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About propedeutic benefits of Esperanto | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 26 24 October 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all.
I have some curiosities about Esperanto. It's advocated to be of great value as propedeutic language. It has also some criticism. What are your opinions about it? And furthermore: - those benefits are only for the first foreign language (that becomes thus the second) or there are benefits also to whom already speaks 4 and half languages before Esperanto? - can be beneficial to study slavic or slavic influenced languages? - is the claim that can be learned in 1/15 of the time of a natural language realistic (can one be fluent after 100/150 hours of study)? On a personal note, I know the general opinion of the forum is against the use of a propedeutic language because motivation is everything. I simply wonder if in a moment where one wants to have a pause of new language learning and dedicate more time to improve 'old' languages can still boost his brain messing up with Esperanto or if it is better to sleep one hour more :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7208 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 26 24 October 2014 at 6:52am | IP Logged | ||
Sleep is very important to memory and good mental health. If you are short of sleep today, then an extra hour of sleep would probably be the most beneficial in the long run. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 3 of 26 24 October 2014 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I gave Esperanto a try mostly because Prof Argüelles said there's a noticeable boost after 5 languages or so, and I wanted to reach that number sooner. As you can see, I never got fluent in Esperanto, and it actually felt less logical than Finnish to me :PPP I don't regret this, though, but I soon came to realize that all your experience counts, and as long as you get fluent in 2-3 languages, the non-fluent ones are also a valuable experience.
I do think that learning even Esperanto requires motivation beyond "I want to speak one more language". I couldn't find any fantasy books, football forums (let alone videos, haha) or music I truly liked. I think those who succeed tend to believe in the idea of Esperanto or actually need it*, or simply like the language enough to be excited about books or music just because they're in Esperanto. *picture a Chinese or even Russian Esperantist who finds it significantly easier than English and uses it for building international friendships... or those couples where the only common language turns out to be Esperanto, that kind of need. You can read about my experiences in my old logs :) As for your specific questions, I definitely dedicated over 150 hours to Esperanto. I did use it for experimenting, but I think I also expected more from the time I put in. Note that I wanted to join a conversation group and the local association/club wasn't impressed with my writing skills and basically said I should take classes. I think I would've made more progress if I had more opportunities to speak when I wanted to. For Slavic languages, I believe with your Italian background you'll find Latin more beneficial. My friend said it seemed like "English words with Russian grammar" to her, haha. Latin would also help your French and Spanish, of course. (assuming you have an interest in historical linguistics, etymology etc) Edited by Serpent on 24 October 2014 at 9:34am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 26 24 October 2014 at 9:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you @Serpent :) I will try to locate your experiences :)
and what do you think about: - can be beneficial to study slavic or slavic influenced languages? - is the claim that can be learned in 1/15 of the time of a natural language realistic (can one be fluent after 100/150 hours of study)? EDIT: ok you added these infos before I posted my message ;D Are you fluent in Latin? :O I notice it only now! I'm afraid to ask you how many time you dedicated to it. On a plus side, I read that it is also regular. But what, talking about Esperanto, about slavic influences in the language? Edited by tristano on 24 October 2014 at 9:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 5 of 26 24 October 2014 at 9:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Esperanto does have a handful of words from Slavic languages. But I remember pointing out one of them to Radioclare who's learning Croatian :) I think they're generally more noticeable to those who speak a Slavic language natively.
If you want to play around before starting your Slavic project, you can also try Slovio or toki pona :) As for my Latin, well, obviously I don't fit the standard HTLAL criteria like being able to hold a conversation or read a newspaper ;D Unlike Iversen I also don't treat it like a living language and nowadays I mostly use it through my Romance languages. I'd not be able to read or especially enjoy La Divina Commedia purely with my Italian, for example. I had 4 years of Latin classes, three of which at the lyceum and then from scratch at university, with an amazing prof who's a polyglot and speaks the modern Romance languages (and also English, German, Ancient Greek and not sure what else). She was also amazingly strict though, and I had to do lots of SRS to succeed, even despite my previous knowledge. Also, we had a great textbook that pointed out the descendants of each Latin word in the vocabulary lists (in French, English, German and Russian). During that year I did Esperanto/Latin flashcards btw, and later I added Portuguese to some of them. It was fun to see the similarities, but eventually I found those cards stressful and now I keep it simple. Edited by Serpent on 24 October 2014 at 10:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4586 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 6 of 26 24 October 2014 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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A lot is said about the supposed propaedeutic benefits of Esperanto, and some of it should be taken with a healthy dose of scepticism. I just took a look at the English-language Wikipedia page on this subject, for example, and noted at least one factual inaccuracy. Some of the studies which are reported show really encouraging results in favour of Esperanto, but almost none of them are taken seriously by academics in the relevant field because they have not necessarily been conducted in the correct conditions, with sufficient rigour, etc etc.
