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Adding Esperanto as a "side dish"? | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5600 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 9 of 23 19 March 2012 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | ||
The problem with Toki pona is, that the "dish" is too small. Can you name me at least ten books which are writte in it? No, the language is not made for that purpose, it is for conversation. I would never learn a language without a literary corpus, because I am not very interested in talking to other people, but want only texts to study. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5730 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 10 of 23 20 March 2012 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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My point about writing a book or giving a lecture was that if you want to be highly functional in Esperanto, it's silly to just call it "half a language." I understand OP's original statement was about difficulty, but any language you study is as difficult as you make it, depending how good you want to be at the language. Depending on the language, survival skills could be very useful (like knowing basic Spanish in the Southwestern US), but that level would probably be useless in Esperanto (after all, in which city in the world can you ask someone for directions in Esperanto and be reasonably certain they'd understand you?).
There are orators and writers in Esperanto. I'm still a komencanto, so I can't comment on how good they are, but most of them probably willingly learned Esperanto as a second language (they probably aren't native speakers). What I'm trying to say is that whatever any other language can do, I'm sure Esperanto can do just as well. It annoys me a little when people say otherwise. I'm interested in other conlangs like toki pona or Lojban, but the real appeal from those languages seems to be using them for chatting online. To me, that just doesn't seem like a good enough reason to learn them. As more people learn them, the body of literature and opportunities to use them for other purposes other than chatting online will increase too. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5547 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 23 20 March 2012 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Esperanto is fun and once you start learning it becomes really addictive... I won't call it "half a language" since I don't know enough about it, but what bothers me is that it is a constructed language... No offense to those who love them, but I'm reluctant to learn constructed languages - they just don't appeal to me in the same way that natural languages do.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 12 of 23 20 March 2012 at 2:13pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think that's the "real appeal" of either Lojban or Toki Pona. Both these languages are engineered with a specific purpose in mind. Their main selling point is restructuring your thoughts and forcing you to express yourself in ways that don't come as easily in natural languages, thus giving you a whole new way of looking at the world (a logical way, in the case of Lojban, and a simple way without self-deception, in the case of Toki Pona). They're to some extent more "private". Of course they're used for communication, but I don't think it's their main purpose, even though part of Lojban's purpose is, if I recall correctly, to enable easier communication between humans and computers. 4 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 13 of 23 20 March 2012 at 3:08pm | IP Logged | ||
In terms of expressiveness, quality of literature, and so forth, Esperanto is not "half a language". In terms of difficulty to learn in to any given level, it is, in the same sense that French is for a speaker of Spanish. Every Esperanto writer speaker of note is a non-native speaker. Some of them are very, very good. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5730 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 14 of 23 20 March 2012 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Ari: Thanks. I didn't really know how people use Lojban and toki pona, but I can see how using it to think in new ways would be appealing.
@manish: Esperanto is the closest conlang to being a natural language. It has just about everything natural languages have (including native speakers), so it's really a natural language in every way except that someone purposefully designed it instead of evolving naturally and be tinkered with by grammarians over a period of time. Some conlangs are more like incomplete projects than languages, so I can see why some people wouldn't want to learn them. Also, no other conlang has the community and literature that Esperanto has, so if you want to get into conlangs and maybe make your own someday (like I do), Esperanto is the best way to get started. 2 persons have 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 23 20 March 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, depends if you count Indonesian and Modern Hebrew, these were also largely designed rather than evolving naturally. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5547 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 23 20 March 2012 at 7:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Indonesian is the standard form of a dialect, how exactly is it "designed"? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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