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Slovio and Esperanto?

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Jinatonik
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5044 days ago
3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: English*, Japanese

 
 Message 1 of 7
03 February 2011 at 11:48am | IP Logged 
Hello everyone! First post here! Anyway, my goal languages in the world seem to be mostly of the Slavic and Finno-Ugric variety. This is my first experience with conlangs, mind you.

I've come across Esperanto many times because, and personally, find it an interesting language which I seldom study in my free time.

Lately I've been searching for a language like Esperanto, but with a more Slavic quality to it. Hence, I came across Slovio.

My question is this, will learning these help me in my target languages (Slavic and Finno-Ugric) in future time?

The only reason Esperanto seems of use to me is because it's grammar seems to have the Finno-ugric quality to it. (Not necessarily the same type of grammar (Cases and so on))
1 person has voted this message useful



math82
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United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 2 of 7
03 February 2011 at 5:12pm | IP Logged 
umm....
Esporanto probably wouldn't help you much at all with Finno-Ugric, as any similarities in grammar are minimal.
Finno-Ugric being highly agglutinative and in some parts lots of synthetic morphology. Esporanto on the other
hand has only some agglutination by comparison. Plus the route words of from Indo-European, so you would get
no help in vocabulary to cross to Finno-Ugric. In short, any effort spent learning Esporanto as a gateway to Finno-
Ugric would simply be better invested in actual study of Finno-Ugric.

Slovio I would guess might point you in the right direction for vocab/ route words/ word stems. But again, I'd say
just study a real Slavic language if that is your ultimate goal.
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago
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20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 3 of 7
03 February 2011 at 6:44pm | IP Logged 
Jinatonik wrote:
Hello everyone! First post here! Anyway, my goal languages in the world seem to be mostly of the Slavic and Finno-Ugric variety. This is my first experience with conlangs, mind you.

I've come across Esperanto many times because, and personally, find it an interesting language which I seldom study in my free time.

Lately I've been searching for a language like Esperanto, but with a more Slavic quality to it. Hence, I came across Slovio.

My question is this, will learning these help me in my target languages (Slavic and Finno-Ugric) in future time?

The only reason Esperanto seems of use to me is because it's grammar seems to have the Finno-ugric quality to it. (Not necessarily the same type of grammar (Cases and so on))


I would actually skip the constructed language and just go headlong into the natural language. It's a bit like telling someone whose primary goal is to learn how to program in C by first learning how to program program using the academic training language Turing. Just learn C and skip Turing.

The only worthwhile similarity between Esperanto and any Finno-Ugric language is the strong reliance on agglutination (and even this varies within Finno-Ugric languages. Finnish and Hungarian are noticeably agglutinative while Estonian relies more on a mix of fusion and agglutination). Esperanto's lexicon is drawn primarily on Romance or Germanic languages, however. As far as I know, the only constructed or artificial languages that have at least a remote influence from a Finno-Ugric language would be Quenya and Sjal. Even these wouldn't be ideal in my view since Tolkien also drew on features reconstructed in Proto-Indo-European or ones attested in Latin or Ancient Greek in addition to Finnish. Sjal doesn't seem to be complete and it resembles Finnish primarily in some aspects of morphology and typology. Much of the vocabulary seems to be idiosyncratic (i.e. of the author's invention) while syntax sometimes mimics English's, however.

If you want to learn a Finno-Ugric language, then just pick one. You have at least three viable choices already in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian (there are more choices if you know Norwegian or Russian to get access to otherwise unusable learning materials published in those languages). There's no real purpose to learn a "training" language unless you're also interested sufficiently in the "training" language itself. While plowing through a course on the "training" language, you may be thinking that it'd be even more satisfying to go for the language that has interested you most in the first place.

For the first Finno-Ugric language I would suggest Hungarian if you are indifferent to the cultures of Finno-Ugric speaking people or have no personal connection to them. Otherwise just pick the Finno-Ugric language that interests you most; to hell with my suggestion :-P. Look at this old thread on whether one should pick Finnish or Hungarian. From a philological point of view, each of Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian have traits which could be considered "exotic" for most outsiders (e.g. Estonian and Finnish have consonant gradation which likely existed in the ancestral language, Hungarian has objective and subjective conjugation which exists in more elaborate variations in Mansi, Mordvin and Nenets)

If you're really interested in using a constructed or artificial language as a primer before tackling a Slavonic language, then look at this thread. Notwithstanding the mud-slinging that surrounds it toward the end, you may find the contents to be useful. If you're dead-set on learning an artificial or constructed Slavonic language then go for it; I would suggest Slovianski. My impression of it is that it's like a mix of Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovak, and it's actually more intelligible to me with my background in several Slavonic languages than Slovio which is more like Russian with some Esperanto characteristics.

