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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6640 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 17 of 140 13 August 2007 at 8:35am | IP Logged | ||
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The main difficulty that most people seem to have is with the accusative
ending -n. In Esperanto, All nouns end in -o, but you mark the direct object with an -n ending on top of that Consider the words hundo (dog), mordas (bites) and viro (man) Hundo mordas viron = dog bites man The -n tells you who was bitten. Therefore viron mordas hundo also means dog bites man. it's the marking, not the word order that indicates the direct object. And though I've never seen this type of construction outside of poetry/ song lyrics, even viron hundo mordas and mordas hundo viron are grammatically correct. How would you say man bites dog? put the -n on hundo instead of viro. Viro mordas hundon. Probably 90% of the time or more, Esperanto keeps subject - verb - object ordering (as in english), but the accusative marking gives you the ability to express to express yourself with varying word orders to change the emphasis/shade of meaning of a sentence. It's surprisingly powerful once you get used to it. But it does take some getting used to Next, adjectives (which always end in -a), must always agree with case and number to form the plural, add -j (the english y sound) thus hundoj mordas viron = dogs are biting a man now consider putting an adjective in the mix, say forta ( = strong) fortaj hundoj mordas viron = strong dogs are biting a man Forta takes the -j ending because it goes with hundoj which also has the -j ending Another example would be hundoj mordas fortan viron = dogs are biting a strong man hundoj mordas fortajn virojn = dogs are biting strong men (men is now plural) Note that in each case, the adjective has the same ending as the noun it modifies. So what if you forget to add the ending to the adjective? it can change the meaning of the sentence. hundoj mordas fortaj virojn? fortaj has the same -j ending as hundo, not the -jn ending of virojn. Therefore, "hundoj mordas fortaj virojn" means strong dogs are biting men. because fortaj goes with hundoj, despite the unusual word order. I think this is the most complex feature of Esperanto, and until you get used to it, it can give you fits. :) -------------------- There were other things I struggled with in Esperanto, mostly just things where english does it differently. It's not that Esperanto was any harder, it's just that I had to break habits. For example, in English we say I have fallen In Esperanto we say Mi estas falinta = I am fallen --------------------- Esperanto also uses a lot of prepositions, and they have very narrowly defined meanings. Beginners often struggle with using the right one For example, kun and per both can be translated by the english word "with" but they have much more specific meanings kun implies being together Mi iris kun li = I went with him but per = "by means of" Mi iris per buso = I went by bus Mi skribis per stylo = I wrote with (by means of) a pen Those tend to get mixed up a lot. I assume that some other languages probably make similar distinctions, so your mileage may vary :) ---------- P.S. Esperanto has one very cool feature, a wildcard preposition. Because prepositions in esperanto have such specific meanings, there are times when no specific preposition means just what you want. In those cases, you use the preposition je which takes on the meaning you need it to. For example, The preposition "sur" means on. Beginners might say li vetas sur ĉevaloj = he bets on horses. But, this sentence means, he bets when he is physically on multiple horses But here, the wildcard preposition can be used. Li vetas je ĉevaloj = he bets on horses. or Li venos je mardo = he will come on tuesday etc... :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 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 18 of 140 13 August 2007 at 11:03am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with awake that the Accusative and the Noun-adjective agreement are rather challenging features. However, they are less difficult in Esperanto than in other languages that have them.
