Kial vi ne lernas Esperanton? (Why aren't you learning Esperanto?) [Archive]

Jean Poutine

July 13th, 2015, 11:05 PM

Ĉiu devus lerni Esperanton. Ĝi estas planlingvo por internacia komunikilo kun vortoj de la Angla, la Franca, la Hispana, la Germana, la Rusa, k.t.p. Eblas ke vi povas kompreni kion mi skribas eĉ se vi ne scipovas paroli la Esperanton. Bazo en la Esperanto facilas la lernado de aliaj lingvoj ĉar ĝi estas facile ellernebla kaj grade presentas al vin lingvistikaj nocioj. Oni povas lerni la Esperanton en 4-6 monadoj!

Esperanto ankaŭ havas kulturon! Fakte, la kulturo de la Esperanto estas la pli vigla de la planlingvoj. Estas multe da Esperantistoj kaj lernantoj en la tuta mondo, kiu estas organizataj en la interreto. Ekzemple, kun Pasporta Servo, vi povas vojaĝi en la tuta mondo kaj resti en Esperantparolantaj hejmoj senpage!

Kelkaj ligoj :

http://en.lernu.net/ - Retpaĝo por kurso de Esperanto
http://www.duolingo.com/ - Jes! Duolingo nun havas kurson de Esperanto (en beta)
http://www.kurso.com.br/index.php?en - Komputila programo

Kun tiuj iloj vi povas eklerni Esperanton!

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Everyone should learn Esperanto. It is a planned language for international communication with words from English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc. It is possible that you can understand what I'm writing even if you do not know how to speak Esperanto. A base in Esperanto facilitates the learning of other languages because it is easy to learn and introduces you gradually to linguistic notions. One can learn Esperanto in 4-6 months!

Esperanto also has a culture! In fact, the culture of Esperanto is the most vibrant of all the planned languages. There are many Esperantists and students all over the word, who are organized on the Internet. For example, with Pasporta Servo, you can travel all over the world and stay for free in Esperanto-speaking homes!

Some links :

http://en.lernu.net/ - A webpage for a course of Esperanto
http://www.duolingo.com/ - Yes! Duolingo now has an Esperanto course! (in beta)
http://www.kurso.com.br/index.php?en - A computer program

With these tools, you can begin to learn Esperanto!

Jean Poutine

July 15th, 2015, 02:19 PM

I think the problem is that the language is currently not very known across the world. It is a great idea, and definitely has a potential to facititate international comunication, but right now it is not very useful, as few people speak it.

If everyone holds that same mindset then it's never going to be very useful, no? Some estimates count around 2 million speakers of varying levels. There are even some native speakers (George Soros is one BTW). Esperanto life is mostly over the Internet but there are a lot of events and conventions happening around the world and the biggest benefit IMO is Pasporta Servo, Esperanto couchsurfing. I'm currently planning a trip around the world and that's mostly how I'm going to find places to stay.

Besides, it's honestly such a small time investment that there is really no reason not to give it a go. Learning it is very easy and pretty fast which helps a lot with motivation. I could contribute legible Esperanto on various subjects on Esperanto forums after not even a month of studying every day for 1 hour. The grammar is extremely easy and you can pretty much clinch it in not even a week, the vocabulary takes a bit more time. Do some Anki decks on your commute back home from school or wherever and you'll be able to learn it in no time.

Even if you end up not using it much, it's been proven that studying Esperanto and a foreign language, for, say 500 hours total, makes you more proficient in that foreign language than if you spent the whole 500 hours on just the foreign language. Thus, it's a great investment even if you don't participate in the culture.

This is very helpful. I been curious about Esperanto, and I think it's an interesting language that blends all foreign lexicons together.

One thing that is neat with Esperanto is that its adfixing/infixing system is so powerful that you can form new words in the spur of the moment or really shorten texts just by agglutination. In other words, you can use the borrowed vocabulary from other languages or just basically create your own.

Esperanto has a list of these prefixes and infixes which allow you to change the meaning of a base word. So if you know a base word, you can just stick things on it and make it mean something else, which greatly increase your vocabulary even if you learn only a few base words.

For example, in my text there is the word eklerni, which translates as "to start learning", ek- meaning "suddenness" and lerni being "to learn". I could have just wrote komenci lerni which means the same thing and is closer in construction to most languages, but it's just so fun to create words :3 That way, if you don't know the word for "to start", you can still understand what I'm saying if you know the prefix I used. There are only 40 or so and they massively increase your capacity to express yourself. Indeed, even if the words you make up don't show up in dictionaries, everyone will still understand you.

Also, the final vowel of a word determines 95% of the time its class (by that I mean noun, adjective, adverb, etc). So if you know the word rapida "fast, speedy, swift, prompt", you also know rapido "speed, velocity, rapidity, promptness", rapidi "to hurry, to go fast", rapide "quickly, promptly, swiftly". From that, with the adfixes and infixes you can make rapidigi "to speed up, to accelerate (cause something to go fast)", rapidado "speedster", rapidema "habitually fast", rapideta "somewhat fast", rapidega "really fast", malrapida "slow", ekrapidi "to step on the gas, to put the pedal to the metal, to hurry suddenly", etc. Multiple shades of meaning can be drawn from this system, which makes Esperanto a potentially very precise language.

You can also derive new words from participles. An example is lernanto, which means "student" (more literally "learner"). The word studento was borrowed into Esperanto so you can use that if you want, or you can use the participle.

One ad hoc creation I have used once is fipensinda, which translates roughly as "deserving of dirty thoughts" (fi- : "pornographic", penso : "thought, idea", -ind- : "worthy/deserving of", -a : adjective form) ;)

It sounds a lot like Spanish.
Is it a latin based language?

In part. Its words are drawn from the most spoken European languages, and a lot of these are Romance, so you will see a lot of roots with which you are familiar. Other words are drawn from Germanic languages, like hundo "dog" or birdo "bird".

I've never heard of Esperanto and I doubt it will include any African languages so not really interested

Eurocentrism is a frequently criticized aspect of the language, but as it was invented in the late 1800s by a Polish man, this is to be expected, and I personally don't think it matters much.

Like it or not, Indo-European languages as a group are the most spoken languages in the world (sans outliers such as Tibeto-Burman Chinese or Afro-Asiatic Arabic), then as now. Many more people are familiar with English and French than there are Swahili (the only African language with a wide speaker base) speakers.

Besides, what if we were going to reform Esperanto and add words from Swahili, for example. What would this concretely change? A few token words from African languages wouldn't make it that much easier for Africans to learn. Esperanto wasn't based in Japanese, yet the Esperanto community in Japan is one of the largest and most active in the world.

What is important is that the grammar is flexible, powerful and stupid easy to learn for anyone, even those who speak non-Indo-European languages. Truthfully, it could be even simpler, but I think we would lose shades of expressive power and I doubt it is worth the price.

Esperanto as an auxlang is the most successful (and vastly so) and is also culturally neutral, unlike English. The development of slang and new words is left in the hands of individuals (thus this is how we can speak of an Esperanto culture), as long as they obey the Fundamento, which is just 16 rules of very basic grammar.