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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 49 of 51 11 April 2010 at 6:45pm | IP Logged |
1qaz2wsx wrote:
I have never studied esperanto but I would like to learn it someday.Because of the fact that it is a constructed language it is based on solid rules and I think learning it would teach me a lot about grammar in general and about how a language works. |
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I would say that's more of a reason not to learn Esperanto -- because Esperanto isn't a natural language, it doesn't really tell you how language works. I've heard people commenting here, for example, about negation being very logical.
If the human brain was logical, all languages would naturally be logical, but there are things we don't need to say (and so can't be said in most languages) but with an overly-logical constructed language, they exist, as they do in older grammar books of natural language, even though no-one would genuinely say them.
The reason grammar teaching is so heavily looked-down on is because the old structuralist grammars were a poor model of genuine language, and Zamenhof's Esperanto was based on the prevailing structuralist theory of grammar. Thus Esperanto is to an extent based on a misunderstanding of language, and not reflective of natural language.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Blunderstein Triglot Pro Member Sweden schackhandeln.se Joined 5422 days ago 60 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC2, FrenchB2 Studies: German, Esperanto Personal Language Map
| Message 50 of 51 12 April 2010 at 10:59am | IP Logged |
Basically, I and others have reported from the inside that "there is an Esperanto culture, and I've experienced it". Tombstone and others claim from the outside "there is no Esperanto culture". And they keep on claiming this no matter what anyone tells them about cultural achievements in Esperanto. Moreover, they do not demonstrate any particular knowledge about Esperanto. Instead they keep repeating various "general principles", according to which Esperanto culture cannot exist, no matters what the actual facts are.
Their posts even get votes.
Whipback (who started the thread) at least had the common sense to understand that since there are people who use Esperanto and claim that they have experienced the Esperanto culture, it probably exists. Whipback also had the decency to apologize. The others go on repeating that "Esperanto has no culture", and it is clear that they will not listen to anything anyone says.
At first I was furious, then amazed. Would these people claim "there is no Swedish culture", no matter what a Swede told them? Or perhaps make the same claim about some other culture?
Of course, the question is not if Esperanto culture is "good enough" or "deep enough". The question is whether it exists at all. In this question, like in most others, people with first-hand experience tend to be the ones who know most about the subject.
So I have a question for the rest of you: can anyone recommend a language-learning forum (in English, French, Swedish, Esperanto or German) where I would not get this kind of arrogance thrown in my face? It's perfectly ok if I have to pay to register, I would gladly pay to avoid this kind of behaviour. You might want to send me a private message on the topic.
And by the way, I've reported some posts from this thread to the moderator.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7380 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map
| Message 51 of 51 12 April 2010 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
Thread closed - sorry gentlemen but the argument is getting too heated and some posts really offensive for people who learned Esperanto. Instead of deleting those posts as was requested, I chose to close the thread before it gets out of hand. I hope you will understand.
1 person has voted this message useful
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