E. g. the Accusative is always marked by the added -n - no matter whether you're talking singular nouns, plural nouns, adjectives or even personal pronouns. Not only do you not have to learn any declension patterns, you also don't have to learn several forms for each personal pronoun, such as English "he - him" but "she - her"(not "shim"). This feature of English is actually the Accusative in disguise, so to get English speakers accustomed to remembering the Accusative I always ask them to replace whatever word with "he" or "she". Also, since Esperanto lacks a Dative case, the decision whether or not to add -n is really just a matter of identifying whether the word is the object of the sentence or not. I believe that Esperanto could have done without noun-adjective agreement. After all, I've never seen anybody separate the adjective from its noun in a way that would make it unclear to what noun the adjective belongs. Most people say "la ridantaj infanoj"(the laughing children), some say "la infanoj ridantaj"(the children laughing), mostly to make some things sound more poetic, but I've never seen a placement like "hundoj mordas fortaj virojn". But finally, noun-adjective agreement in Esperanto is also much easier than in other languages because the ending of the connected words are always the same. In Latin, you sometimes get matching endings like "hominibus venientibus", but usually you have to painstakingly analyze words in order to see that they are in the same case, number and gender and that hence they belong together. Also, Latin word order can be really chaotic... I would not say that prepositions are hard in Esperanto. Prepositions are traditionally an illogical part of language, otherwise why is it "in the afternoon" but "at night", "in June" but "on Monday". All of them refer to a stretch of time. Plus, all languages divide their prepositions differently, so there are no patterns that Esperanto could follow. Hence, Zamenhof did the only sensible thing by taking whatever prepositions languages clearly defined (e. g. opting to take "sur" rather than "on" for the spatial relation, because "on" is also used for time in English whereas "sur" is unambiguous) and then applying the rule "one preposition per context". So there's one preposition that's only used for the means by which you do something, one preposition for something or somebody that accompanies you, and so on. There are rather more prepositions in Esperanto than in other languages because of this, but I found them much more logical and it's easier to learn what is logical. The wildcard preposition and the possibility of using the Accusative and "al X" interchangeably make it harder to make mistakes. Some people also say that transitive/intransitive is a problem. I don't know any Indo-European language that has succeeded in doing away with it though. I didn't find it much of a bother just like I didn't find it a bother in other languages: 1. there are a lot of verbs where it's obvious, e. g. "to sleep", "to see", "to give", and so on. 2. in case it's not obvious or the verb has the wrong status for your purposes, you always have the possibility of changing a verb's status by adding -ig- or -igx- as a suffix. 3. this results in some people making the mistake of adding -ig- or -igx- where it is not necessary. Imho it's not something to worry about because most people wouldn't notice this mistake, it can't lead to confusion of any kind, and through regular usage of the language people will eventually absorb the correct form. Finally, I would wager to say that Esperanto is easier for a Chinese person than any other European language, possibly even easier than Japanese for them. The reason is that a simple, logical grammar will be appreciated by everybody and the vocabulary, which initially favours those who know a European language (the majority of the world's population), is so versatile that very few word stems actually have to be learned. For example, it's the common estimate that knowing 500 word roots are enough to express basically anything and most of the rest are just synonyms of words that could be created from those roots. It takes some practice and courage to start using Esperanto word roots creatively like that though. Edited by Sprachprofi on 13 August 2007 at 11:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6695 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 19 of 140 13 August 2007 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has the UN ever expressed its views regarding Esperanto?
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| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6872 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 20 of 140 13 August 2007 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
I've read that there has been no serious consideration of it by the UN, but that was years ago when I was reading about it, I don't know if that has changed at all. It seems I've read that some interpreters/translators don't like the idea of an international language coming in when they've worked hard to learn Arabic, Chinese, Russian, etc. For the sake of their jobs, I certainly wouldn't blame them. I think though, again from some of the same stuff I was reading, some Esperantists might not like the idea of the language being the official language of an organization such as the UN or EU. Not being the official language would make it more "everyone's language." They way I see it, the organizations are already international, but even as a limited Esperantist still, my opinions are that I like it being free of these organizations. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 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 21 of 140 14 August 2007 at 3:48am | IP Logged | ||
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UNESCO has passed two resolutions in favour of Esperanto. You can read them at http://e.euroscola.free.fr/unesco-en.htm .
