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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6769 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 49 of 140 16 August 2007 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Speaking of which, I'd like to see any example of anything Esperanto can express better than Japanese. :) 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 50 of 140 16 August 2007 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I don't quite agree with your first few examples. For one, learning Esperanto is nothing like joining a sect. You can still learn other languages, you don't have to get involved in the community and you don't have to change anything about your beliefs or way of life. In fact, Esperanto speakers tend to be very tolerant e. g. about religion, political beliefs or sexual orientation. At Esperanto youth meetings and parties, there is also no strife between vegans / vegetarians / meat-eaters, between those who want to drink excessively and those who refuse to drink alcohol altogether, between those who want to dance all night and those who want to sit back and talk over a cup of tea ;-) Most college parties exert more group pressure...
You can get by by speaking English in many places, that's true. You can use it to ask for directions or buy a postcard - although you'd be surprised how many locals don't even speak enough English to help you with that. However, I have yet to hear of a single person being invited to a local's home just because they spoke English, being shown a place tourists don't normally see or even getting to hear more about local culture from people. All too often, speaking English is a sign that people are NOT interested in local culture. Speaking the country's language well may get you noticed among the thousands of tourists, if it's something unusual, like Swahili, not a widespread language like French or Spanish. But if you don't have the time or inclination to learn dozens of small languages for this purpose before being able to experience the world's diversity of cultures, Esperanto will do very nicely.
I don't believe that "model train collectors" are necessarily open-minded, even if you are an open-minded model train collector. Being open-minded does not affect the decision of starting this hobby, whereas it does affect the decision of learning Esperanto. As for the other subgroups you mentioned, imho they are at the opposite end of the scale. The thing is, speaking Esperanto doesn't limit you to discussions about Esperanto like being in a group of model train collectors would mean you'd mostly discuss model train collecting among them. Esperanto is a tool that is used to talk about anything - to the point that there are Esperanto associations for people interested in the railway, Esperanto associations for people interested in teaching, Esperanto associations for boyscouts and girlscouts - people of any field of interest. And if you want to discuss Feng Shui with a Chinese professional in Esperanto, the Universal Esperanto Associations has a list of contacts who volunteered to reply to enquiries from foreigners about their subject matter.
As I said, all 4 language groups in Bialystok tried to dominate each other. Do not try to twist my meaning. Even though a lot of people were able to communicate in at least two of the city's languages, especially the educated people, you could not go to e. g. a Russian doctor and expect to be allowed to talk to him in Yiddish, Polish or German, and vice versa. That way, people tried to make others speak their language, and not just for reasons of convenience. It's similar to how some Wallon people feel about Flemish (and vice versa) even today, or some French Canadians and English Canadians.
Slavic languages have affixes. So does German. Even English has a few. The differences to Esperanto are: In natural languages - affixes don't cover the same breadth - affixes are often vaguely defined - adding affixes sometimes requires illogical changes to the word, such as changing the word stem or adding an extra letter in between, hence non-native speakers can't easily find the right form - even if affix + word are combined correctly, non-native speakers will be told "you can't combine things like this; this word doesn't exist; we don't say it like that". In Esperanto, anything goes. Hence, affixes in natural languages may help non-native speakers learn the meaning of a word after they have encountered it, whereas in Esperanto, affixes allow non-native speakers to create perfectly correct words before having encountered them, i. e. they use affixes CREATIVELY, and it's fun. That's something you aren't allowed to do in any language I'm aware of. This creative usage of affixes leads to some very interesting words that you would find hard to translate into any single natural language, but more importantly it greatly reduces the time needed to learn basic words to express your thoughts and feelings in Esperanto. The affix system makes the language much easier to learn, especially for speakers of non-European languages. Whether it also makes the language more elegant or nicer is a matter of taste. You admire the diversity of vocabulary, that forces learners to memorize more than 30 words for 10 animals (and even native speakers don't typically know the relations between all of them); awake and I admire the genius that streamlined the language so that you only have to learn 10 words without losing any of the nuances the additional words brought and while adding the possibility of further nuances. E. g. for pigs, English distinguishes between "boar"(male) and "sow"(female) (which is another problem because "sow" is also the word for a female bear). Then why doesn't it allow distinguishing male and female dolphins? Esperanto does, and it does away nicely with the ambiguity of the word "sow", too. For me, the essence of elegance is to achieve vast beauty while only using few means, a few simple accents rather than a smattering of jewelry. Go is more elegant than chess because its rules are as easy as those of Tic-Tac-Toe and the game evolving from them is deeper and more intricate than any chess game. Esperanto to me is more elegant than natural languages because it only uses comparatively few word roots and can yet express all the nuances that other languages spend so many word roots on, and you can express yourself in it as well or even better than in any one natural language. You accuse me of not doing my research learning all kinds of languages to be able to tell you that none of them allow you to express yourself the same way as Esperanto does. How'bout you study Esperanto, even just for 6 weeks, before telling me that Esperanto is nothing special. Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 August 2007 at 9:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6437 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 51 of 140 16 August 2007 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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@furyou_gaijin: why is it that you have to litter this forum with your hatred towards Esperanto? Frankly, I'm getting quite sick of you taking every single opportunity to pervert all topics that has something to do with this noble language.
