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Learning Esperanto helps you speak English?

door Alkanadi, 30 augustus 2015

Berichten: 69

Taal: English

Alkanadi (Profiel tonen) 30 augustus 2015 15:48:20

I am a native English speaker. I feel like my English speaking skills are improving because I am learning Esperanto. I feel like I speak my native language more fluently than I did a year ago.

Does anyone else have this experience also?

They say that learning a second language causes your brain to grow. So, is that why?

filmo70 (Profiel tonen) 30 augustus 2015 22:03:51

Alkanadi:I am a native English speaker. I feel like my English speaking skills are improving because I am learning Esperanto. I feel like I speak my native language more fluently than I did a year ago.

Does anyone else have this experience also?

They say that learning a second language causes your brain to grow. So, is that why?
I'd say no, I don't speak English any better. I might be a bit more grammar conscious.

It would be good if it causes my brain to grow. I had many years of brain shrinkage from listening to speed metal.

Tempodivalse (Profiel tonen) 30 augustus 2015 22:52:50

I think knowing Esperanto helps solidify your knowledge of grammatical concepts in general, which might result in you feeling more confident in other languages you speak (not necessarily causing you to speak better, just more confidently). I have observed this effect after learning EO, primarily with my first language.

rikforto (Profiel tonen) 30 augustus 2015 23:00:28

There is oodles of evidence that acquiring a second language improves your grasp of your first language, as well as better prepares you for learning a third. This also just feels intuitively right to me.

Vestitor (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 06:33:49

Any second language acquisition has to improve your first language because you are forced to do translation and think about how your own language works in order to transfer this to the second language. People tend not to learn the grammar of their native language in the same way they do when learning a foreign language, so that improves too.

I'm less convinced that acquiring a 3rd language onwards is made drastically easier for the average learner. The learning process and expectation of results in taken forward (plus vocabulary and structural elements; especially for related languages), but the slog is not completely removed.

Alkanadi (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 07:10:28

rikforto:There is oodles of evidence that acquiring a second language improves your grasp of your first language, as well as better prepares you for learning a third. This also just feels intuitively right to me.
Okay. Interesting. So, it isn't just me then.

Fenris_kcf (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 07:32:17

Here i want to quote a famous man of letters:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.
which translates to „Who doesn't know foreign languages, knows nothing about the own one.“

sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 11:05:26

If there were hard experimental evidence that learning Esperanto improves one's command of one's own language, this could be used to argue for the introduction of Esperanto into the school curriculum - which is, by the way, the only route by which it seems one could achieve la fina venko, or at least enhance the practical value of knowing Esperanto.

In the not very distant past it used to be the case that the teaching of Latin in English schools was justified by the effect it might have on the pupil's command of English. But like so much in education it was supported by armchair reasoning rather than, as far as I am aware, by experimental evidence.

If I had to speculate, I would guess that the most beneficial educational effect of learning Esperanto on one's use of one's mother tongue would be from a heightening of awareness of potential ambiguities, or lack of clarity, in writing in one's mother tongue.

Learning Esperanto may well raise one's awareness of grammatical categories, but it seems to me dubious that this would make one speak or write more clearly in one's denaska language.

As an experiment (for UK schools) I would suggest presenting Esperanto learners, with a mixed batch of poor/ambiguous English sentences and clear ones and contrasting the speed with which the lack of clarity was identified, as compared with the performance in the control group.

You could also contrast the facility with which the experimental subjects were able to reformulate the examples of poor English into a less ambiguous sentences.

I expect that Teachers could supply plentiful examples of poor English from their marking of student's essays.

Altebrilas (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 11:46:42

It may be challenging to fill the array ino/ido/isto/ejo/aĵo/viro for different animals in one's own language. Many people are unable to fill all the cases and have to look in the dictionary.

Alkanadi (Profiel tonen) 31 augustus 2015 14:38:33

sudanglo:...the introduction of Esperanto into the school curriculum - which is, by the way, the only route by which it seems one could achieve la fina venko...
I think that Esperanto will achieve fina venko once it has a significant tangible reward.

In Canada, people learn French from grade 4 to grade 7 as a minimum government requirement. Try going to anyone on the western side of Canada and ask them "Excuse me, do you know where the washroom is?" in French. Nobody, will understand you.

On the flip side, go to the eastern side of Canada and ask them "Excuse me, do you know where the washroom is?" in English. They will understand.

When Esperanto is appealing to the masses then people will learn it. Because it is so easy to learn, it will have a snowball effect. It just needs a little nudge.

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