erinja:I gave her a hint - "90% of Chinese are members of this ethnic group" - but she still didn't know the answer

To be fair, I don't know if even someone absorbed in their own culture would know what ethnic group they are apart from words they commonly hear, and I doubt a Chinese immigrant family would spend most of its time rambling on about "han heritage" in English (even if she knew it in Chinese, she mightn't be able to express it in English).

On the other hand, because most English speakers identify with "anglo-saxon", she probably knew that word, because she hears it being used. But I don't know many English speakers who even know what "han" is (in English it's more customary to say someone's "chinese" instead of "han").

Not to mention, most English speakers don't even realise that Anglo-saxon is not an modern ethnicity, and that almost everyone who's natively british-isles-born (or Irish) is in fact part of a "british" ethnicity (people with german blood or mixed blood would find it easier to associate with anglo-saxon though).

As far as I am aware there is no evidence that 'denaskaj' speakers of Esperanto have any better command of the language than 'spertuloj' who have learnt it later in life.

Essentially Esperanto is designed to be easy to acquire in adulthood.

It was interesting that some pioneers did teach Esperanto to their children, and this proved that the language could be acquired like other languages before the age when the analytical mind develops.

But that is now an established fact, and there seems to be no virtue now in teaching it to the very young. Better to wait until the child is older and can travel to other countries and meet Esperantists of different mother tongues.

In my experience the most competent speakers of Esperanto seem generally to have started learning the language in their student years or shortly afterwards (so age range 18-25). However there would be exceptions.

I wouldn't worry too much about the kid being turned off by the language. If you use Mazi and children's books, most kids are interested. I taught kindergarten Spanish here for years and my kindergartners loved it. I showed them films in Spanish. We sang songs and did puppet shows, colored pictures with Spanish texts, played games (Donde hay algo rojo en la sala? - Where is something red in the room?) I also used TPR (Total Physical Responce), i.e. the use of appropriate gestures with words.
The human brain releases hormones when one masters a new skill. These hormones create a pleasant feeling in the body, much like when one has a good meal or has sex. Education should aim to be pleasurable and not a burden.
Getting this little boy to be bilingual at an early age will give him the opportunity to acquire more languages later on in life. It can only be a good thing.

robbkvasnak:Getting this little boy to be bilingual at an early age will give him the opportunity to acquire more languages later on in life. It can only be a good thing.

I like this !

sudanglo:As far as I am aware there is no evidence that 'denaskaj' speakers of Esperanto have any better command of the language than 'spertuloj' who have learnt it later in life.

Correct. I would put akademianoj John Wells or Paul Gubbins against any denaska, especially when, in my experience, a good proportion of denaskuloj learnt Esperanto in a household where the parents spoke it imperfectly. Yes, you have people who speak it fluently in the sense that it comes naturally, but it's still imperfect.

Denaska Rolf Fantom (who does speak a fluent, near-perfect Esperanto) wrote "There is no significant divide between native speakers and good non-native speakers" in an interview for Chuck Smith's blog.

But that is now an established fact, and there seems to be no virtue now in teaching it to the very young. Better to wait until the child is older and can travel to other countries and meet Esperantists of different mother tongues.

There are two immediate reasons that I agree with your sentiment that I don't find it ideal to teach to the very young as a first language, except in the rare case when the parents are from different language backgrounds and Esperanto is the common tongue.

1) The hardest foreign tongue to learn is one's first, because the learner has to "learn how to learn". (This is not the case for the very young, whose brains are hardwired for language acquisition.) Once the individual has developed language-acquisition skills, it becomes easier to learn subsequent languages.

Esperanto, through its accessibility, makes it easier for children to gain these skills, which makes it more likely that they will make progress with other languages. It's the same motivation that underpins the teaching of recorders as a musical instrument in schools; we don't aim to create a generation of recorder-players, but introduce an easy first instrument to get children learning to read music etc, before they progress on to more difficult instruments. This is our motivation for introducing Esperanto into primary schools in the UK, as shown in this

In my experience the most competent speakers of Esperanto seem generally to have started learning the language in their student years or shortly afterwards (so age range 18-25). However there would be exceptions.[/quote]television programme on the BBC.

