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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| rapp Senior Member United States Joined 5729 days ago 129 posts - 204 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 130 of 351 04 December 2009 at 1:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Esperanto has its own flag - a green field with a smaller white field in the upper left-hand corner, which in turn contains a green star. I'm too new a member here, I think, to be able to post links, but you can see it at Wikipedia's esperanto topic page. The flag, and the green star itself are already well-known symbols of Esperanto within the movement. That's why whoever it was suggested putting one on his luggage in the first place. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hoogamagoo Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6549 days ago 14 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto | Message 131 of 351 04 December 2009 at 1:57am | IP Logged | |||||
Is this better?
Interestingly enough, the Ekparoli study that I cited earlier has some of statistical data to demonstrate that primary school children prefer learning Esperanto over another language. It's a pretty small sample, and doesn't take into account the idea that Esperanto had a certain novelty to it in the course of the field study. Of course, if the kids were relatively comfortable in the language after a month's instruction that might play a role, too. I have more data, if you'd like. I just didn't want to do one of my standard 'copy and paste' giant posts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sawasawaya Newbie United States Joined 5468 days ago 5 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 132 of 351 04 December 2009 at 2:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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Shifting the topic slightly...
Recently, at my local library's used book sale, a title caught my eye: 'Esperanto - The Aggressor Language.' I was stunned. Esperanto? Aggressor? It turned out to be a US Army Field Manual from 1962. Quoting from the Foreword: "Esperanto has been adopted as the official language of Aggressor, the Maneuver Enemy. It may be modified by local usage or supplanted by the language of the local area. The primary benefit of using a different language is its contribution to the realistic intelligence play in training exercises. Where personnel are available with a proficiency in a foreign language, intelligence documents may be prepared in that particular language and injected into the exercise. This Esperanto Supplement has been compiled for use where trained linguists are not available." In my own mind this raises lots of questions as to what extent the military used Esperanto and how successfully they did so, but what brought a sad smile to my face was the little disclaimer the military felt it had to insert: "Although Esperanto has been adopted as the official Aggressor language, it is not intended to prohibit the oral or written use of any foreign language or dialect by prisoners of war, casualties or other Aggressor personnel, or in the preparation of documents for use in intelligence training." During the height of the Cold War they had to spell out clearly that they were not going to be hamstrung with Esperanto. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5984 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 133 of 351 04 December 2009 at 4:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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For Tombstone: here's a link to Claude Piron's article responding to linguists' opinions on esperanto, specifically from a site called "Ask a Linguist". Apparently there are some linguists who are willing to give an opinion on Esperanto without investigating the facts, so I guess every group has members that don't necessarily follow the established facts ;)
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| Dainty Newbie United States Joined 5483 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 134 of 351 16 December 2009 at 8:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Another use for Esperanto that I do not think has been mentioned yet is as a "secret code".
At least, for my little sister. You see, she and her best friend are getting irritated with the way their conversations are being overheard, so she mentioned that they were trying to work out a secret code. I suggested Esperanto. :) Then, because my little sister's homeschooled, I had to convince my mom that Esperanto is a worthwhile study, since otherwise my little sister's homework time is being wasted. At first she said no, so I told her about the studies on Esperanto and language acquisition. That won her over. :D So now there are two new new Esperanto learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6468 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 135 of 351 16 December 2009 at 11:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Awesome! Btw, this is the premise of the book "Peter Jameson's secret language". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5897 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 136 of 351 16 December 2009 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are so many interesting languages out there, it seems to me there is no need or rationale for having artificial ones. It is like taking plastic flowers to a botanical garden.
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