In this blog, in the entry for 4 September 2011 (you have to go back several pages or do a search), the writer claims that it takes five years of "serious part-time study" to become really proficient in any (constructed) auxiliary language. (Rather than fill up with long quotations, I will let those interested to read the writer's comments.) In his commentary, even though the thrust of the post relates to Interlingua, the writer specifically includes Esperanto. I will, however, include this quotation:

"I think the propaganda, especially by Esperantists but also by those promoting Interlingua and other languages, which loudly trumpets that one can learn to use these languages after very little study and in very short timeframes, is an enormous strategic mistake by the auxlang community." (He also comments, "Incidentally, Esperanto has its own countless idioms to learn and to learn it well enough to write a good novel would I am sure also take about five years.")

Particularly when it comes to adult learners with differing capacities, differing opportunities (especially opportunities for active use), and differing available resources, times will differ. However, I would be interested in reactions to the claim that even Esperanto takes five years of "serious part-time study" to attain proficiency sufficient to write good literature.

I’m not sure, but I’ve been learning Esperanto for about three years and I consider my level sufficiently good that I can, at least, without a lot of dictionary usage use these forums every day.

As far as writing seriously good literature, or writing a novel, I think that most people aren't capable of doing that even in their native language!

But assuming that a person is a talented writer (theoretically capable of writing good literature), and also talented with language learning, I think that this person could become proficient in Esperanto in a year (or even less) of serious part-time study. You could add, perhaps, a second year of serious part-time study for this person to be capable of writing some decent literature. Hard to judge, because few learners of Esperanto (or any other language) ever decide to write a novel in any language at all, let alone their second language.

It depends on the person, of course. But I would be surprised if someone studying a non-constructed language for five years, even a relatively easy one like French or Spanish, would be able to write a novel in good language. As far as Esperanto is concerned, however, I think it is a very believable situation. Esperanto has some idioms and turns of phrase but they are few and far between compared to non-constructed languages.

bartlett22183:the writer claims that it takes five years of "serious part-time study" to become really proficient in any (constructed) auxiliary language.

Even if it were true, it's still far less time than a natural language.

But assuming that a person is a talented writer (theoretically capable of writing good literature), and also talented with language learning, I think that this person could become proficient in Esperanto in a year (or even less) of serious part-time study. - Erinja

Does the above statement justify promoting Esperanto as a language learned in a quarter of the time it takes to learn a national language? It's a common claim.
I was not particularly talented with languages at school, but I learned Dutch as an adult learner (aged 24) in 1.5 years (to intermediate conversational and written level). The following 8 years has been a lot of fine-tuning. I still don't think I could write a convincing novel in Dutch. I've written two in English.

I ask the honest question: for Esperanto is it really possible to develop the level required to justly call oneself "fluent" in one year or less? If not then the claim might well be a "strategic mistake" because there's nothing worse than being told something is easier than usual, only to find it's not quite as expected. A bit like the myth that Spanish is easy, which deludes many people into thinking they can master it in three months.

Vestitor:I ask the honest question: for Esperanto is it really possible to develop the level required to justly call oneself "fluent" in one year or less?

I have seen it happen. You don't give the circumstances of your study of Dutch; presumably you'd pick it up more quickly in an immersion environment, than sitting at home in an anglophone country, studying it for two hours a week. And regarding fluency, I wouldn't call your intermediate conversational level in Dutch "fluent". I've seen many people reach an intermediate conversational level in Esperanto in six months or less, if they worked at it steadily.

In an intense environment of Esperanto immersion, you could achieve fluency in far less than a year. For a person with a natural talent in languages, steadily working at it, you could also achieve fluency in a year or less, though surely not as quickly as in an immersive environment.

I have heard very positive stories about the month-long Esperanto immersion course run in China, and Esperanto is much more difficult for the Chinese than for speakers of Western languages.

I think a lot of Esperanto propaganda is overblown. Learning Esperanto to fluency requires work; you don't doze your way to fluency. However I firmly believe in the "quarter of the time" statistic. One of the main factors behind this is Esperanto's word building system. Your vocabulary and expressive capability grows quickly, because you don't have to memorize a separate word for every single concept, you can construct one based on roots and affixes that you already know. It's hard to overestimate the power of this feature. The second main factor is Esperanto's relative lack of idioms compared to other languages. It does have a few idioms and a few turns of phrase that aren't logically obvious. But for the most part, you say what you mean, so there is (usually) no need to learn non-intuitive ways to express everyday ideas. There is much less of "We say it this way just because". Why do we knock on a door, but not against a door or to a door? In Esperanto, you can use whichever preposition seems to make logical sense.

Vestitor:I ask the honest question: for Esperanto is it really possible to develop the level required to justly call oneself "fluent" in one year or less?

