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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5165 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes  Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 257 of 351 09 October 2010 at 7:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Of course, esperanto is complete waste of time, but it's not a problem...a hobby is
almost always useless. But there is a real problem with learning esperanto: any real languages learning will be incredebely difficult after that! Then NEVER learn esperanto if you want to learn a real language someday! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 258 of 351 09 October 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's rather debatable.
What are you basing this on? It's contrary both to studies done on the propedeutic effect of Esperanto, and to everything I have seen; Esperanto conferences have the highest percentage of polyglots of anywhere I spend time, including language fairs. People like Sprachprofi and Professor Arguelles speak Esperanto... and no, Esperanto was not the last language they learned.
Your premises are false, and Esperanto is a 'real language', but you can read all the evidence by searching the web, so I see no point rehashing it. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5165 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 259 of 351 10 October 2010 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thank you for your corrections, Volte...of course esperantists are polyglots as well (but
they where polyglots before they learned esperanto). I just wanted to warn monoglots: esperanto is a very bad idea for a "first second language". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 260 of 351 10 October 2010 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What is your warning based on, though? A gut feeling? Observation? A study I'm unaware of? I've met plenty of Esperanto speakers who speak Esperanto as a first second language. Many/most seem to make at least as much progress with further languages as their monolingual peers. I've only met a handful that don't bother at all with further languages. My Esperanto is at a higher level than any of my other non-native languages by now. Thus far, that's actually been extremely helpful - a lot of what I've picked up in improving my Esperanto from 'basic/mid basic fluency'* is a transferable skill, which I'm applying to decrease the number of errors and increase the naturalness of my Italian and German these days. * I can imagine s_allard groaning at this description. Sorry! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5165 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 261 of 351 10 October 2010 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have to admit my warning is based on gut feeling, nothing else.
:) Moreover I have to say I agree with your "skills" theory: some of the skills are transferable, and I understand it could help you for German and Italian. But I really believe you overestimate the role of esperanto in the learning process...it just part of the theory "the more languages you knows, the more it's easy to learn new ones". And I think this theorie doesn't work for non-indoeuropean languages: my recent experience taught me that having learned an "easy" (i.e. indoeuropean) language, like slovak for me last year) is completely useless for a "hard" (i.e. not-indoeuropean) langague, like mandarin for me now... By the way I see you're studying japanese...do you sincerly believe that esperanto helps you in learning japanese? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5694 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 264 of 351 11 October 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The issue of Esperanto notwithstanding, I would argue that most sign languages are not at all artificial, they emerged just like spoken languages—naturally, spontaneously, and to satisfy a much needed communicative function in deaf communities around the world. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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