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Esperanto vs Interlingua

 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto Post Reply
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jae
Triglot
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United States
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Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, French

 
 Message 9 of 44
08 January 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged 
Edit: Submitted under wrong topic :)

Edited by jae on 08 January 2010 at 8:33pm
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JCF
Diglot
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 Message 10 of 44
08 January 2010 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 
Thanks for all of your help! I guess what I am going to do is start with Esperanto and if I don't like it, switch. But I like the flexibility of Esperanto, so I will probably stay with it.

Thanks again,
Peter
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vilas
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Italy
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 Message 11 of 44
21 January 2010 at 7:33pm | IP Logged 
Interlingua is more natural , is more human . If you study interlingua you can easily read and learn all romance languages and make yourself understood in many places around the world
With Esperanto you will talk only with people that is part of the same club .
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Johntm
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 Message 12 of 44
21 January 2010 at 11:38pm | IP Logged 
Fasulye wrote:
Esperanto has far more speakers than Interlingua. Esperanto has 3-4 millions of speakers worldwide,
I thought Esperanto had 300000-1 million speakers? I swore I saw that on some Esperanto site, can't remember which.
Ehh, wikipedia says 100,000-2 million speakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
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Gusutafu
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Sweden
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 Message 13 of 44
22 January 2010 at 10:40am | IP Logged 
If it's travel opportunities you're after, use CouchSurfing and learn Lojban, it seems to be the craziest of them all. It's probably impossible to learn and I'm sure it will never have more than a few hundred speakers, so it gives you the most conlang bang for your buck. "Our language is better than all other languages, one day the world government will force everyone to speak it, that'll teach you for laughing at us!"

Edit: For some reason, all Swedes I know somehow manage to pronounce "CouchSurfing" as "CoachSurfing", which gives it a whole new meaning. I supposed it has rubbed off on me. Also, they all say "YouTub" instead of "YouTube". I suppose they primarily watch bathing videos.

Edited by Gusutafu on 22 January 2010 at 1:04pm
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Sprachprofi
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Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 14 of 44
22 January 2010 at 12:24pm | IP Logged 
Johntm wrote:
Fasulye wrote:
Esperanto has far more speakers than Interlingua. Esperanto has 3-4 millions of speakers worldwide,
I thought Esperanto had 300000-1 million speakers? I swore I saw that on some Esperanto site, can't remember which.
Ehh, wikipedia says 100,000-2 million speakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Estimates vary greatly. Trying to estimate how many people speak Esperanto is kind of like trying to estimate how many people are able to play chess. You can count those who are at international championships, possibly also the ones at seminars and clubs - though on a worldwide scale, with many rural clubs in East Africa, Iran and Central Asia, where there are few internet connections, even that is non-trivial. A great many people however learn Esperanto or chess in self-study or from a friend, never showing up at championships, seminars or clubs, so those can't be counted, except I keep encountering them if the conversation randomly turns to Esperanto.

The estimate that Esperanto far outstripped Interlingua, Ido and other planned languages in terms of speakers is by looking at clubs (e. g. there are more than 100 German cities that have Esperanto clubs, some more than one, and I haven't been able to find information online on a single Interlingua club in Germany) and conferences (the most popular Interlingua conference ever had 100 speakers, Esperanto's Universala Kongreso has consistently had around 2000 participants every year no matter if it's held in Beijing, Bulgaria or Brazil).

Considering also that many conlangers speak Esperanto before trying their hand at Toki Pona, Klingon, Ido, Interlingua etc., some linguists therefore claim that 99% of those who speak ANY constructed language speak Esperanto. This would mean that there are only 1% who speak any of the hundreds of others without speaking Esperanto.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 22 January 2010 at 1:08pm
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Gusutafu
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Sweden
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Speaks: Swedish*

 
 Message 15 of 44
22 January 2010 at 1:10pm | IP Logged 
Sprachprofi wrote:
Johntm wrote:
Fasulye wrote:
Esperanto has far more speakers than Interlingua. Esperanto has 3-4 millions of speakers worldwide,
I thought Esperanto had 300000-1 million speakers? I swore I saw that on some Esperanto site, can't remember which.
Ehh, wikipedia says 100,000-2 million speakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Estimates vary greatly. Trying to estimate how many people speak Esperanto is kind of like trying to estimate how many people are able to play chess. You can count those who are at international championships, possibly also the ones at seminars and clubs - though on a worldwide scale, with many rural clubs in East Africa, Iran and Central Asia, where there are few internet connections, even that is non-trivial. A great many people however learn Esperanto or chess in self-study or from a friend, never showing up at championships, seminars or clubs, so those can't be counted, except I keep encountering them if the conversation randomly turns to Esperanto.

