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Why learn Esperanto? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6640 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 33 of 140 14 August 2007 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The use of the definite article "la" in Esperanto presents no problems at
all, even for speakers who come from languages where it doesn't exist. I'll explain why it's not a problem in a minute, but let me give a little background first. The problem with articles in English is to determine when you use the definite article (the) and when you use the indefinite articles (a, an). This does indeed create problems for speakers of languages that don't have articles. Many other languages such as French, Spanish, German, etc... create even more difficulty because they have multiple articles some of which can change form depending on the grammar role being played by the noun it modifies. This is an even deeper level of complexity. However, Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, saw the utility of the English approach of having a single, definite article which is invariable. The purpose of this is to act as a pointer. You can use it to emphasize that you are referring to a specific (definite) item rather than any generic example of the item you are talking about. So why isn't it a problem? Because Esperanto removes the complexity of the English article system. There are no indefinite articles in Esperanto. In English, one of the purposes of articles in English is to provide a cue that a noun is being referred to. However, in Esperanto, all nouns are marked by an -o ending to the word. Thus, indefinite articles would serve no purpose. There's nothing to confuse the use of the word la with, no other possibility. Either you use la because you are referring to a specific item, or you don't use it. But here's the best thing. Its use is completely optional. There are no rules governing its usage (other than that if you do use it, it doesn't change its form). People who come from languages that use definite articles, can use it as they would in their own language, without the complications (different forms of the article for different "genders" of words, or changes with case or number, etc...) found in many languages. Those who come from languages that don't have articles can use it or not. It's not grammatically incorrect to omit it, and it doesn't even sound odd (as such omissions do in english) to omit it. It's simply one tool that the language gives you. Even if you personally struggle with which articles to use (and where) in English, I imagine you aren't confused when you see them. That is, you may not know why it's one or the other, but seeing one doesn't make the meaning of the sentence incomprehensible to you. So seeing/hearing the definite article in Esperanto would never confuse you, even if you wouldn't have chose to use it. Thus, it presents no barrier to communication at all. And if you learned Esperanto, and started using it, you might find that you start using the article yourself through osmosis. And indeed, that might make its use in English more transparent to you, because it represents a simpler case than the English one. Incidentally, I personally wouldn't have used "la" in your example sentence. Not because it's wrong, but just because my personal style is a little different. I would have said mi trovis botelon kaj deprenis gxian fermilon I found a bottle and took off its lid. but that's just me :)
Edited by awake on 14 August 2007 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6872 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 34 of 140 14 August 2007 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Just my individual story: I personally met my first actual Esperantist, Sprachprofi, through this forum a few months ago. We corresponded a little bit and eventually she invited me to her place so we could meet in person. Although we spoke very little in Esperanto while I stayed at her house, we (her, her boyfriend -also an Esperantist- and I) talked a lot about the language and she has been a big inspiration for me to study the language again, especially since now I have someone I can correspond with. This has made me a little less shy about seeking people out who speak the language. It's remarkable the trust strangers can have in one another to invite them into their homes when their most obvious link is a common language. It really is a unique and touching experience.
I don't always mention it, and when I do, it's a bit with caution. Most people have never heard of it, and I got tired of explaining it. At the same time, I felt a bit empty that I wouldn't empty the first language I had learned to a level of some depth. Most of the feed back I've gotten back, however, has been neutral to negative. Another reason why I stopped mentioning it is because I didn't know how to turn their negativity around. I didn't feel educated enough on the language to point out where they were mistaken on what they'd heard about the language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6601 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 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 35 of 140 15 August 2007 at 12:53am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7185 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 36 of 140 15 August 2007 at 1:42am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks for you feedback..
Letting strangers stay in your house! What if you get some psychotic polyglot coming to your house? How long do the people stay for? Do you ever just leave them in the house on their own while you go to work etc? Also another question to add to your fantastically answered ones. Many of you are learning or have already learned many important world languages. If you could be fluent in all those important languages except '1' would it be Esperanto that you would drop? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 37 of 140 15 August 2007 at 2:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Definitely. When Esperanto was first created, most people wouldn't ever meet a foreigner or hear a foreign language in their entire lives. Also, during the two world wars people weren't very interested in making friends from other countries and Esperantists had to fear for their lives under several regimes (e. g. Hitler and Stalin). To learn Esperanto, you would have to attend a conference or order books from abroad (which wasn't as easy as today either). Today, getting materials is no problem, multimedia materials attract more interest and free tutors help you along. There's virtually no prosecution and most people are convinced of the need to learn foreign languages to be able to communicate with foreigners either where they live or on their holidays. The atmosphere is very favourable to Esperanto's ideals of international peace and understanding, even little kids have foreign pen-pals. For those who never heard of Esperanto, it will sooner or later attract their attention, e. g. through the fact that Esperanto is the 15th largest language of Wikipedia, and there are lots of possibilities of learning it entirely online, though local courses also exist. By the way, read this article titled "Betting on Esperanto" that explains the developments in more detail and also more eloquently than I can.
