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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| 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 193 of 351 18 January 2010 at 9:46am | IP Logged | ||
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The thing about Esperanto's so-called "native speakers" is that they are isolated and have no unified culture, so
there is no geographical capital that defines the proper or prestigious way of speaking it and no cultural elements that prevent outsiders from grasping crucial nuances. Someone who spoke it from birth would not really be at much advantage compared to an adult learner, and indeed I imagine that you could find great differences in the speech style and proficiency of any two "native Esperanto speakers", wherever you happened to find them. I think in that sense, one can say with certainty that there is an objective sense of neutrality one can ascribe to Esperanto and not to any natural language. That said, I don't think Esperanto has any realistic hope of being used in this way, and I would prefer to see a multi-polar world with several linguae francae common but no single one dominating. Edited by Captain Haddock on 18 January 2010 at 9:47am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 6937 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 194 of 351 18 January 2010 at 10:03am | IP Logged | ||
let us take your final sentence either way. If everyone doesn't have Esperanto as their native tongue, the exact same situation as you describe with English will repeat itself with Esperanto. I can't see it. If Esperanto isn't everyone's native tongue we all speak Esperanto as a foreign language, putting us on the same level. No one has the linguistic advantage. If everyone does have Esperanto as their native tongue, the exact same situation as you describe with English will repeat itself with Esperanto. It will still put us on the same level because we are debating in our own native language. I think, either way you lose. Actually, I think this is a strong argument for making Esperanto the language of world politics and international negotiations. 2 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 195 of 351 18 January 2010 at 10:21am | IP Logged | ||
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It is certainly true that Esperanto can be learned a lot faster than other languages. Having started learning Esperanto less than three weeks ago, I can see for myself how rapid progress is. However, it still does take effort. Maybe some super genius can crack the language in a dozen hours, but I would say that I will need at least 100 hours of study to be comfortable with Esperanto.
Now, I am not learning Esperanto with a dream that it will become a universal language. Rather, I am learning because I am now quite comfortable with a few other languages, and thought "why not?". That is, learning Esperanto is a luxury, rather than a necessity. It is, in effect, a hobby language for me. Learning it is quite relaxing, and I am sure that attending a few conferences with like-minded people will be fun. This weekend, I spent a few days with some friends who speak Czech natively, and Russian and German very well. I mentioned that I was learning Esperanto, and one of the group said something very interesting: "You have the luxury of doing that because you can already speak English well. Anytime I spent on Esperanto would be time I wouldn't spend on getting better at English." And this got me thinking: I am sure that plenty of Esperanto speakers already speak several languages, and I bet most can already speak English. This means they can ALREADY communicate with plenty of people from all around the world - and Esperanto is sort of an "icing on the cake". Assuming their interest is in communicating with people from around the world, I wonder how many people have deliberately shunned learning English in favour of learning Esperanto. It would be a brave decision. Edited by Splog on 18 January 2010 at 10:23am 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5312 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 196 of 351 18 January 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Yes, the alleged native speakers do. Not everyone is not the same as no-one... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6935 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 197 of 351 18 January 2010 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Look, few would deny that, given its regularity, Esperanto is easier to learn than almost any other language (except perhaps the "improved" versions such as Ido, etc.), and thus theoretically an ideal "international" language if the need for such truly exists. But this idea has been commonplace for the past century, and despite all the efforts of the Esperanto cult, the idea has never caught on except among a small bunch of hobbyists who, in most cases, already speak one or more foreign languages, and have the leisure and wherewithal to devote themselves to yet another, and even to attend Esperanto congresses, where they happily chatter away with other like-minded folk. If they derive pleasure from this, fine; there are worse hobbies.
But the idea that learning Esperanto has much practical utility for most of the world's population is an illusion. On this forum, we had a discussion a few weeks ago about jobs requiring foreign languages, i.e., jobs advertised in different countries with specific language requirements. Where was Esperanto? Various people on this forum work in multilingual call centers. How useful is Esperanto to them? There was also a story (perhaps in this very thread; I can't recall) about some potentially seminal scientific paper published by a Japanese scientist in the "International Language" a number of decades ago, which remained unknown because no one in the field read Esperanto. For the true believers, these are all examples of just how much opportunity there is out there, if they can just get enough people to believe and take up the cause; for the rest of us, these are examples of how useless Esperanto is. Then we have Esperanto literature, which at least in the eyes of some outshines Latin literature, except that books in Esperanto are impossible to come by, except at Esperanto conferences and the like. And as for literature translated INTO Esperanto, how does the volume and quality of this compare with the foreign literary works translated into major languages? Then there are people upset that native speakers have a verbal advantage over foreigners in "hegemonic" languages like English, or even German in Germany. I guess the prime directive in human discourse is that equality among participants counts more than the quality of the discussion, and thus it's better to have everyone stumbling around in an artificial language than allow anyone the "unfair" advantage of speaking comfortably in their native languages. And the career implications for non-natives! Horrors! The poor Danish minister, whose career is now over! I hadn't heard about the incident in question, but assume that for those who caught the potential "other" meaning, it led to a few smiles, and in fact probably led to a more sympathetic reception to whatever he had to say. And are such "slips" not equally possible in Esperanto? A language so crystal-clear (or so poor?) at all times as to allow no possible confusion or double entendre? There was a posting above, generally fairly sympathetic to Esperanto, suggesting