Al la enhavo
Respondi

Does anyone know anyone who speaks Esperanto and does not speak English?

de Jonatano, 2016-februaro-03

Mesaĝoj: 21

Lingvo: English

morico (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-05 11:20:53

I don't speak English like 8O % of world population or much more. Many people who say speak English don't understand it and speak a few words.

Kiom da miliardoj da dolaroj por la disvastigo de la Angla kaj kiom da miloj da $ por Esperanto?
Bone paroli angla-n kostas 10000 horojn au ses jarojn da laboro (Klod Piron)
Bone paroli esperanto-n kostas 1OOO horojn.
Se la horo kostas unu dolaron, la kosto por sep miliardoj da loghantoj estas 70 000 miliardoj da $. Tio kostas unu jaron de monda produktajho. Tio estas por mi la pli granda malshparo en la mondo.

How many bilions dollars for English diffusion and how many thousand $ for Esperanto? One milion against one.
Good speaking English is costing 10000 hours or six years of labour (Claude Piron)
Good speaking Esperanto is costing 1000 hours.
If one hour is costing one dollar on an average, the cost for seven bilionoj inhabitants in no first English countries is 70 trilionoj dollars. It's egal with one year of worldproduction. It's for me the biggest wasting in the world.

Mustelvulpo (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-05 14:17:47

It depends on what you mean by "speak English." The ability to make some basic communication in English doesn't necessarily imply a good command of the language. I'm sure many of the people who participate in this English language forum would have a hard time communicating in spoken English. I think that English, perhaps more than any other language, has the advantage of being understandable even when spoken poorly. For instance, in the post above by morico, the use of the language is awkward but the ideas expressed are clear and perfectly understandable. In other languages, if the speaker is incorrectly using cases and conjugations, it may be hard to discern what he or she is trying to express. I also think that Esperanto is perhaps second to English in this quality of being understandable even with significant mistakes in grammar and syntax.

morico (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-06 21:54:19

Comparative characteristics of English and Esperanto (Eo) explain why Eo is much easier than English for the 94% of the worldpopulation who is not English native.
1- English alphabet is not phonetic: 46 phonems, 20 vowels.
Esperanto alphabet is phonetic with 28 letters.
2- English pronunciation is chaotic, elusive, impossible to standardize.
In Eo each letter is pronounced and always represents the same sound.
3- English stress is indefinable, determined by usage; no standard can be established.
Eo stress is always on the penultimate syllable.
4- Irregular verbs are 283 in English, none in Eo.
5- For the conjugation the verbroot is variable in English, invariable in Eo.
6- The identification of the grammatical function is:
confused in English: many grammatical relations are unexpressed;
clear and immediate in Eo.
7- Syntax is rigid in English with fixed word order; it is very subtle in Eo.

morico (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-06 21:56:57

8- Word derivation(1): limited possibilities in English :5%; vast possibilities in Eo :17%.
9- Index of agglutination (1) is O,3 in English versus 1 in Esperanto.
10- - Idioms: innumerable in English ; virtually non-existent in Eo .
11- - Homonyms: very numerous in English; virtually non existent in Eo.
12- Polysemy (2): very commun in English: 21120 different meanings for the 850 words of the basic vocabulary; rare in Eo.
13- Vocabulary necessary to understand an ordinary text (3)
for 80 90%: 2000 words in English; 500 words + 50 grammatical elements in Eo;
for 99% *: 7000 words in English ; 2000 words in Eo.
*Frequency of dictionary consultation: one unknown word in a hundred
14- Time needed to reach a standard equivalent to A level(4)
In English, 1500 hours for a French speaker
In Eo 150 hours for a French speaker

(1) "Lingvistikaj aspektoj de Esperanto", Dr John C. Wells; professor of English language phonetics at University College London.
(2) Edward Thorndike, a famous American teacher and educationalist.
(3) "Fortoj de l’vivo", Vilho Setälä, a Finnish linguist.
(4) Dr Helmar Frank, director of the Institute of Cybernetics in Paderborn, Germany.

robbkvasnak (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-06 23:08:45

I know a bunch of people who speak Esperanto as their second language but who do not speak English. Yesterday we had dinner with two Esperantists - one of them is an American so he speaks American (like we do) but his wife is from China and she has been here a year. She speaks Fujianhua, Shanghaihua, Beijinghua and Esperanto but her English is almost nil though she has been studying it for a year and she has lived in the USA so long.
English is one bummer of a language, believe me - I teach it to foreigners.

bartlett22183 (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-07 20:04:10

Although not professionally, I have tried to help others learn elementary, minimally functional English. Especially if they are speakers of non-Indo-European languages, they tended to have a terrible time, and English spelling is a nightmare for non-native speakers (and sometimes even for native-speaking children).

As an educated native speaker of (General American) English, I acknowledge how difficult a language English truly is for ever so many adult learners. That is why I support the ideal of a constructed international auxiliary language such as Esperanto. Even (IALA) Interlingua is much preferable to something like English, although it is not quite as regular as E-o. The problem is that so many "important people" including so many (not quite all) professional linguists just don't take constructed auxiliary languages seriously.

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-08 13:50:32

morico:How many bilions dollars for English diffusion and how many thousand $ for Esperanto? One milion against one.

Good speaking English is costing 10000 hours or six years of labour (Claude Piron)
Good speaking Esperanto is costing 1000 hours.
This is the best argument for Esperanto in my opinion. Why don't we sell tell people how much it will cost them to speech English versus how much it will cost them to speech Esperanto.

Kirilo81 (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-08 14:18:43

Alkanadi:
morico:How many bilions dollars for English diffusion and how many thousand $ for Esperanto? One milion against one.

Good speaking English is costing 10000 hours or six years of labour (Claude Piron)
Good speaking Esperanto is costing 1000 hours.
This is the best argument for Esperanto in my opinion. Why don't we sell tell people how much it will cost them to speech English versus how much it will cost them to speech Esperanto.
Because most people are more willing to spend much money for something they need than little money for something useless. And this is what English vs Esperanto is for most people.

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-09 08:29:50

Kirilo81:
Alkanadi:This is the best argument for Esperanto in my opinion. Why don't we tell people how much it will cost them to speak English versus how much it will cost them to speak Esperanto.
Because most people are more willing to spend much money for something they need than little money for something useless.
Good point. Maybe, the best selling point is that Esperanto can be used in almost every country whereas a national language is restricted to a locale.

Altebrilas (Montri la profilon) 2016-februaro-13 13:20:53

The point is that to hold a debate like we do now, 90% of the people have better to learn esperanto from scratch than to improve their english from its present level (and I am not sure not to be myself in these 90%).

Reen al la supro