As others have already explained, it's the Pasporta Servo that allows you to stay with several thousand people in 80 or so countries. It's free for hosts and the booklet is 5 Euros or so for non-hosts. Additionally, you may also easily be invited to stay by any Esperanto speaker whose acquaintance you make. I don't see what's surprising about it: I believe that most people here on the forum would not mind the chance to have open-minded foreign guests with whom they share at least one interest and with whom they could practice languages.
Esperanto is agglutinative, that's not very eurocentric ;-) The vocabulary of course is all about European languages (and I believe adding Hindi or Mandarin to the mix would make it more difficult for everybody, especially if the Mandarin has to be bastardized to fit a toneless language with different phonology), but that doesn't really make it euro-centric: European languages are natively spoken not just in Europe, but also in North America, South America, Australia, as vital second languages (languages need to communicate with the administration) also in Africa and they are increasingly important in Asia. Plus there a lot of European words who entered local languages. Also, as I said before, there are really not that many word roots to learn, so the source of vocabulary is less important than when learning other languages. As for creating an easier language: a lot have tried and none have succeeded. The problem is that the definition of an "ideal easy grammar" varies a lot. E. g. for some it means abolishing the plural, whereas others would find a language without plural hard to get used to. Some may want a completely free word order, but that would require a lot of grammatical endings on words. Some want to replace tenses with a system of particles, but particles are hard to learn if you didn't already study Japanese or something. I believe all new attempts will suffer from internal quarrels about this kind of thing. Even if they succeed in establishing a small group of speakers, new converts are hard to come by because a lot of people believe that an artificial language can't possibly be good enough to express all the nuances a natural language can express. Esperanto has an advantage there: it has proven itself for more than 100 years now and it's the language of choice for many poets. There are translations of all major works of literature, ranging from the Bible to Tolstoi (who was himself a fan of Esperanto, just like Jules Verne and J. R. R. Tolkien) and a lot of Asian authors whose works haven't even been translated to English. This has helped hone the language - Zamenhof himself translated the Old Testament and Hamlet before publishing his language.
Here in Germany, almost everybody has at least heard of Esperanto. Most people think it is a good project which unfortunately died some time during the world wars. Once I tell them that the Esperanto movement is alive and doing better than ever, they usually want to look into it - though a lot tell me that they would first want to learn English or French. Among random adults that ask me about reading Esperanto books on the train, some also think it's a weird idea to learn this language that isn't spoken by very many people - about the same reaction as I get when telling them that I'm learning Chinese and Modern Greek. Edited by Sprachprofi on 15 August 2007 at 2:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 38 of 140 15 August 2007 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You always have a choice, you know. If you're not comfortable with somebody, you don't have to let them stay with you. Time of stay depends on your preferences too. There are some people in Pasporta Servo that list that they will only allow one person at a time and only for one night, and then there are people who will allow groups of 6 or more to stay for a month (it's expected they contribute to food expenses and such then). I personally don't leave people in the house on their own, partly because it's a hard thing to do with 3 other family members, partly because I feel it's my responsibility as a host to make sure the guests are entertained and partly because it's just much more fun to go places together, show them the area and practice languages.
For me: never. Esperanto has brought me a lot of great experiences, including meeting my awesome boyfriend with whom I've been together for a year and a half now, whereas other languages, such as Italian, never turned out great for me. I learned Italian for 3 years at school and I was really fluent in it at the end, doing an oral exam on the causes of Venice's flood problems, but in the 3 years since I have never found any use for it, nobody to practise it with, no opportunity to go to Italy, so right now I can barely say anything without thinking. I can still read Umberto Eco's "Ricerca della lingua perfetta"(the search for the perfect language) though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| karuna Triglot Groupie United States Joined 6338 days ago 47 posts - 46 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Latvian*, Russian, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 39 of 140 15 August 2007 at 8:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It is more complicated than that, you have to decide between "the", "a" and no article. I can see that Esperanto is easier because there are only two, not three choices but it is still a hassle.
To decide what is considered definite and what is generic is the biggest difficulty especially with English abstract nouns. I have been actively learning and using English for 15 years already and while there is improvement, I still don't get the basic idea and have to rely on bunch of conflicting prescriptive rules.
I could speak English without articles too but a large part of other speakers would find it strange. But if the article is really optional in Esperanto then many speakers wouldn't use it at all and it would gradually die out, unless most Esperanto speakers come from linguistic background of languages with the articles. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7185 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 40 of 140 15 August 2007 at 9:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sprachprofi, do you and your boyfriend usually use Esperanto to communicate? I think it would be really cool to have a language few people can understand especially when outside!
Oh also I was wondering though Esperanto is an artificial language with no exceptions in say the verb endings have people ever rebelled and started messing with this when they speak? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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