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Esperanto in schools

от stjernerlever, 22 август 2012

Съобщения: 72

Език: English

stjernerlever (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 18:21:50

Hey everyone!

I'm a new discoverer of esperanto. Now I've wondered for a week, why isn't esperanto taught in schools across the world as the second language? I simply can not find an answer. Can anyone tell me?

Thanks

ofnayim (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 19:23:16

Esperanto never gained traction because it is not taken seriously and it lacks a speaker base. English is the current international language because it is the current international language. If I were a Farsi speaker and travel to Greece I can expect the hotel desk clerk to speak English. Therefore, it behooves me to learn English. English is used because it is useful. Unfortunately, it is damned difficult to learn and speak with precision. There is a remedy. Let American high school students learn Esperanto. If the Americans speak Esperanto, then others will learn it because, (1) It will then have a speaker base; and (2) It is far easier to learn than English. Americans could be sold on teaching Esperanto to high school students because (1) Foreign language instruction in the States is a mockery. Despite the two to four years that the average college educated American studies a foreign language few if any can actually speak the language; and (2) Esperanto can easily be taught and mastered in two years. Why would the students want to learn Esperanto and with whom would the students speak Esperanto? They would speak Esperanto among themselves! American teenagers would be given a special language that adults could not speak. They would love it! In this way a base of Esperanto speakers would emerge to whom it would be worthwhile to speak. Esperanto would be useful. Hence, it would be used.

RiotNrrd (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 19:41:49

Esperanto? Sounds communist to me*.

--------------------

* Obviously, not. But that (or something similar) IS the response you will immediately get from a relatively small, but disproportionately loud, cross-section of the US. Heck, Esperanto was probably the language Obama spoke while he was being indoctrinated in radical islamic atheism. George Soros speaks it, after all; what further proof do you need that it's the language of the Antichrist? No, best to stick to the language the Bible is written in: King James English. If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

sudanglo (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 19:59:11

Now I've wondered for a week, why isn't Esperanto taught in schools across the world as the second language?
Some of us have wondered that for more than 50 years - and generations of Esperantists before, going back to to the 19th century, probably wondered that too.

Do let us know, if you can work out why.

creedelambard (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 20:06:55

Sadly, there's as much truth as humor in riotnrrd's post.

Schools in this country are starved for money and resources. The reasons are many and we don't need to go into them here. So maybe someone could persuade a foundation, or maybe a wealthy individual (say the aforementioned S-ro Soros) to fund a pilot program in language learning. Start teaching eighth-grade kids (13- to 14-y/o) a year of Esperanto and see if they have better acquisition of French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese or any of the other national languages that are taught in high school these days once they start studying those languages. Of course if I were to set up a program like this I would want to continue classes in the second year and beyond, or maybe even have an Esperanto club after school.

There is a great deal of inertia to be overcome in any endeavor like this.

Vestitor (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 20:24:07

ofnayim:English is the current international language because it is the current international language.
Am I reading this wrong? It is because it is?

I know English is the current tacitly accepted mondolingvo, but actually there are millions of people all around the world who can't speak English at all, or speak it poorly.

There's no denying it has been foisted upon the world and all those people cramming for the Cambridge ESL exams are not doing it because they all dreamed of learning English above any other language, it's just a career door opener in an English dominated world. And despite what several nations think of their English, they're deluded because the situation still gives native English speakers the communicative whip hand.

As to the original question Riotnrrd hilariously outlined the essence, and no country really wants to make the effort to step forward and set an example. All those translators/interpreters at the United Nations probably put a stick in the wheel as well.

creedelambard (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 20:45:04

Maybe to a certain extent, it is because it is. But it won't be forever. It's not so long ago that France was the, um, lingua franca of the world, and Latin before that. And I can foresee a day when Chinese will supplant English. (I heard a report just yesterday on the BBC World Service about China's involvement in many civil engineering projects in Africa, and got to wondering whether Chinese might take root in Africa and spread from there.)

Vestitor (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 20:51:30

creedelambard:Maybe to a certain extent, it is because it is. But it won't be forever. It's not so long ago that France was the, um, lingua franca of the world, and Latin before that. And I can foresee a day when Chinese will supplant English. (I heard a report just yesterday on the BBC World Service about China's involvement in many civil engineering projects in Africa, and got to wondering whether Chinese might take root in Africa and spread from there.)
I've thought about Chinese in this way and it simply has to be even harder to learn than English, especially for a place like Africa with hundreds of years of contact with English and other European languages. Chinese is a huge language no doubt, but not many speak it as a second language, even some of its nearest neighbours.

I'm no expert though and I wonder how many people are actually learning Chinese. There was a massive burst of learning Russian between about 1945 and 1980, dozens of government-sponsored programmes and now hardly anything.

hebda999 (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 21:04:21

"English is the current international language because it is the current international language." that's ridiculous. English is where money and dominance are. When they change their place, prepare for a new "international language". It is useless to point out how many many billions of dollars have been put by USA into teaching of English to give it today status. Nothing is because it is - it was made to be so and we (the foreigners) all have to suffer.

creedelambard (Покажи профила) 22 август 2012, 21:16:47

Vestitor:I've thought about Chinese in this way and it simply has to be even harder to learn than English, especially for a place like Africa with hundreds of years of contact with English and other European languages.
I'm not sure about that. Once you get past the tones I don't think it's that much harder to learn than most other languages. Certainly Polyglot Benny at "Fluent In Three Months" doesn't think so either (I was just introduced to his blog yesterday and did a bit of reading about his adventures in learning Mandarin).

The written language can be a challenge, but again, mostly because it's different from what you and I are used to. I can recognize maybe 100 characters and know the basics of how radicals form to make characters, but I haven't gotten any farther than that. Maybe it's because (to paraphrase Benny) it's because my standard of living doesn't depend on it.

At any rate once there's money to be made in doing so people will start learning Chinese.

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