Hey all! This is Benny Lewis (Fi3M). I'm drawing up a survey that I'll be pushing on my blog & have got confirmation that several other high profile language learners will be promoting it along with me too. As it is, I think we can get up 5-10,000 respondents, but with more promotion elsewhere it could be higher!

The point is that it will be investigating how people learn languages based on their background and goals. I'm hoping the data could really inspire language learners. I ran a much smaller survey when my blog was smaller and got pretty conclusive evidence that successful language learners are more likely to focus on a smaller number of materials than own a bunch that they spread themselves thin over. This is of course intuitive but it's great to have data that proves that simply buying lots of courses is not going to help you much, and it's better to be focused on particular things. I'm hoping for similar helpful data to inspire language learners.

There will also be plenty of monolinguals taking part (discussing their goals and what they've used thus far that perhaps wasn't so helpful) and I think that will really help give the data more relevance as there will be a control group, which I've seen missing from other surveys about language learning.

One cool thing I can do with this survey thanks to its size, is that I can have SPLIT OFF questionnaires if a particular answer is given. One such split off can be for Esperanto speakers! I'm not sure if such questions were asked in E-o events, but pushing it online (especially for people who haven't been able to attend such events) could give us the most interesting data of our community, and who Esperanto speakers really are.

If you have any suggestion questions that would be worth asking Esperanto speakers, then let me know! Any other feedback on the survey appreciated! What I plan to do is go through various drafts, and have full community feedback to make sure the questions lead to as scientifically viable results as possible.

Another cool thing will be that it will be TRANSLATED to as many language as the community can supply. Limesurvey lets you host multilingual surveys, and this would let us get through to people who are not native or high level English speakers (which too many surveys online are biased towards). Of course there'd be an Esperanto translation if someone can offer a couple of hours to translate the questions when the final draft is frozen

A few linguists and psychologists have offered to edit questions so coaching towards particular answers is reduced, but I'd be happy for anyone else willing to lend a hand! I should have draft one of the survey ready in a few days. The point will be that this will be a community contributed survey, and all answers will be made public. There may be prizes involved too, to motivate more people to answer, although I have to figure out logistics of this so people don't spam it for example.

Thanks for any thoughts!

Benny, if your interest is to determine how people learn languages. you may get some interesting results.

On the other hand if you wish to estimate how many speakers of Esperanto there are, you face a major problem.

It is a commonplace occurrence in the Esperanto movement that individuals at a certain time in there life may have studied the language to fluency and then completely disappear, only to surface again many years later, at which point they still retain enough knowledge of the language to be considered a speaker.

It is a feature of Esperanto that once the language is sufficiently learnt, the competence is only slightly eroded during lengthy periods on non-use This contrasts markedly with the natural languages where the language is rapidly forgotten when not practised.

It is impossible to determine in any survey that requires active participation just how many people fall into this category of a competence that can be quickly re-awoken. Though you might get some estimate from knocking on doors, or making random telephone calls.

sudanglo:Benny, if your interest is to determine how people learn languages. you may get some interesting results.

On the other hand if you wish to estimate how many speakers of Esperanto there are, you face a major problem.

I've read over his post a couple times and I don't see anything suggesting that he's trying to ascertain a firm estimate of number of speakers. It looks like he's just trying to get information regarding language learning, and hopes the flexibility of his survey format will yield a large response sample, including many Esperanto speakers.

He does talk about finding out who Esperanto speakers really are. This faces the same problem as determining the number. An unknown proportion of Esperanto speakers are not active at any one time.

I would guess that the number of people who at some time have learnt some Esperanto, and therefore can be counted as speakers, considerably exceeds the number of people who are actively using the language in any particular month or year.

I can count a period of at least 15 years in my life when I did not read in the language or use it in any way. I think my case is more the norm than the exception.

However, it could be interesting to establish the typical profile of the currently active Esperantist.

We have kabei, but is there a term for leaving for years and then coming back? Maybe malkabei. Because I've done exactly what sudanglo described, haha. I learned Eo almost to fluency when I was 14, then when I was 15 or so almost totally stopped speaking it/doing anything Eo-related until I was in my 20s, yet I retained enough of it to barely have to study when I came back.

