume that Esperanto will only be useful once everybody is using it, and of course that's when it would truly fulfill its goal, but the thing is that even today a lot of people find Esperanto useful for any of a number of goals, some (the people publishing the Manifest of Rauma) to the point of not wanting Esperanto to become the world's lingua franca, because that might destroy some of the advantages it currently has. Of course you are welcome to say that you personally don't see a reason to learn Esperanto, or wouldn't learn it even if it became the lingua franca, but don't assume that there is no reason to learn Esperanto just because you don't see any that applies to you. There are people learning Esperanto and they wouldn't be making the effort if they didn't have pretty damn good reasons. And among all my acquaintances who learned Esperanto I only know one who regrets having invested the time, so the vast majority of people who do learn Esperanto are not unsatisfied with their choice later either. A lot of people are complaining about the fervor that some Esperantists display in promoting the language, but hardly anybody ever stops to think WHY so many people would invest a lot of time and effort doing that. I can tell you they are not getting paid. So what turns a regular, educated, critically-thinking language lover like me into an enthusiastic promoter of Esperanto? Idealism? I don't consider myself an idealist and for example I also don't believe that Esperanto will ever be *everybody's* second language. Sect-ish behavior? I abhor all kinds of organized religion and anybody who tries to tell me what to believe. Also, I was already enthusiastic about Esperanto for 4 years before I ever participated in an Esperanto meeting. So what is it? Don't just discard this. Maybe if you spent one afternoon pretending to "learn" the language, you'd see a glimpse of what it is that fascinates people and turns them enthusiast. Then, I'm not holding my breath.
Of course it depends on your personal preferences how much importance you assign to grammar study. I try to do without, but I sometimes feel better if I look up to see if there's a rule or I'm just imagining things. Or if I'm desperate, to see if there's a rule in the chaos that I'm missing. No matter whether you actively study grammar or not, you will at some point have to understand the language and be able to produce it more or less correctly, and that's considerably easier if there are few rules, no irregularities, especially no stem-changing words and so on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 70 of 194 08 November 2007 at 8:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Man, it's arguments like these that turn me off Esperanto. More to the point, despite remush's spirited yet at times incoherent defense of Esperanto, I've stated before that I'm neutral to Esperanto and wouldn't care if it'd be wiped off the face of the Earth, nor would I care if Esperanto grew to rival English as an auxillary language. Stranger things have happened in history. I also feel that by trying to learn a "culturally-neutral" Esperanto I'm actually making more of a political statement than if I were to learn say Croatian instead of Serbian.
While views like those of Sprachprofi seem relatively reasonable and give some positive vibes about the language, with all due respect to remush, I find his approach to be at times incoherent and off-putting to encouraging me to look more into Esperanto and its whole being. Resorting to Claude Piron's psychological analysis of Esperanto-skeptics isn't much of an improvement of Esperanto-skeptics resorting to Chris Culver's critcism of Esperanto. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Art Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6536 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 71 of 194 08 November 2007 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sprachprofi
I pretened once to "learn" Esperanto. What I can say is "Esperanto estas lingvacxo" and it is hard to separate Esperanto as a language and Esperanto as a movement. As a movement it is on the verge of converting into a religion. To sum up my views: 1. Esperanto as a language is ok and worth learning as a linguistic quirk. 2. Esperanto as a lingua franca isn't ok. 3. It is hard to separate Esperanto as a language from the Espranto movement. 4. Esperanto as a movement has a lot in common with cults. Also, I propose to rename this topic to "Hone your arguing skills" and practice here in the art of rhetoric with proponents of Esperanto. Edited by Art on 08 November 2007 at 8:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 72 of 194 08 November 2007 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I have also read this thread with somewhat mixed feelings. But my reaction is rather that I get turned off arguments that lead nowhere. The fact is: there is something called Esperanto out there in the world. It looks like a language, it has people who speak it and write it (though for most part as a non native language, - that's good enough for me), there is a lot of learning materials out there and many people even from the non-Indoeuropean part of the world tell me that it is exceedingly easy to learn. So from my perspective it would be tempting to add it to my collection when I get a couple of weeks off. I don't care about it being an artificially created language as long at it looks like a real language (and it does), and I care even less about Dr. Zamenhof's idealistic and somewhat naive motives for creating it (I'm a realistic pessimist). It is there, and whatever its origins it has grown into a real living language now, and with all its ardent supporters I might even find somebody to communicate with in that language - which makes it a better choice than most of the living languages of this planet.
1: I agree (though the word quirk isn't justified, - it was a quirk when it left Dr. Zamenhof's hand, but now it has become a regular language) 2: I agree - but there are enough speakers to make it worthwhile to learn it, - and they seem quite eager to use their Esperantean skills in public, which is not necessarily the case for speakers of other small and scattered languages 3: I don't find it hard - idealism makes me sick, so I just ignore that element 4: Cult? Maybe they try to convince me by making lots of practical tutors, grammars, dictionaries and text collections on the internet ... and frankly, I don't mind. As long as they don't expect me to say prayers for the soul of Saint Ludwik. PS: I don't like the diacritics, and the x's are also ugly. Edited by Iversen on 08 November 2007 at 9:18am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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