Al la enhavo

New Member with questions

de Traduku, 2006-marto-04

Mesaĝoj: 33

Lingvo: English

Traduku (Montri la profilon) 2006-marto-04 14:48:21

Traduku (Montri la profilon) 2006-marto-04 14:59:12

That is annoying, how come it didn't work?

I'm new. My name is Ben, I'm 17 and from the UK.

I like the idea of Esperanto, and an international language. I want to become fluent so I can travel and meet new people in my gap year. Also, I love learning languages, and hopefully, beacuse Esperanto is supposedly so easy, it'll be my first language fluently under my belt, and it'll help me with other languages.

I have a few questions:

What sorts of people speak Esperanto? Are they mainly old fuddy-duddy linguists, or people who've learned J.R.R Tolkien's languages (Not that there's anything wrong with this)? Are there many young people involved in the movement?

Also, how long did it take you to learn Esperanto? How long would it take a young person of average intelligence to become fluent, by doing half an hour of Esperanto study per day?

Many thanks,

Ben.

boy-o (Montri la profilon) 2006-marto-22 05:07:10

Personally, I haven't quite gotten a full grasp of the language as of yet (and i'm going on two and a half years of on-off studying) but I will say that I enjoy the language immensely.  I have learned a lot and luckily for me, its easily retainable, so I can take two-three-four months off of working and I remember a lot and only need to do a little review.That aside, I am trying to learn the language b/c its always been a desire of mine to know a second language.  Living in culturally monoganous Ohio, Usono, everything that surrounds me is english.  For my whole life, I've only rarely encountered someone who spoke another language.  I aquired a desire to learn another language so the door can open up, so to speak, and I can experience the rest of the world outside of my dull little bubble.  Esperanto has helped in that it is spoken by at least a handful of people in every country of the world, so there's a lot of different cultures out there expressing themselves in Esperanto that I have access too.  And its easier than other languages to boot.If any of what I said doesn't make sense, to put simply: I'm learning esperanto to experience as much of the world as I can.  I don't personally know anyone else with whom I can speak Esperanto, nor are there any Esperanto groups in my area.  But even so, I see Esperanto as a tool that I can use to see the world through new eyes.Now if only I could get some consistent studying in!If you practice for half an hour a day, I'd say you'd be close to fluency within 6-9 months, and completely fluent within a year. Depending on how hard you study, how much you try and incorporate Esperanto into the rest of your life, and If you strictly stick to 30 minutes a day, or if you study a little longer, you could probably cut these times in half.  It all depends.The most difficult thing about learning the language for me isn't the language itself, but the linguistic and cultural barriers that speaking only English has put on me throughout my life.  I've gone a long way into thinking outside the English-box, mainly by looking into the various features of Esperanto that English lacks, and trying to actually think in the language, but I still have a lot of work to do.Now that I'm done rambling, I wish you luck en via Esperanta Travivajxo. AmikeStefano

Caeireann (Montri la profilon) 2006-marto-25 15:22:21

Hey!

I wouldn't say those people learning Esperanto/ Ido/ Interlingua are the same people learning Sindarin/ Quenya. They both serve different tastes. It depends what you want to learn the language for. Do you want to be able to read Elven poetry or travel the world. Who is to say which is better? I am doing both but I must say I am having much more luck learning E-o. I have been learning with a number of sources for a month now and I would say I am fluid, better than in German which I have been studying on and off for about 3 years. However, I find Esperanto easier because I already speak French to a proficient level. I don't speak Scots or Dutch so German is like leraning a langauge sort of from scratch. However, if you really want to learn a language from scratch and I mean the scraticiest of scraticness, try Sami/ Finnish/ Estonian/ Hungarian. I'm studying Estonian and it is beautiful but much much much harder than learn E-o. E-o is cake compared to it.

What I like about E-o is that it is simple but beautiful, and you can find people to practise it with on an even enough playing field free from nationalistic influence.