I believe that Esperanto not being heavily backed by a country (= huge amount of money and economic power) like English or French are is the main reason for it not being commonly taught in schools worldwide right now. Without doubt it is the language best suited to be used as a language of international communication, and also a logical neutral choice since countries could never agree on one country's language to use in contexts that matter, but suitability is not a criteria in politics and logic not the way politics work. And maybe it's not desirable for Esperanto to be adopted by one country or one regional association such as the EU. The Esperanto movements in Brazil, Togo, Azerbaijan, Japan, Australia and other countries might feel slighted, and this would increase the common prejudice that Esperanto is too European-centric. People who have a grudge against the European Union would then feel discouraged from learning it and that's really against the intentions of Esperanto, which is supposed to be a language that everybody everywhere can call his own. If Esperanto becomes more wide-spread, it will be because of its merits, because people believe that it deserves to be more and because they can draw practical usage from it. Edited by Sprachprofi on 14 August 2007 at 3:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6440 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 140 14 August 2007 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I was away at my grandparents' until today, so I couldn't reply at all to the thread.
Wow, Sprachprofi, thanks for a long, detailed and inspirational post. I really think I ought to take Esperanto after I've finished with German. I hope it will help me with Italian and Spanish which I plan to learn later. Hopefully, it won't take too long. I see none of the difficulties mentioned are as discouraging as the difficulties of German, English or Mandarin. So there should be no "logical" reason for not learning Esperanto. I always wondered why the UN didn't have Esperanto as one of its official languages. But I guess it could be because there's a fewer number of speakers than other languages which are chosen. I've heard there was a movement to make Esperanto a computer language, the argument being that it should be easier to teach "man-made" computer a "man-made" language rather than a "natural" language. Also, I've heard that Ido is a bit like a deviation of Esperanto. How similar are those two languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 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 23 of 140 14 August 2007 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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:-)
Maybe Esperanto is a little easier to teach to a computer than English or other languages because of its regularity, but then, what's a computer good for if not to memorize irregularities, declension and conjugation tables much better than any human could hope to memorize them ;-) I believe people have now switched to Lojban/Loglan as an ideal language for computers. Ido is a dead branch evolving from Esperanto (hence the name: "ido" is one way to say "child" in Esperanto). The problem of most planned languages (and new ones are added every day) is that the community always bickers about what features it should or should not have. The only one who has any say at all is obviously the one who invented the language, that's why most planned languages die after the founder is dead. It's also a reason why less people are ready to learn those languages, because they can't be sure that the grammar won't have been changed by the time they finished studying it. Esperanto of course has its share of bickering, e. g. people suggesting the abolishment of all difficulties mentioned above, suggesting doing away with the plural, suggesting nouns ending in something other than -o and the addition of noun gender, suggesting an affix for men just like there is an affix for women, and so on. However, Zamenhof created a document called "La Fundamento", in which he lays down all 16 basic grammar rules (hence the sometimes-heard claim that Esperanto only has 16 grammar rules) and also provides examples of vocabulary and expressions. Nobody may change anything about these fundamentals. This rule made Esperanto flexible enough to be able to develop over time and make necessary additions e. g. for modern vocabulary, but not so flexible that people could just introduce whatever grammar feature they missed. As for features that Zamenhof didn't strictly envisage or reject, such as the adding of a suffix for males (an idea inspired by political correctness, something unforeseen in 1905), these will only become a part of the language if the vast majority of speakers start using them. The Academy of Esperanto is descriptivist. Anyway, Ido diverged from Esperanto because its founders wanted to change some things about Esperanto that the fundamentals didn't allow to be changed. They and their followers have since made quite drastic changes, including replacing a lot of word roots to make the language look more like Italian or Spanish. You can find a comparison of the two languages at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_and_Ido_compared, including the Lord's Prayer as a sample. I think this sample was chosen to look quite different though, since the language samples at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido#Language_examples are much more understandable to an Esperanto speaker. While Ido has avoided being destroyed by internal quarrels about language features, it is not nearly as successful as Esperanto, neither in terms of literature, speakers or conferences. Approximately 99% of those who know a planned language know Esperanto, the remaining 1% are divided between Ido, Interlingua, Klingon and many other projects that never came to fruition, such as Volapük. By the way, "volapukaĵo" (literally: something Volapük) is a colourful Esperanto word for "nonsense". 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6695 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 24 of 140 14 August 2007 at 10:40am | IP Logged | ||
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One complaint I read about Esperanto is the language's sound. Some people say that the language sounds too much like Portuguese or Spanish instead of a unique and neutral sound. How do Esperantists feel about that criticism?
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