2) Esperanto is supposed to be a common second language for all, belonging to no one group but equally to everybody. By bringing up children to have it as their first language one violates this principle.

As for the original poster, Erinja has it covered, much more tactfully than I'm capable of. If "Mia nomo es Joseph" is typical of your Esperanto level, then you really need to learn the basics yourself before playing the role of teacher to someone else.

robbkvasnak:Getting this little boy to be bilingual at an early age will give him the opportunity to acquire more languages later on in life. It can only be a good thing.

I wouldn't want to argue with an expert, but are you sure that this applies to a three-year-old? Whilst his brain is still in language-acquisition mode he's not teaching his older brain how to learn languages, and so is in the same boat as all others when it comes to, say, learning French as an older child.

Thinking about it, the denaskuloj that I know aren't necessarily any different in their abilities regarding languages to their peers. From one family of three denaskuloj, two speak only Esperanto as their foreign tongue (and have a smattering of very broken basic French or German from their dozens of trips abroad or relationships) and the other one has learnt a Slavic language because of his marriage to a national but, and this is the key point, is having to learn how to learn; it hasn't come as easily to him as, say, picking up elementary Russian did to me, a man who is monolingual by birth.

They are no better off through their Esperanto than I would be if my parents brought me up speaking English and Welsh; I would still have had the same difficulties when introduced to French later in life.

The same is broadly true of other denaskuloj that I know (of which there must be a couple dozen); some are exceptionally good at foreign languages (as some monolinguals also become) but most are no different to their peers. Esperanto hasn't done anything to help them because it's simply there in their heads and hasn't implanted the skills of language-learning.

Timtim:2) Esperanto is supposed to be a common second language for all, belonging to no one group but equally to everybody. By bringing up children to have it as their first language one violates this principle.

Not really as they're literally a product of shared culture. If they choose to increasingly adapt a certain culture, they'll become assimilated by it rather than disproportionately having Esperanto's culture assimilated.

Even if all the native speakers suddenly had the same culture bias that was not neutral or a product of the balance that Esperanto provides, such would be so hard to pull off that I doubt it'd ever happen and if it did it'd be quite telling about how an popular artificial language would end up in the future.

ceigered:Not really as they're literally a product of shared culture. If they choose to increasingly adapt a certain culture, they'll become assimilated by it rather than disproportionately having Esperanto's culture assimilated.

Even if all the native speakers suddenly had the same culture bias that was not neutral or a product of the balance that Esperanto provides, such would be so hard to pull off that I doubt it'd ever happen and if it did it'd be quite telling about how an popular artificial language would end up in the future.

I suspect you're missing my point. The principle is that of the "linguistic handshake"; we both have to have made the same effort to learn the same language, avoiding the situation of X having had to learn Y's.

This doesn't hold in the case of denaskaj. It's no different to people speaking to me in English, my native tongue.

Timtim:This doesn't hold in the case of denaskaj. It's no different to people speaking to me in English, my native tongue.

Yeah but it's specifically a point of EO culture that we don't care that much about what native speakers say

(that is, it's been cultivated to the point where every speaker of Esperanto basically knows that EO was created to promote linguistic equality, and that native-speaker-worship goes against the ingrained traditions).

robbkvasnak:
Little kids have no problem sorting out languages and knowing whom to speak them with.

I'll add my 0.02 Our 4.5 year old son speaks Esperanto more often than his parents do. When I was 6, I used to speak English with my mother. I believe that reasons are different. I spoke English when I was shy or feeled uncomfortable. It was 'our' language that other people could not understand. My son apparently can not realize that other people do not understand Esperanto neither they want to learn it.
We parents both have low Esperanto level (A1).

robbkvasnak:
There is a fantastic program on Youtube: Mazi en Gondolando.

Oh, yes. The only problem with it (esp. with part 2) is that some words sounds not clear
enough. This causes some problems.
Another problem that I see is that he nearly lost interest in English.
- In which language is this song ?
- English (French, German)
- I do not want it, do find one in Esperanto.
(while watching Youtube)