orthohawk:

revstevelondon:I think Duolingo will bring more speakers in. I would be an example. I never considered Esperanto until the course came out, but now I am really enjoying learning it as well as reading up on the history and reach of the language. I confess I had no idea of the extent of the Esperanto world! I am looking forward to dropping into the local conversation group when I am a bit more advanced.

If I may, what took thee so long? I mean Esperanto's presence on the 'net has been around almost as long as the 'net has (20-25 years at the very least), so I was wondering at the reason for thy delay in learning it. Was it because DL was/is the best learning tool thee had come across at that point?

Good question. My initial answer is that so far as I know, I have never met someone who speaks Esperanto, or at least no one who ever told me this would be a good idea. I majored in German in university and never ran into anyone, even in the linguistics department, who ever mentioned Esperanto. It wasn't really a live option.

Duolingo was good because it was the first place I came across people in the discussion groups who were very passionate about Esperanto and articulated why this would be a good language to spend time and energy on. I was intrigued!

revstevelondon: I majored in German in university and never ran into anyone, even in the linguistics department, who ever mentioned Esperanto. It wasn't really a live option.

Duolingo was good because it was the first place I came across people in the discussion groups who were very passionate about Esperanto and articulated why this would be a good language to spend time and energy on. I was intrigued!

Thee is lucky. In most Linguistics Departments if Esperanto IS ever mentioned it's with the same condescending tone used when discussing reality shows .

I had a professor once who poo-poo-ed Esperanto because (in his words) "real languages don't put the plural marker before the case marker!"

I dared him to tell a Georgian or a Turk that their languages weren't "real". He had no idea that they do exactly that: root+plural marker+case marker.

How he ever got a doctorate without being aware of this I'll never know.

orthohawk, it really intrigues me that people can get a doctorate in the USA without knowing any other language other than American English. Both my husband and I are polyglots and we got our doctorates together at the same university. Neither of us could understand that there were people in the courses we took who had absolutely NO knowledge of any other language. On top of that, they got a PhD without any courses in philosophy!!!! We took a non-required course in philosophy just to fulfill our idea of what a PhD should be about. We both feel that monolingualism is one of the USA's big problems. Really too bad, but it is so.

I first heard about Esperanto in a discussion on Duolingo 2.5 years ago, while reviewing my French. I immediately decided to learn it, and am now both a lingvohelpanto on lernu and one of the moderators of the Duolingo Esperanto course. So in fact, Duolingo introduced me to Esperanto, for which I am very grateful. It is in no small part for that reason that I have devoted countless hours over the last 7 months to creating the Duolingo course, along with our small but dedicated team. Duolingo has many millions of users, most of whom had never heard of Esperanto before learning about it there. It's a potentially huge new source of future Esperanto speakers and we are very excited to see what the future will hold for the course and for the growth of Esperanto worldwide

robbkvasnak:orthohawk, it really intrigues me that people can get a doctorate in the USA without knowing any other language other than American English. Both my husband and I are polyglots and we got our doctorates together at the same university. Neither of us could understand that there were people in the courses we took who had absolutely NO knowledge of any other language. On top of that, they got a PhD without any courses in philosophy!!!! We took a non-required course in philosophy just to fulfill our idea of what a PhD should be about. We both feel that monolingualism is one of the USA's big problems. Really too bad, but it is so.

oh, most programs require at least one foreign language and many require 2 or even more; however, the languages chosen are always French, Spanish, German, with occasionally Russian or Italian or Portuguese (unless the PhD happens to be in Chinese or something, lol).

orthohawk:I had a professor once who poo-poo-ed Esperanto because (in his words) "real languages don't put the plural marker before the case marker!"

I dared him to tell a Georgian or a Turk that their languages weren't "real". He had no idea that they do exactly that: root+plural marker+case marker.

How he ever got a doctorate without being aware of this I'll never know.

Oh, my. I hope he was sincerely embarrassed. (Somehow I doubt it, but I can hope.)

For me Duolingo was a really fun way to get a LOT of exposure to the language in a fairly short time, but in easy to digest chunks.

Having attempted (and got very bored with) Bildoj kaj Demandoj sometime last year, I started EO properly at the end of January this year.

I completed the first 7 lessons of Ana Pana alongside vocal practice on Memrise, and then life happened. Going back to lesson 8 after doing the EO tree, I was really quite amazed at how much more confident I felt tackling the lesson and writing my answers at the end - I jumped straight on to the first chunk of Ana Renkontas.

I just looked at Memrise and AP; I did lesson 7 of AP at the end of February, and haven't done any Memrise since the end of March. I started the DL course the evening it came out and finished it on Tuesday (I think. This week was kind of a blur, not helped by me continually falling asleep in the middle of the day), and it was enough for me to feel like I'd really refreshed what I had previously learned and filled in a LOT of gaps. I started reading Gerda Malaperis the next day and have been romping quite happily through it; I also restarted Harry Potter kaj la Ŝtono de la Saĝuloj and finding it way easier than before, with many of the words I'd previously stumbled over being entirely comfortable now.

I don't believe it'll have a detrimental effect on Lernu courses - I think it's a different kind of course, and they complement each other well. I think it provides a really good intro to Esperanto, and lots of people will be eager to use Lernu and other resources to supplement what they've learned.

Also I think, for the language as a whole, it's really interesting (and for some will make Esperanto very tempting) to compare it directly with courses in natural languages in terms of how quick one can get through it and how relatively advanced one can get in a fairly short space of time. I'd compare it to Ukrainian, which has been on DL for about a week longer - most of the threads in the forum are still people getting to grips with fairly basic aspects, and I've seen relatively few people actually attempting to write stuff/ask questions IN Ukrainian. By contrast, I've seen people who were absolute newcomers to EO having simple conversations in the language and even making jokes and being silly and stuff. That's pretty good going for a course that's been up 8 days!

I do wish I'd got my backside in gear and learned EO sooner, but the DL course was a really good experience.

orthohawk:

robbkvasnak:orthohawk, it really intrigues me that people can get a doctorate in the USA without knowing any other language other than American English. Both my husband and I are polyglots and we got our doctorates together at the same university. Neither of us could understand that there were people in the courses we took who had absolutely NO knowledge of any other language. On top of that, they got a PhD without any courses in philosophy!!!! We took a non-required course in philosophy just to fulfill our idea of what a PhD should be about. We both feel that monolingualism is one of the USA's big problems. Really too bad, but it is so.

oh, most programs require at least one foreign language and many require 2 or even more; however, the languages chosen are always French, Spanish, German, with occasionally Russian or Italian or Portuguese (unless the PhD happens to be in Chinese or something, lol).

Florida state universities (there are 11) only require a high school diploma which MAY require two years of high-school foreign language [please, I am trying not to choke - I taught high-school French and Spanish in Florida according to the syllabus and books prescribed by the local school board]. So you MAY have to take 2 years of high-school for. lang. to get into a freshman class in Florida but that is IT!!! Believe me! I live here. I was a professor at Florida Atlantic University. There are people teaching there now who cannot even remember how to say "I am" in the high-school foreign language courses they took. I can give you real names! It is a catastrophe. And I helped prepare the basic syllabus for the new TESOL program. When we demanded two years of COLLEGE foreign language, the chair split a gut! We did NOT get our demand fulfilled - needless-to-say......