Meddelanden: 89
Språk: English
aliceeliz (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 03:57:42
I always struggle with the -n suffix! 
SheldonYoung (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 05:42:09
The challenges I find the most difficult when learning Esperanto have been, in no particular order:
[LISTO]
Practicing the pronunciation without feeling self-conscious.
The accusative -n suffix.
Visualizing concepts instead of translating to and from English.
Finding high quality audio samples at my level that are easy understand in the car. Radio Arkivo is great but the sound quality makes it difficult to follow in traffic[/list]
[LISTO]
Practicing the pronunciation without feeling self-conscious.
The accusative -n suffix.
Visualizing concepts instead of translating to and from English.
Finding high quality audio samples at my level that are easy understand in the car. Radio Arkivo is great but the sound quality makes it difficult to follow in traffic[/list]
RiotNrrd (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 07:05:49
My problem areas are:
1. The accusative ending (the infamous -n).
2. Keeping the correlatives straight. They all look so freaking similar that I often forget which is which (or should that be what is what, or who is who?).
3. Remembering to pluralize and "accusativize" adjectives modifying plural and-or accusative nouns. It's not a complicated thing, but it's easy to forget. After writing something, I typically have to sweep through it several times before I finally fix all the places I forgot to do correctly as I was originally writing it.
4. The transitivity or intransitivity of verbs keeps biting me. Most of the time it's obvious, but sometimes it is quite the opposite and just has to be memorized ("boli" being a typical example of one where I think it OUGHT to be transitive, but it isn't - there's plenty more of those lying around waiting to pounce on the unwary).
5. Trying to explain to people why anyone would want to bother learning a language that is both 1) dead, and 2) fake, which failed miserably a century ago, and which no one actually speaks (except for maybe a few crackpots here and there), and how maybe their preconceptions about it might not actually be all that correct.
1. The accusative ending (the infamous -n).
2. Keeping the correlatives straight. They all look so freaking similar that I often forget which is which (or should that be what is what, or who is who?).
3. Remembering to pluralize and "accusativize" adjectives modifying plural and-or accusative nouns. It's not a complicated thing, but it's easy to forget. After writing something, I typically have to sweep through it several times before I finally fix all the places I forgot to do correctly as I was originally writing it.
4. The transitivity or intransitivity of verbs keeps biting me. Most of the time it's obvious, but sometimes it is quite the opposite and just has to be memorized ("boli" being a typical example of one where I think it OUGHT to be transitive, but it isn't - there's plenty more of those lying around waiting to pounce on the unwary).
5. Trying to explain to people why anyone would want to bother learning a language that is both 1) dead, and 2) fake, which failed miserably a century ago, and which no one actually speaks (except for maybe a few crackpots here and there), and how maybe their preconceptions about it might not actually be all that correct.
nw2394 (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 14:50:23
Well, since this is open season on moans, I might add to the list the similarity of some words. For example marto and mardo (March and Tuesday) or ŝi and si (she and reflexive pronoun). These provide opportunities for slip ups.
Also the accusative allows relatively free word order and therefore allows emphasis (or so the courses say), but nowhere is it defined what the normal word order is and what variations of that emphasise what!
However, do these difficulties amount to a hill of beans really?
1) There are generally far more difficulties in learning any other language, except maybe some other constructed languages.
2) The other constructed languages don't have many followers.
3) Though, for example, the accusative is difficult for English speakers, there are those whose native language does have it. So they would find it more difficult to learn that word order is used to differentiate subject and object and that they can't mess about with word order freely at all.
4) As English speakers we don't complain about there being a plural, for example. I understand Chinese doesn't have a plural - so they have to get used to that. Also, I am not sure that there are any languages surviving today with singular, "dual" and plural, but certainly ancient languages commonly had that feature - they would have to get used to getting by without a "dual".
And so on....
The problem is, if you want to "fix" these problems, can you make a language that has sufficient changes that will be regarded as truly being an improvement for enough people that your new creation will actually take off. In over a hundred years several people have tried and not succeeded. Consequently, until the time when such a language is created, E-o may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it works. One gets used to the difficulties, which are nothing like as great as they might be.
Nick
Also the accusative allows relatively free word order and therefore allows emphasis (or so the courses say), but nowhere is it defined what the normal word order is and what variations of that emphasise what!
However, do these difficulties amount to a hill of beans really?
1) There are generally far more difficulties in learning any other language, except maybe some other constructed languages.
2) The other constructed languages don't have many followers.
