Forigite

In the case of Esperanto, there seems no point at all in teaching the language with phrases and letting the learner work out the rules for himself.

Much more efficient, I would have thought, to explain how the language works and let the learner - who will normally be an adult capable of understanding the explanation - plunge straight into using it.

Someone could set up an experiment with two groups of absolute beginners - one group being giving no explanation and having to work out the 'rules' of the language by induction and the other group being taught the 'rules'.

My guess is that the second group would progress more rapidly and more confidently.

Esperantists of my generation all learnt by having the language explained and then practising, as the early Esperantists would have done.

Forigite

Hyperboreus:Group (A) learns initially slower but develops what you call a "lingvosenso" faster. They will never need a written grammar and when asked about why they say A and not B will answers like "Because B sounds strange".

Group (B) learns initially faster but will stick to internally translating from their mother tongue to Eo, developing a very faint "lingvosenso" after decades. They will depend on grammars and when asked about why they say A and not B will answers like "Because B is against grammatical rule number 17-2".

I wasn't planning to enter this discussion but I think your analysis has no basis in fact. Almost every fluent Esperantist I know learned through the grammatical method, and they speak fluently, with an excellent "lingvosento", in an amount of time far less than even one decade. I don't know very many Esperantists who learned simply by hearing the language; almost all of them are people who learned it from their parents.

Esperanto's rules are so simple that there's simply no point in insisting that someone learn through repetition, rather than simply telling them the rule. The rules become second nature very quickly.

Forigite

Hyperboreus:... Do speakers whose native language has a progressive aspect, tend to use "estas leganta" over "legas" more frequently than those whose language does not have this aspekt?...

I know you were addressing this to erinja, but I'll answer it from my own experience.

Beginners do that. Once they've learned the language beyond the beginner stage, they no longer do so to nearly the same extent.

How to phrase things is as much a part of learning the language as is grammar and vocabulary. Learning that simple tenses are preferred over more complex forms is one of the lessons students are eventually exposed to.

Native English speakers (such as myself) do tend to want to use the more complex forms at first, because English uses them heavily, and in the early days it is very tempting to translate from English into Esperanto very literally. You rely on what you know, and early on you don't know much.

Whenever I see an overuse of "estas -anta" forms, I know I'm reading stuff written by a beginner (whose native language is probably English, although that's not a 100% given). By the time someone has reached a more intermediate stage, though, typically those forms appear much more infrequently in their output.

HB, you must stop trying to view Esperanto through the prism of natural languages.

The fact that it has been constructed from simple principles, that it is designed to be easily acquired by adult learners, and that is almost exclusively learnt by adult learners, puts the language in a different category.

It is probably the only language (that merits the term language rather than language project) whose speakers (discounting beginners) almost universally have a conscious awareness of the 'rules'.

When Esperanto speakers are uncertain about whether something is well-formed they may talk of their lingvo-sento, but they also try to work out whether it is consistent with their knowledge of the mechanisms of the language.

It is the latter which is more likely to be considered to have the final word.

As to whether there are sub-dialects of Esperanto, there may be a greater tendency of one group of speakers to phrase something one way rather than another. BUT it is a feature of the language that a high degree of flexibility is built into the language (in anticipation of a tendency for Mother tongue influence) so that variations (within the 'rules') do NOT 'sound odd'.

So Li amas min is Ok as is Li min amas.

Li kuris rapide for is OK,
as is Li rapide kuris for,
and li forkuris rapide,
and Li kure rapidis for.

You get my drift?

The practical experience among spertuloj is that we all speak the same language, as Erinja will no doubt confirm.

More so, I might say, than Americans speak the same English as the English.

The Mother tongue influences are more likely to be seen among beginners.

But to pick up on one small point of yours, a native speakers of English quickly learns when to say Mi estas leganta and when to say Mi legas, which usage in Esperanto is quite different to that in English.

HB, I don't think that you have grasped the extent to which Esperanto is a non-idiomatic language.

In the natural languages it can often happen that a particular way of expressing some idea is the preferred one, and if foreigners don't copy that, they will sound odd.

Esperanto plays a different game.

To a much greater extent, any way of expressing an idea, through a verb or an adjective or a noun, or with one word order or another, or with one structure rather than another, is acceptable providing it is seen to be encompassed by the 'rules'.

This is not to say that there are no preferences, but the freedom to vary within what is permissible is much greater.

Actually, it is this feature of the language which many Esperantists would single out to be most charming and to hold a particular fascination.

Given the hostility towards Esperanto which has been experienced over the years, or the amount of ridicule Esperantists have had to put with, it is clear that there is something about the language which has resulted in it attracting new adherents generation after generation.

It is only speculation on my part, but I think the experience of freedom which derives from it not being an idiomatic language may have a lot to do with this.

Esperanto is not a language of set phrases. It is much more like a Lego or Mechano set that presents endless possibilities for you to exercise your creativity.

Hyperboreus:Hava you ever noticed with fluent Esperanto speakers that there is something like a "local" coloring to their Esperanto?

Yes, but not exactly the way you think. The differences are much more likely to relate to vocabulary than to grammar.

On verbs - you asked several different questions on verb usage. But the answer is the same for all of them. Experienced Esperantists from all different countries have no significant differences in the way they use verbs. An experienced Esperanto speaker who is a native English speaker would not tend to use more progressive verbs, for example, than an experienced speaker from another linguistic background. As RiotNrrd said, that would be a real mark of a beginner. When reading a text written by an experienced Esperanto speaker, there is not normally even the slightest hint of where that person came from.

Use of the word "la" - yes, there are sometimes a few differences. But Esperanto doesn't really have strongly fixed rules for when to use "la", so within certain limits, a given sentence would still be correct with or without "la".

Remember that Esperanto is highly unified by its written language. We all read the same books and publications. The real differences tend to come in when you talk about everyday items or situations that aren't often discussed in print. People sometimes come up with their own words for these things because it's not something they spend a lot of time talking about in Esperanto. With Esperanto's word building system, you don't have to sit around memorizing a word for every little thing.

Therefore, for example, I always called a gas station/petrol station a "benzinejo" in Esperanto. Travelling with some Esperanto-speaking friends from another country, I discovered that they call it a "ĉerpejo". I was able to understand their word instantly, and I'm sure they could understand mine, but there was this difference. I found that I was calling my suitcase a "valizo" and they were calling it a "kofro" (neither word, in fact, is quite right for a modern suitcase, if you look at lernu's Eo-Eo dictionary). But we understand each other perfectly, the vast majority of our vocabularies are the same, and we speak Esperanto for days on end with no misunderstandings at all.

Some vocabulary choices can be influenced by the word for a certain thing in a person's native language, or in the language of the country they live in. Sometimes they're choosing the more familiar out of several equally valid terms, and sometimes they're using a false friend. But the more experienced someone is and the better they speak, the fewer false friends they use.

erinja:I found that I was calling my suitcase a "valizo" and they were calling it a "kofro" (neither word, in fact, is quite right for a modern suitcase, if you look at lernu's Eo-Eo dictionary).

I would go with ReVo on this one - 'Valizo' appears to be the correct word for a suitcase, unless you're dragging around a huge trunk.

Here's the ReVo definition:

Valizo = Vojaĝa pakumo, proksimume paralelepipeda, malfermiĝanta en du partojn, portebla de unu homo: ni ellitiĝis je la 3a horo frumatene por pretigi la valizojn kaj vojaĝsaketojn.

Check out the ReVo page about "Kofro" - there's an interesting comment there.