BelgoHead Senior Member Belgium Joined 6307 days ago 120 posts - 119 votes Studies: French, English* Studies: Esperanto
| Message 1 of 2 27 August 2007 at 12:59am | IP Logged |
Ok my question(s) like in the title is about the Esperatno language.
So I will begin by asking how long did it take you to become fluent (by your definition) in the language? How where your experences with the language?
Also since Esperanto is a man made language what about the expressions in the language? Like in english they say 50/50 for half half you know? Well what about expressions in Esperanto? Where did they come from?
I would like to averd the usage of the word "easy" but i can't help but asking if it lives up to it's reputation.
Regards,
BelgoHead
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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 2 of 2 27 August 2007 at 7:24am | IP Logged |
I did a ten-lesson e-mail course and finished each lesson within 2 weeks, not studying hard either, so that would add up to finishing the entire thing in less than 5 months. After that, I could express basically anything I wanted to, but I wouldn't call myself fluent then because I lacked speaking experience (the course was all by e-mail). I acquired that experience gradually afterwards. I can't say when exactly I reached fluency, but I just came back from an Esperanto work meeting in Sweden and spoke only Esperanto for 3 days (same in Lithuania last month, and a week in the Czech Republic last year).
My experiences with Esperanto have been all positive (both the learning, the meeting of other Esperanto speakers and the free travel), that's why I'm one of the people on this forum who like to reply to Esperanto questions. But I'm not asking you to rely on my judgement and experiences alone - please feel free to browse the Esperanto threads in the "Language Learning Logs" forum. A lot of forum members are detailing their experiences as they learn Esperanto there. Quite a few decided to experiment with it for 6 weeks (the original 6 Week Challenge) for example, to see for themselves how easy it is. I can recommend that to everybody, because you're in for a fascinating experience.
Also, please have a look at this long recent Esperanto thread, where a lot of questions were asked and answered.
As for Esperanto expressions, they are coined by usage just like in any other language. The language has been evolving naturally in the past 100+ years. If people use an expression, it becomes common and if they stop using it, it eventually will no longer be mentioned in dictionaries and the like.
Some sayings were coined by Zamenhof while he translated the Bible and literary works such as "Hamlet", some by other translators, some are native Esperanto in the sense that they first appeared in Esperanto speeches or music or original literature... or simply by somebody using it somewhere and others taking a liking to it. For example, a friend and I were the first to say "saluĝis" (a mix of "saluton" and "ĝis", "hello" and "bye") to people who are leaving so quickly that there isn't even time for greeting, especially in chat rooms, and now it's included in several slang reference works. Another example: recently at a big youth meeting, a Brazilian and a Pole always called each other "Homo"(Esperanto and Latin for "human") rather than using their first names. For them the tradition evolved because they found that though they are from very different countries, that is no barrier to them, they are still basically the same. At first we had a good laugh at always hearing "Homo!", but towards the end of the meeting several others had adopted it, too. Maybe in several years it will be used by a majority of Esperanto-speaking youths.
Edited by Sprachprofi on 27 August 2007 at 7:44am
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