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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7147 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 113 of 140 21 August 2009 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The idea of criticising a person for learning a language that we would find a waste of time seems strange to me. Why do I have to answer to anybody for the language or subject I am learning?
You can say why you want to learn Esperanto and the reason is valid, at least it is valid to you. That is all that matters. You can say why you don't want to learn Esperanto and the reason is valid, at least it is valid to you. That is all that matters. But don't try and impose your reasons on somebody else. I have already recounted why I began learning Esperanto. I didn't have to ask anyone's permission to do so. I don't have to give account to anybody for how and why I learn any language. I have my reasons and they are valid to me. You can ask me why I learn Esperanto and that is fine. The question is valid. Just don't criticise me for doing so. I am under no obligation to defend the language or to defend myself for learning it. I give my reasons for learning Esperanto and you give your reasons for not learning it. We are both right. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 115 of 140 21 August 2009 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
That's a common reaction; mine is similar. I can also think of at least one book in Esperanto which seems to be almost entirely a reaction to this phenomena. It's a rather long book, at that. Making fun of this is actually fairly common in Esperantujo - there's a great video about "how to advocate for Esperanto", which involves yelling at random people in Esperanto and hitting them with Esperanto flags. A surprising percent of the oversellers don't actually speak usable Esperanto either.
Yep. Well-said. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 116 of 140 21 August 2009 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Universal...??? Esperanto was written by a resident of a quadrilingual town. It contains elements drawn from Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages. It is a long, long way from universal. I don't see any problem with anyone learning whatever they want to, but overzealous advocacy is no less misguided than criticising anyone's personal choice. My personal reason for not studying Esperanto, which is also my objection to attempting to use it as a "bridge" or "gateway" language for new learners, is that as I learn related languages (whether these have a so-called "genetic" relationship or a contact relationship where vocabulary has been shared) I find that I start to develop an intuitive feel for the changes in sounds and structures between the languages. My fear is that Esperanto, because of Zamenhoff having consciously altered existing language without conscious regard to natural language-change processes, would put... (how do I say this?)... I suppose false or misleading data into my "map" of language change. IE. Zamenhoff's logic wouldn't match the internal logic of the language families involved, and would somehow "break" my ability to internalise that logic. I may be wrong, which is why I don't tell anyone not to learn Esperanto, but I'm not going to learn it, and I would resist any movement to make it obligatory. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5586 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 117 of 140 21 August 2009 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I meant universal because it wouldn't matter what your native language was, You could easy speak with someone that speaks native mandarin without learning mandarin...and they could speak to me without learning English. That's why it's universal, it doesn't take 29389283 languages to communicate with people from all over the world :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 118 of 140 21 August 2009 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
So true.
I cultivate the same, and Esperanto doesn't seem to have done any harm whatsoever. Edit: I suppose the reason for this is that natural languages are almost as chaotic in practice. Between academics reinjecting Latin into the Romance languages, different conventions for borrowed words in different eras, simply borrowing in different eras as they'd drifted further from their origins, and exceptions, a knowledge of sound shifts and so forth remains extremely useful, but far from universal. Esperanto has quite a few patterns - I find it a bit reminiscent of how English deals with loan words, including French ones from different eras. Different languages have different borrowings, even within the same family - look at Romanian and the Slavic influence on it for another example of this. The type of knowledge you seek isn't fragile - it would be almost useless if it were. Edited by Volte on 21 August 2009 at 6:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Aeroflot Senior Member United States Joined 5603 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 119 of 140 21 August 2009 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
English is already the universal language. When English loses its popularity, another language will become the universal language. So what's the problem here? Why complicate the world by adding one more language? And the world masses won't learn Esperanto because it seems like the 'logical' choice. People only do the least amount of work, not more than is necessary. So only a language which has obvious value is going to be bothered with, meaning whichever country has the most influence. But you can go introduce Esperanto to Antarctica and maybe in a few centuries Antarctica will become the major power, and then people will learn Esperanto. :) Edited by Aeroflot on 21 August 2009 at 6:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 120 of 140 21 August 2009 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
English isn't a universal language. It's the closest thing we have, but a minority of the world's population speaks it, and a fairly small minority speaks it fluently - 25% is being way too generous. The world has never had a universal language within recorded history. At most, there are regional languages and some languages used between some areas, and some languages are more popular than others in the latter role. Recently, I had to interpret at a kebab stand in a small town in the Czech Republic. I was with a group of Esperanto speakers, and between us we had quite a lot of languages -- but the only common language we had with the people at the kebab stand was my very broken Dutch. We ended up needing to use that and my Czech-Esperanto dictionary to communicate. Our English, Italian, German, Danish, Hungarian, etc were useless - as was their native language.
The above is such a mixture of accuracy and total nonsense that I really don't want to dig into it. It suffices to say that I agree with the main point, but not most of the details.
We're already on it - most conferences I've been to sell t-shirts that say "Esperanto: official language of Antarctica" on them (in Esperanto, not English). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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