Erinja,
If I may ask, which course(s) did you take to learn Eo? And what (other?) things do you think helped you the most in reaching fluency?

erinja:
Thirdly - I always had a hard time with jokes when learning Esperanto. I remember that a later lesson in my course had a bunch of jokes as the reading material, and it took me a long time to understand them, even though I understood the individual words.

awake:Erinja,
If I may ask, which course(s) did you take to learn Eo? And what (other?) things do you think helped you the most in reaching fluency?

I used the 10 lesson free postal course (available online in e-mail version). It was 1995, my family didn't have internet access, and my local library didn't have a book. Actually I just now did an online search and to this day, my county (among the wealthiest in the nation) has just two books in the entire system). My options were limited, to put it mildly.

That was the only course I ever took. After that, I had several international pen pals, first by post, and then by e-mail. I hate memorizing vocabulary, so that probably built up my vocabulary and grammar more than anything. I was first able to attend an Esperanto event (a youth weekend) about a year and a half after the start of my (sporadic, due to my school schedule) studies. I was able to communicate on a basic level and catch the gist of what people were saying, but my vocabulary still had big holes so I wasn't able to talk about much. To this day, that's why I don't mind being a 'crocodile' a bit with beginners. I remember how much I appreciated late night "krokodilado" with other participants, I felt exhausted after a full day of Esperanto-only.

My written Esperanto was eventually pretty good but my spoken Esperanto still wasn't that great until I spent several days in a foreign country staying with an Esperanto friend of mine, speaking only Esperanto - this was about 6 years after I started.

My advice is that the best way to learn is just to speak, speak, speak. Even if "speak" only means "write", you'll still learn vocabulary. I think you need a course to learn the basics. After that, practice should get you the rest of the way, if you are a person interested enough in grammar to try hard to get it right (I know some speakers whose grammar is still terrible after decades; I refuse to believe they are simply stupid, my conclusion is that they are lazy).

Well, thanks for all your advice.

I'm disappointed to have pretty much completed a book on the subject, can read the story at the end of it and find that, despite the apparent simplicity of the language, much of what I will have to cope with understanding still requires more than learning more vocabulary.

Frankly I find Novial easier. But then, quite apart from the fact that that language is hardly used at all, I suspect I find it easier because the syntax is more Germanic. And that someone else, with a different native language, would be in the same position I am with respect to E-o.

It doesn't fill me with hope regarding the future of this or any other IAL.

Sorry if that sounds glum.

Nick

nw2394:Well, thanks for all your advice.

I'm disappointed to have pretty much completed a book on the subject, can read the story at the end of it and find that, despite the apparent simplicity of the language, much of what I will have to cope with understanding still requires more than learning more vocabulary.

Something just isn't clicking for you, and I'm not sure what. Which book did you read? (and regarding Novial - it probably doesn't even have complicated enough literature to present much of a challenge to someone who has learned the basics, does it?)

I just find it hard to believe that an intelligent person such as yourself, who has learned other languages (Russian, right?) would be finding things so difficult, and I wonder if there's not something that could be done to help things click for you. Russian is quite different from English, word order, grammar, vocabulary, and all, isn't it?

And maybe things just need more time to sink in. You started using lernu in the middle of November; did you start studying before that? Honestly, you've been studying, what, a bit more than 2 months? That's not really a lot of time. I think you're being too hard on yourself. In any case, feel free to send me a personal message and we'll see what we can do to get you to where you want to be.

erinja:Something just isn't clicking for you, and I'm not sure what. Which book did you read? (and regarding Novial - it probably doesn't even have complicated enough literature to present much of a challenge to someone who has learned the basics, does it?)

The book I have (or rather keep borrowing from the library) is "Step by Step in Esperanto" by Montagu C. Butler (though the book is old and the material presented in the style of textbooks as they used to be before educationalists got the idea that study ought to be fun, it seems to be thorough. Also Butler seems to have a good reputation). I also have done some of the course material on this site, covered all of the material on a couple of other sites with html page style courses, plus I've done about 2/3rds of the material in Kurso de Esperanto (the program you can download from, I think, a Brazillian site).

Re Novial: It has quite a few wikipedia pages now (about 1,500 though mainly created by a few enthusiasts, rather than what I would call a whole community). Not much I can see in the way of literature.

Jespersen, the chap that invented it, gets an awful bad press on E-o supporting sites because of his involvement with the development of Ido. However, he seems to me to have been better informed than he is sometimes given credit for. But I am not really trying to plug that language here. If anyone is interested, his stuff is on the net.

