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Esperanto Opinions | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| whipback Groupie United States Joined 5598 days ago 91 posts - 118 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French | Message 1 of 51 05 April 2010 at 4:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello everyone! I searched for this and didn't find anything specific to my topic so sorry if there is already a topic discussing this.
I was wondering how you feel about Esperanto. I do not speak Esperanto, and do not ever plan to learn it. My reasons are: 1. I base my life on being unique, and Esperanto is a language created by combining all other languages. I do not respect a language that has no culture or originality, 2. The Esperanto goal seems to be in vain because it is only human nature to change. So even if Esperanto increases in size, dialects will start to pop up and eventually will be completely different languages, and 3. Esperanto really isn't common enough for it to be as useful as people make it out to be. It is not a language to really use on the streets in every day conversation, but instead to describe and promote itself. What do you all think about Esperanto. Originally I strongly hated Esperanto, but now my hate has died down to a more dislike. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5527 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 2 of 51 05 April 2010 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hmmm. I really like the concept, however the actual sound/vocabulary of the language grates on my ears. Also some of the propaganda/politics that people ship the language with is annoying.
I'll probably learn it anyway when I have more time 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Matteo Diglot Groupie Brazil Joined 5584 days ago 88 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: ItalianB1, German | Message 3 of 51 05 April 2010 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like esperanto.
I think that it's not a useful language, but is very easy to learn, and learning it you also learn some words in many languages. Study esperanto is a good hobby. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5426 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 51 05 April 2010 at 6:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't like it. It'd be easier for everyone to know several languages rather than attempting to get everyone to learn one. Also because you never know when you meet a speaker, unlike most languages. If you learn Lithuanian, you can meet Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania, while you can't go to Esperantoland because it doesn't exist.
I'm not sure if I presented that clearly :\ 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 5 of 51 05 April 2010 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There have been lots of impassioned discussions/arguments over Esperanto on this forum. Here're some of the threads that have dealt with this contentious topic. how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4709 &PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6861 &PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1830 9&PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7816 &PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1871 2&PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1666 4&PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2428 &PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1709 2&PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1474 1&PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7201 &PN=1 how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1767 6&PN=1 I'm indifferent about Esperanto but I'm more likely to get irritated by some of the beliefs held by Esperantists about Esperanto. Fundamentally I find that I'm most against most Esperantists because their support for Esperanto and the associated justifications (the most frequent one is "but it's so much easier to learn than natural languages!") leads naive people to believe that there really exists an inherently superior language. To me this is BS because in descriptive linguistics there is no such thing as a "superior"/"better" language. No human language (artificial or natural) is inherently superior to another. What matters is that the language in question fulfills the needs of its users/speech community. There are different languages out there but that's as far as the comparison goes once we exclude political, ideological or sociolinguistic aims. However I do not contest the separate idea that there exists the idea of prestigious languages which CAN BE perceived or promoted by certain users as superior for various sociolinguistic, cultural or political reasons. To a descriptive linguist, these are merely things to observe and note rather than seize upon as "proof" that people would be better off using a certain language in line with someone else's set of value judgments. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6018 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 6 of 51 05 April 2010 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like it. It's eccentric, intellectual, and just obscure enough to warrant a funny look instead of a totally lost expression if you bring it up. I don't know if I'd ever learn it though. Probably not. My language learning tends to be driven by cultural and anthropological interest. But, then again, who knows what will happen next time I'm bored. I've got plenty of life left and it's not hard to learn.
