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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5629 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 73 of 351 30 November 2009 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with everything that David Welsh said. Finally somebody who has the same opinion as me - and a native English speaker at that! ----- Dare to go against the stream and be a visionary! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6261 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 74 of 351 30 November 2009 at 11:04am | IP Logged | |||||
It's the same experience I had. I was in Beijing in 2004 and even the people working at the Beijing Yuyan Wenhua Daxue (most prestigious school for foreigners to learn Chinese) were not able to speak English. On the streets, lots of random Chinese people said "Hello, how are you?" to me but couldn't say *anything* else. I also was at the Universala Kongreso (biggest Esperanto conference, in a different country each year) while in Beijing and the Chinese people I met there spoke Esperanto very well, I had a lot of interesting conversations. It was already the second time that Beijing hosted the Universala Kongreso, the first time was in 1986. Of course you still can't hope to just walk up to a person on the street and talk to him in Esperanto, but it is encouraging that so many people are learning Esperanto in China, Japan, Russia, Kazakstan, Iran, Western Africa and a whole lot of places where you wouldn't expect it. In fact, the movement in Japan, Brazil and Western Africa has more momentum than in Europe. Edited by Sprachprofi on 30 November 2009 at 11:08am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6559 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 75 of 351 30 November 2009 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
There's actually an Esperanto journal published in Japan, with articles in Japanese and Esperanto. There's also a Japanese religion that encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers. That said, I've yet to meet anyone who speaks it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6230 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 76 of 351 30 November 2009 at 3:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
As far as you know, at least. Most people I know face-to-face have no idea I speak Esperanto, because it simply doesn't come up. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5777 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 77 of 351 01 December 2009 at 5:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ya, I was thinking about this with regard to traveling. I'm thinking about sewing a little green-star flag onto my bag or something, just to see if anyone recognizes it and speaks Esperanto to me. I might try and do something similar for German and Chinese, except hopefully in some way that doesn't look like I'm trying to say that I'm from those countries. I definitely want something to encourage people to use those languages with me, though...something to start conversations.
4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5320 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 79 of 351 01 December 2009 at 11:09am | IP Logged | |||||
As a language teacher I really have to disagree with this. People are different - some people find maths easy, others don't. Some find learning a language comes easily to them, others don't. Just because you find something difficult doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. And I'm afraid that research shows that the majority of school students gain only a superficial grasp of the foreign languages they are taught at school. It's only those who are particularly gifted, or who have the opportunity to spend some time living in a country where the language is spoken that really master it. Of course this applies to other languages besides English, but English does present particular difficulties to learners (in terms of spelling, the complex tense system, the ambiguity of many words.) The difficulties are compounded when the learners' mother tongue is radically different from English, as is the case with Chinese and Japanese students of English for example. In English speaking countries, learners usually tackle languages that are quite similar to English (such as French, German or Spanish) and so don't encounter the same kinds of difficulties. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5460 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 80 of 351 01 December 2009 at 11:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I have become increasingly convinced that such cases are where the teacher is not very good. Give the same students to a better language teacher and they will flourish. I have yet to meet a person who was bad at learning to speak a foreign language, once you have worked out what is blocking their fluency. Look at what Michel Thomas did with the least able french speakers in an English school. Inspired by him, I have been teaching Czech to a few people who have attended language classes for at least two years and were getting nowhere. Within a few days I can get them speaking pretty fluently, and from then on they can teach themselves without a teacher getting in the way. Edited by Splog on 01 December 2009 at 11:48am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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