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Why did I stop studying Esperanto and began to do Mandarin instead

od Korsivo, 19 lutego 2015

Wpisy: 31

Język: English

Korsivo (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 06:29:19

Originally, the reasons that led me to start learning Esperanto had to do with the intellectual sympathy and allegiances I felt (and to many degrees still feel) with the Italian Radical Party’s (radicali.it) policies and campaigns.
You could say that it was more of a political choice, as I believed, and still believe now, that our politicians in Brussels (but also anywhere else in the world where a lingua franca is badly needed) should be “playing their cards” on a linguistic level playing field, and should be left with no scope for blaming the interpreters and/or the translators when they feel that their arguments are not being clearly heard or understood. What I mean, basically, is that I wouldn’t be too surprised if I heard that some of the MEPs, or other political figures, were in some way taking advantage of the linguistic differences to delay, pretend they don’t understand, or understand something different, or even veto, on the basis that the translations available come across as susceptible to different interpretations . I don’t know whether I have explained this well enough: if I was down the pub I would refer to this phenomenon as “playing silly buggers” …
In other words, I believed and still believe that Esperanto is a good tool at our disposal to bridge linguist and cultural differences; it can put us all on that so desirable level playing field where it is possible for all written material, all sentences and all speeches pronounced by whoever national in the world, to be perceived by all with an equal degree of intensity, as I do believe, in my limited experience of languages, that even the best translation of a sentence or written paragraph into any other different language, can only just about equal the original, or be able to convey the exact same flavours of the original. This is obviously due to the differences in culture and heritage. But Esperanto has its own culture too, right?
I stopped studying Esperanto mainly for lack of time and aesthetic reasons: I got tired of learning a language where all nouns end by o and all adjectives end by a. Sometimes you make choices for the sake of aesthetics, right? Or is me an Italian wimp?
I had started Spanish too: I didn’t get too far with it simply because I didn’t like it enough. I have fared so much better with French though. I’ve always liked its accent and now I am about to get an A-level in it.
Lately, I have undertaken Mandarin too. It’s just fascinating, but very difficult.
As for Esperanto, I hope that one day I will find the time and a renewed enthusiasm for it. I owe it to all of you beautiful (and not so odd as suggested in another thread) people of lernu.net.
For the sake of linguistic democracy.

kaŝperanto (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 14:41:23

It sounds like you have at least some practical uses for foreign national languages, so it is easy to understand how they would be of a higher priority to you. In my case, I have exactly no "practical" use for any language other than English, professionally or otherwise. Esperanto fills the hobbyist niche for me while giving me easier access to the benefits of a foreign language (and then some, considering Esperantists are more interesting to talk to than normal people). I could probably easily re-up my Spanish skills to college-level or better (studied it for maybe 10 years in school), but even as the second most spoken language in my area it has no use to me (and I even room with someone who is a native speaker). I'm not saying this of you, but so many people get caught up in a false sense of practicality of a language when they are no linguist and have no aspirations to live in another country or otherwise make money off of the language.

The more Esperanto I learn, the more I see how impossible it is to gain even semi-equal footing with a native speaker of a foreign language. There is so much cultural baggage behind a language that it's a wonder we can translate anything reliably.

Alkanadi (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 16:00:13

kaŝperanto:The more Esperanto I learn, the more I see how impossible it is to gain even semi-equal footing with a native speaker of a foreign language. There is so much cultural baggage behind a language that it's a wonder we can translate anything reliably.
Yep. I taught a class on English idioms, slang, and cultural expressions. I would take a 5 minute video off youtube and make roughly 20 points about the sentences that were used. It would take me two hours to go through the notes. Many times I didn't even get all the way through it.

Take any 5 minute video and it will take you 2 hours to explain the main points. All my students were advanced English speakers that had lots of exposure to English in their youth. It was at this time I realized that it is impossible to learn a native language.

Red_Rat_Writer (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 16:55:22

Alkanadi:
kaŝperanto:The more Esperanto I learn, the more I see how impossible it is to gain even semi-equal footing with a native speaker of a foreign language. There is so much cultural baggage behind a language that it's a wonder we can translate anything reliably.
Yep. I taught a class on English idioms, slang, and cultural expressions. I would take a 5 minute video off youtube and make roughly 20 points about the sentences that were used. It would take me two hours to go through the notes. Many times I didn't even get all the way through it.