Anyway Benny, neat idea! I'd be happy to help translate a little bit.

whysea:Maybe malkabei.

Yes, [url=?t=809&p=5#70467]maybe[/url].

BTW I’m not sure if the difference between Esperanto and national languages concerning how easily you forget them is really that big. I think the difference between one’s first and foreign language is bigger because you never learned your first language according to any grammatical rules, only according to your feeling, and that feeling can easily be forgotten without constant usage. My mother experienced this as a teenager when spending not even six months in France - she started to have problems doing grammar exercises in the German classes there!

irishpolyglot:
There will also be plenty of monolinguals taking part (discussing their goals and what they've used thus far that perhaps wasn't so helpful) and I think that will really help give the data more relevance as there will be a control group, which I've seen missing from other surveys about language learning.

Thanks ...

With regard to monolinguals, I discovered the reason why Australians are so hopeless at learning another language is because we have almost no perceivable need to use another language, and therefore no motivation. When i went to Europe, they use different languages all the time, so there was an obvious need for other languages. I would like to see some questions relating to this idea on the survey. You could also ask how many monolinguals would like to learn another language, but feel they cant.

As for those who have heard of Esperanto, but never learnt it, you could ask why they did not learn it. For those people with a negative opinion of Esperanto, you could ask where they got their information from.

darkweasel:BTW I’m not sure if the difference between Esperanto and national languages concerning how easily you forget them is really that big. I think the difference between one’s first and foreign language is bigger because you never learned your first language according to any grammatical rules, only according to your feeling, and that feeling can easily be forgotten without constant usage. My mother experienced this as a teenager when spending not even six months in France - she started to have problems doing grammar exercises in the German classes there!

Unbelievable! And I used to think of all things in the world at least you could take your mother tongue for granted.

You prompted me to investigate the phenomenon a little and it turns out, you are right. A person can lose his/her first language if he/she doesn't get to practice it.

Here is the abstract of a PhD thesis carried out on Dutch speakers in Australia, many of whom lost their ability to converse in Dutch wihtin a generation, and here is a PPT on the subject.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I won't be asking any questions about Esperanto of non-Esperanto speakers as I want to keep the number of questions to a minimum. This branch of Esperanto related questions will only be for those who are genuinely into the language, as the rest of the survey will ask other things.

So that's the question I should be asking: at what point should I make it such that someone would be part of the Esperanto community to receive such questions? If they have an A2+ spoken level, and have spent at least a couple of hours using the language with another person (in person or online)?

And what questions would you ask? That's the most important thing! If I don't have good questions that make it worthwhile, then I won't be going ahead with this branch...

As it stands, by default, I'll be able to run a comparison of those who select Esperanto and don't for the questions that will be on the survey anyway (age group, gender etc.) so even if there is no branch, I can still release some interesting information. But if there is genuine interest in the branch, we can work on some good questions

@whysea Thanks for the offer! What languages are you offering though? To Esperanto? Any other offers of translations for when the final list of questions is ready?

Irishpolyglot, once you have a translation of your survey into Esperanto, it would be a simple matter to enlist the Esperanto speaking community for translations into a whole range of other languages.

One advantage of using Esperanto as a bridge language in translation work is that both the translation out of the original source language and the translation into the target language can be carried out by native speakers of the languages concerned.

I can be difficult with some language pairs to find a translator who has native speaker competence in both languages. Furthermore, because of Esperanto's flexibility in syntactical and lexical areas and its relative cultural neutrality, an Esperanto translation may be closer to the original and free of untoward connotations. Granted, these considerations may be more relevant in more subtle text than the plain language of your survey.

The question that interests most Esperantists is why the language does not have more speakers. Probably the most widely held opinion is that this must wait until the language becomes widely taught in schools.

However, once it becomes a part of the school curriculum, it is assumed that within a generation vast numbers would have an adequate competence. In contrast to the relatively small numbers who progress to useful proficiency from learning a foreign national language at school.