讯息： 23
语言: English
erinja (显示个人资料) 2013年10月21日下午1:36:32
I would not say that someone is an eternal beginner if they dabbled in Esperanto for a couple of months in 2007, left it alone for a few years, and then came back to it in 2013.
An eternal beginner isn't someone who picks it up and then drops it due to lack of time, then picks it up again from time to time. An eternal beginner is someone who starts with Esperanto, stays *continually* involved with it for years, and despite attending countless Esperanto events, still manages not to speak Esperanto to any degree of intelligibility. It really boggles the mind, when you meet these people, how they have managed to spend so much time with Esperanto, yet not learn to speak it better.
So you definitely can't judge by the age of someone's lernu account. People pick things up and drop them, and you don't know how many years of doing nothing with Esperanto might be in someone's past.
I will say, however, that we do have some eternal beginners at lernu. It's a fact of life in the Esperanto world, and I know that people worry about becoming an eternal beginner, but like I said, the person who drops out of Esperanto entirely for years and then comes back to it ten years later would definitely not be counted as an eternal beginner simply because they have been "in Esperanto for 10 years and still can't speak it!". True eternal beginners are a relatively small percentage of the Esperanto community.
An eternal beginner isn't someone who picks it up and then drops it due to lack of time, then picks it up again from time to time. An eternal beginner is someone who starts with Esperanto, stays *continually* involved with it for years, and despite attending countless Esperanto events, still manages not to speak Esperanto to any degree of intelligibility. It really boggles the mind, when you meet these people, how they have managed to spend so much time with Esperanto, yet not learn to speak it better.
So you definitely can't judge by the age of someone's lernu account. People pick things up and drop them, and you don't know how many years of doing nothing with Esperanto might be in someone's past.
I will say, however, that we do have some eternal beginners at lernu. It's a fact of life in the Esperanto world, and I know that people worry about becoming an eternal beginner, but like I said, the person who drops out of Esperanto entirely for years and then comes back to it ten years later would definitely not be counted as an eternal beginner simply because they have been "in Esperanto for 10 years and still can't speak it!". True eternal beginners are a relatively small percentage of the Esperanto community.
kefga_x (显示个人资料) 2013年10月21日下午2:50:54
erinja:True eternal beginners are a relatively small percentage of the Esperanto community.Do you have any kind of source on that? I don't necessarily mean it in a sceptic way, I'm more just curious if data exists for this kind of thing.
erinja (显示个人资料) 2013年10月21日下午2:54:27
No data. And like I said, it's a situation of "You know it when you see it" so if you wanted to do a scientific study it would be hard to draw a dividing line on whether a given person is or isn't.
Anecdotally, if I think about all of the Esperanto events I've attended and I had to put a number on it... I would probably say it's less than 10%. It's so hard to count. In some situations you would have more eternal beginners because if it is a small meet-up that gets a reputation of having a lot of eternal beginners, experienced speakers will stop coming.
Anecdotally, if I think about all of the Esperanto events I've attended and I had to put a number on it... I would probably say it's less than 10%. It's so hard to count. In some situations you would have more eternal beginners because if it is a small meet-up that gets a reputation of having a lot of eternal beginners, experienced speakers will stop coming.