Sprachprofi, thank you very much for your contribution to this thread. You have made Esperanto an irresistable language, and I can't wait till I start on it after my German 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 52 of 140 16 August 2007 at 9:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Here are a few words that you can try finding words in other languages for:
detaladi pagegi forgesejo ventido fortempiĝi italinde belega malsekvi ĉuvivaj homoj eldenti antaŭdoloro forregali preterami kunlipuloj (all of these are taken from actual Esperanto texts or conversations) Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 August 2007 at 9:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6692 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 53 of 140 16 August 2007 at 10:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Thanks for the links, and the information. I am checking them out.
Can you translate them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Frakseno Newbie Joined 6311 days ago 23 posts - 28 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto | Message 54 of 140 16 August 2007 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sprachprofi, your excellent posts haven't convinced me to study Esperanto (I have already been studying it), but they did convince me to register at this forum.
For my two cents' worth on this topic: I study Esperanto because I love language, yet I am not so enamored of any other country or culture that I am willing to immerse myself in it for the sheer love of it. I am interested in many nations, cultures, and religions. I have studied German, Spanish, Hebrew, and Japanese. But to truly come to know a language, I think, requires an immersion in culture which I simply don't have the energy for at this time in my life. I lived in Germany for a few years and enjoyed it alot; that made immersion easy. I love much about the Japanese language, history, art, and culture; and that helped my language learning so that I was an A student in college Japanese courses. But right now I am so enjoying simply exploring a culture-neutral, religion-neutral, and politics-neutral language for its own sake. Studying Esperanto is teaching me about language itself, about how chaotic English itself is, and about how I form thoughts in my native language and express them, etc. It is to me fun and intellectually stimulating. 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 55 of 140 16 August 2007 at 10:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
If there were concise ways of translating all of them to English, I wouldn't be posting them. I can try though. detaladi: detali = to detail; -ad- = take a long time -> to go on and on talking about the details of a topic pagegi: pagi = to pay; -eg- = big, a lot -> pay a very expensive price forgesejo: forgesi = to forget; -ej- = place -> place where you are likely to forget and leave things ventido: vento = wind; -id- = child -> a small movement of air that could not be called "wind" yet but may develop into one fortempiĝi: for = away; tempo = time; igxi = become -> to be lost/forgotten or similar through the passing of time italinde belega: itala = Italian; -ind- = worthy; -e = adverb; belega (bel-eg-a) = very beautiful -> (in this case an edition) that's so very beautiful Italy (the publishing country) can be proud of it malsekvi: mal- = opposite; sekvi = follow -> go in the opposite direction than indicated e. g. by arrows ĉuvivaj homoj: cxu = whether; viva = alive; homoj = people -> people of which you're not sure whether they're dead or alive (e. g. with reference to some refugees that are brought into a camp in very bad condition) eldenti: el = out of; dento = tooth; -i = verb in infinitive -> to talk through gritted teeth antaŭdoloro: antaux = before; doloro = pain -> pain you feel in anticipation of a dreaded event forregali: for = away; regali = give as a present -> make somebody (in this case girlfriends) leave you by giving inappropriate gifts preterami: preter = (passing) by; ami = love -> love somebody in a way but without actually taking the time to get to know him or spend time with him kunlipuloj: kun = with; lipo = lip; uloj = persons -> people that have their lips together (from a text about a kissing contest) Another one that I like: homarano homo = human; -ar- = group, collection; -an- = member; -o = noun -> a member of mankind 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 56 of 140 16 August 2007 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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A few more questions :)
1) How are new words, say for new electronic items incorporated into Esperanto? 2) Am I right in thinking that items can be expressed using a few ways? If nouns can be expressed fluidly like this doesn't it sometimes cause confusion? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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