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door sudanglo, 12 april 2013

Berichten: 15

Taal: English

sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 12 april 2013 11:57:20

The other day, in private correspondence the issue was raised as to whether it is warranted to assert that Esperanto is not ten time easier in the early stages but potentially 1000 times easier (than a foreign national language).

A stunning example presented itself on French TV yesterday. I watched two native speakers of French lose 20,000 Euro's because they chose the incorrect form for the French for vestu vin (dress yourself or clothe yourself).

They had to choose between two offered alternatives for the 2nd person plural imperative of se vêtir. Should it be vêtez-vous or vêtissez-vous.

How long does it take to learn that all imperatives for all verbs in Esperanto (regardless of subject) end in 'u'? 30 seconds seems generous.

Mustelvulpo (Profiel tonen) 12 april 2013 12:48:08

The fact that Esperanto is consistently regular makes it a lot easier to learn than any national language. I'm not sure exactly how a 10-1, 100-1 or 1000-1 ratio could be accurately calculated.

Maybe one way to justify 10-1 would be to estimate that in one year of studying Esperanto, a mastery of the language will be gained that is similar to the mastery gained in ten years of studying another language. To me, that seems a very reasonable estimate.

Matthieu (Profiel tonen) 12 april 2013 15:07:10

sudanglo:They had to choose between two offered alternatives for the 2nd person plural imperative of se vêtir. Should it be vêtez-vous or vêtissez-vous.
Oh wow, French is my native language and I would have chosen the wrong answer… (I just checked, the correct answer is vêtez-vous.)

Vêtir is rare anyway, most people would say habiller instead.

robbkvasnak (Profiel tonen) 12 april 2013 16:40:57

But at least nobody suggested that French be written in another alphabet like some have suggested for Esperanto!!!!

Altebrilas (Profiel tonen) 16 april 2013 09:39:08

robbkvasnak:But at least nobody suggested that French be written in another alphabet like some have suggested for Esperanto!!!!
sorry:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_spel...

Altebrilas (Profiel tonen) 16 april 2013 09:55:39

About the topic, I would say that most of the "2nd group" french verbs are quasi- equivalent of esperanto verbs with the suffix "-ig" and "iĝ".
e.g. rouge (ruĝa) -> rougir (rugigi/ruĝiĝi)
These verbs have the imperfect in "-issait" and the present participle in "-issant": rougissait, rougissant.

Other verbs are 3rd group (i.e. irregular): vêtir (vêtais), partir (partais)

But infortunately, there are some exceptions: finir ( finissait; =to end) has no relation with the adjective fin (=fine, thin), gemir (gémissait; = to moan),...

sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 16 april 2013 10:33:31

Altebrilas (Profiel tonen) 16 april 2013 22:11:35

sudanglo:What a nightmare. I pity all those spell-checking programs.
Don't worry. French people just don't care about that reform.

yyaann (Profiel tonen) 18 april 2013 10:54:27

Altebrilas:
Don't worry. French people just don't care about that reform.
Well I do. Although I'm mostly conservative when it comes to French spelling, I'm grateful I can now spell "évènement" in the way that has always seemed to make most sense to me. It's also a relief that I get to forget some circumflex accents from time to time and get away with it.

Tempodivalse (Profiel tonen) 18 april 2013 13:56:35

I would be quite conservative in estimating how many times easier Esperanto is compared with national languages -- you still won't learn it overnight. Calling it "100 times easier" than language X is likely to raise false hopes for learners, who will discover that EO isn't without complications that require time to be mastered. This is true especially for many monolingual English speakers today, who have no experience with declensions and are never normally confronted with transitivity. (Speakers of heavily inflected or agglutinative languages, I've noticed, have an easier time. As a bilingual, my knowledge of Russian has helped me with Esperanto much more than my English knowledge.)

Safe estimates for English speakers, based on the languages I've studied or speak, are:

Esperanto is 4 times faster to learn than Spanish, 6-8 times faster than French or spoken Chinese, 10-15 times faster than Russian.

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