I will admit that the propaganda associated with it can be a bit much, but how else to get people to learn such a constructed language? At least it has a dedicated community, and the speakers are guaranteed to be helpful. It's more than you get out of a run of the mill obscure hobby. I certainly don't see a reason to hate or dislike it. @Chung. I seriously doubt that an individual considering Esperanto would be led to this belief just because of the way Esperanto is promoted (unless you've seen it happen). And if so, that's their own fallacy, not the fault of the Esperantists. When they say Esperanto is easy to learn, they aren't kidding. Esperanto's easiness is well substantiated. I haven't read any Esperanto literature yet that made any claims past this, claiming that the language is inherently superior, so it seems it's just a problem of general ignorance, not false advertising. If you have read such things, by all means point them out to me. Edited by unityandoutside on 05 April 2010 at 6:32am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| 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 7 of 51 05 April 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It's more of an indirect thing. I've never met any respectable Esperantist state explicitly that Esperanto is superior, but the implication is there and can be easily believed by the linguistically-naive. For me I detect the hint, but my background in descriptive linguistics guards me from accepting the idea of superior/inferior languages. The superiority of Esperanto relative to other languages is strongly hinted at when you read justifications for its existence or learning it. Justifications include highlighting topics such as "unintuitive idioms [in natural languages]" (unintuitive for whom? Has anyone asked the native members of the speech community which uses those idioms?), "fun" (again for whom? Is learning Esperanto decisively more fun than learning a natural language?), "(cultural/political/religious) neutrality" (let's not get into this one because it's meaningless in genetic linguistics and is more of a sociolinguistic matter) among others:
...and so on This kind of promotion doesn't state "Esperanto is superior", however most if not all of these ideas are held by Esperantists, and upon sober reflection, they do emit a strong whiff about some sort of Esperanto superiority. It's then up to each person to figure out the implications of viewing or judging languages (natural or artificial) in this way. You probably know where I stand on the matter. My first set of comments are also there to illustrate that it's possible to separate the language from the attitudes of users of the language (it's a variation of the colloquial axiom "Don't hate the player, hate the game". In this case, I'm more likely to have a problem with the "player" than the "game"). Edited by Chung on 05 April 2010 at 8:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5673 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 8 of 51 05 April 2010 at 9:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I spent the first two months of this year, one hour a day, learning Esperanto.
My motivations were: 1: I had heard Esperanto was easy to learn, and wanted to see if this is true. It turned out that after about 40 hours I was very comfortable with the grammar and the most common words. My conclusion was that the grammar is indeed much easier to learn than any "real" language. The remaining 20 or so hours I put into it were spent learning more vocabulary. The words themselves were not particularly any easier to learn than any other language, except that there are far fewer of them, since most words are constructed from parts - so you can often guess a word or at least create one with the meaning you intend. 2: I had heard that time spent on Esperanto would be time well spent even if I never used the language, since it would alter my brain in some way and increase my learning ability with other languages. This did not prove to be the case at all. I noticed no improvement in my language learning ability. Maybe this brain altering only works if Esperanto is your first "foreign" language. Now, I had originally planned to spend a whole year (1 hour a day) on Esperanto, however I stopped after two months. Here is why: - I had already answered my two original motivating questions (yes, it is easy to learn, and no it didn't help my other languages), so the motivation fizzled out. To keep the motivation going I needed to shift into either reading literature or speaking with other Esperanto speakers. - There is very little literature available, in comparison with "real" languages. Rather than hundreds of thousands or millions of books to choose from, there are probably a few hundred, and most of those didn't interest me very much and were not easy to find (you have to order from foreign websites or buy them at gatherings of Esperanto speakers). So, once past the beginners stage, I found little compelling content to encourage me to move onto intermediate and advanced ability. - I spend the first three weeks of March in hospital having surgery on my eyes followed by vision therapy. I could not read during most of this time and had to listen only to audio content. If the literature available for Esperanto is limited, the audio content is even more limited. So, I spent most of that three weeks listening instead to audio in French, and fell in love with the language again. It was such a pleasure to have so much beautiful audio available that the Esperanto audio paled in comparison. So, on compelling content alone I fell more in love with real languages, and less in love with Esperanto. - There are very few speakers of Esperanto, and even fewer with whom to have a fluent conversation. Where I live, there are two local groups: one for youths who seem quite lively and fun-loving, and a group for older people who seem to believe that one day Esperanto will become a prominent world language. I am too old for the first group, and the second group is too deluded for me. This left me with going to "congresses" once or twice a year or using Skype, which simply isn't enough conversational opportunity for me. I like real face-to-face conversations with fluent speakers on a regular basis. This is much easier to find in other languages. Overall, my feeling was that, for me at least, Esperanto was a language worth learning, but not one worth maintaining. I am glad I dabbled with it, to find out about how it works and how "clever" the grammar is, but can find no motivating reason to keep going with it. I came away realising that I would rather spend the time on languages that offer me richer literature, audio, and conversational opportunities. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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