that what's needed is more general-interest books, such as on gardening and the like. But this again, to my view, illustrates the problem Esperanto faces: there are already plenty of gardening books in just about every language people with an interest in gardening speak, and they can easily buy or borrow them in their native languages. There's no, or only a minimal, Esperanto market for such books, as even the Esperantistas admit. So regardless of Esperanto's supposed virtues and theoretical utility, the fact remains that next to no one speaks it or has any interest in learning it, and indeed, except for the true believers, an interest in Esperanto seems to many people a rather crackpot hobby. (The stereotype may be unfair, but it exists, I think.) The "opportunity cost" of learning Esperanto was also touched on above; I think this is an issue that in fact looms larger for most people than Esperanto devotees realize. Learning English (or another "major" language) can bring great opportunities for people who don't speak it already. Native speakers may or may not realize the advantages they have in this regard, but the demand throughout the world to become literate and at least semi-fluent in English is genuine and self-evident to a vast portion of the world's population. This goes for other languages as well, if on a somewhat smaller scale. Such languages are harder to learn than Esperanto, certainly not "neutral", etc., but for most language learners, the intellectual/scientific/cultural/travel/career/commercial, etc. opportunities that English, or French, or Russian, or German, or Chinese, or ... whatever brings far outweigh whatever utility there might be in a "neutral" but essentially hobby language like Esperanto. So people are willing to invest great time and energy, not to mention money, in learning such languages because they see it as worth their while. Very few, as the evidence indicates, see the practical payoffs from Esperanto being so high. So rather than rant on any longer, I'll stop here, and just suggest that Esperanto, while a nifty idea, is an idea whose time has never come and most likely never will, except for the hobbyists who are so enamored of the theoretical, "what if?" possibilities. Or, to paraphrase what used to be said about Brazil, Esperanto is the international language of the future -- and always will be. Edited by daristani on 18 January 2010 at 5:06pm 9 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 198 of 351 18 January 2010 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Esperanto has obviously suffered from its reluctance to adapt and change. Although a remarkable achievement for the 1880's, nobody would expect that the language would be perfect for its intended purpose. My personal opinion is that the greatest original problem was the decision to use diacritics (special letters), and the use of adjectival agreement. An 'easy' language should not have unnecessary complications and (perceived by some) annoyances. So I believe Esperanto would have been very much more successful if it had been willing to adapt and change. Esperantists have acquired a bit of a reputation of being rigid fanatics, unwilling to adapt, even when it seems to make a lot of sense. Ido was developed as an improvement to Esperanto but has 'suffered' from the existence and dominance of Esperanto. Had the Ido version of Esperanto been the dominant form when I started to learn Esperanto in the 1970s, I'm sure I would have learned it a whole lot faster and better. And I think it would be enjoying a lot more widespread use today than it is. I think if the Esperantists would swallow their pride and work with the Idoists, to make a major revision to Esperanto, and then evolve as necessary, then Esperanto will be immeasurably more successful. Many natural languages have evolved very considerably over 130 years. Why not Esperanto? 2 persons have 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 199 of 351 18 January 2010 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Zamenhof actually started a referendum about the use of the diacritics, the Accusative
and other parts of the languages where others suggested improvement. Only a minority voted in favour then, and I highly doubt that today there would be more. Ido is considerably easier for speakers of Romance languages and considerably harder for speakers of all other languages, as most of the brilliant affix system has been replaced by French word roots. The founder of Ido was French. For a Frenchman to opine that Esperanto doesn't have enough French word roots... well. (Zamenhof included conspicuouly few Polish words in Esperanto.) I am sure that that is the reason Esperantists did not flock to Ido. Whether it would be used more widely today - it's doubtful, considering most people don't even bother to look at the language for 10 minutes before determining that it "can't be that much easier than Spanish or English". Also, a great many are repulsed by the very idea of a man-made language, and for those no amount of changes can help. Apart from the impossibility of agreeing on what is the easiest possible grammar, man- made changes have been the biggest enemy of all international auxiliary languages, especially the ones currently being developed as community efforts. As long as people are still tinkering with the language, others won't learn it, because they are afraid of having to re-learn everything in 5 years. It also hampers cultural production. Another problem is that once you make one change, lots of people won't be happy until other things are changed. Take Protestantism for example. The Catholic church is rather homogenous, despite being both old and wide-spread. As soon as Luther started a different branch of Christianity however, lots of other denominations branched off from that branch, and they keep dividing - see jokes.html">this joke. All this to say that I'm strictly against any changes introduced to Esperanto. I believe that any remaining rough edges will be taken care of by natural evolution. For example, there are those who use the preposition "na" instead of the -n Accusative ending. This issue should be resolved just like the issue of "komputero" vs. "komputilo" etc. has been resolved in the past: by waiting and seeing which one winds up being used by the majority of current Esperanto speakers. Similarly, the word "mojosa" (cool) has managed to spread from Berlin to most of the Esperanto-speaking world now, whereas many other languages still use the anglicism. The Esperanto community, even though they are physically further apart and not as inundated with daily media as other languages, is closely-knit enough for natural evolution to work. I am very happy that the Akademio de Esperanto is a descriptivist rather than prescriptivist institution. Edited by Sprachprofi on 18 January 2010 at 4:42pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5376 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 200 of 351 18 January 2010 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've just recently started studying Esperanto. I have a master plan (which I cannot reveal yet :D) to bring Esperanto amoung teens and young adults.
In my opinion, Esperanto is very pleasing, easy, and fun to study. It's so simple I can study a TON of material and not even realize it. As far as I'm concerned, it's another language to "add to the resume" -Jordan 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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