3) Though, for example, the accusative is difficult for English speakers, there are those whose native language does have it. So they would find it more difficult to learn that word order is used to differentiate subject and object and that they can't mess about with word order freely at all.
4) As English speakers we don't complain about there being a plural, for example. I understand Chinese doesn't have a plural - so they have to get used to that. Also, I am not sure that there are any languages surviving today with singular, "dual" and plural, but certainly ancient languages commonly had that feature - they would have to get used to getting by without a "dual".
And so on....
The problem is, if you want to "fix" these problems, can you make a language that has sufficient changes that will be regarded as truly being an improvement for enough people that your new creation will actually take off. In over a hundred years several people have tried and not succeeded. Consequently, until the time when such a language is created, E-o may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it works. One gets used to the difficulties, which are nothing like as great as they might be.
Nick
awake (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 15:34:50
The accusative ending seems to be the favorite complaint of people learning esperanto. Probably everyone strugles with that at first. It's also complicated by the fact that it has so many different uses (marking direct objects, replacing prepositions, showing motion).
The main thing is to practice it (if you have windows or linux do a search for "Kurso de Esperanto" it has some great exercises for that). What you'll find is that if you keep at it your brain will start to internalize the pattern and you'll just naturally mark things as accusative (and/or) plural where appropriate without even thinking about it.
As for correlatives, I found them nearly impossible to keep straight at first. One thing I did that helped tremendously was to make 2 stacks of flash cards, one with all the beginings and the other stack with all the endings.
I'd shuffle both decks then keep cycling through them in two piles
ki- -es
ti- -u
ĉi- -o
etc...
The point is, instead of learning kiam as when, I learned it as "ki" + "am" = "which" + "time"
So I had to memorize the meanings of 14 (5 beginnings and 9 endings) words (or word units) instead of 45 similar (to the point of confusion) words. I worked with these a few min for a few days and then I no longer had any problems with them. At first when reading things, I'd slow down a bit and go "which....time...oh when" as I deciphered what the correlative was, but I never had to look it up. I think it's like sounding out words when you first start learning to read english, it's a crutch but one you can dispense with fairly quickly. Now when I see kiam I don't even translate it into english, I just understand the word as it is.
Transitivity, that can be a pain. But fortunately I've only found a few of them that are counterintuitive enough to trip me up. I just suck it up and memorize those when I encounter them
-------------
I've found the hardest part of learning esperanto to be understanding spoken esperanto. I think that's the hardest part of learning any language, being able to think in it at conversation speed.
The main thing is to practice it (if you have windows or linux do a search for "Kurso de Esperanto" it has some great exercises for that). What you'll find is that if you keep at it your brain will start to internalize the pattern and you'll just naturally mark things as accusative (and/or) plural where appropriate without even thinking about it.
As for correlatives, I found them nearly impossible to keep straight at first. One thing I did that helped tremendously was to make 2 stacks of flash cards, one with all the beginings and the other stack with all the endings.
I'd shuffle both decks then keep cycling through them in two piles
ki- -es
ti- -u
ĉi- -o
etc...
The point is, instead of learning kiam as when, I learned it as "ki" + "am" = "which" + "time"
So I had to memorize the meanings of 14 (5 beginnings and 9 endings) words (or word units) instead of 45 similar (to the point of confusion) words. I worked with these a few min for a few days and then I no longer had any problems with them. At first when reading things, I'd slow down a bit and go "which....time...oh when" as I deciphered what the correlative was, but I never had to look it up. I think it's like sounding out words when you first start learning to read english, it's a crutch but one you can dispense with fairly quickly. Now when I see kiam I don't even translate it into english, I just understand the word as it is.
Transitivity, that can be a pain. But fortunately I've only found a few of them that are counterintuitive enough to trip me up. I just suck it up and memorize those when I encounter them
-------------
I've found the hardest part of learning esperanto to be understanding spoken esperanto. I think that's the hardest part of learning any language, being able to think in it at conversation speed.
RiotNrrd:My problem areas are:
1. The accusative ending (the infamous -n).
2. Keeping the correlatives straight. They all look so freaking similar that I often forget which is which (or should that be what is what, or who is who?).
3. Remembering to pluralize and "accusativize" adjectives modifying plural and-or accusative nouns. It's not a complicated thing, but it's easy to forget. After writing something, I typically have to sweep through it several times before I finally fix all the places I forgot to do correctly as I was originally writing it.
4. The transitivity or intransitivity of verbs keeps biting me. Most of the time it's obvious, but sometimes it is quite the opposite and just has to be memorized ("boli" being a typical example of one where I think it OUGHT to be transitive, but it isn't - there's plenty more of those lying around waiting to pounce on the unwary).