I just find it hard to believe that an intelligent person such as yourself, who has learned other languages (Russian, right?) would be finding things so difficult, and I wonder if there's not something that could be done to help things click for you.

What I find a challenge is expounded by Piron as a virtue of Esperanto. I quote:

"A beginner in Esperanto will express the idea 'I'll go to the convention by train' saying Mi iros al la kongreso per trajno, when a more mature Esperantist will say Trajne mi alkongresos or Mi iros kongresen trajne."

I think, yes, very clever. Cute even. I can follow that - when it is explained. In real life I find such linguistic tricks highly unnatural and hard to follow.

And the trouble is that courses tend largely to avoid these tricks. Dictionaries, even, avoid this sort of thing to a significant degree. And then you get let loose on an E-o forum and find that the language is actually quite alien to that which you've learnt already. Factually, colloquial E-o is a different dialect to that which is actually taught. But it masquerades as standard Esperanto because the grammar rules of E-o inherently permit such tricks. Esperantists do not, it seems, stop to think that people of limited familiarity with the language might be completely alientated by that sort of thing.

I'll have to see if I can dig up the material Todd recommended. Maybe that is the thing I need.

Nick

nw2394:What I find a challenge is expounded by Piron as a virtue of Esperanto. I quote:

"A beginner in Esperanto will express the idea 'I'll go to the convention by train' saying Mi iros al la kongreso per trajno, when a more mature Esperantist will say Trajne mi alkongresos or Mi iros kongresen trajne."

I think, yes, very clever. Cute even. I can follow that - when it is explained. In real life I find such linguistic tricks highly unnatural and hard to follow.

Far be it from me to criticise someone with the expertise and experience of Piron, but I think he's overstating the facts a little here. Those are quite odd and infrequent ways of phrasing the sentence, and I doubt the average Esperantist, even a very fluent one, would come out with them unless he/she was specifically striving for an unusual or original style - perhaps if they had mentioned "iri al la kongreso per trajno" already and were looking for some variety.

In reality, people don't overdo the nonce-words; just read through the average article in LMD or Libera Folio. We're talking about Esperanto here, not Esperant'!

I agree that Piron overstates this point; I find his sentence highly unnatural and I don't personally talk that way or know anyone who does.

But it is true that spoken Esperanto tends to be heavily adverb-oriented. I would perhaps say "Mi trajne iros" instead of "Mi iros per trajno" but I would probably say "al la kongreso" instead of "kongresen". Or else I might use "kongresen" but not "per trajno"; I don't think I would use both of those together.

I would summarize the points of colloquial Esperanto as follows:

- a tendency to use a lot of adverbs ("iri hejmen" instead of "iri al sia hejmo")

- a tendency to use the prefixes, suffixes, and some prepositions as independendent words, especially verbs ("eki" = to start, "indi" = to be worthwhile, "kontrauxi" = to be against [something])

- a tendency to combine a prefix or suffix plus a preposition to form a verb, so that the derivation isn't immediately clear (eligi = to elicit; troigi = to exaggerate)

But you have a good point, that the transition might be hard for some people. If anyone else has some ideas of spoken Esperanto colloquialisms (things that are grammatically correct, no "alies" here!), perhaps I can organize the creation of a new course to teach them.

Incidentally, Nick, I don't know if you've checked out the "Franko-tekstoj" in the lernu library section, but they have phrase by phrase translations, so the parallel text type of format might be helpful to you. I know that that sort of text can be helpful for some learners.

I think that some of the language stylings mentioned fit more into mid-level or advanced-level eo, and indeed I do fully understand how they can confuse someone just starting out. A year ago I was also often confused by what is being referred to as colloquial eo, whereas now that I've become comfortable with eo in general I also now find myself composing sentences more and more in that fashion.

I no longer have any real trouble parsing words, or understanding why adverbs are used so heavily in eo, whereas a year ago I was in pretty much the same boat as Nick. So, Nick, I guess my bit of advice - and I'm certainly no expert, but I have been down the same road you are heading down - is that if you don't get wound up about it, and just try to have as much fun with it as you can, it will become clearer over time.

I do admit that I tend to approach eo the way I approach programming languages. I've spent many years maintaining a massive program written by other people - people I sometimes imagine had the programming skills of untrained monkeys - and frequently have to look at code that is anything but obvious and try to figure out what the heck the original programmers were thinking. So when I am reading eo and come across a word or sentence construction that just doesn't match the way I think, I automatically go into "debug mode". I don't worry so much about the fact that I don't understand a particular word or phrase, but more about simply understanding the intent of the author and discovering why they expressed themselves the way they did. Sometimes I can't figure out how to parse a word, can't figure out what the roots used are (which sometimes aren't in my dictionaries), and then finally just have to shrug and move on. But this doesn't actually happen nearly as often now as it used to.