The Esperanto association in the UK has invested a lot of money over the past decade in trying to build up a more respectable portfolio of research and while there are indications that there are benefits to learning Esperanto, it's very difficult to conduct proper research on a big enough scale to actually 'prove' anything. As part of the research programme we had a number of pilot schools where Esperanto was taught to primary school children as part of a 'language awareness' programme. The analogy we used to explain it was that when you want to teach children about music, you don't start by teaching them to play the violin; you teach them to play the recorder so that they can learn how to learn to play an instrument. Your intention is not to end up with a nation of recorder-players. Similarly with Esperanto, we believe it has value as a first foreign language or a way to learn about learning a language. Whether there are any benefits if you already speak four languages, I'm not sure. If you are already fluent in a number of languages then the chances are that you already understand a lot about language learning and there probably isn't a lot that learning Esperanto will add. It perhaps depends on the level to which you already speak the other four languages. Learning Esperanto to a really high level gives you an experience similar to being bilingual and that level is a lot easier to achieve than it would be in another language. Personally I really enjoy being able to speak another language so fluently and perhaps that experience is worth having for it's own sake, despite the fact that Esperanto is never going to be my 'favourite' language. I wouldn't expect too much from Esperanto in terms of it helping you to learn a Slavic language though. There is some vocabulary which is influenced by Slavic languages, but the words and few and far between compared to what you would recognise from Romance languages. I don't think Esperanto is helping me learn Croatian; it is probably just making me frustrated because I wish I could speak Croatian as easily as I speak Esperanto, but Croatian is a lot harder ;) I suppose there are some similar concepts in the grammar of both languages. Esperanto uses the word 'sia' to indicate the concept of one's own, for example, it the same way as Croatian uses the word 'svoj', eg. Li trinkas sian bieron (He drinks his own beer) vs Li trinkas lian bieron (He drinks his (someone else's) beer.) Both languages have the preposition 'po' and I can't use it accurately in either of them :D Can you be fluent in 150 hours of study? It depends on you. I have met some people who have studied Esperanto for a matter of weeks and can speak it at a level which is definitely above B1. I have met some people who have been studying for 20 years and still can't use the accusative. Sometimes people try learning Esperanto and complain that Esperanto isn't as easy to learn as Esperanto-speakers claim, to which I would say that it is still a language, and all languages take time and effort to learn. You still have to master the grammar. You still have to learn the vocabulary. You will still make mistakes when you start and the first time you speak it out loud will be just as nerve-wracking as the first time you speak any other language. The further you delve into the language the more you will find grammatical oddities and perhaps you will never know for sure whether some verbs are transitive or intransitive (or perhaps that's just me!). But I think when you learn Esperanto, it is as if that entire normal language learning process is on fast forward. You can cover the basic grammar in a few days. The system of suffixes and affixes means that s_allard would be in heaven with a kernel of 300 words in Esperanto :) You can start communicating with other people in a meaningful way almost from the start. As I said at the start, it's difficult to objectively 'prove' these claims but some anecdotal evidence about the simplicity of Esperanto is demonstrated by the problems there have been with administering the Esperanto CEFR exams. Obviously these exams have to fit into the framework in the same way as the national languages, so that the Esperanto B2 exam can only cover the same grammar and structures that would be tested in a CEFR exam for French or German or any other language. The comparative simplicity of Esperanto means that when people sit the CEFR exams they tend to finish in half the allocated time and want to leave early. I heard that in the first few sessions the examiners allowed people to leave when they had finished and then there were big problems with the CEFR regulators who complained that there must be something wrong with the exams if people could finish them so quickly. But there was no way that the exams could be made more difficult and stay in line with the requirements of the framework. So now anyone who sits an Esperanto CEFR exam is politely requested to stay sitting in the exam room until the exam is officially finished, even if they have to sit there for two hours doing nothing :D In conclusion my advice to anyone who isn't sure whether they want to learn Esperanto to just try learning it for a few weeks or so and see how you get on. If you like it, great. If you don't, you haven't lost a lot of time and at least you know for sure now. Although you do have to be careful that Esperanto doesn't become a gateway drug :) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4586 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 7 of 26 24 October 2014 at 10:34am | IP Logged | ||
Haha, yes that's true :) The only Slavic word I could think of off the top of my head would be 'kolbaso' (sausage). Or possibly 'koŝmaro' (nightmare); I saw a very similar word to this in a Serbian book I was reading yesterday, although I think someone had previously told me that this word came to Esperanto from the French. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 8 of 26 24 October 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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That is indeed a French word (cauchemar). However many languages in the Balkan and
Eastern Europe borrowed it (Russian has кошмар, Romanian coșmar). 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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