5. Trying to explain to people why anyone would want to bother learning a language that is both 1) dead, and 2) fake, which failed miserably a century ago, and which no one actually speaks (except for maybe a few crackpots here and there), and how maybe their preconceptions about it might not actually be all that correct.
awake (Visa profilen) 28 december 2006 20:57:31
In Japanese, there's no sound corresponding to the English R or the English L, but there is a sound that's sort of half way in between the two. If you listen to japanese people speaking english as a non-native second language, often they confuse the L and the R sounds, because it is hard for them to discriminate between the two (during one of the Kerry-Bush U.S. presidential debates, a japanese friend told me that she gets very nervous when she has to say the word election *grin*).
The sound system in Esperanto was designed with international usage in mind. Some people have difficulty making some sounds that are not in their language. Therefore, the esperanto letters allow for a certain level of variability.
This is most evident in various way's you'll hear people pronouncing an "r" sound in esperanto. The "official" way to do it is with a one (or at most two) tap trill (with the tap just above the teeth). What you find is that native french speakers sometimes tend to pronounce more of a "swallowed" r which is trilled differenty, that is they make the sound that is closest to the r that french people normally speak. Some spanish-speaking people (and probably others) tend to pronounce an r that is fully trilled (3-4 taps or more). And of course, most americans couldnt make any kind of trill sound to save their life, so they just speak the standard american english R.
All of these variations are acceptible in Esperanto, because none of them hinder communication. And that's the key, keep practicing to develop good Esperanto pronounciation , but don't stress about it being perfect. As long as you can be understood, that's the main thing.
Also, One tricky thing is to keep the accentuation proper. The main stress goes on the next to the last syllable, of course. I still find that I have to be careful (especially with words that are strong english cognates but stressed differently in English). For instance the English word FO-Li-o as opposed to the esperanto word fo-LI-o (both of which can refer to a sheet of paper).
As far as finding out if you can be understood or not, the best way is to practice with some other esperanto speakers. If you don't have a local esperanto group/club, then perhaps you can find someone willing to chat in Eo over skype or some other internet telephony program.
The sound system in Esperanto was designed with international usage in mind. Some people have difficulty making some sounds that are not in their language. Therefore, the esperanto letters allow for a certain level of variability.
This is most evident in various way's you'll hear people pronouncing an "r" sound in esperanto. The "official" way to do it is with a one (or at most two) tap trill (with the tap just above the teeth). What you find is that native french speakers sometimes tend to pronounce more of a "swallowed" r which is trilled differenty, that is they make the sound that is closest to the r that french people normally speak. Some spanish-speaking people (and probably others) tend to pronounce an r that is fully trilled (3-4 taps or more). And of course, most americans couldnt make any kind of trill sound to save their life, so they just speak the standard american english R.
All of these variations are acceptible in Esperanto, because none of them hinder communication. And that's the key, keep practicing to develop good Esperanto pronounciation , but don't stress about it being perfect. As long as you can be understood, that's the main thing.
Also, One tricky thing is to keep the accentuation proper. The main stress goes on the next to the last syllable, of course. I still find that I have to be careful (especially with words that are strong english cognates but stressed differently in English). For instance the English word FO-Li-o as opposed to the esperanto word fo-LI-o (both of which can refer to a sheet of paper).
As far as finding out if you can be understood or not, the best way is to practice with some other esperanto speakers. If you don't have a local esperanto group/club, then perhaps you can find someone willing to chat in Eo over skype or some other internet telephony program
.waxle:Learning to pronounce and understand speech correctly is the most difficult part for me. There are enough different accents out there that it gets a little aggravating. As soon as I have figured out the musicians I listen to, I discover another pronunciation in Radio Verda, and then I find another one in Radio Arkivo, and then even more on Internacia TV.
I try to stick closest to pure vowels and carefully pronounce my consonants as they are given in the alphabet page here on Lernu!. It ends up sounding mostly like Arono from Radio Verda.
But even then, I'm not sure that I'm saying it right, and I can't be sure that I will be understood.
T0dd (Visa profilen) 29 december 2006 00:24:19
SheldonYoung:I *love* the pronunciation of Esperanto! I don't claim that come anywhere close to eradicating my American accent, but I find pronouncing Esperanto very satisfying and fun. I think there's always an element of self-consciousness about trying to make the sounds of another language, but the thing to do is just go for it. When I was at the Esperanto summer course in 1986, one of the instructors, David Jordan, offered the following "drill." He said to try pronouncing Esperanto while pretending to be Count Dracula or something equally silly--i.e., to adopt an exaggerated "foreign" accent in a make-believe way. We did this in class and he pointed out that our Esperanto pronunciation was actually much better as we were doing it.
