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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6055 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 137 of 351 16 December 2009 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
But Juan, one should not be so closed minded as this. You see, following the rationale you use, I could argue that learning something like Latin, Sanskrit, or Ancient Greek is useless as there is no one with whom you could speak it with. If you look around online, you would find there is a wealth of good material in Esperanto for reading and many people happy to speak it with you. Just because it doesn't interest you, it doesn't mean that it is not worth learning. I think that any language is worth learning if there is something good to read in it and if there or wonderful people with which to converse or both. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5690 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 138 of 351 16 December 2009 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
Some of human's most profound insights have been rendered in those languages you mention, so I'd say there is plenty of reason to learn them. On the other hand, people seem to seek material to read in Esperanto for the sole purpose of using the language, not because it is remarkably worthwhile. Likewise whatever is written in it appears to have as its main preoccupation the employment of Esperanto. About conversation, it is not a concern for me. Obviously others find Esperanto fascinating and worthwhile, and it is really no one's intention to convince them otherwise. Likewise, my personal opinion is that any of the thousands of living languages in existence today is preferable to 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 139 of 351 16 December 2009 at 3:42pm | IP Logged | ||
There is material for its own sake in many languages, including Esperanto. That said, I do find some Esperanto material quite worthwhile. I'm currently reading "Raportoj el Japanio" (an original Esperanto work by a Japanese author, "Reports from Japan"), and it's full of interesting cultural insights and tidbits; I'd greatly enjoy it in any language I could read it in. I also really enjoy anthologies of works in various languages translated into Esperanto - and they are often translated from relatively 'obscure' languages, such as Frisian or Hungarian, which I might never have otherwise explored the literature of. In short: no, most Esperanto material is not mainly preoccupied with the employment of Esperanto. Why make such an assertion when you haven't read any? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5690 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 140 of 351 16 December 2009 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
You're right and perhaps I'm mistaken. My perception derives from the almost evangelical ardor with which Esperanto sometimes is promoted, and from many years of reading and study in a range of topics and literary traditions in which I have not come across *anything* in Esperanto referenced or cited anywhere elsewhere. Thus to me Esperanto seems like a hobby taken way too far. I believe one could learn far more about language, society and culture from learning a real tongue resulting from authentic human experience -anything from Khmer to Yoruba to Frisian to Navajo back to Polish- than a synthetic one, which should be of interest mainly as an experiment in a technically-circumscribed context to computer scientists, linguists or neurologists. That's my opinion at least. Edited by Juan M. on 16 December 2009 at 4:20pm 1 person has 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 141 of 351 16 December 2009 at 5:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Again, I think you're imagining that Esperantists just sit at home and play with their "toy language", but most people I've encountered have actually used it for international communication with people who don't otherwise speak another common language with them. A lot of people go to various conferences or go on trips, and have plenty of "authentic human experience". Why would you assume that this is "synthetic", or that they're all neurologists?
Actually, an interesting example that I recently heard about was the 2008 anti-G8 protests in Japan. There were Japanese activists there that were using Esperanto to communicate their ideas to foreigners, and to have a common language at the protests. Apparently the police were rather confused because they couldn't understand what was being said. I've also read an article in Esperanto about a Japanese position on their government's involvement in the Iraq war, and whether or not that goes against the Japanese constitution. I can't read Japanese, and a lot of these people can't write English to such a degree (or at all), so this is another instance where "authentic" communication was happening that otherwise might not have. Also, the radio station in China that broadcasts in Esperanto is not just broadcasting content of interest to computing scientists and neurologists. Esperanto is a real language with real speakers and real uses. Your label of "synthetic" betrays your bias against it, and I think you're assuming that because it originated 100+ years ago in Poland, that somehow makes it doomed to never be used for real things. This idea was proven wrong many decades ago. You don't have to learn it, no one's making you. But I don't think there's any need to go around saying these provably-false theories. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5657 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 142 of 351 16 December 2009 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been inspired by the Google/Esperanto thread to reconsider Esperanto. I first studied Esperanto in 1975, and made considerable progress very quickly. For a variety of reasons, my interest waned after a few years. That was well before widespread use of computers and the Internet.
So I decided to look around the Internet to see what resources and interesting material are available today. To my disappointment, I could not find any "news". I'm not talking about news about Esperanto. There is lots of that. I am talking about the daily news around the world. News about the climate conference in Copenhagen. News about the major events that fill the front pages of newspapers of all major languages. I was able to find the news section of the Esperanto Wikipedia site, and a radio news site, but those sites are very limited. http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aktualaĵoj http://radioverda.com/dosierkesto/ Perhaps there are better news sites, but I didn't find any. Because of that lack of current news, in my opinion, Esperanto fails a critical aspect of being a "living language". Without current news that people are reading daily, Esperanto seems to me to be a bit stale and static. I use the daily news as a key component of my second language learning. It is interesting, familiar, available in all major living native languages, and reading the news in several languages augments the learning experience. It appears I cannot do that in Esperanto. If someone can point out a good source of daily news in Esperanto, I will be very grateful, and I will retract what I said above. If no such daily news in Esperanto currently exists, then I suggest to the Esperanto community that serious effort needs to be devoted to that crucial missing link. If there are really 1,000,000 Esperanto speakers/readers/writers in the world, that would seem like more than enough to produce a current news site on the Internet, and more than enough to provide thousands of readers daily. Dynamic daily news on the Internet would do a lot to make Esperanto a living language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5690 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes | Message 143 of 351 16 December 2009 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
If we're talking about its usefulness as a lingua franca, I don't see how Esperanto can rival either the intellectual, cultural and literary heritage of English or its ubiquity. And if we're talking about gaining access to a tradition of its own, in my opinion most if not all of the many European languages have more to offer than Esperanto. So really, what's the point? Again, I post this in accordance with the topic title of this thread and not in a spirit of confrontation. I understand that Esperanto has become dear to many and of course they should not desist of their feelings. It just seems to me that objectively there is not much substance behind this phenomenon, and that someone with an interest in language could spend his or her time much, much more profitably elsewhere. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6055 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 144 of 351 16 December 2009 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | ||
You know Juan, I once held a very similar belief. I once was completely against the idea that rap could be considered a genre of music as most rap is generally someone using their voice to speak in a rhythmic fashion as opposed to actually singing. This closed-minded believe of mine was converted by a friend who explained that just because I don't like or listen to it, doesn't mean it isn't music and that it doesn't have meaning for someone else. As such, I think we are not trying to convince you that you personally need to learn this language, because you don't. It is a personal choice. All we are saying is be open-minded. If someone wants to learn it, who cares, it doesn't hurt you or even affect you. As such, just go on to studying the languages you want and let those who study their languages study theirs. One shouldn't criticize another's choice in such a matter. I wish you all the best and hope you can consider another alternate condition in which people can study a language of their choice without being told it is a "waste of their time". That's my two yen worth. 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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