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How Long Does it Take to Learn Esperanto?

  Tags: Esperanto
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
haziz
Bilingual Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3863 days ago

28 posts - 37 votes
Speaks: Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian)*, English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 1 of 5
26 November 2015 at 7:03am | IP Logged 
So how long does it take to learn Esperanto, and how does that compare to learning a romance language like Spanish, Italian or French?

I am considering tackling Esperanto AFTER gaining some basic fluency in Spanish and after relearning French.

Is it a romp in the park for a month, reading a short book and playing video games on Duolingo? If yes, please sign me up!

Or is it half as hard as learning French or Italian, and takes half as long? In that case I would prefer to conserve my energy and learn a living language. Sorry, Esperanto does not qualify, even if it has a handful of native speakers and even if there seems to be, not one but two, Esperanto conversation groups near me! Surprising, specially since I live in the sticks in western Massachusetts!

So how long, and how easily, does it take to achieve basic fluency (let's say B1 level) in Esperanto, and how does that compare to a romance language, e.g. Spanish or Italian studied to the same fluency level?
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geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4689 days ago

1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 2 of 5
27 November 2015 at 1:46am | IP Logged 
haziz wrote:


Is it a romp in the park for a month, reading a short book and playing video games on Duolingo? If yes,
please sign me up!



Yes.
2 persons have voted this message useful



geoffw
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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1134 posts - 1865 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish
Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian

 
 Message 3 of 5
27 November 2015 at 1:57am | IP Logged 
To be a bit more precise, that's more or less what I did--but I already knew German, Yiddish and French to
a decent level, had studied a decent bit of Italian, Spanish, and Latin, and was familiar with the basics of
Russian. Therefore, nearly everything in Esperanto was a cognate for me, and the grammar concepts were
easy to pick up. (And the question particle "ĉu" appears to be based on the way questions are formed in
Polish, btw.) I was awkwardly chatting online (with the help of Google translate) after a week or two.

I have no doubt that you could study Esperanto for 4-6 weeks and get to a decent level well beyond what
you would achieve in Spanish or Italian in the same amount of time. If you're interested in Esperanto, give it
a try.

Check out this 6 week Esperanto project to compare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHPC5DN4eJA
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Serpent
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Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6598 days ago

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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 4 of 5
27 November 2015 at 4:45am | IP Logged 
Ukrainian and Belarusian also use similar particles :)
The basics are really easy indeed, but developing a decent vocabulary still takes time (I never managed to do that because I lost motivation).
4 persons have voted this message useful



datsunking1
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5586 days ago

1014 posts - 1533 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French

 
 Message 5 of 5
05 September 2016 at 12:29pm | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:
Ukrainian and Belarusian also use similar particles :)
The basics are really easy indeed, but developing a decent vocabulary still takes time (I never managed to do that because I lost motivation).


Yeah, with few people to interact with (I know there are forums and stuff) I lost motivation quickly.

Teach Yourself has a older course (I believe mine is from the 60s) that is really good for Esperanto. I picked it up for $5 I think, it's written be John Cresswell and John Hartley. Someday maybe I'll learn.


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