I am 29 years old. I picked up my first book on learning Esperanto when I was 18. I still can't speak this stupid language. I learned French in 5 months. Esperanto is the most difficult language to learn IN THE WORLD. Having no irregular verbs hardly makes up for the ridiculous, non-descriptive vocabulary and verb forms. The transitive/intransitive verb form of esperanto makes me think it's creator smoked meth or chewed on dried paint.

Pura - Clean
Puri - to clean? NoPE!
Purigi! or maybe puriĝi I still have no clue.

However Prava will translate to pravi. igi iĝi and ont int ant forms were enough to drive me insane.

This rant has little finesse, I know. But after 10 years, I just wanted to announce somewhere... I QUIT.

The french Laver kaj Propre are far more logical and easy to learn, for sure!

goliath07:The transitive/intransitive verb form of esperanto makes me think it's creator smoked meth or chewed on dried paint.

You're right that the transitive/intransitive verb form of Esperanto is a problem for all of us, like the accusative.

But if I want to learn, for exemple, English, I have to learn to pronounce EACH English word, to memorize EACH one of them, (thousands and thousands) due to the irregularities of the language.

Is this better?

Amike.

I think it is just a provocation.

antoniomoya:

goliath07:The transitive/intransitive verb form of esperanto makes me think it's creator smoked meth or chewed on dried paint.

You're right that the transitive/intransitive verb form of Esperanto is a problem for all of us, like the accusative.

But if I want to learn, for exemple, English, I have to learn to pronounce EACH English word, to memorize EACH one of them, (thousands and thousands) due to the irregularities of the language.

Is this better?

Amike.

You have to do the same thing in esperanto. You have to memorize every verb and whether or not it's already transitive and whether or not you can make it transitive/intransitive.

goliath07, how come did you find French easier than English? As a french native speaker, I think that English and French have their nice sides, but I didn't expect to hear that!

For the record, did you follow any course/exercise here? Feel free to quit, but I'm really curious about the whole process that lead you to that conclusion.

It could be that the way that Esperanto is structured just doesn't fit well with the way your mind does logic. If you don't like Esperanto, then feel free to spend your time on something you enjoy more. I have never heard of a language that treated every verb the same regardless of transitivity, so on that count, I'm not sure how to respond to you.

If you would like to hear some strategies on how to handle Esperanto word building, this forum has many experienced people who would be happy to share their strategies. But if you aren't interested in hearing those strategies, and if you would rather spend your time with something that you enjoy more, then I wish you the best of luck with your French etc. You can delete your account at lernu, if you don't want to get any more e-mails from the site (otherwise you'll get an automated e-mail after 30 days of inactivity, and an automated e-mail once a year on your birthday. Some people don't like that.)

No one is forcing you to hang around here, spending your time with something you don't enjoy.

French is easier to learn than Esperanto? That's the first time I've ever heard that. To me it would be a bit like saying Calculus is easier to learn than simple addition but maybe that's the case for some people.

goliath07:Pura - Clean
Puri - to clean? NoPE!
Purigi! or maybe puriĝi I still have no clue.

However Prava will translate to pravi.

Actually the relationship between prava and pravi is exactly the same as between pura and puri, because these are both adjectival roots:

prava = right
pravi = be right

pura = clean
puri = be clean

It's actually not that tricky, when you understand the principle that roots have an inherent leaning to a particular part of speech ("root classes" as it is called in Esperanto). The root pur' is basically adjectival, so of course you must say purigi (igi pura) for "to clean", and puriĝi (iĝi pura) for "get clean". It works the same way with prav' and other adjectival roots.

Sometimes it's not obvious what class a root belongs to, and in these cases it can indeed be tricky to come up with the right form. But IMO it's generally not that hard.

By the way, the fact you "have no clue" as to whether puriĝi means to clean (it doesn't, and never could) suggests to me a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of -iĝ. This being the case it's little wonder you're experiencing difficulty. It would be a shame if you gave up over something like that, because such basic misunderstandings are very easy to correct. This page may help.

Sometimes language just boils down to rote memorization, no matter how easy the language is supposed to be. For instance if you can't absorb the relations between the correlatives, you may just have to memorize that "neniu" means "nobody" instead of being able to put it together from the parts of "nen-" "-i-" "-u". Likewise with participles, adjectives, transitives. accusatives and the like. In that case you're no worse off than you would be learning French, where you still have to learn a lot of rules with a lot of exceptions.

I learned a few mnemonics over the years that occasionally help me parse out the meaning of a word. Just as an example, if I get stuck on transitive and intransitive verbs I can fall back on the mnemonic of a sausage factory. That is where you make a p-"ig" become saus-"iĝ". So "make" words are "ig" and "become" words are "iĝ". "purigi" == to make clean, to clean (something). "puriĝi" == "to become clean", presumably in either a physical or spiritual sense. I checked the Tekstaro and forms of both "purigi" and puriĝi" appear frequently. ("Puri" appears not at all except in two quotes from "La Ondo" where it appears as "malpuri." (One actual sentence is "Sed ĝi malpuras kiel lavĉifono!" - which I think is supposed to mean "But it gets dirty like a dishrag!", although why the author decided to use "malpuri" rather than "malpuriĝi", I don't know.)

My guess is that the OP had unrealistic expectations of the amount of work one has to put in to learn Esperanto. There are dozens of ways to learn anything, and if one doesn't work, another will. It makes me wonder where he was attempting to teach himself and whether a more organized system might have benefitted him better.

In any case, as a couple of people have indicated, life is too short for doing things you don't enjoy that you don't have to do. Esperanto is not an essential life skill. At this point for most people it's a hobby. There's no sense in pursuing a hobby you don't enjoy, even if at some point you thought you might.