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Esperanto’s benefit for language learners | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5426 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 10 of 78 14 April 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I would agree that learning a language is an intellectual challenge, but if you're just talking about languages themselves then Esperanto is far from an intellectual challenge. And I'm not exactly sure on the three months thing, that's just what I've heard from a lot of Esperantists, and I think I've seen that estimate on this forum.
That's one reason I'm getting turned off to Esperanto. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5842 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 11 of 78 14 April 2010 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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With the possible exception of MrHenrik, it seems that everyone else who appears somehow provoked by Esperanto in this and other threads, are native English speakers.
While the people who are positive as a rule are continental Europeans. How do you explain that? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5407 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 12 of 78 15 April 2010 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm not positive about Esperanto and I'm a Continental European. But I must be in the minority (of those people who know about Esperanto, not people in general).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5389 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 13 of 78 15 April 2010 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have no problem with Esperanto in concept, just in form.
If you want to make a language for the whole world, it's pretty short-sighted to just make a language that sounds like simplified Italian and push it in the Latin script, with an entirely Eurocentric group of phonemes. For its time it was an admirable effort. But Esperanto is not a world language--it is a Eurocentric language with a very smart and simple design. And I think this rings true in that, as Cordelia mentioned, most speakers of it--from what I can tell--seem to be continental Europeans. Some folks from Asia, Africa, and the Americas may pick it up, but only if they're true language nerds (which implies a certain amount of economic privileges and education). A true world language can't have a Eurocentric bias, which is why I think Esperanto, while an interesting track of linguistic history, is not going to take the world by storm. I think what irritates many is that this Eurocentric bias is sort of swept under the rug as Esperantists push the image of us all singing Esperanto Kum-Ba-Yas around an international bonfire. If people were seriously interested in an international language, I think that something like Lojban (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban) is the best direction to move in: its vocabulary base is evenly influenced by English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, and Russian. It is unfortunately only written in Latin or Cyrillic script, which I would personally like to see replaced with an innovative new script that borrows from several script traditions but is easily reproduced. THEN we would truly have the start of an international handshake, because nobody would have a significant leg up on anyone else in learning the language, as Europeans currently have with Esperanto. But what, you say, Lojban isn't popular enough, right? There's no base of speakers worth mentioning, and there's no real literary tradition, right? It's just some exercise made up by a small group of scholars and has no chance of making it, right? Well, that's how most people feel about Esperanto. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 15 of 78 15 April 2010 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I definitely understand your sentiment, and I have similar concerns. I'm not saying Esperanto is a perfect language, or that it lacks a certain Eurocentric bias, or even that it necessarily should be the world's lingua franca. My reasons for enjoying the language are purely pragmatic. It is the only language of its kind that's actually spoken by a significant number of people, and has a culture behind it. I've put some thought into how I would construct a lingua franca, and I think I would definitely make something less Eurocentric. I would base the vocabulary on the twelve languages with 100 million+ speakers (Mandarin, English, Hindi-Urdu, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian, German, French, Japanese), make the grammar much more analytic, simplify the phonology and get rid of the consonant clusters that present difficulties (the word scii, pronounced 'stsee-ee' and meaning 'to know', was a big mistake). I would also make the pronouns more distinct; it's hard to tell mi 'I' from ni 'we', and it doesn't help that the other personal pronouns are vi, li, ŝi, ĝi, ili. There are a lot of aspects about Esperanto that could be improved and which make the language sub-optimal for use as a lingua franca. And Lojban too for that matter; I just don't see it catching on with its strange, non-intuitive grammar, and I would prefer something that more resembles the grammar of creole languages. I apologize if I came off as preachy in the original post. Rereading it, I can definitely see how one could get that impression. My point is that Esperanto is a great language to learn because of the great people who speak it. If that sounds "elitist", then so be it, I don't care. My experience has validated time and time again that Esperantists really are a very intelligent, friendly bunch of people on the whole, and it makes sense when you consider the sort of person who would decide to learn the language. I have gotten a lot of utility out of it, finding likable people all over the world who are interested in languages like I am, and who often speak the languages I am studying, and I don't really see the problem with encouraging others to share in this incredibly rewarding experience. If you don't want to, don't. As regards my comment about Esperantists being the sort of people who enjoy an intellectual challenge, I meant that in the sense that furrykef clarified:
Edited by Levi on 15 April 2010 at 1:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 6083 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 78 15 April 2010 at 2:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The problem here is that you see things in black and white only, but there's so much more to it. Drawing the conclusion that English natives hates Esperanto based on a couple of threads here seems a bit peculiar. For starters, I'm not really negative towards Esperanto - I just don't really get the point. Europeans will know English through culture and if you're not European you'll have more of a reason to learn English seeing as Esperanto won't give you much of an advantage anyhow. I'm not negative, I'm just not very.. positive. If it counts for anything, I started learning Esperanto myself a couple of years back but I kind of lost motivation with the whole pointlessness of it all. If it did become a lingua franca I wouldn't mind of course. I know you're very keen on latching out on English and it's stance in society - in my opinion English has spiralled out of control now as a part of the natural evolution of the language world, no point in fighting the currents. Of course, the fact that I love the language does help me personally. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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