The estimate that Esperanto far outstripped Interlingua, Ido and other planned languages in terms of speakers is by looking at clubs (e. g. there are more than 100 German cities that have Esperanto clubs, some more than one, and I haven't been able to find information online on a single Interlingua club in Germany) and conferences (the most popular Interlingua conference ever had 100 speakers, Esperanto's Universala Kongreso has consistently had around 2000 participants every year no matter if it's held in Beijing, Bulgaria or Brazil).


A conference with 100 speakers sounds larger than one with 2000 listeners, but perhaps Esperanto conferences are different...

I'm not sure that they chess analogy is completely correct, because whereas learning to play chess (without mastering it) only takes one hour, and even Esperanto takes longer. Secondly, chess is still pretty useful even if you never join a club, but knowledge of Esperanto is of quite limited utility unless you join an organisation (so you can meka new friends, live with strangers and go to conferences). Sure, there are books and webpages in Esperanto, but there are about a million times more books in English, so it really only makes sense to join a club if you take the trouble to learn Esperanto.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
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Germany
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Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

 
 Message 16 of 44
22 January 2010 at 2:10pm | IP Logged 
Gusutafu wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:
Johntm wrote:
Fasulye wrote:
Esperanto has far more speakers than Interlingua. Esperanto has 3-4 millions of speakers worldwide,
I thought Esperanto had 300000-1 million speakers? I swore I saw that on some Esperanto site, can't remember which.
Ehh, wikipedia says 100,000-2 million speakers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Estimates vary greatly. Trying to estimate how many people speak Esperanto is kind of like trying to estimate how many people are able to play chess. You can count those who are at international championships, possibly also the ones at seminars and clubs - though on a worldwide scale, with many rural clubs in East Africa, Iran and Central Asia, where there are few internet connections, even that is non-trivial. A great many people however learn Esperanto or chess in self-study or from a friend, never showing up at championships, seminars or clubs, so those can't be counted, except I keep encountering them if the conversation randomly turns to Esperanto.

The estimate that Esperanto far outstripped Interlingua, Ido and other planned languages in terms of speakers is by looking at clubs (e. g. there are more than 100 German cities that have Esperanto clubs, some more than one, and I haven't been able to find information online on a single Interlingua club in Germany) and conferences (the most popular Interlingua conference ever had 100 speakers, Esperanto's Universala Kongreso has consistently had around 2000 participants every year no matter if it's held in Beijing, Bulgaria or Brazil).


A conference with 100 speakers sounds larger than one with 2000 listeners, but perhaps Esperanto conferences are different...

Forgive me, I meant "speakers" as in "Interlingua speakers". That conference obviously did not have 100 lecturers, just 100 participants.

Quote:
I'm not sure that they chess analogy is completely correct, because whereas learning to play chess (without mastering it) only takes one hour, and even Esperanto takes longer. Secondly, chess is still pretty useful even if you never join a club, but knowledge of Esperanto is of quite limited utility unless you join an organisation (so you can meka new friends, live with strangers and go to conferences). Sure, there are books and webpages in Esperanto, but there are about a million times more books in English, so it really only makes sense to join a club if you take the trouble to learn Esperanto.

I have to disagree. Organizations for Esperanto speakers fulfill the same role as organizations for English speakers (e. g. the local expat meet-up), so membership in them is completely optional. In fact, I found the local Esperanto clubs in my native region quite boring, as they were full of old people and talking mostly about Esperanto. All the young Esperanto speakers in the area did not actually join the club but organized things together over Facebook or just by calling round. So I actually only attended the club a couple times and spent five years mostly using Esperanto on the internet, chatting with people from Brazil, China, Russia and Iran whose English was non-existant or poor.

In Berlin, there are separate club evenings for young Esperanto speakers, as well as for people in different parts of town. And in Berlin the club is actually interesting, because there is a large amount of local foreign Esperanto speakers and visitors every week, including singers giving concerts in Esperanto. For me, that's still the most interesting use of Esperanto, to communicate with people from other countries with whom I otherwise couldn't have an easy conversation. Yes, the majority of my Esperanto friends are not fluent in English or German. Travelling has become a bigger thing for me now as well, because I'm no longer 14 as when I started, I have more money and an Esperanto-speaking boyfriend, all of which makes it easier.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 22 January 2010 at 2:12pm


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