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My experience & thoughtsabout Esperanto | ||
Tags: Esperanto | Pronunciation | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| 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 9 of 18 19 February 2008 at 2:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes, this is also the approach I used. I believe the problem with memorizing each correlative individually is that they all are so similar, hard to distinguish and they don't correspond to any existing word in any natural language. However, if you learn the regularity behind the table, learning these words is actually easier than learning the corresponding words in other languages.
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| Masked Avenger Triglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6138 days ago 145 posts - 151 votes Speaks: English, French*, Danish Studies: Finnish, Latin | Message 10 of 18 19 February 2008 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To all of you Esperanto fans, did you try or were you tempted to learn Latin for some of the same reasons as Esperanto?
What I mean is that while Esperanto is a constructed language with borrowed affinities from many (mainly European) languages, Latin appears like the opposite: A root language from which some of today's biggest languages are descended from and where a large bulk of vocabulary has found its way into many other (and again mainly European) languages. Just curious, 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Jiwon Triglot Moderator Korea, South Joined 6440 days ago 1417 posts - 1500 votes Speaks: EnglishC2, Korean*, GermanC1 Studies: Hindi, Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 18 20 February 2008 at 10:02am | IP Logged | |||||
Not really. B in ball and bei-jing are really really different, and so are j in joke and jian. That being said, I agree that Esperanto is quite difficult for Koreans, and perhaps I found it easy because I already had a strong command of English and useful knowledge of German. Sx, c, gx and hx would have been a bit difficult to grasp without English and German. However, I must add that compared to English and German, Esperanto is definitely easier. Perhaps the pronunciation and the Latin word roots make it difficult for non-European language speakers; but if you think the other way round, by learning those features from Esperanto, a relatively easy language, you would be able to conquer English, German and Romance languages without much frustration. I'd also like to add that I just finished reading Chapter 18 of Gerda Malaperis, and I know that I wouldn't be able to read such texts in any other natural languages after only 8 months of studying the language. 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 12 of 18 20 February 2008 at 10:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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I had to learn Latin at school and I enjoyed it. Latin has several things in common with Esperanto:
- similar vocabulary (though most of Esperanto's non-scientific vocabulary is derived straight from modern Romance languages, knowing Latin still helps you learn a lot of the roots, and vice versa) - logical grammar (Latin's grammar is huge but very regular, Esperanto's grammar is tiny and more regular) - both Latin and Esperanto could be used to teach people logic; Latin was used for that in the past because the children of noblemen weren't supposed to know such a base thing as maths that only merchants would need to know... - both Latin and Esperanto will serve as a good foundation to learning other languages because of the vocabulary, grammar and logic. Esperanto's value in that has been proven in numerous studies (see Wikipedia) and Latin's value is at least an inherent belief of linguists - it's also a main reason for Latin to be taught at German schools. However, there is also a major difference that will ensure that the people who study Latin and the people who study Esperanto are often different: Latin allows you to understand the Roman culture, Roman literature or also the Church in as far as it speaks / spoke Latin. As such, Latin is not very interesting to people outside of the Western world or people who aren't interested in history. Esperanto gives you access to a living culture, which also thrives in places outside the Western world, for example Brazil, Iran, Japan and Togo (people were considering holding the Universal Youth Congress 2009 in Togo because there are so many young Africans interested in attending a big international Esperanto meeting). So Esperanto is not as interesting for history geeks, but it is more interesting for those who want to use the language actively and who are interested in more exotic places. EDIT: Congratulations on your progress, Jiwon! Once you're done with "Gerda malaperis", I recommend "Fajron sentas mi interne". It's an original Esperanto novel I really enjoyed, half-autobiographical and it goes far into the psyche. What I also like is that the author avoided neo-Esperantisms that are extra work for Asians, instead he followed the "bona lingvo" guideline of sticking to a limited amount of Esperanto roots and using them to their full natural power with affixes and the like. So by reading this novel you will get extra practise in thinking in Esperanto. :-) Edited by Sprachprofi on 20 February 2008 at 10:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6913 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 18 20 February 2008 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, I know that too, but I thought that "gx, jx, z are same pronounce, and s, sx are same pronounce, p, f are same pronounce, b, v are same pronounce, r, l are same pronounce. c, ch are same pronounce, especially hx is very wired pronounce" (as the original poster said) was about as wrong as it could be, and I also wrote:
Comparisons between similar sounds in English and Mandarin (languages that the poster know or study), sounds he should be familiar with. 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 14 of 18 20 February 2008 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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 15 of 18 20 February 2008 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, it's a debate in the entire movement for international auxiliary languages, not just Esperanto, but you can find it among Esperanto speakers to some extend, too. Essentially, there are two groups: - people that advocate the use of "international" words such as "hospital" in some adapted form, which means that the language becomes easier for speakers of European languages (Asians being the most notable group that is at a disadvantage because on every other continent there are significant amounts of people fluent in European languages); these people might even go so far as to say "olda" instead of "maljuna". - people that advocate the use of regular affixes and word combinations as much as possible in order to keep the amount of word stems low. This means that people have to learn less vocabulary (which is better for people for whom the vocabulary would not be recognizable) but have to be able to use it in more creative ways, such as saying "malsanulejo" for hospital: mal-san-ul-ejo literally translates to un-healthy-person-place, a place for sick people. I personally like this way of using Esperanto's word creation system to the max rather than burdening the learners, I even feel as if it liberates my mind, because I feel that I can mirror my thoughts better using this system and I don't search for words as often. I could for example also say "sanigejo" (= place for healing) or "kuracistejo" (= place for doctors)... or the same with -domo (house) instead of -ejo (place), all depending on what connotation I want to emphasize. And I am able to intuitively create new understandable words for whatever idea crosses my mind, even if English and German lack a word for it. Claude Piron, a former UN translator for 5 languages, is one of the recent defenders of this second idea and he wrote the book "La bona lingvo" as a guideline for good language usage in this sense, which is considered an authority. The first idea, the idea that words for such concepts should have separate stems which have to be learned on their own but which would be recognizable to Europeans, is seen reflected in Ido (an offspring of Esperanto) and Interlingua for example. It's the main reason (next to its extreme amount of Romance language stems compared to Germanic ones) why Interlingua is a lot more comprehensible at first glance to a European who hasn't studied it at all. Edited by Sprachprofi on 20 February 2008 at 4:08pm 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 16 of 18 20 February 2008 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for such a detailed answer ;o)
I love the affixes of Esperanto (even though I still don't know many of them), so I agree with you and those who support the "creative" way:) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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