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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| 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 41 of 140 15 August 2007 at 11:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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lernu! said that there is a site that can help you find Esperanto clubs in your area. Unfortunately, the website is only in German and Esperanto. What can I click to search for one in my area?
http://www.esperantoland.org/eo/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| justinwilliams Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6693 days ago 321 posts - 327 votes 3 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Italian | Message 42 of 140 15 August 2007 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Wow, you guys are good at making esperanto attracting. I've been reading about it for the past 2 days and I'm very tempted to learn it!
How does it compare to Italian and Spanish for instance in terms of difficulty and time required to learn it? Edited by justinwilliams on 15 August 2007 at 1:29pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| 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 43 of 140 15 August 2007 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I'm not sure how to answer the question of time between Esperanto vs. Spanish, but it is certainly easier, IMHO. I was able to express on myself in Esperanto far better after a few months of learning it alone than I was after a few months of being in Mexico. That was several years ago, so I don't remember exactly how much time it took, but due to the flexibilities of Esperanto in the word-building, you can put understandable concepts together, where as in Spanish I always have to think about things much more deeply before I could say something.
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| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6640 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 44 of 140 15 August 2007 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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It depends on your aptitude and experience, but the general rule of
thumb is that Esperanto can be learned 4 to 10 times faster than a national language. My personal experience validates that estimate: I studied German in College for about 18 months, and could read/write it well, but After 2-3 months of studying Esperanto I was at a higher level in Esperanto than I ever reached in German)
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| amuzulo Newbie Germany chucksmith.de/ Joined 6314 days ago 4 posts - 9 votes | Message 45 of 140 16 August 2007 at 1:45am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
So, congrats for posting a message that got Sprachprofi's boyfriend to write his first post to the forum. :-) I just want to mention that ELNA has a list of Eo clubs in the USA. Also, if a club is not listed in your city, you might could find another individual Eo speaker at the Amikumu website. Americans are currently the second largest user group with 178 members. Good luck! Edited by amuzulo on 16 August 2007 at 1:46am 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 46 of 140 16 August 2007 at 1:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Okay, answering various questions that popped up while I was travelling to my boyfriend's place - staying for free with an Esperanto speaker ;-) btw I've heard of people who spend half a year or so touring Europe using Pasporta Servo and paying only travel costs and presents to hosts.
Re: secret languages between my boyfriend and me: of course we use Esperanto that way when we're on the bus or something. At home we speak whatever we feel like though: Esperanto, English or German, rarely also French or Dutch. Re: creating exceptions: I haven't ever witnessed that. The only expression sometimes uttered that doesn't conform to Esperanto's grammar rules is "Jam temp' está" (it's time now) - taken from Zamenhof's earliest versions of Esperanto. Compared to Italian and Spanish, Esperanto is definitely much easier. I started learning Esperanto only a month or two before I started learning Italian. Even though the Italian course at High School led us to basic fluency after only 3 years (6-8 hours per week), the e-mail Esperanto course I did at a pace of 1 lesson every two weeks got me there after less than one year. Of course it helps immensely if you already know Germanic or Romance languages - I knew German, English, Latin and some French - that way you can already understand perhaps 85% of Esperanto after reading about the 16 grammar rules. A friend of mine from Montreal speaks French and English natively and has learned German to a quite high level. He's already beyond 50 and doesn't like formal study, so he just sat in an Esperanto voice-chat room at least once a week for 2-3 months and afterwards was able to speak Esperanto quite well. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6390 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 47 of 140 16 August 2007 at 6:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Take out 'Esperanto speakers' and replace it with 'Jehovah's Witnesses' or 'Sunday Adventists' or 'Aum Shinrikyo', for that matter, the above will still read the same... Or replace it with 'collectors of model trains' - the analogy will still hold.
Euh... wrong. English provides easy access to lots of cultures in the present day and age. One can argue that it is by far more effective than Esperanto in achieving the goal of superficially acquainting oneself with local cultures. And for any deeper understanding of any local culture, learning the local language is still a necessity, I'm afraid.
Once again, replace 'Esperanto speakers' with 'model train collectors' and the argument will hold. As it will hold for any crowd of people sharing interests vaguely similar to one's own.
And exactly how did Jews try to force their language and dominate Russians, Germans and Polish, pray tell?!.. Although I can think of a few sources that upheld that view after the turn of that century, I could not think for a moment those sources could have possibly been yours...
Obviously, you have familiarised yourself with the affix system of the Slavic languages and its expressiveness before making this statement, have you not? In which case, a few examples of how that natural system fails to perform in comparison to Esperanto would not be out of place.
Yes, the diversity of the vocabulary is one of the things that make natural languages so beautiful and rich. Are you suggesting that cutting down to one suffix per meaning makes a language elegant?! In that case, our tastes and notions of elegancy truly differ... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| amuzulo Newbie Germany chucksmith.de/ Joined 6314 days ago 4 posts - 9 votes | Message 48 of 140 16 August 2007 at 7:46am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
The only difference is that you'll have a common language. If you stay with a model train collector in Japan, there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to talk with each other, nor that you would be able to communicate well enough to be able to ask to stay at their place... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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