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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| chris777 Newbie United States Joined 6318 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 140 11 August 2007 at 1:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am a bit turned off by the cultish factor, but after doing a Google search I came across these songs in Esperanto. Absolutely beautiful! I might have to learn it now.
http://www.esperanto-mv.pp.ru/Muziko/folkloro.html 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6637 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 10 of 140 11 August 2007 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
I took about 2-3 months to learn Esperanto to a level that I was actually using the language (email correspondence with 2 other people, such that Esperanto was our only common language). Was I fluent? no, not by a longshot. I made a ton of mistakes, and I wore out my Esperanto English Dictionary. But I was USING esperanto, understanding what was being written to me, and making myself understood). That's the thing about Esperanto, it's designed to be usable long before you have mastered it. I had 2 years of German in college (and a German major girlfriend at the time- i.e. motivation to learn it well - and I did pretty well with it), but I was more confident in my Esperanto after 3 months than I was in my German after two years (And I put a LOT more effort into learning German). Here are just a few of the many features that make learning Esperanto much faster than most other languages. 1) There are no irregular verbs. There are only six conjugations of verbs and every verb is conjugated exactly the same way. Once you learn the basic rules, any new verb you learn just plugs into the pattern 2) The orthography is consistent. Every letter gets exactly one sound, and every word is pronounced as it is spelled. The accentuation is 100% regular too. 3) Affixes allow you to expand your vocabulary very quickly. For example, in English we have to learn two names for many animals. Dog and puppy. Cat and kitten. Horse and colt. etc... In Esperanto, the suffix -ido means "offspring of" so if you know the word Hundo is dog, you automatically know that hundido is puppy. Kato is cat, Katido is kitten. etc... And these affixes can be applied to ANY word where it makes sense. libero = freedom. liberido = a child of freedom. Or, keeping with the animal example, in English we have to learn different words for groups of animals, pack of dogs, herd of horses, school of fish, etc... In esperanto, the suffix -aro means "a group of" thus hundaro is a pack of dogs, fiŝaro = a school of fish, etc... And again, the affix can be applied anywhere that it makes sense. monto is a mountain. montaro is a mountain range (a group of mountains). hundidaro is a pack of puppies. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea, Esperanto is remarkably streamlined and elegant. That makes learning it much faster. That's not to say that learning Esperanto is Easy, it's a full language and learning any language will be a challenge, Esperanto included. But, it's vastly Easier than just about any other language out there.
you may be interested in the information here: http://www.answers.com/topic/propedeutic-value-of-esperanto The short answer is that it absolutely is true. I think this is probably true of any language. Learning languages is a skill. The more of them that you learn, the more that skill is developed (which makes learning future languages, even those in different language families, easier). However, I think it's especially true with Esperanto. Firstly, because Esperanto can be learned so quickly. And also because Esperanto is so regular, the "rules" make much more sense. I learned an amazing amount about my native language (English) through my study of Esperanto. And yes, Esperanto has its overzealous supporters (maybe I'm one of them) But maybe it's worth wondering why people get so passionate about it? For me, it was seeing how fast I was able to progress in it, and finding that I could actually use it with people all over the world. Don't let us overzealous supporters turn you off due to our zeal. It's not Esperanto's fault that some of us are a bit crazy :) I always make a suggestion to people who are thinking about studying Esperanto; commit to it for six weeks. My gamble is that if you study Esperanto for six weeks, and see how quickly you can add another language, and a useful, beautiful, and rewarding one at that, you'll be hooked. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 11 of 140 11 August 2007 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh dear, arrgh i've just started helplessly learning Esperanto. Only went to have a look at it. Seemed so easy. Then I just started inputting words into supermemo. Oh dear :( I hope this won't be too hard to juggle next to my Chinese?
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| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6570 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 12 of 140 12 August 2007 at 2:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sprachprofi, you should write an article on Esperanto. You really make a good case for the language. Also take a look at the Wikipedia article, for some reason I found your posts a lot more illustrative.
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 13 of 140 12 August 2007 at 7:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sprachprofi, definately you should write something on Esperanto. Really before reading your post I was totally turned off by Esperanto I thought it would be the last language i'd ever want to learn.
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| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6625 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 14 of 140 12 August 2007 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Sprachprofi, your post was the most pursuasive argument for learning Esperanto I have ever read. I may have to rethink my opinion of it. Edited by Cage on 12 August 2007 at 2:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 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 15 of 140 12 August 2007 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am really glad I was able to make a difference. :-)))
I truly believe that learning Esperanto is an enriching experience everybody should make, especially those who have had bad experiences learning languages. I can accept if people prefer to learn another language; I can't force them to learn Esperanto even if I personally believe they would immensely enjoy it and not fall back in their study of other languages either. What I find hard to accept is when people reject Esperanto out of hand, without considering it, or when they make a case against it without knowing the facts. I wonder what it is that often inspires this strong reaction to the idea; it doesn't occur when considering Ancient Greek, Yoruba, Lakota or other small languages that people could have objections to... As for 'writing something about Esperanto', I will do so on my personal homepage. I'm afraid Wikipedia wouldn't appreciate my contribution because of their NPOV (neutral point of view) rule, and my point of view is definitely not neutral. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 16 of 140 13 August 2007 at 6:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Sprachprofi,
What are the difficulties as you see them in learning Esperanto? Are there any aspects of the body of the language itself that are challenging that you think could be a challenge? I'm trying to encourage a Chinese friend who studies many languages to learn it. Really I don't want to speak English to them and i'm sure they don't want to speak Chinese to me! We both have an interest in each other's languages which is the problem. So I thought if we both learn another language that would solve the problem. Esperanto seem to be quickest and easiest language to learn from a Eurocentric perspective. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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