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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5312 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes  Speaks: Swedish* | Message 153 of 351 17 December 2009 at 9:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You know, every time I hear Esperantists and other enthusiasts of constructed languages brag about the supposed lack of figurative speech in their languages, I ask myself (after noting that most of our speech is figurative "turn UP the volume"): "Who but an autist would find this an advantage?" 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 154 of 351 17 December 2009 at 2:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Where is the idea that Esperanto lacks figurative speech coming from? Esperanto has figurative speech and idioms. Zamenhof invented plenty, and others have continued to do so over the last century.
It's not more 'cognitively relaxing' to read Esperanto. Esperanto can lose a lot in translation. For poetry, devices which rely on alternating stressed and unstressed syllables in some pattern simply cannot be rendered adequately in many languages; even in the ones it can be, maintaining such patterns while preserving meaning is difficult. Esperanto has relatively free word order, which can be used for brilliant poetic effect; this doesn't come across at all in languages with fixed word order. Beyond the tools given by Esperanto phonology and word order, the word creation system can lead to very beautiful, hard to translate words, some of which cannot easily be rendered in other languages without lengthy circumlocutions. This results in clumsy translated prose, and often utterly untenable poetry. In other words: well-written Esperanto can be hard to translate for any of the reasons that well-written Latin, Ancient Greek, modern Russian, modern Hungarian, and so forth are, even without starting to delve into idioms. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5327 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 155 of 351 17 December 2009 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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So only poetry would lose something in translation? And if what Volte says is true that Esperanto has lots of figurative speech and idioms then the advertised just-learn-16-grammar-rules-and-vocabulary is completely false? People always criticize English as being very idiomatic and therefore difficult to learn.
Who's telling the truth? Why not stick to English then? 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 156 of 351 17 December 2009 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Please go back and read the previous messages in this thread before asking the same things over again.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6230 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 157 of 351 17 December 2009 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Of course not: any highly crafted work would lose more in translation, just as in any other language. Poetry simply makes a convenient example, as good poetry is always crafted, often more than good prose is.
Yes, the 16-rules propaganda is false. Esperanto is much easier to learn than any other language I've ever looked at, but it's not quite that easy.
English is easy to speak comprehensibly, and hard to speak well.
English and Esperanto serve different purposes. If you're planning to read technical literature or want to maximize your odds of successfully asking for directions while only learning one language, regardless of where you are geographically, English is more useful than Esperanto - just as English is more useful than Russian, or Mandarin, or Swahili, or Basque, or Warlpiri, though there are specific areas where those languages are more useful. Esperanto is useful in a few niches. One is international communication which feels much more equal than that conducted in English; I've found it to feel that way even when I'm talking with native English speakers who speak sufficiently differently from how I do, but it's even more noticeable when I'm talking to someone I don't share a mother tongue with. I'm not the only person to have noticed that Esperanto meetings seem far more pleasant than international ones conducted in national languages in some ways - for instance, there is much less division by native language for the conversations which aren't the core focus of an event, but where much/most of the actual idea exchange occurs. I feel more comfortable speaking in Esperanto than in Italian, despite over a decade in an Italian-speaking area and years of study, and exposure to Italian (without picking it up) from birth. Esperanto is also quite useful for people who are relatively new to language learning, because conversational ability arrives quite quickly, and a lot of conceptual hurdles can be dealt with quickly (for instance, people learn that they cannot translate word-for-word from their native tongues). Studies have been mentioned earlier in this thread about the benefits of learning Esperanto as a first foreign language. I could go on, but I'll simply second Doviende's advice instead: read this thread. 12 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5327 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 158 of 351 17 December 2009 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Mea culpa, I didn't read the entire thread so sorry for asking things already answered. Thanks Volte for your insightful answer and not being rude (although I deserved it).
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| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5833 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 159 of 351 19 December 2009 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Nothing is a waste of time if it makes you happy. Life is too short.
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| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5599 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 160 of 351 22 December 2009 at 4:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I have to say, after reading this thread I am genuinely curious about Esperanto.
Natural human languages, while beautiful, seem so haphazard and arbitrary at times especially compared to computer languages. I'm really curious to see how an "engineered" human language compares to naturally evolved human languages. Edited by ChiaBrain on 22 December 2009 at 4:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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