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Native Esperanto as a Test Case (...) | ||
Tags: Native Language | Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| remush Tetraglot Groupie Belgium remush.beRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6065 days ago 79 posts - 94 votes  Speaks: French*, Esperanto, English, Dutch Studies: German, Polish | Message 17 of 43 25 April 2010 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
You probably meant: ... created by one individual. About the vocabulary, see http://remush.be/tezauro/PIV.xml In green: the words chosen by Zamenhof In red : the official words later added by the Academy of Esperanto. In black: the words added by individuals, and generally accepted by the community. Between [brackets] a few examples of words commonly built by users of the languages. Same type of remark applies to the grammar: compare Fundamento and PMEG The largest part of Esperanto was built by the community of speakers and developed gradually but consciously by literate people, while "natural" languages developed by illiterates. Edited by remush on 04 May 2010 at 6:03pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5701 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 18 of 43 20 May 2010 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Funny, considering that there are hundreds of natural languages with less speakers than Esperanto... 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6236 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 19 of 43 20 May 2010 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find it funny that there are people who want Esperanto to become a native language for people, or to unite Esperantists under a flag and so on. That seems to contradict Zamenhof's desires to me. He never intended Esperanto to be a native language or a language of communication expect between two people who do not share a native language.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6236 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 20 of 43 20 May 2010 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
There's no reason why two people who share a native language can't use it. I use it with other native English speakers, both one-on-one and in groups (with or without non-native English speakers in them), when we feel like it. Likewise, I can't really see anything wrong with the idea of natively bilingual Esperanto speakers. I know a few. Lastly - Zamenhof has been dead for nearly a century. He deserves a lot of credit for creating Esperanto, but his opinions are not some kind of overarching and binding law. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 22 of 43 13 July 2011 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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An article about native speakers of Esperanto which I accidentally found while searching for expressions for "native speaker" in other languages:
Nativization processes in L1 Esperanto 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6236 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 23 of 43 23 July 2011 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
It's fascinating, especially as much of it directly contradicts what I've observed with (adult) native Esperanto speakers. In no particular order, here are some notes. One factor in common: phonology does tend to at least partially mirror that of the parent(s) who spoke Esperanto to the infant, as far as I can tell, when native speakers have what I'll call "strongly non-neutral" accents in Esperanto. In most cases, I don't know the parents, but I do know other non-native Esperanto speakers who share a native language with the parents. Notably, this does apply to phonological reductions. I expect it also applies to stress, though I fear I haven't paid enough attention to feel comfortable saying so. Native use of the accusative, compound tenses, and aspect seem alive and kicking, and I've had quite a few corrections to my use from natives - and not only from first-generation natives, contrary to the predictions of the author. Most children I've met at Esperanto conferences haven't been native Esperanto speakers, despite having at least one parent who speaks the language, and most of them have not spoken it fluently. I do find myself curious about to what extent the children in the study you mention are native Esperanto speakers, as opposed to children of Esperanto speakers who sometimes speak to them in the language. I've phrased this poorly; perhaps it's more useful to point to children of native speakers of foreign and/or minority languages (children of immigrants who mainly/exclusively speak to them in the language of where they live, of people who speak various Celtic languages in areas where much of the community does not and speak mainly English to their children, etc), who have some ability to understand the language, but aren't anywhere near fully comfortable in speaking it. (On re-reading the article, I see that this concern is partially unfounded - page 5 says "all children were raised in households in which one parent addressed them primarily in Esperanto" - although there are still quite a lot of questions which this leaves open). I've definitely met more young children who speak a smattering of Esperanto, than people of any age who I'd call native Esperanto speakers. The estimate of 350 native Esperanto speakers is significantly lower than what I've heard from other sources. The (Esperanto) wikipedia article on native Esperanto speakers claims "Laŭ la hungara censo de 2001 tie estis 168 Esperanto-denaskulo" - "according to the 2001 Hungarian census, there are 168 native Esperanto speakers there (in Hungary)". I've usually heard numbers around 1000-2000 worldwide. Also, the proficiency of people who choose to teach their children Esperanto from birth is reputed to vary quite significantly. The study only involved one parent, and acknowledges that as a limitation. I haven't met enough parents of native speakers to comment concretely on this, though. The fine-grained tense distinctions definitely seem to be more common in writing. They are used in speech, but they're fairly strongly marked when using a simpler form does not lose crucial information. It's not surprising that short interviews might invoke rather few instances. -------- Less directly relatedly: It might be interesting, though rather limited by sample size, to examine the speech of second-generation and third-generation native adult Esperanto speakers; they exist. Also, while it's not directly related to native use of Esperanto, I disagree with the author's support of the notion that the accusative in Esperanto is "superficial and retained more for psycho-social reasons than for linguistic ones". I think the extent to which this is true varies a lot from one setting and group of speakers to another. I've seen plenty of literature which would be crippled without the accusative, and plenty of conversational speakers who wouldn't lose a thing by ditching it. This isn't a speech/writing distinction, either - in my personal observation, there seem to be plenty of speakers who make functional use of the accusative on the fly, varying word order for emphasis. I'm aware of some native Esperanto speakers who were spoken to in (only) Esperanto by both parents. The wider community around them spoke another language. I'm really not sure whether or not to call them natively bilingual, though all the ones I'm aware of and have information about have native proficiency in two languages as adults. Wikipedia claims the first native speaker in this category was 2 years old in 1935; there are also some contemporary ones. None of this is based on rigorous research - it's personal observations, and anecdotal. Take it with salt - but here it is nonetheless. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lindseylbb Bilingual Triglot Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4729 days ago 92 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Cantonese*, English Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 24 of 43 20 October 2011 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
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How can it become a native language is beyond me. without people murmuring around when you are an infant, without atmosphere,without a cultural background of its own?
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