I am a twenty year old university student from Ireland interested in languages and ligustics, though I don't study that at college. I speak English as my mother tongue (unfortunately), Irish Gaelic and French from school as my second and third. I am improving my self taught German, and recently started learning Esperanto, Estonian, and Swedish. I also want to start learning Scots Gaelic, Spanish, Italian, and Welsh.

Even if Esperanto was made a language for world political and social communication I wouldn't stop learning other languages, as I think it's an amazing to learn a new language. Someday I want to make up my own language(s) and build a story around it, just like Tolkien did ridulo.gif Of course I have no intention to be as popular as him, but then again who knows, he never thought people would write his material either ridulo.gif

 

godzup (Montri la profilon) 2006-aprilo-10 14:14:23

Hi Ben, I agree with Boy-o/Stefano both in the time taken to learn it and in my depravity of any other language other than English. (Ĉar mi estas usonano ankaux. "As I'm a US citizen too.")

My first chance to learn *any* other language was when I went to high school (I think it's called secondary school in non-US countries) ... 9th grade. lango.gif That's when I applied myself to Spanish as it was the best choice for me at the time & it is phonetically spelled. Then when the internet became popular, I looked up Esperanto & was fascinated with it. I've been playing with it for a few years, but just like Steven/Stefano/Boy-o, I have not set myself down with a strict schedule or plan to learn Eo, but my brother and I have helped spur each other's interest. The neat thing with Eo is that there exists many good resources to learn it, as I have also looked into Ido, which interests me too. But the popularity of the two are *very* different. I want to learn both, but realized I must concentrate on one and not spread myself too thin as, like Caeireann, I am learning other languages too. I currently can communicate with enough fluency to text chat in 3 languages, Esperanto being my worst. But I've put in like 1/5th the amount of time learning Esperanto as I have learning Spanish, and my Esperanto is probably about 1/2 as good as my Spanish.

One book I bought and was reading about Eo, explained that there was a classroom test for Esperanto in a California Middle school. They had 2 groups of students. One learned 4 years of French, and no other language. The other took Esperanto for one year, then after that 3 years of French, so it was still the same total of 4 years studying a foreign language, but just divided into 1 Eo & 3 of French. The class that learned Esperanto could fluently speak Esperanto after the first year of class! Then after 3 years of French, they could speak better French than the other group who took 4 years of French. One reason is likely because of the enthusiasm that Eo gave them in being able to speak a new language. Plus there are many vocabulary helps which French and Eo have in common ("flava" = [en] "yellow", which is similar to French. [French] "parolar" = [eo] "paroli" = [en] "to speak".) But nevertheless, in this case study, a group of people successfully spoke fluent Esperanto after one school year (8.5 monthsof classroom study. My middle school classes were just under 1 hour a class each day, I think 50 minutes. And comparing my current level of Esperanto with how much time or lack of time I spent studying it, I think that is very realistic of my level and time spent learning it too.<br />
<br />
But I also have an advantage of being half fluent is Spanish too.
And Esperanto is *so* amazingly easier, and I thought Spanish was easy when I was learning it. And it is compared to English.<br />
<br />
About, who speaks Esperanto, what demographic profile or age range or hobbies &amp; interests that Esperantists and wanna-be's are or have, I don't know.
I haven't asked. I do know I see a very wide variety of different people who make up the Esperanto community.<br />
<br />
Happy learning!<br />
<br />
-Shawn &lt;&gt;&lt; (USA, Kansas)[/eo]

Kat (Montri la profilon) 2006-aprilo-10 16:59:21

Hi Ben --

Kat here - howdy!  I just wanted to jump in with some links to other resource sites:

 Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) -- http://www.esperanto-usa.org
   this site has a catalog, plus information about local clubs (your fluency will increase by leaps and bounds if you actually get to talk with someone)

 US Esperanto Youth Association (USEJ) -- http://www.esperanto.org/usej/

 Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo (TEJO) -- http://www.tejo.org/indexjs.php
   same idea as USEJ, but it's a world-wide organization

Also, Esperanto.net's English page has some organizational lists, so you can check out other youth-based organizations (if you are so inclined). 

