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Esperanto a waste of time?

 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto Post Reply
351 messages over 44 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 32 ... 43 44 Next >>
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 249 of 351
25 June 2010 at 3:38pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:
Btw the French languages were mutually
incomprehensible (when spoken) up until world war 1 - at which time the French government
started imposing one language.

Didn't that start earlier, with the French Revolution?

The language was standardized before, but the standard language didn't spread much beyond
Paris. At the beginning of the first world war, most troops were grouped by region. When
that proved impossible later on, the French had to realize that many soldiers couldn't
understand each other, which was a problem. This lead to a big effort to impose standard
French everywhere at the expense of the other languages, mostly through public education
and centralization.
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Juаn
Senior Member
Colombia
Joined 5136 days ago

727 posts - 1830 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*

 
 Message 250 of 351
25 June 2010 at 5:12pm | IP Logged 
Sprachprofi wrote:
gedamara wrote:
yyes it is a total waste of time as long as it is an artificial
language,

So is German.


And so would most other major languages in the world today, according to your logic, since many have undergone systematizations and reforms of one sort or another. That doesn't mean anyone "invented" German like Zamenhof invented Esperanto.
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GREGORG4000
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5314 days ago

307 posts - 479 votes 
Speaks: English*, Finnish
Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French

 
 Message 251 of 351
25 June 2010 at 5:50pm | IP Logged 
My main problem is how it sounds and the politics connected with it. It's almost as bad with English because of all the Romance loanwords and the battling between American English vs Received Pronunciation learners, but not quite. I just find Romance languages generally unpleasant to listen to, I think that Finnish would be a better phonological (if not grammatical) model to base an international language off of, I have never heard anybody say that Finnish sounds bad. Also the sounds in it are easier to distinguish.

Edited by GREGORG4000 on 25 June 2010 at 5:57pm

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tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 252 of 351
25 June 2010 at 6:51pm | IP Logged 
GREGORG4000 wrote:
I have never heard anybody say that Finnish sounds bad.


I think it sounds bad. Even worse than German and American English.
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Juаn
Senior Member
Colombia
Joined 5136 days ago

727 posts - 1830 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*

 
 Message 253 of 351
25 June 2010 at 6:59pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:
GREGORG4000 wrote:
I have never heard anybody say that Finnish sounds bad.


I think it sounds bad. Even worse than German and American English.


Then to my ears it must sound beautifully, since I love the sound of German and don't mind English either.
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Enriquee
Triglot
Groupie
United States
esperantofre.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5126 days ago

51 posts - 125 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto, English

 
 Message 254 of 351
27 June 2010 at 6:25am | IP Logged 
>Imagine if the EU stated, ... they would recognise Khasi ... as a working language.
>It may just end up being yet another translation target, thereby increasing costs and >bureaucracy but with little impact on uptake of the language. I do not see why >Esperanto would be any different.

If you don't see why, it is simply because you didn't try to find information about Esperanto. There are two main differences:
1. Esperanto can be learned in a small fraction of the time required to learn other languages.
2. You can learn Esperanto for free. Everything to learn Esperanto is free on the Internet. And Esperanto is a language that you can learn by yourself, as I did, and as many current Esperanto speakers have done.

About the sound of Esperanto:
Most languages sound very sweet to their native speakers.
Most languages don't sound so sweet to the people that don't know them.
Somebody said that romance languages sound bad. To my ears French and Brazilian Portuguese sound very likable, but then, my first language is Spanish.

After you get used to a language, it doesn't sound bad any more.

If you have difficulty learning a language, or if you don't have enough time for that, start by the easiest language to learn ... the one that you can learn in short time ... its name is "Esperanto".

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remush
Tetraglot
Groupie
Belgium
remush.beRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6059 days ago

79 posts - 94 votes 
Speaks: French*, Esperanto, English, Dutch
Studies: German, Polish

 
 Message 255 of 351
27 June 2010 at 12:04pm | IP Logged 
gedamara wrote:
yyes it is a total waste of time as long as it is an artificial language,


read Piron

Remuŝ
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