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Poll about the easiness/difficulty of Esperanto

de el_edu, 2009-julio-22

Mesaĝoj: 19

Lingvo: English

el_edu (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-22 20:44:36

Nowadays, English is the "de facto" international language. Many say that, in some future, Esperanto should be in that place, arguing, among other reasons, that it is a language much easier than English. But, to what extent is this proved? I would like to make a little poll for those persons who have studied both languages. Please, try to answer as objectively as possible. Thanks a lot.

Finally, if someone could translate this poll to other languages with forums in lernu!, I would be very grateful. It would be very interesting the comparison between different languages (I already wrote it in Esperanto and Spanish).

Thanks again rideto.gif

robinast (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-22 21:28:59

Though it is very difficult to give numeric judgements (what it is that is to be measured?), I voted for "at least 8 times easier".
I have started to learn languages in that order: Estonian (native), Russian, English, German, Spanish and Esperanto - and though I have gained fluency (more or less) only in the first three languages, I already had a pretty solid base for Esperanto when I started to learn it a bit more than a half of a year ago. But what if I had started with the Esperanto as my first foreign language for years ago and with the English only now? Definitely, I would have had much more problems with the Esperanto and far less with the English...

Vilinilo (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-23 00:02:33

robinast:Though it is very difficult to give numeric judgements (what it is that is to be measured?)
Me too, I can't put a number to that... Even worse using a geometric scale! But I voted for 8 times, because I took about 8 years to master English and with only one year of seriously studying Esperanto I'm already able to communicate.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-23 02:47:03

I'm a native English speaker, so I didn't "study" English the way a non-native speaker would. Therefore, I can't really make an assessment.

However, I took German classes in high school and college for a total of 4.5 years, and French at just the high school level for three years.

Based on that experience, I think I'm on pretty solid ground when I estimate that one month of Esperanto is equal to about one year of German or French (I actually found German to be a bit easier than French, but both were still pretty hard). That makes Esperanto about 12x easier than French or German.

For me, of course. Others mileage may vary, depending on a whole host of factors, such as innate language talent, prior exposure to other foreign languages, what kinds of languages those were, etc., etc., etc.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-23 07:22:05

I'd say just as easy as English or any other natlang. I can much easier pronounce german or french and be understood than I can Esperanto, because with Esperanto importance is placed on very-easy-to-miss parts of the word, like -'j' for plural and -a/e/i/o/u final vowel distinctions.

Additionally Esperanto words have formidable syllable groups and formations inside of them, I find Swedish much easier.

If Japan officially switched the language to romaji and standardised the amount of words with dual meanings I'd make that the world language - the only thing that I think prevents Japanese from beating Esperanto is that darned writing system rido.gif

As a written language, though, Esperanto is infinitely easier than anything else at the moment as far as I am concerned.

jsewell94 (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-23 07:53:01

I voted that it's at least 8 times easier. Just studying Spanish makes me realize how complex English really is. For the most part, Spanish has patterns set in place that are followed pretty consistently (Besides the few irregulars). But in English, we have like a 1000000001 irregulars. Not to mention the fact that our words are hard to pronounce for non-native speakers.

I think Spanish is 2x easier than English...and they say Esperanto is 4x easier than Spanish, so saying that Esperanto is 8x easier than english makes sense rideto.gif

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-28 18:56:28

Ceigered, it's surprising to hear you say that Japanese is relatively straightforward, other than the writing system. I have never studied it, so I don't really know, but I was under the impression that the grammar was extremely complex. Also, that "social" issues are very important, so you have to be very careful to use the right politeness level with the right person, to avoid causing offense. It sounds very complex to me. But perhaps you are not really referring to romanized standard Japanese, but to a sort of "pidgin" Japanese of the future, with much simplified grammar, politeness registers, etc.

If this is the case than I think English would be just as easy, if we are talking about a pidgin English without the irregular verbs etc.

I have always felt that it is easy to speak English badly (but understandably) but hard for a non-native speaker to learn to a native-sounding level.

I am surprised to see you say that you have difficulty making yourself understood in Esperanto. Have you actually found this to be the case (that is, that Esperanto speakers can't understand your spoken Esperanto easily), or is only a guess?

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-28 20:52:20

erinja:I was under the impression that the grammar was extremely complex.
It's not, it's actually rather straightforward, for what little I know about it, at least if compared to Italian. It is however markedly different than most European language, featuring an agglutinative morphology, with no gender, number or articles. The demonstratives resemble a lot the Kunrelativoj. There are perhaps three irregular verbs in total, or were there only two?

The only complication that I can think about is the different shades of formality. Oh, and the counters!

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-29 04:13:41

Hey Erinja haven't seen you in a while!
As mnlg said, it's quite straight forward, and I would have to say that it's a great base for learning agglutinative languages writing system aside. Thanks to Japanese, Finnish no longer looks so scary (still can't understand a word of it though).

As mnlg also said, those darned counter words are complicated, it's like saying 'loaves of' in front of 'bread' when talking about a number of them, BUT they apply to almost all things, and some counters work differently. I haven't learnt counters yet though.

A sort of pidgin Japanese in the future would be good, but not a full pidgin like the pidgins of English and romance languages, one that still has the precision that we see in Esperanto (a great reason to learn EO).

I also agree, however if I was a foreigner I guess I would learn English a lot more willingly than many other languages, despite the difficulties.

And in regards to my lack of understandability, it's mostly a guess. The main prob is that I skip 'j' quite often at the end of words and can confuse or meld the pronunciations of 'as' and 'is' (luckily, the future is always clear for me *pun intended*) rideto.gif
So, like your comments about learning bad English but hard to learn it well, the same applies to me and my pronunciation. I haven't had much speaking experience before though.

mnlg (Montri la profilon) 2009-julio-29 07:35:02

ceigered:[...] those darned counter words are complicated [..]
I have watched a Japanese quiz show once, where contestants have to find the correct counter word for different things in the least possible time.

However I am told that you can be precise enough, even if not perfectly precise, by using just a handful of them.

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