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What are Esperantists like? | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7160 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 39 18 September 2009 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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What I notice about Esperanto is that in almost all cases, Esperanto-speakers have made a choice to learn it. The prime reason behind choosing it varies from intellectual curiosity to a desire to mentally align with a world-view which holds that there's an injustice to be amended - namely that English and/or the associated culture of English-speakers now only oppresses or suppresses the expression of other languages or cultures. And that the only way to combat this malavolent trend is to learn Esperanto.
I find that people get emotional when they attach all sorts of extraneous political, ideological or spiritual reasons to learning or knowing a language. If you strip those those extraneous factors from learning or knowing a language, it's then a lot harder to get worked up about things. I mean, I doubt that people would get emotional about learning English just because it has a predominantly analytic typology or about learning Mandarin because it uses 4 tones and also has an analytic or isolating typology. Esperanto on its own would be the same. I couldn't care less that its vocabulary is primarily taken from words in the Romance or Germanic languages, or that it shows some traits of agglutinative typology. Lancemanion, those types of judgements and mashing of world-view with language choice often turn me off. What you experienced fortunately isn't too common, but unfortunately it still happens enough that it turns off people who genuinely want to know more about Esperanto. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5851 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 39 19 September 2009 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just like to have international contacts and friends and speaking and writing Esperanto has opened me a lot of doors to find such contacts. On an international Esperanto meeting for example it's easy to get to know people if you are a communicative and group-oriented person like me.
I don't have any ideological ideas behind it nor do I dislike other languages. I treat all my languages equally and Esperanto is just one of them. Esperanto is for me a correspondence language like Dutch or French. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 21 September 2009 at 7:55pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lackinglatin Triglot Groupie United States randomwritingsetc.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 62 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Modern Hebrew Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 39 06 March 2010 at 4:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I found a great post a while ago on this forum about Esperantists, based on their experiences at International Congresses she'd attended. Though I speak it, I've only been able to attend one land conference here in Israel that was hardly representative even of the Israeli Esperanto scene.
Anyways, her description, whatever it was, left me eagerly desiring to hang out with such people! Generally you get very interesting people. They probably lean a little more left in politics and values, but saying that, I know I lean more right, so it's certainly not exclusive. You find self-motivated people, people who find things to believe in, and then believe in them. You find a lot of travelers, global minded people. As far as the bad experiences people have mentioned... The internet brings out the worst of any people group. It's a shame, but it's the truth. I'm sorry you encountered those people, and I can only speak for myself authoritatively when I say that I try and approach Esperanto from a pragmatic view: it's simply wise to learn Esperanto before French according to a number of studies, as you'll more than earn your time back with the improvements you gain in French through studying Esperanto, for instance. And it's so easy, interesting, and fun... and getting a language with speakers spread so far out, that are so welcoming? And the pasporta servo? I love the language, and I love most of the people I meet in it. Though, now that I think about it, I've had my share of negative Esperanto contacts online as well. I remember back when I was learning I would frequent freenode's #esperanto channel, and get made fun of and treated badly for my poor speaking. Made me so angry that someone wouldn't be encouraging in this language--I was more frustrated that he might discourage others than myself, actually, but man... did that motivate me to learn, so I could respond back just as forcefully! Anyways, the internet is rarely a balanced representation. Further, if anyone here wants help, I'd be glad to be a tutor of it. As I intend to teach English around the world for a career, I intend to teach Esperanto around the world as a hobby, so I'd be glad to get some practice. :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| str0be Senior Member Korea, South Joined 5608 days ago 103 posts - 148 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, Korean | Message 12 of 39 06 March 2010 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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lackinglatin, could you go into more detail about in what ways Esperanto helps with learning French?
Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lackinglatin Triglot Groupie United States randomwritingsetc.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 62 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Modern Hebrew Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 39 06 March 2010 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a good article that mentions and links to several studies: http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/pr/propaedeutic_value_of_espera nto.htm
The general idea is that it a) builds what is likely the most widely applicable vocabulary b) enables a student to experience high level fluency, which then facilitates equivalent fluency in later languages. c) illustrates grammatical principles in a very intuitive way, and allows people to 'own' that grammar, which makes a third grammar much more comprehensible later. (Indeed, I understand many things about English grammar now that I never understood prior to Esperanto). Any language would help with B & C, but Esperanto does it quickly, effectively, and clearly. As one of the first studies mentioned in the link points out, after one year of studying Esperanto, students generally have a grasp of the language that takes other students 6 to 7 years to attain in other foreign languages. (When I learned all of this, it was the breaking point for me to learn it. It just made sense after that, since the time would obviously pay itself off anyways.) Edited: link was miscopied? fixed. Edited by lackinglatin on 06 March 2010 at 10:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 39 06 March 2010 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I haven't read the article. The link still doesn't work, so I'm sorry if this has already been discussed in the article itself. You say: "As one of the first studies mentioned in the link points out, after one year of studying Esperanto, students generally have a grasp of the language that takes other students 6 to 7 years to attain in other foreign languages." Couldn't this be just because people studying Esperanto are highly motivated? Learning language in school is inefficient, especially if you are not motivated, as opposed to learning by yourself. If you are learning a language that is relatively closely related to your mother tongue (for instance studying another Germanic or a Romance language if you're an English-speaker), 6 to 7 years is a lot of time if you are studying on your own. I would also assume that very few people actually start out with Esperanto as their very first foreign language. To get a grasp of your first foreign language is harder than the subsequent ones. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lackinglatin Triglot Groupie United States randomwritingsetc.blRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5984 days ago 62 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, Modern Hebrew Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 39 07 March 2010 at 7:17am | IP Logged | ||
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The study was done in the context of a school, alongside other languages. And aren't plenty of people in other languages just as motivated? I doubt motivation can really account for a 600-700% increase in learning ability in a school context... It's really better to just read the link.
But that aside, if you learn Esperanto, it just makes sense. The grammar is stupid-easy. Claude Piron, a UN translator for russian/french/chinese (and other languages?) who is supportive of Esperanto, has written that one of the great things about Esperanto is that is rewards the brain's natural tendency to identify patterns. At almost every level, Esperanto allows you to take a rule and re-apply it everywhere it logically would follow. What's more, for me, your theory wouldn't hold. I wasn't particularly motivated. I can spontaneously create speech about an unlimited number of topics in the language, and I've never studied in any kind of dedicated way. I did for about 3 weeks when I started, then didn't really do anything with it for a long time. Eventually I started occasionally looking at some stuff again, teaching material, but it was so inconsistent that I eventually just picked up an Esperanto book and decided to power through. Surprisingly, I got the gist. And after that, just chatting online with an online dictionary with enough to get me to where I am now. Another study points out that after 5 hours with the language, students have a relatively good idea of the outline of the entire language grammar... in German, French, and comparative languages, students had almost nothing after 5 hours. After 20 hours, students are leagues ahead of students who have spent 100 hours in other languages. And that rate of difference never stops, theoretically, as long as the learning process continues. Let me re-copy it? http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/pr/propaedeutic_value_of_espera nto.htm I just pasted it here, and then re-pasted the same thing into my address bar, and it worked... so this should be it. Otherwise, just type 'propaedeutic value esperanto study' and you should be able to find many websites on the topic. About.com's that I've linked here has a lot of studies linked, quoted, and briefly overviewed, stating methods and conclusions. Check the link and make sure there is no spaces... for some reason the link always seems to have a space inserted into it. I think it's the forum. It's been in the middle of the word "esperanto" at the end of the link so far, I think. Edit: See link on post below, that one should work. Edit 2: Esperanto was my first foreign language. I was learning Latin, but once I learned of the benefits of Esperanto, I dropped Latin and switched. And I'm really happy I made that choice. Edited by lackinglatin on 07 March 2010 at 9:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6443 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 39 07 March 2010 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Fixed link. The forum software inserts a space.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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