I also tend to approach writing it with a programming bent. I'll write a few paragraphs in my eo-language blog (which I've found is a very good way to force myself to write new stuff each day - or at least every couple of days). Then I'll make a few passes over it. "Hmmm... I can tighten that up a little by combining these two words, and if I used an adverb here I could drop this particular construction, and..." and so on. I'm usually more concerned with conciseness and expressiveness than with writing at a level that is understandable to complete beginners. Maybe not a commendable attitude, but it's my blog and I can do what I want to in it!

Anyway, as I write more and more in this unnatural "programmy" fashion, I find that it becomes more and more natural. I no longer have to make so many passes over new material, as the more concise constructions are starting to occur to me as I write the sentences for the first time instead of on the third pass. I also find that when I see these decidedly non-English constructions in other peoples eo writings, I now understand them without difficulty because there's a good chance I used them myself at some earlier date.

So my OTHER advice is to start writing eo often (perhaps every day). Reading others stuff is fine, but I don't think you really start learning how to piece a sentence together until you start writing your own stuff. I use a blog as my excuse, but anything that will get you writing your own sentences will work. Once you start doing that, a lot of the power of eo suddenly becomes a lot clearer and more accessible.

Just don't get down on yourself if you run into roadblocks. They're there, and they nail everyone at one time or another. Early on I sometimes just could not figure out how to say something or other in the manner that I wanted. I STILL run into this now and then, but much less frequently. I'd give it a shot, fail, and just move on, realizing that at some point I'd figure it out and that it wasn't worth beating my head against it right now. And I've found that to be absolutely true.

Remember, frustration is the opposite of fun. You HAVE to approach eo as a fun thing, or there's no point to it. Don't think of the weird constructions as pull-your-hair-out frustrations - think of them as little puzzles that should be fun to solve. And if they aren't turning out to be fun, then don't bother solving them.

erinja:Incidentally, Nick, I don't know if you've checked out the "Franko-tekstoj" in the lernu library section, but they have phrase by phrase translations, so the parallel text type of format might be helpful to you. I know that that sort of text can be helpful for some learners.

I cannot see a link about "Franko-tekstoj". Using that phrase on Google gives one page on the entire net:

http://vikio.lernu.net/Planoj/NovaStrukturo

That seems to mention such a thing, but no link to any content.

- a tendency to combine a prefix or suffix plus a preposition to form a verb, so that the derivation isn't immediately clear (eligi = to elicit; troigi = to exaggerate)

That's the biggest killer of the lot. "eligi", I would have initially thought to mean "to make out"! I would then have wondered if the speaker was American (as the term is not really even British English). If the speaker wasn't from the US, I would then have wondered if it really meant something like to put something outside (as in "put the cat out" type of thing). Possibly I would wonder if the speaker was trying to talk about a particular form of unreliable birth control supposedly favoured by Catholics, if you follow my line of reasoning. When none of those matched the context, I would probably have given up bothering to read the rest of the text. The vortaro here gives it as "take out, utter, pull out, express", which is not quite the same as "elicit".

"troigi" as exaggerate, is more understandable. But even there I would probably have taken it as "to make too big" in a literal sense and possibly misunderstood completely as a result.

But these are not the only ones. I am fairly sure I saw something like "iĝebla" a while back by which the writer meant "renderable". It was only because the English and E-o text were given together that I understood it at all. Whatever it was I couldn't find it in a dictionary.

But I wonder why progressing students have to learn this. I've read some (a very little) of Zammenhof's writings. He is easier to understand than some of the stuff I see elsewhere. If the simple way of saying it was good enough for the creator of the language, I wonder why the rest of us have to learn the hard way?

Maybe others do not find the sorts of things I rant on about as big a problem???? I don't know. I am not sure what sort of figures there are for how many people try to learn E-o versus how many give up before becoming at all confident with the language?

For me this is an important point. I made extremely rapid progress with Kurso de Esperanto and such like. In fact I devoured course material in a matter of about 3 days. Since then, despite the fact that I have added more vocabulary, I've actually become less confident about approaching an E-o group to try to actually speak this language.

Nick

RiotNrrd:And if they aren't turning out to be fun, then don't bother solving them.

Yuh, well, you hit the nail on the head there.