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Pay me to learn Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5141 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 17 of 26 14 November 2010 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well I would do it for only $749.99 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| RealJames Diglot Newbie Japan realizeenglish.com/ Joined 4921 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: French, English* Studies: Japanese | Message 18 of 26 14 November 2010 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
100 hours for fluency? I hadn't heard that before. I'm not holding this against you, but rather your source, that if anyone studied it for 8 hours a day for 2 weeks, they'd still have a hard time forming a mildly complex idea into a coherent statement. That said, if I got 1000$ to study the language for 100hrs, so long as I could do it 2 or 3 hours a week tops and in my free time I'd do it. I seriously wouldn't expect myself to retain much of it in that time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6267 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 19 of 26 14 November 2010 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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RealJames, Esperanto has been found to be around 5 times easier to learn than French,
Spanish or the like. If you put French fluency at 600 hours as the FSI does, then that would mean 120 hours of Esperanto to achieve a similar level. Others say 100, 150... depends on your definition of fluency as much as on your estimate for French. It is ridiculously low though, which is the main advantage of teaching people Esperanto as a lingua franca rather than teaching them a language that has no other qualification for this other than being the one of a former colonial power. Spend 2 hours on any Esperanto course or grammar and you'll see what I mean. -- All you people asking for money, even jokingly... I think you're missing one important thing: if someone suggested you learn Esperanto, most likely that someone doesn't get a personal benefit from you learning it (they can already communicate with you, right?). Nor is there an indirect benefit - even if we found another 2 million speakers right now, Esperantujo would probably not feel much different, and few people care about the fina venko nowadays anyway. If someone suggests you learn Esperanto, it's because they think that YOU would benefit from it. It's like... imagine you have a friend who is really into manga and anime, can't wait to get his hands on the latest publications, yet he never seriously considered learning Japanese. Wouldn't you suggest he learn it? But: would you pay him to learn it? No. You'd probably point him to some good materials, maybe even prepare an introduction yourself if you're good at Japanese, offer to be his practice partner, take him to places where Japanese people hang out, that kind of thing, but no matter how much you believe that he'd benefit from learning Japanese, you wouldn't even pay him $20 to do it. I dare anyone to say he would. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5079 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 20 of 26 14 November 2010 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
A passive construction obviates any need to mention the subject. But just for the record: WHO found Esperanto to be "around 5 times easier than French"..? Is this credible peer-reviewed research? Do the researchers have direct links to the Esperanto University? Do they have a strong vested interest in promoting Esperanto? (I may be wrong, but I suspect that the respective answers to the above questions are: "no, yes, yes"...) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5490 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 21 of 26 14 November 2010 at 11:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
I assume she used the passive construction to avoid having to pick just one of the many various projects on this topic which have been carried out. I saw the list of them once, with all the projects' goals, conclusions, sponsoring organizations, citations, etc. I would link it for you here, except that I never bookmarked it myself; the list was so huge and repetitive (all the results showed that yes, Esperanto is far easier to learn than most other languages) that I got tired of reading it all and went away. ETA: My personal opinion is, why bother reading about all the research? People seem obsessed with getting "proof" and "seeing the research" when a much easier and more practical way to demonstrate Esperanto's simplicity to oneself would just be to go to lernu.net and try a beginner's course. You would quickly see that all the basic rules of the language can be learned in a few days of study. Edited by Jinx on 14 November 2010 at 11:15pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6267 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 22 of 26 14 November 2010 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There have been a number of experiments proving that Esperanto can be learned a lot
faster than another national language, and anyone can easily experience that for himself. There are people who stop learning Esperanto for a number of reasons, but never because the language is too difficult. Anyway, Dr Edward Thorndike of Columbia University is known as the father of modern educational psychology and he was the first to quantify the ease; he came up with 5x easier. Going into that experiment he did not speak any Esperanto. He was not working for an Esperanto organization either, he was part of the International Auxiliary Language Association that was founded in order to research which language would be best suited as a worldwide lingua franca and later went on to invent Interlingua. This research was published in 1933. Since then, there have been a number of studies all coming to the same conclusion. There's an overview at http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Propedeutic_value_of_Espera nto (I suspect this is incomplete; the Springboard to Languages paper lists 18 such experiments, unfortunately without further references) and several countries are now running "Springboard to Languages" or similar programs that use Esperanto as an easy first foreign language to encourage pupils and help them pick up other languages faster. Edited by Sprachprofi on 14 November 2010 at 11:27pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5079 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 23 of 26 15 November 2010 at 10:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have no doubt that Esperanto is very easy to learn - indeed much easier than many "real" languages. (Actually there is an argument that a language such as Indonesian could be equally easy, and would have the advantage of having many millions of native speakers - but let's leave that to one side for now.)
My problem with statements such as "Esperanto is 5 times as easy as French" or "Esperanto can be learned five times as quickly" is that they make a specific scientific claim - i.e. if person X spends 1 year and 8 months living in France and studying French, while person Y spends 4 months at the Esperanto University studying Esperanto, they will both reach EXACTLY the same level in each respective language. In other words, they will both have the same level of comprehension and fluency, will both know the same number of words, have the same command of phrases and idioms, etc. This just seems preposterous to me. After 1 year and 8 months in France any serious full time learner should have reached a very high advanced level - I know that for a fact. Is it possible to reach this same level in Esperanto (or in ANY language) after just 4 months worth of study and immersion? I really don't see how this could be possible. As I say, I don't doubt that Esperanto is basically easier than French - but not by a factor of 5! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6267 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 24 of 26 15 November 2010 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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It is pretty unbelievable until you try it, I grant you that. You could go to the "Somera
Esperanto Studado", a one-week immersion course taking place every summer in Eastern Europe and organized by Lernu. Or the NASK, 3 weeks immersion at the University of California. Or, failing that, do a little preparation and join any week-long Esperanto meeting that includes beginner classes, e. g. also the one coming up around New Year near Berlin. Seeing what progress you make in one week should make it easier to believe where you'll be in 4 months. Edited by Sprachprofi on 15 November 2010 at 10:57am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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