Take any 5 minute video and it will take you 2 hours to explain the main points. All my students were advanced English speakers that had lots of exposure to English in their youth. It was at this time I realized that it is impossible to learn a native language.
This gives me an idea for a super huge anki set that exclusively teaches idioms.

novatago (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 17:06:01

Korsivo:
I stopped studying Esperanto mainly for lack of time and aesthetic reasons: I got tired of learning a language where all nouns end by o and all adjectives end by a. Sometimes you make choices for the sake of aesthetics, right? Or is me an Italian wimp?
Well, that's just an opinion and it has value just as an opinion.

Actually, Zamenhof made choices for the sake of aesthetics. Many after First Book vocabulary, the phonetics, and for sure other things were decided under the search of aesthetics. And for me (some of) those choices are precisely what make Esperanto no so beautiful. And those you mentioned (among other similar things) are good decisions, if not the best decisions, to be aesthetics and easy to learn elements.

In my opinion Zamenhof gave too much importance to aesthetics, in order to have a beautiful literature and music, but for me that aspect should be much less important. May be he was right, or at least not wrong, but only may be.

I understand that aesthetics have importance for many people in this case, but we must to be conscious that aesthetics are subjective and it depends a lot of trends and fashions. In other times German was a beautiful language to sing opera, now a days I almost don't hear good opinions about German being a beautiful language for anything. I like German language anyway.

Ĝis, Novatago.

robbkvasnak (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 18:29:46

I find Esperanto useful in my study of Mandarin. In fact, translating from Mandarin into Esperanto helps me understand Mandarin better than if I try to compare it with any other language. Esperanto also helped me master a certain level of Latin and has helped me sort out what is "ethnically idiomatic" in my thinking, thus giving me a more international view point of languages in general. I don't think that it is a question of Esperanto OR another language but Esperanto AND another language. Esperanto fulfills the idea of an InterLanguage (Larrry Selinker, 1972) very neatly.

Tomcxjo (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 18:40:17

Reading your post my history with learning both Esperanto and Mandarin come to mind.

I first came to Esperanto fairly young, about 14 and learned it for a while but soon gave up as one does with hobbies in their youth. At the time I was very attracted to its simplicity (having tried to study both Spanish and Finnish before).

When I was 16, I started studying Mandarin seriously and have continued that and am fairly fluent (for a foreigner). I have recently come back to Esperanto and having learned Mandarin, my perspective has changed a bit.

Before, I was enamored with Esperanto's simplicity, but with Mandarin my mind, I know realize that simplicity is only relative to what you are coming. Of course Mandarin has its huge challenges, but I would say that complex grammar is not one of them. I feel had Zamenhof had any sort of working knowledge of Chinese, or maybe any other Asian language, Esperanto may be a bit different.

For example, there's no conjugation of verbs even for tense. No equivalent for -as, -is, -os. Most of the work there is done by context clues, and sometimes by adding a grammatical particle. Or, take the names of weekdays and months. No seemingly arbitrary (not simple!) names for months and weekdays, but a logical way of naming them that is simply numbers 1-12 (一月,二月,etc. or 1-6 周一,周二,etc(with sunday - 周日- having its own uncomplicated name).

Zamenhof wanted to have word creation from a small set of roots? Chinese takes this to a new level: Look at Esperanto's aŭto, trajno (vagonaro?), biciklo. Compare that to Chinese 汽车,火车,自行车. All come from 车。 Now-- don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Chinese is simpler than Esperanto, or even has a better way of word formation. Many times, though simple, if you don't know already there's really no way of guessing what it is (火车- fire vehicle? what?) All I am saying is it gives a different, very interesting perspective on how we form words, and what simplicity means in language.

Anyway, this is my perspective as a language learner who has learned the world's hardest language, and now is trying to tackle the world's easiest ridulo.gif

nornen (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 19:26:42

Tomcxjo:Reading your post my history with learning both Esperanto and Mandarin come to mind.

I first came to Esperanto fairly young, about 14 and learned it for a while but soon gave up as one does with hobbies in their youth. At the time I was very attracted to its simplicity (having tried to study both Spanish and Finnish before).

When I was 16, I started studying Mandarin seriously and have continued that and am fairly fluent (for a foreigner). I have recently come back to Esperanto and having learned Mandarin, my perspective has changed a bit.

