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BBC article on Esperanto in the Middle Ea | ||
Tags: School Education | Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5905 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes  1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 15 26 July 2009 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that in the first year of high school, Esperanto should be taught. By the end of the year (with good enough education) they should be pretty good at it. That will then give them the confidence to go on to French and Spanish and German or whatever language, and we know confidence is an important factor in language learning. They know they can learn a language, so they will. It also has its roots in those languages, so its a good link.
TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5686 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 10 of 15 27 July 2009 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Maybe it will be as popular as latin. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5663 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 11 of 15 27 July 2009 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not sure about the popularity of Latin (are you kidding?) but the idea is EXCELLENT! If I was the minister of education for the EU it would be a done deal. It's so easy (much easier than English) that they can start at a really young age. Eight perhaps. Lots of cute, fun stories and singing songs.... It would do them a world of good in so many different ways, and it would put British and Irish kids on par with all the other children in Europe. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6981 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 15 27 July 2009 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think that it'd be a bit of a stretch and the enthusiasm would really depend on the motivation and perception of the students as Cainntear mentioned. It won't be as successful as hoped for because most students just aren't as keen on languages as many on this forum are. Offering Esperanto is fine, but it kind of reminds me about how computer science was taught to one of my friends in Canada. In Canadian high schools, students in computer science learned how to use Turing which is a simplified programming language that is akin to Pascal and very popular for teaching. The teachers liked to tout its benefits because it was "easy" and "powerful". Unfortunately, Turing has virtually no application outside the classroom despite its apparent user-friendliness compared to other programming languages. The idea is something like why learn a language of relatively little reach like Turing when it'd be beneficial to start working gradually with C, Visual Basic or Java from the beginning. To boot these aforementioned languages also have much wider use and application despite being less user-friendly than Turing. A similar thing goes for Esperanto. Notwithstanding its "user-friendliness" (using the computer-like analogy) for most native speakers of Romance or Germanic languages (of which there are MANY), why would these students take to it when they see that "harder" natural languages like Arabic, English, French, German, Mandarin, Russian to name a few are still going strong and are more readily perceived as "useful"? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| The Narrator Diglot Newbie Israel Joined 5428 days ago 31 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English, Modern Hebrew* Studies: German | Message 13 of 15 27 July 2009 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Usefulness is becoming less of a factor nowadays. Everyone speaks English and almost
everything gets translated, so being fluent in a language other than English is not such a motivator. I really hope that over time instead of learning a bunch of different languages, people will realize it's much more sensible that we all just have the same second language. That will sure stop English from spreading and destroying cultures. And besides, who can resist it considering the free lunch involved? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6981 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 15 27 July 2009 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I find this part to be most odd considering that we're in a forum of people who enjoy learning languages and that your hope could touch a nerve with a lot of people who rail against the trend of English becoming the de facto second language outside the English-speaking world. If you were to replace this dominating language with Esperanto, I fail to see the difference. As much as it's fashionable to bash English and its current hegemony, I find that the hope of people realizing the sensibility of having the same second language is odd as it seems rather hypocritical. English is currently moving in that direction of being the de facto second language and is criticized for it. Yet somehow if this second language were something else, then it'd be better. :-P Something doesn't fit. Anyway I find it to be rather ordinary in a local sense with the situation of a common second language. The common language of this forum is English even though it's a second language for a goodly amount of members here. If Esperanto were in the same position as English today, then we'd be having this discussion in Esperanto and this forum would insist on Esperanto. What's the difference and how would it be better? Does English fail in its communicative purpose to allow interaction between members here?
Largely free lunch for me and you for sure since we and many others are fluent in a Romance or Germanic language. Others wouldn't be so lucky. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5663 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 15 of 15 28 July 2009 at 12:09am | IP Logged | |||||
In my opinion, YES, it would be better. Why? 1) More logical language, easier spelling, vocabulary, no inaccessible expressions or cultural references that non-natives miss. 2) Fairer, since everybody speaks it as a second language, not their native language. Everybody would be in the same position. 3) Nobody would have reason to complain and whinge about the dominance of the language of a current sometimes inpopular super-power and an ex colonial empire. 4) English would be considered a more interesting and exotic language instead of the compulsory, rather boring and often abused lingua-franca. People would learn it because they really wanted to, not because they were forced to, or had to for academic/career related reasons. The current status of English as lingua franca means it gets dumbed down a lot in order to facilitate communication between two non-native speakers, or between a native speaker and somebody with poor skills. I'd rather subject a made-up, practical language, like Esperanto, to that sort of treatment, than the language of Shakespeare, Hemingway etc! Which one of these arguments do you not agree with? Edited by cordelia0507 on 28 July 2009 at 2:33am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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