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Esperanto’s benefit for language learners | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5378 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 1 of 78 14 April 2010 at 8:04am | IP Logged | |||||
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When people talk about Esperanto being a benefit for people learning foreign languages, it is often in the context of "propedeutic Esperanto", i.e. teaching Esperanto before teaching other languages under the reckoning that learning a second or third language is easier than learning your first so your first might as well be a real easy one. While I have no doubts that the knowledge and experience I gained while learning Esperanto has helped me in my subsequent language studies, I think the language has offered me a much larger benefit.
This, quite simply, is access to a wealth of intelligent, generally tolerant and friendly people with an interest in languages from a plethora of different countries and cultures. After a period of not doing anything with the language, I have forayed back into the Esperanto community online. As I meet new people from all over the globe, I am finding native speakers of my target languages left and right. I am finding other people who study the languages I am studying. I am finding people who speak fascinating languages I am not studying. And furthermore, I am finding people who share my interests, people who have things to say that I want to hear, people I want to converse with. Esperantists are fascinating people. It is somewhat ironic that a language intended to be spoken by everyone has become a global self-selected subculture of individuals who tend to have a set of certain characteristics. The sort of person who learns Esperanto is the sort of person who is open to learning a language to begin with, the sort of person who enjoys an intellectual challenge, the sort of person who is interested in other cultures and seeks friendship rather than hostility. It may not ever be the world's lingua franca, but Esperanto is worth learning just for the people who speak it. Finding people to talk to in your target language(s) can sometimes be difficult, but language learners are bound to run into lots of intelligent, amicable speakers of their target language(s) in the Esperanto community. Esperanto has opened my eyes, and my ears, to the world, and I encourage anyone interested in languages to learn it. Edited by Levi on 14 April 2010 at 8:12am 18 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5233 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 78 14 April 2010 at 8:35am | IP Logged | |||||
7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6281 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 3 of 78 14 April 2010 at 9:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have made the same experience. In a room full of random Esperanto speakers, I can
have a lot of fun talking to almost everybody, while a room full of random English or German speakers, even if you were to limit it to second language speakers, that certainly isn't the case. It's comparable to finding a forum like this for your target language ;-)
The claim was not that Esperanto is an intellectual challenge (though I believe it is, compared to solving crosswords or enigmas, and some learn it for that purpose), but rather that the people learning Esperanto enjoy an intellectual challenge. That must be true, because otherwise they wouldn't learn a language that they really don't need to learn. Edited by Sprachprofi on 14 April 2010 at 9:36am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5658 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 78 14 April 2010 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have also met quite some intellectually inspiring people in the Esperanto movement and I like the open-mindedness and international orientation of Esperantists very much. So I can fully understand Levi's experiences, mine are similarly positive!
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 14 April 2010 at 12:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5890 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 78 14 April 2010 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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An observation:
Replace "Esperanto"/"Esperantists" with any other language and it's speakers and it would still make perfect sense. I can't really see how any of this is unique to Esperanto. I'm glad you enjoy Esperanto, but this is pretty much a word for word description of my experiences with English - and probably eventually French too. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6283 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 6 of 78 14 April 2010 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ouch. I imagine you don't mean to be inflammatory, but this comment could be seen that way. My own opinion is that learning any language (so long as it's not extremely similar to your own) is a challenge. It's not as much of a challenge as natural languages are, and it's not a difficult feat, but it's a heck of a lot more demanding than, say, a video game. Also, I doubt one can become fully proficient in Esperanto in three months. Fluent, sure, but their speech will probably still be overly reliant on paraphrase and such -- they may be understood, but their speech will be less elegant than it could be.
I wouldn't call that a "challenge" so much as "pain". I'm learning Japanese, which most people think is equally difficult, and I feel like I have to fight hard for every little thing I learn. Grammar is not so bad, but vocabulary goes in one ear and out the other, and kanji are sometimes problematic even though I've finished Remembering the Kanji vol. 1. So I'd say East Asian languages are for masochists. Luckily(?), I am one. In any case, comparing Esperanto and East Asian languages is like comparing a hill and Mount Everest. It's a silly comparison. What about all the mountains in between? As for me, my big problem with Esperanto is I just can't enjoy the language. I don't particularly like the way it looks, or the way it sounds, or its grammar, or some of the questionable (in my eyes) ideas that went into it -- they're not serious issues, but they don't help endear the language to me. One time I tried to learn Esperanto the way I try to learn any language -- by making flash cards and putting them into Anki -- and I just got fed up with it to the point I deleted all the cards. I guess it's just not for me. I can certainly respect it as a language and even as a culture, though. But I guess I'll always be an outsider looking in. - Kef 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Blunderstein Triglot Pro Member Sweden schackhandeln.se Joined 5229 days ago 60 posts - 82 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC2, FrenchB2 Studies: German, Esperanto Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 78 14 April 2010 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your comment is much appreciated. A number of people on this board are very eager to demonstrate that they do not respect Esperanto (neither the language nor the culture). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5890 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 78 14 April 2010 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To be frank the almost religious zealousness of some Esperantists can also get somewhat
tiring. Of course I respect the language and it's culture, whatever it's culture might be, but I can't help but marvel at the missionary-like style of advertising the language. I know it's with the best intentions, and Esperanto might be the best thing since sliced bread, I'm just saying it might be expected to get a few snappy replies when you post a thread professing the language's general awesomeness - just like you'd get with any other language. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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