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Thinking about learning Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Everything Diglot Groupie France Joined 4699 days ago 87 posts - 167 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 55 22 February 2012 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi there :)
I'm thinking about learning Esperanto because it seems to be the easiest language to learn (by the way I'm French). My question : how many times does it take to be fluent ? I've heard a lot of answers : 3 months, 6 weeks, 2 weeks. I don't know what to think about it. Let's say if I learn 2 hours everyday. ? Thanks. Edited by Fasulye on 03 March 2012 at 7:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4713 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 2 of 55 22 February 2012 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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That totally depends on how will you study and how much effort will you put into it.
I'd say that studying 2 hours everyday, you'd be conversational (for basic stuff) in less than 1 month and have a decent intermediate level in 2 months. But again, that totally depends on YOU. Edited by fabriciocarraro on 22 February 2012 at 9:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 3 of 55 22 February 2012 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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Enrique, an Esperanto teacher who was helping me a few months ago, says it takes 20 hours to complete a beginner's course. I'm not sure which course he was referring to, and he hasn't been on the forum since this past December.
Sprachprofi, another Esperanto teacher, says it takes about 50 hours of study to be able to read Esperanto. It's not unheard of to be able to speak the language after 6 weeks of study if you're a seasoned language learner. Just as an aside: don't just learn it because it's easy; I think you'll find it boring after awhile. I think that's why Splog started learning it and he got bored once he got to the point where all he had to do was learn vocabulary and idioms. Learn it because you like conlangs or because you want to get in touch with the Esperanto community, or for the original literature and speeches, or other reasons that actually involve using the language. To be honest, it's not that easy (but it is very regular, if you think regularity means easiness) and you can't just give it a half-hearted attempt and be successful. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| balou67 Triglot Newbie France Joined 5230 days ago 15 posts - 31 votes Speaks: French*, Esperanto, English Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese | Message 4 of 55 22 February 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Indeed, it totally depends on the time you'll put into it. In my case, I started
teaching it in the local esperanto club (Strasbourg, FR) about just 1 year after I started learning it on the web. I started with the « cours en 10 leçons » (dek-leciona kurso) on esperanto-jeunes' website, which I found very clear and effective. Then I went on with lernu.net which was great at that time (8 years ago) and should be even better now as they surely added some other cool stuff, be it courses, exercises, forums, chat… The "course in 10 lessons" recommends no more than 1 lesson a day (yet you should wait for correction before sending your next one), no fewer than 1 a week. "Gerda malaperis" is an excellent booster to go on with. (Available on both esperanto-jeunes and lernu.) At the end (or even sooner) of it you can already read whatever you want (you just have to patiently disassemble some words in pieces to understand them, you'll get used quite quickly) and chat with people from everywhere. Still, give lernu a try as it makes you write a bit more, which is important to get confident and get some feedback from helpers *not* from your country. You'll randomly learn expressions/structures/things you can't translate as you'd like from french as you share your tries with the helpers and write more freely about yourself or anything *you* like instead of "Brian is in the kitchen" ;) Just be warned… form the lesson 1 I started "just to see what it's like", I got addicted. I hope you'll get as much pleasure I got learning (and using) it. Have fun! :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 55 23 February 2012 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
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It's definitely doable in under 100 hours. I had a 20 minute long telephone conversation after ~30 hours of Esperanto studies.
7 persons have 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 6 of 55 23 February 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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How long it takes to start reading in Esperanto varies. On the brief end, Tolstoy was rumoured to have taken about an hour to start reading Esperanto.
I've talked with Sprachprofi. Her comment about 50 hours is for reading literature, for people who don't have much experience with languages. Personally, I think that would make some literature accessible. It should take less than 50 hours to start reading something like "Gerda Malaperis", but some more difficult literature would certainly still be daunting at that point. Here's part of what Tolstoy had to say: "Six years ago I received an Esperanto grammar, vocabulary, and articles written in the language. After not more than two hours' study I was able, if not to write the language, at any rate to read it freely...." Edited by Volte on 23 February 2012 at 1:22pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Everything Diglot Groupie France Joined 4699 days ago 87 posts - 167 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 55 23 February 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | ||
You're probably right. At least I can give a try. So the question : what's the best method to learn it ? Lernu is free but seems a bit slowly. Assimil I guess. Edited by Everything on 23 February 2012 at 6:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5727 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 8 of 55 23 February 2012 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've heard the Assimil for Esperanto isn't that good.
I'm still trying to find a good course for the language myself. I took some material off a 10 lesson course from a German youth website, but I haven't started yet. I was translating "Gerda Malaperis" into English, but it was pretty tough going and people stopped helping me with correcting my translation, so I stopped after the 10th chapter. There are 25 chapters in GM plus an epilogue, so I didn't quite translate half of it. Enrique said it would be the first translation of GM in English, so that's some motivation for me. I hope Enrique comes back soon. You might want to try the 10 lesson correspondance course. There's also a French version: http://personal.southern.edu/~caviness/cge/ http://pacujo.net/esperanto/course/ Here is Enrique's Esperanto site, which I found to be very helpful: http://esperantofre.com/ He's from Argentina but now lives in the US. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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