Ĝuu!

 -- Katjo

oren (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-09 03:17:46

Yeah, I think a good deal of Esperantists in North America may be those who would have just as much fun speaking elven or klingon... but I for one have no (well, very little in comparison) interest in those endeavors; I am learning Esperanto because I want to help promote international communication and sharing.

I for one am 18. I just began studying last month (June 2006) and can already read real documents with little trouble, understand most podcasts I listen to and have fairly good command of using it to word my thoughts written and spoken (although I only speak with other novices). I have a slight advantage having a cumulative seven years of study in french and german.

But yeah. one more slice of the demographic pie...

mgayoub (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-09 23:04:44

For what it's worth, I'll say that I am currently 15 years old and started learning Esperanto not too long ago. I haven't gotten far. Not because the language is hard, but just because I haven't been motivated. But this post isn't going to be about my motivational problems.

I like the idea of an international language, and I guess you could say that is why I began to study Esperanto.

I am very interested in different languages and aspire to be a polyglot. What do I study? Certainly not Quenya or Klingon, but I do study Arabic, and, soon, German. I know enough about linguistics to impress a layperson, but am by no means an expert.

I also conlang myself.

Novico Dektri (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-15 19:52:16

Saluton. Im 15, from Ottawa, Ontario. I recently picked up Esperanto because it seemed like the ideal step for one such as me, who is attempting to take my first steps into polyglotism. In any case, I was originally frustrated with the language because it didn't seem as easy as I thought it would be (but then, when I had first heard about it, I was told one could learn it in a few days. Yeah, right. lango.gif), but I've matured since then and realize that I certainly mst work had at it for a couple of months, minimum. But if you're feeling discouraged, after two weeks of learning I could succesfully write short e-mails to other Esperantists and communicate with some efficiency on chatrooms. I'm approaching my sixth week now, but I've sort of delayed my studies because I'm working on processing what I already know so that I won't get overwhelmed. But I've recently located a small (if inactive) Eperanto Club in my city and plan to attend my first meeting in September. They meet only occasionally and their website is about as detailed as a stub article on wikipedia (by the way, I reccomend reading Vikipedio articles for a method of study for your vocab'), but I'm hoping it will be a healthy, well formed Club. Also, next year when I enter Gr.11, I intend to start an Esperanto club in my school. I doubt many will be interested, but even if you can find one or two more people to talk to, I think your vocabulary will be up like a shot.

I think that with a 1/2 hour of study every day, you cn acheive reasonable fluency in maybe five or six months. I'm trying the "intensive study" method so I believe that at the rate I'm progressing I might be able to function okay at a Universala Kongreso in another two or three months. And "average intelligence"? I don't think it matters much. Didn't Zamenhoff design la Internacia Lingvo to be learned by rural farmers and such with little to no time on their hands as well as everyone else? I think half an hour study and being of average intelligence would be more than sufficient.

Bonsxacon pri viaj studadoj de Esperanto, samideanoj. Mi kredas ke cxiuj sukcesos!

Vivu Esperante!

-Benjamin

Esben87 (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-26 00:31:29

Saluton!

I'm from Denmark and I speak both English and French. I used to hate my French lessons in high school due to all the irregular verbs and everything.

In short, I think I began learning Esperanto because of my innate love to mathmatics ridulo.gif The fact that Esperanto is based on logics and is very simple and precise simply left me fascinated.

I didn't learn Esperanto because of any fanatic idea of spreading the language globally or world peace. I simply thought it would be fun to learn some of it. After a couple of months, I realized that it became possible to speak to people all over the world which IMO is fun.

I'm 19 years old by the way and I'm going away for a week to Bosnia (IJK 2006) to meet other people at my age. Not to discuss any new Crusadelike ideas, but simply to have fun... and maybe drink some beer?

Reen al la supro