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Fastest Way to Achieve Fluency in Esperanto?

de jsewell94, 2009-julio-21

Mesaĝoj: 54

Lingvo: English

jsewell94 (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 01:37:58

We need to do something to make Esperanto more well known. I wish I knew some people locally who spoke the language, but unfortunately, I'm not that lucky.

Any ideas on how we can spread the word on Esperanto? And yes, I am digressing ridulo.gif

Pharoah (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 03:27:32

I think most people have heard about it, but I'm afraid to bring it up because everyone seems to have a negative impression of Esperanto. And I don't want to seem like a zealot defending it.

jsewell94 (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 03:53:22

Bahahaha. Yeah most people I talk to haven't ever heard of it. And when they learn a little about it, they say 'Wow 2 million speakers. Not going to waste my time learning something that's not applicable'..and I don't usually say much.

My dad even tells me that I should spend my time learning something useful. Which irritates me and I give him reasons as to why I'm learning it. One time I even typed out my contentions and debated with him about it, lol. That's the only incident where I was being a bit overzealous.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 04:44:05

jsewell94:My dad even tells me that I should spend my time learning something useful.
Just tell him that you spend your time in school learning the useful stuff, and in your free time you'd rather do something fun.

I swear. If someone asks "What do you like to do as a hobby?", and you answer "Well, I like to play video games", or "I'm really into bowling", or even "I'm a big movie fan", they'll respond with something like "that's cool". But if you say "I speak Esperanto", the answer is almost invariably "why on earth would you want to waste your time on that?"

When it comes to sheer usefulness, I'm pretty sure Esperanto *objectively* rates higher than video games, bowling, or watching movies. But for some reason, people just can't get their heads around the idea that Esperanto might just be fun. Because it's a language, of course.

Languages are NOT fun.

They're just hard.

At least, they are for people learning languages that aren't Esperanto. ridulo.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 09:54:21

RiotNrrd:When it comes to sheer usefulness, I'm pretty sure Esperanto *objectively* rates higher than video games, bowling, or watching movies
But don't forget - to the biased spectator, those things bring in much larger crowds, and with online games, often more players than EO has speakers okulumo.gif
Darnehd video games these whipper-snappers are playin'.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 10:02:07

RiotNrrd:When it comes to sheer usefulness, I'm pretty sure Esperanto *objectively* rates higher than video games, bowling, or watching movies. But for some reason, people just can't get their heads around the idea that Esperanto might just be fun. Because it's a language, of course.
I suspect the fact there's no money in Esperanto (and hence no cultural/commercial brainwashing to go along with it), might have something to do with it.

andogigi (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 12:10:09

jsewell94:One time I even typed out my contentions and debated with him about it, lol.
Here's some ammunition to help you out. It has been proven that learning Esperanto before learning a national language, will make the student a better speaker of the national language. Why?

Simply put, if you are bilingual, it is a proven fact that learning a third language will be much easier for you than for someone who is learning their very first foreign language. What's more, it doesn't appear to matter much what languages are involved.

Hence, it is much easier for an English/Swahili speaker or a Spanish/Chinese speaker to learn Russian than for an English only speaker to learn Russian. This applies to Esperanto, as well. Since Esperanto is so easy to learn, students who can speak it will have an easier time with the languages like French or Spanish which you can study in school.

Check out this website for more. Many studies have been done to back this up.
http://en.allexperts.com/e/p/pr/propaedeutic_value...

jsewell94 (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 18:38:27

Andogigi, that was actually something that I brought up to him. But, I didn't have any sources to back it up. Learning basic Spanish has made learning Esperanto REALLY easy, because there are many similar words. For example: The word for 'white' in Esperanto is 'blanka', and in Spanish 'blanca'. Or the word for bread in Esperanto is 'Pano' and in Spanish is 'Pan'.

I digress, there are even medical terms that help me remember some Esperanto words. For example 'lakto', reminds me of lactose intolerance, which is (as we all know) a problem with digesting dairy...

But anyway, yes you're correct in that learning Esperanto (or any language for that matter) makes learning a third language easier.

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 19:23:12

jsewell94:Andogigi, that was actually something that I brought up to him. But, I didn't have any sources to back it up.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/propaedeutic_v...

http://books.google.it/books?id=rTZhbJq8pJ0C&pg=...

jchthys (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-27 19:41:28

Here are some works by Claude Piron (French-speaking Swiss, but his English was relatively good):

[LISTO]
Psychological Reactions to Esperanto
Where is Myth? Where Reality?
Linguistic Communication (I read this today; it was really depressing)
The Language Challenge: Facing Up to Reality (a must-see)[/list]Actually, I think that most people have never heard of Esperanto, and are not antipathetic towards it—in fact, some people might even want to desire to learn it.

(I try to wear my green star pin whenever possible! I’m prepared to defend the language, as well as eager to bump into samideanoj.)

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