[LISTO]
Practicing the pronunciation without feeling self-conscious.
The accusative -n suffix.
Visualizing concepts instead of translating to and from English.
Finding high quality audio samples at my level that are easy understand in the car. Radio Arkivo is great but the sound quality makes it difficult to follow in traffic[/list]
The accusative -n.... The trouble is, most of us are not used to thinking about what's the subject and what's the direct object. We use word order unreflectively to indicate them. In Ido (a "reformed" version of Esperanto), there's no -n ending used *unless the word order is not SVO." Therefore, you still have to know what's the subject and what's the object, in order to know when the order is SVO and when it isn't.
"Visualizing concepts"--This may be the biggest hurdle in learning any new language. Keep in mind that there's always more than one way to say what you want to say, and the other way may be easier than the one you're stuck on. If you must translate from English, your first step must be to put your English into the least idiomatic form possible.
Quality audio....Radio Verda
pastorant (Visa profilen) 29 december 2006 09:41:11
My hardest thing was the correlatives as well.
I know a couple of other languages (including Cherokee!), and while the correlatives in Esperanto were supposed to be easier, for me they are actually harder. I still confuse kio and kiu in a sentence. Ekzemple, "Mi estas la ulo, kiu iris." and "Ĉi tio estas la ilo, kio fosas."
I also have "Jen Nia Mondo" on CD (an audio course which is Pimsleurish.). The woman on the CD speaks with such a THICK Manchester British accent, I can hardly undertand a word she says in Esperanto. Something silly like "Mi aĉetis tri violetojn" become incomprehensible with her thick accent and her rhythm is WAY off. It's almost "Mia cheti strivio leti"
I think they just told her to read a sheet of paper without understanding what she's reading.
Butg besides that one big gripe, I use the CD's almost daily. I believe I can understand a Liverpudlian (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence) speaking Esperanto quite well now!
I have no problem with the -n ending. It makes sense to me. I like grammar. I see grammar as plumbing. After years of Ancient Greek, the E-o Accusative is a blessing
If there are no E-o clubs locally, why not start one and practice your pronunciation. Sed memoru! Ne krokodilu!
I know a couple of other languages (including Cherokee!), and while the correlatives in Esperanto were supposed to be easier, for me they are actually harder. I still confuse kio and kiu in a sentence. Ekzemple, "Mi estas la ulo, kiu iris." and "Ĉi tio estas la ilo, kio fosas."
I also have "Jen Nia Mondo" on CD (an audio course which is Pimsleurish.). The woman on the CD speaks with such a THICK Manchester British accent, I can hardly undertand a word she says in Esperanto. Something silly like "Mi aĉetis tri violetojn" become incomprehensible with her thick accent and her rhythm is WAY off. It's almost "Mia cheti strivio leti"
I think they just told her to read a sheet of paper without understanding what she's reading.
Butg besides that one big gripe, I use the CD's almost daily. I believe I can understand a Liverpudlian (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence) speaking Esperanto quite well now!
I have no problem with the -n ending. It makes sense to me. I like grammar. I see grammar as plumbing. After years of Ancient Greek, the E-o Accusative is a blessing
If there are no E-o clubs locally, why not start one and practice your pronunciation. Sed memoru! Ne krokodilu!
Filu (Visa profilen) 29 december 2006 14:51:23
Novico Dektri:You just threw me off there, Pastorant. Are you sure that the correct usage would not be "Cxi tio estas ilo, kiu fosas"?It would indeed be "Ĉi (tio/tiu) estas ilo, kiu fosas".
The difference between the two versions is rather subtle to me... I believe tio would be your choice if you are talking about (shovels/picks/...) in general and not about a specefic one ("Things like this one are a tool that allows digging"), while tiu would fit if you are talking about a specific (shovel/pick/...) and describing what it is used for ("This thing is a tool, and it allows you to dig").
Don't quote me on the last part, but I'm sure of myself as far as the first part goes...
And I wish you a happy new year!
Auger (Visa profilen) 17 januari 2007 12:25:04
As English speakers we don't complain about there being a plural, for example. I understand Chinese doesn't have a plural - so they have to get used to that. Also, I am not sure that there are any languages surviving today with singular, "dual" and plural, but certainly ancient languages commonly had that feature - they would have to get used to getting by without a "dual".For your information, Arabic, classic and modern, uses such a dual plural.