I started learning Esperanto one year ago. I haven't written a novel yet (nor have I considered writing one), but I did pass a KER-ekzameno. Maybe one of the reasons I took that test was because I wanted to officially be able to say "Yes" when people ask me if my Espento is fluent

You don't give the circumstances of your study of Dutch; presumably you'd pick it up more quickly in an immersion environment, than sitting at home in an anglophone country, studying it for two hours a week. And regarding fluency, I wouldn't call your intermediate conversational level in Dutch "fluent". I've seen many people reach an intermediate conversational level in Esperanto in six months or less, if they worked at it steadily.

I was in an immersion environment, but nonetheless there are people who live in foreign countries for 20 years and never actually "speak", even though they pick up a lot of the language. I did 15 hours a week for six months, then an exam, and could make my way around without having that look of fear in the eyes when someone speaks to you.
I said 'intermediate' as a modest guess. This to me means full conversations, though perhaps not discussing the ins-and-outs of Kantian philosophy. I was reading novels and watching discussion programmes. All the subsequent learning improvements I have made by reading and speaking. I've now also picked up German in a fairly short space of time (no doubt helped by Dutch).

The structure of Esperanto, as logical, ordered and simplified in comparison to natural languages, is the stated reason for the claim to quicker fluency , but the lack of an "immersion environment" for Esperanto in the way there is for national languages surely slows down actual speaking fluency; even with a simple sound system.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that with application and dedication it's most likely possible to achieve a good working knowledge of most languages; adjusting for differences between your native language group and the group of the target language; level of application and aptitude. I struggled through Latin at school, but now recognise many Esperanto words as a result. If I were only coming from a Germanic language position I don't think it would be half as easy as coming from a romance language position.
I take the point about Chinese learners, because the building of words probably reflects how words are built in Chinese.

I realise many here will have probably discussed these sorts of questions many times. I suppose I'm only just encountering them.

bartlett22183:In this blog, in the entry for 4 September 2011 (you have to go back several pages or do a search), the writer claims that it takes five years of "serious part-time study" to become really proficient in any (constructed) auxiliary language...

He doesn't claim that. What he suggests that instead of touting auxlangs as something that can be learned in a very short period, we should instead be giving newcomers a realistic time frame.

Just look at the huge technical vocabulary that is indefensible if you want to do more than just casual conversations.Also, I don't think the person using haŭtoscienco will be considered as erudite as the one using dermatologio. So there is this high-Esperanto and low-Esperanto.

Of course it isn't going to be five-year-for-all. Europeans would need probably no more than two years but for Asians and Africans who haven't studied any European language before, five years is a realistic time period if the goal is to attain fluency and carry out meaningful discussions on philosophy or politics.

15 hours a week for six months is much more time that almost anyone spends studying Esperanto.

I think you would be surprised on the issue of spoken fluency. It's true that there is no Esperanto country, but there are several residential courses lasting a week or more, which practically provide an immersive environment, not to mention the numerous Esperanto conventions and other multi-day events held entirely in Esperanto.

I've been to week-long Esperanto events where someone was having their first spoken Esperanto conversation at the beginning of the week, and speaking with some degree of smoothness (though not complete fluency) by the end of the week. It depends greatly on the person's willingness to get out there and talk to people, regardless of language level. I have seen rapid progress from people who are determined to talk to lots of people and learn. Not so much progress from people who are too shy to try to talk to anyone, and hang around in a corner with people who speak their native language. It's the same deal with people who live in a foreign country for 20 years and never learn the language, I'm sure!

I can talk a bit on my own experience on this topic - since nearly all Esperanto speakers learned as a teen or as an adult, it's easy to ask almost any fluent speaker exactly how they came to be fluent, what their experiences were, etc. The process of learning Esperanto is something that most Esperantists remember clearly, which is also part of why Esperantists tend to be so helpful and forgiving of beginners.

At the time that I personally achieved relative fluency in spoken Esperanto, I had spent a grand total of less than two weeks in spoken-Esperanto settings. I had reached quite a good level of written Esperanto, through online text chatting (Skype hadn't been invented yet). I had attended two three-day Esperanto weekends; those were my only immersive experiences. I made a trip to Italy with a friend, and as part of the trip, I spent about a week staying with one of my Esperanto friends who lived there. Spending my whole day in Esperanto, day in and day out, and then translating between Esperanto and English for my American friend brought me the rest of the way to spoken fluency, though still with a few holes in my vocabulary. Therefore I'd say that roughly two weeks of spoken Esperanto were responsible for about 95% of my spoken fluency. I did have an excellent background in written Esperanto, from several years of text-only correspondence with other Esperanto speakers from around the world, but I think that my experience was not unusual.

Today it's easier. Beginners who want to practice their speaking can just exchange Skype names and they can talk that way. But that didn't exist yet when I was learning (through a paper postal course - no sound files or tapes in support, so my first Esperanto weekend was more or less the first time I even heard Esperanto spoken by a person other than myself).

You can imagine that how I learned (entirely on paper) was the way that all of the earliest Esperantists learned. You can imagine what a thrill it must have been when the very first Esperanto congress took place in 1905, when all of these people found that they could actually communicate with one another, though many of them had never spoken Esperanto aloud with a person from another country before!