Mesaĝoj: 38
Lingvo: English
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 11:01:36
How can we stop people going around making unsubstantiated claims without any evidential basis.
What if I went around saying that the French should learn English because Engish's subtle verb system and extensive vocabulary would give them insight into the French language.
Isn't this just as daft as claiming that learning Latin in school will improve your English.
Of course, I don't need any evidence to assert that learning Esperanto in school will teach the pupil some grammar - it's obvious, isn't it? Who needs any evidence?
lgg (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 12:41:19
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 13:00:40
sudanglo:How can we stop people going around making unsubstantiated claims without any evidential basis.Politicians do it all the time! I don't see this coming to a stop any time soon, whether it relates to Esperanto or to some unrelated aspect of public policy.
Miland (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 17:00:53
Diablo (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 19:26:24
On the other hand, although I learned Esperanto too late in life to discern any impact of it on the languages I already know (in fact, it was Spanish, French and English that reduced my Esperanto learning experience to virtually zero difficulty), I doubt that having known Esperanto prior to learning French would have helped in any significant way.
I'm slightly deviating from the subject at this point, but perhaps Esperanto is (more) practical when used in scenarios in which language learning is considered an option or a leisure activity. But in situations where language learning constitutes a fly-or-crash element (ex: war refugees arriving at a new country have to adapt quickly if they want to build a decent lifestyle, or else everyone else tramples them), the question of motivation becomes largely irrelevant.
Ĉu ne?
sudanglo:Last night on the 'One Show' on BBC TV, various people enthused gushingly over the value of the teaching of Latin (which I think they said was undergoing a revival).
How can we stop people going around making unsubstantiated claims without any evidential basis.
What if I went around saying that the French should learn English because Engish's subtle verb system and extensive vocabulary would give them insight into the French language.
Isn't this just as daft as claiming that learning Latin in school will improve your English.
Of course, I don't need any evidence to assert that learning Esperanto in school will teach the pupil some grammar - it's obvious, isn't it? Who needs any evidence?
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 23:23:39
sudanglo:Isn't this just as daft as claiming that learning Latin in school will improve your English.Latin does not help you with other languages, and certainly not with your native language. Why go through the trouble of learning Latin and studying French/Spanish later, than just studying French/Spanish from the beginning? Could someone give me some insight into why people value Latin at all?
Of course, I don't need any evidence to assert that learning Esperanto in school will teach the pupil some grammar - it's obvious, isn't it? Who needs any evidence?
Also, sudanglo, I don't understand what you mean when you say that Esperanto would teach them grammar. Can you elaborate a bit more?
One thing that I haven't been able to shake off recently-
One of Esperanto's claims is that it makes learning other languages easier. But isn't it the point of learning Esperanto that you won't have to learn other national languages?
Kalantir (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 23:26:18
razlem:One of Esperanto's claims is that it makes learning other languages easier. But isn't it the point of learning Esperanto that you won't have to learn other national languages?I think this largely depends on the individual learning Esperanto. I have every intention of learning other languages even after I become fluent in Esperanto. Also, I don't see why learning Latin wouldn't speed up the process of learning other Latin based languages the same way that Esperanto would.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-21 23:48:34
Kalantir:Also, I don't see why learning Latin wouldn't speed up the process of learning other Latin based languages the same way that Esperanto would.I have yet to see scientific evidence that Esperanto does.
Come to think of it, does Latin really help you learn romance languages faster than Spanish or Italian would?
Kalantir (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-22 00:31:11
razlem:Well there was a German study I read about where they had one group of students study Esperanto for 1 year and French for 3 years and another group studied French for all 4 years. At the end of the 4 years, the group who studied Esperanto for 1 year was reportedly more fluent in French than the group who studied french for all 4 years.
I have yet to see scientific evidence that Esperanto does.
I don't remember where I read about this, but a google search using select keywords would probably turn up something
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-oktobro-22 01:31:24
More groups should have been studied in addition to those two:
German for a year, then French for 3
Russian for a year, then French for 3
Spanish for a year, " "
Chinese
Arabic
Then, I think, you would get crystal clear results and eliminate the third-language-ease variable.