As an alternative, I would suggest that you learn Slovak as your first Slavonic language because even for a natural Slavonic language, it has quite a lot of intelligibility on average with speakers of all other Slavonic languages. This implies that some of its features show noticeable similarities to other Slavonic languages that aren't in its own sub-division of Western Slavonic (i.e. grouping with Czech, Polish and Sorbian) but are lacking in its otherwise most-closely-related languages. See this thread for more information.
8 persons have voted this message useful



Jinatonik
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5044 days ago
3 posts - 3 votes
Speaks: English*, Japanese

 
 Message 4 of 7
03 February 2011 at 10:11pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
Jinatonik wrote:
Hello everyone! First post here! Anyway, my goal languages in the world seem to be mostly of the Slavic and Finno-Ugric variety. This is my first experience with conlangs, mind you.

I've come across Esperanto many times because, and personally, find it an interesting language which I seldom study in my free time.

Lately I've been searching for a language like Esperanto, but with a more Slavic quality to it. Hence, I came across Slovio.

My question is this, will learning these help me in my target languages (Slavic and Finno-Ugric) in future time?

The only reason Esperanto seems of use to me is because it's grammar seems to have the Finno-ugric quality to it. (Not necessarily the same type of grammar (Cases and so on))


I would actually skip the constructed language and just go headlong into the natural language. It's a bit like telling someone whose primary goal is to learn how to program in C by first learning how to program program using the academic training language Turing. Just learn C and skip Turing.

The only worthwhile similarity between Esperanto and any Finno-Ugric language is the strong reliance on agglutination (and even this varies within Finno-Ugric languages. Finnish and Hungarian are noticeably agglutinative while Estonian relies more on a mix of fusion and agglutination). Esperanto's lexicon is drawn primarily on Romance or Germanic languages, however. As far as I know, the only constructed or artificial languages that have at least a remote influence from a Finno-Ugric language would be Quenya and Sjal. Even these wouldn't be ideal in my view since Tolkien also drew on features reconstructed in Proto-Indo-European or ones attested in Latin or Ancient Greek in addition to Finnish. Sjal doesn't seem to be complete and it resembles Finnish primarily in some aspects of morphology and typology. Much of the vocabulary seems to be idiosyncratic (i.e. of the author's invention) while syntax sometimes mimics English's, however.

If you want to learn a Finno-Ugric language, then just pick one. You have at least three viable choices already in Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian (there are more choices if you know Norwegian or Russian to get access to otherwise unusable learning materials published in those languages). There's no real purpose to learn a "training" language unless you're also interested sufficiently in the "training" language itself. While plowing through a course on the "training" language, you may be thinking that it'd be even more satisfying to go for the language that has interested you most in the first place.

For the first Finno-Ugric language I would suggest Hungarian if you are indifferent to the cultures of Finno-Ugric speaking people or have no personal connection to them. Otherwise just pick the Finno-Ugric language that interests you most; to hell with my suggestion :-P. Look at this old thread on whether one should pick Finnish or Hungarian. From a philological point of view, each of Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian have traits which could be considered "exotic" for most outsiders (e.g. Estonian and Finnish have consonant gradation which likely existed in the ancestral language, Hungarian has objective and subjective conjugation which exists in more elaborate variations in Mansi, Mordvin and Nenets)

If you're really interested in using a constructed or artificial language as a primer before tackling a Slavonic language, then look at this thread. Notwithstanding the mud-slinging that surrounds it toward the end, you may find the contents to be useful. If you're dead-set on learning an artificial or constructed Slavonic language then go for it; I would suggest Slovianski. My impression of it is that it's like a mix of Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovak, and it's actually more intelligible to me with my background in several Slavonic languages than Slovio which is more like Russian with some Esperanto characteristics.

As an alternative, I would suggest that you learn Slovak as your first Slavonic language because even for a natural Slavonic language, it has quite a lot of intelligibility on average with speakers of all other Slavonic languages. This implies that some of its features show noticeable similarities to other Slavonic languages that aren't in its own sub-division of Western Slavonic (i.e. grouping with Czech, Polish and Sorbian) but are lacking in its otherwise most-closely-related languages. See this thread for more information.


I really thank you for all the time and effort you put into posting all of that information. My main goal and thought is that, if I learn one language of that family, the others will be much easier. That is why I looked at Esperanto/Slovio/Etc first, just to think just that, but really, I have no interest in them except for maybe Esperanto.

But I'm taking some time read through the threads you've posted, and will give Slovak a try. Not too sure on the Finnic-Ugric one, I just know I really like Hungary, so I will probably go for that.

Thanks for the help!
1 person has voted this message useful



canada38
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 5496 days ago
304 posts - 417 votes 
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French
Studies: Portuguese, Japanese

 
 Message 5 of 7
12 February 2011 at 4:59pm | IP Logged 
If you chose to learn both Slovak and Hungarian, you could benefit from the proximity of
their two respective countries. It would be very easy to make an immersion trip to
practice both languages. (Although with the costs of flights in Europe, it wouldn't
really be expensive to visit any two countries)
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jo-han
Newbie
Czech Republic
Joined 5085 days ago
6 posts - 6 votes

 
 Message 6 of 7
09 July 2011 at 6:27pm | IP Logged 
http://izviestija.info/izviestija/

inter-slavic newspaper

Edited by jo-han on 09 July 2011 at 6:27pm
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