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Learn Esperanto if bilingual?

 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto Post Reply
CetteFilleErica
Newbie
United States
Joined 4050 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 1 of 7
07 March 2013 at 4:24am | IP Logged 
I have a good grasp of French but want to learn Spanish among other languages. Should I learn Esperanto and then learn Spanish, or could I use my French knowledge to learn it? Also, how good is Esperanto for learning Arabic and Turkish?
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alang
Diglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6981 days ago

563 posts - 757 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish

 
 Message 2 of 7
07 March 2013 at 5:54am | IP Logged 

Choose which language you have more interest in. Esperanto agglutinates words, like
Turkish. No idea compared to Arabic. Any language helps learn the next. In your case I
presume, you have more exposure to Spanish, so I recommend Spanish.

A nice option is to strengthen your French by using French base programs to learn
Spanish. Do not use a French base program with audio to learn Esperanto, specifically
Parlons and Assimil the pronunciations have a very thick French accent speaking Esperanto.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 days ago

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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 7
07 March 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged 
Do you actually want to learn Esperanto, or have you just heard that it makes learning other languages easier?
Esperanto would be easy for you, but only if you're motivated enough.
As you're in the US, I recommend Spanish first. In fact given your motivation, I'd recommend it even if you weren't in the US.
here are my favourite Spanish resources:
http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/#
http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html a tv series for learners
http://albalearning.com/
http://lyricstraining.com/
http://gloss.dliflc.edu/Default.aspx - free lessons with interesting content

PS On this forum bilingual has a very clear definition - having two native languages.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6199 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 4 of 7
08 March 2013 at 1:22pm | IP Logged 
Learn Esperanto if you're interested by/in it. You've already learned French; you won't get that much of a benefit to your Spanish by studying Esperanto before it. Turkish agglutination will seem a bit more natural to you after Esperanto.

It's an awesomely fun language. It won't actually help you that much with the other languages you mentioned, given where you already are; with your French, you already know how to learn languages. That said, if you're not entirely comfortable in French (attending lectures, discussing philosophy/science/your intellectual interests, reading literature...), you can get your Esperanto up to that level faster than your French, most likely, and this is worthwhile.

I heartily recommend giving it a try - if you want to.
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CetteFilleErica
Newbie
United States
Joined 4050 days ago

5 posts - 5 votes
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 5 of 7
09 March 2013 at 2:56am | IP Logged 
Thanks everybody! I am interested in learning esperanto. I just wanted to know how much benefit it would give me learning other languages.
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6199 days ago

4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 6 of 7
09 March 2013 at 8:19am | IP Logged 
CetteFilleErica wrote:
Thanks everybody! I am interested in learning esperanto. I just wanted to know how much benefit it would give me learning other languages.


A bit. Where it's most useful is giving someone their first taste of a foreign language without unnecessary things like irregular verbs (which don't help conceptual understanding, but require extra memorization). It helps you get a feel for grammar, spontaneously expressing yourself in another language, etc - but so will any other first foreign language taken to a high enough level, just after more time and effort.

I've found agglutination, flexible word ordering, and causatives to be useful for other languages, and Esperanto has them all. So does Turkish, so those elements of Turkish will be a bit easier if you study Esperanto first. How much easier? I don't know.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6230 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 7 of 7
16 March 2013 at 9:21pm | IP Logged 
I found Esperanto helpful in learning Arabic in that it makes the word construction
easier to understand. For example Form II of Arabic verbs corresponds to the Esperanto
suffix -ig- or -eg-, Form III often corresponds to kun-, Form V is like -iĝ- and Form
VI is like inter-.

Also, the Arabic prefix mu- for nouns corresponds to -ul- in Esperanto, while ma-
corresponds to -ej- in Esperanto. As an example, the word "maktab" derives from the
root "kataba" (to write) - don't ask how it's derived, Arabic is very complicated like
that, unlike Esperanto. "maktab" means "office" or "study room" but also "desk". In
Esperanto, the word for "to write" is "skribi" and the direct translation of "maktab"
would therefore be "skribejo" - place of writing, which could arguably describe both an
office or a desk. Once I translated everything to Esperanto, Arabic became much clearer
to me.

It is certainly possible to understand this way of traversing word fields without
knowing Esperanto, but it's much more intuitive when you do. Also, it is easier to
learn the concept by taking examples from a completely regular language, not one that
is as opaque as Arabic.

Edited by Sprachprofi on 16 March 2013 at 9:22pm



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