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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 169 of 351 24 December 2009 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am serious. I also realize that this is not a common viewpoint; nonetheless, I hold it, given the Esperanto and Latin literature I've read. It's a matter of taste. Latin literature is of far more historical value, and will continue to be so. Latin poetry is better than Esperanto poetry; if Esperanto has a Catullus, I have never heard of him or her. Nonetheless, I find more which actually interests me in Esperanto: anthologies of works in a variety of major and minor contemporary languages, contemporary scientific information, etc. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6866 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 170 of 351 28 December 2009 at 2:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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Volte, where do you find your Esperanto literature? I'm interested in reading some of these things you are talking about, such as the Frisian literature, plus to find some on my own. Do you just search for it on Google?
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| Sprachjunge Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 7163 days ago 368 posts - 548 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2 Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 171 of 351 29 December 2009 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Volte, I just wanted to applaud your bravery and unwillingness to give the knee-jerk reaction that I think so many others do when considering what you genuinely like. I think far too many are cowed into thinking, "Oh, it's Latin so the material HAS to be interesting!" Bollocks. I don't know Latin, so I could only read several works in translation, so maybe the language itself is interesting. But the content (and I'm talking Cicero, Sallust, etc.) was, while of historical value, as you said, not in and of itself all that fascinating (okay, Catullus was slightly raunchy, which I liked). But I can easily imagine that material in Esperanto is nowadays more fascinating.
Again, I'm glad that you had the guts to say so. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6437 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 172 of 351 09 January 2010 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Mainly, I find it at Esperanto events. There is usually a "libroservo" - and the people running libroservoj are knowlegable, friendly, and bring good books. Some Esperanto centers have similar services. If I didn´t have access to this, I would use a combination of google and the UEA site, I suppose. There are also a few sites which have quite a bit of Esperanto literature, most notably Harlow´s, but I haven´t spent much time on them. Esperanto literature is far too often far too hard to get - I mean, specific works of it. It´s very international, often published by obscure publishers in small print runs, relatively rarely digitized, etc. I hear the UEA is pretty good at helping with this, but I still lack first-hand experience with them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7144 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 173 of 351 10 January 2010 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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The whole question is subjective and can't be answered definitively.
We all have different reasons for doing the things we do. You might be told learning Icelandic is a waste of time considering the small number of people who speak it. But, if you are migrating to Iceland, it is the most sensible thing you can do. You might learn Icelandic as part of your other studies to get first hand sources. Volte says she finds more of interest to read in Esperanto than Latin. Who can argue with her? If she says so I believe it is true for her. If you want to learn Esperanto then it is worthwhile doing so. If you don't, then it may well be a waste of time. I am continually evaluating what is the most important thing for me to be studying but I don't count any of my studies a waste of time. And, if I want to spend some of my time and effort studying Esperanto and get pleasure from doing it, why should I have to believe it is a waste of time? None of the arguments put forward will change the minds of people on either side of the argument. I am not interested in changing anyone's mind. Does there have to be great literature in a language to make learning it worthwhile? I did think that studying Esperanto was not worthwhile until I gave a presentation in a local library and found the book by David Richardson. The book convinced me to try and I haven't regretted it. I have ordered the book from amazon.com and I am expecting it any day. In the meantime I have it on long-term loan from the library. There are excellent resources on the Internet and most are free. Lernu is probably the best Internet language site I have found for any language with Pimsleur type courses, Assimil type courses and a whole lot of other styles available too. I have downloaded it all so I can learn offline and you can get an instant translation of any word by clicking on it. So, I think the original question is best ignored. I sense a feeling of superiority in many of those who put down study of the language. I must confess that I feel a study of Klingon would be a waste of time for me. But, I don't judge others who may have what they feel are good reasons for learning it. I say, leave them to it. Edited by fanatic on 10 January 2010 at 6:01am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5431 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 174 of 351 16 January 2010 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think that learning Esperanto is worth the effort. A few years ago, I was interested in the language and thought it was really good to learn. However, those who know something about semantics realize that a project of spreading the language to a lot of people and having it as lingua franca is impossible. Why? Because when we speak a language, there are lots of cultural references. The limits between words differ between languages, there are rarely perfect translations and the synonyms have different connotations. One can only understand a word in its cultural context. Due to the fact that Esperanto is not connected to any country, the words lose their nuances. For instance, a novel or a poem can generally be thoroughly understood only if you know something about the history, geography and habits of that country. The very idea of Esperanto was to obtain a neutral means of commuincation, which cannot be obtained. Furthermore, any attempt to do so will be on behalf of the factor above.
As presented, together with the fact that people from Asian countries and the people living in the rain forests do not benefit at all from introducing esperanto as lingua franca. The words are primarily based on Latin morphemes combined with some Germanic words. How can those who speak non-Indoeuropean languages like Chinese, Dravidian languages and Japanese be favoured by this? Edited by Impiegato on 17 January 2010 at 2:05am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6009 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 175 of 351 17 January 2010 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||
Then I would say Esperanto is the ideal target market for Print-On-Demand. POD publishers like Lulu and Amazon's Booksurge allow available to not be limited by runs, storage etc, as the books are only made when someone needs them. It ups the production price, of course, but even full-production books are expensive when printed in low quantities, and the cost of storage and transport to various Esperantist conferences is also probably quite high. The usual complaint about POD (aside from price) is that it is difficult to get books into "real world" bookshops, but I've personally never seen an Esperanto book in a bookshop anyway, so this isn't much of a change. The restricted availability makes it difficult to publicise effectively, but the Esperantist community's success has always relied on good communication, so I don't suppose it would be that big a problem. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kugel Senior Member United States Joined 6536 days ago 497 posts - 555 votes Speaks: English* | Message 176 of 351 17 January 2010 at 8:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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In order to give meaningful reasons on the question of Esperanto's worth, one pretty much has to rehash the ideas
from a college Ethics 101 course. I would've thought that this forum would be distinguishing in detail the different ideas from utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue theorists so as to give clear reasons on whether or not Esperanto is worth studying. Yes, the claim, "Esperanto is worthy/unworthy of our time" is a normative claim, but this claim still has non- normative data(positive claims) that have to be regarded as truth. I think that many people are confused about the concept of subjectivity or opinions. I cringe when I hear, "Oh, that's just your opinion." Oddly enough, the people with any useful non-normative data, or positive claims, on Esperanto's worth tend to be Esperanto enthusiasts. Thus, most discussions with non Esperanto enthusiasts tend to be a waste of time. At least this is what I've experienced so far. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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