Before, I was enamored with Esperanto's simplicity, but with Mandarin my mind, I know realize that simplicity is only relative to what you are coming. Of course Mandarin has its huge challenges, but I would say that complex grammar is not one of them. I feel had Zamenhof had any sort of working knowledge of Chinese, or maybe any other Asian language, Esperanto may be a bit different.

For example, there's no conjugation of verbs even for tense. No equivalent for -as, -is, -os. Most of the work there is done by context clues, and sometimes by adding a grammatical particle. Or, take the names of weekdays and months. No seemingly arbitrary (not simple!) names for months and weekdays, but a logical way of naming them that is simply numbers 1-12 (一月,二月,etc. or 1-6 周一,周二,etc(with sunday - 周日- having its own uncomplicated name).

Zamenhof wanted to have word creation from a small set of roots? Chinese takes this to a new level: Look at Esperanto's aŭto, trajno (vagonaro?), biciklo. Compare that to Chinese 汽车,火车,自行车. All come from 车。 Now-- don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that Chinese is simpler than Esperanto, or even has a better way of word formation. Many times, though simple, if you don't know already there's really no way of guessing what it is (火车- fire vehicle? what?) All I am saying is it gives a different, very interesting perspective on how we form words, and what simplicity means in language.

Anyway, this is my perspective as a language learner who has learned the world's hardest language, and now is trying to tackle the world's easiest ridulo.gif
Very interesting opinion. I would like to add as a side note, that these mechanics of word formation also apply to the formation of characters from radicals. See e.g. 木, 林 and 森. Or the aforementioned 汽: water-air = steam.

Basically all can be broken down to some 200 radicals (roots). Sometimes semantic, sometimes phonetic. However as Tomĉjo has alread mentioned, sometimes the derivations are not "obvious". Other derivations become logical once one has learned its meaning: 力 + 田 = 男. Force applied to a rice field = man. Well, men do work on fields.

kaŝperanto (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 20:26:43

nornen:
Very interesting opinion. I would like to add as a side note, that these mechanics of word formation also apply to the formation of characters from radicals. See e.g. 木, 林 and 森. Or the aforementioned 汽: water-air = steam.

Basically all can be broken down to some 200 radicals (roots). Sometimes semantic, sometimes phonetic. However as Tomĉjo has alread mentioned, sometimes the derivations are not "obvious". Other derivations become logical once one has learned its meaning: 力 + 田 = 男. Force applied to a rice field = man. Well, men do work on fields.
Interesting. I have been told that their word for an electric motor uses the symbol for "electricity" and the symbol for "grinding stone". As a westerner I would guess that to mean what it says, an electric grinding stone/mill, and not a general motor that may or may not have the purpose of grinding anything. I am surprised that there are only 200 radicals, though. It seems like they should start teaching with that instead of whole symbols or pinyin.

I won't claim to know Chinese or its usage, but I would say Esperanto's minimal and regular conjugation is preferable or at least equivalent to using contextual clues to achieve the same. We certainly have unnecessarily precise and/or largely equivalent forms to say almost the same thing, though. I feel inclined to put to use my "you can write bad code in any language" programmer's analogy here (overuse of participles is not "good Esperanto").

Could someone Esperantize (or Englishize) some examples of how the contextual tense works?

nornen (Pokaż profil) 19 lutego 2015, 20:34:20

kaŝperanto:Could someone Esperantize (or Englishize) some examples of how the contextual tense works?
Most simple example (language agnostic):
Mi ir'. = Mi kutimas iri. Mi iras nun. Mi iris iafoje. Mi estas irulo.
Mi ir' nun. = Mi iras nun.
Mi ir' hieraux. = Mi iris hieraux.
Mi ir' morgaux. = Mi iros morgaux.

Real examples taken from Q'eqchi'.
Us li wa'. = Good the eat. = The food is good (may be in general or right now).
Us li wa' iwir. = Good the eat yesterday. = Yesterday, the food was good.
Ra li wa' iwir, ab'an us anajwan. = Bad the eat yesterday, but good today. = Yesterday the food was bad, but today it is good.
Ra sa' linch'ool. = Bad in the-my-heart. = Mi fartas malbone.
Naq ch'ina'in, ra sa' linch'ool. = When small-me, bad in the-my-heart. = Kiam mi estis junulo, mi fart(ad)is malbone.

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