What National Language Does Esperanto Most Closely Resemble?
by jsewell94, July 27, 2009
Messages: 29
Language: English
darkweasel (User's profile) August 1, 2009, 7:44:10 PM
As a listening example, I played Persone - Liza pentras bildojn on the CD player. Everyone said it reminded them of Spanish
After all, Esperanto has that ĥ sound (although rarely used), -o and -a word-endings. It seems less "musical" than Italian, although it has its ĉ/ĝ sounds. Maybe it also seems more like Spanish than like Italian because of its -as/-is/-os verbal endings - after all, Spanish uses these for plurals (Italian -i/-e I think...)
When I recently explained to someone (on an IRC chatroom) that the plural accusative ending of Esperanto nouns is "-ojn", he said it sounds Russian!
TLDR: Spanish.
mnlg (User's profile) August 2, 2009, 9:30:36 AM
darkweasel:TLDR: Spanish.Haha, it's "tl;dr"
ceigered (User's profile) August 2, 2009, 9:38:29 AM
andogigi (User's profile) August 2, 2009, 1:51:09 PM
darkweasel:That's funny. Everytime I play their song Povus Esti Simple, it reminds me of a Polish rock group called Wilki. I have no idea why I make this association.
As a listening example, I played Persone - Liza pentras bildojn on the CD player. Everyone said it reminded them of Spanish
Rogir (User's profile) August 2, 2009, 3:46:41 PM
The vocabulary is mostly French and German, with few words from other languages.
But often what language spoken esperanto sounds like depends mostly on the speaker's own accent, so a german speaker would still sound like a German, a british speaker like a Brit, ktp.
russ (User's profile) August 4, 2009, 7:05:06 AM
Miland:Perhaps we could ask another question which would throw light on it: of which national language would the speakers find it easiest to learn Esperanto? I would have thought that speakers of romance languages such as French would be strong candidates.There are different aspects of learning a language.
For phonetics, I've often heard that Croatians have the easiest time with Esperanto since the sounds in the 2 languages are most similar.
Polish also has the word accent on the penultimate syllable like Esperanto (except for various exceptions in Polish
For vocabulary, clearly most Romance and Germanic languages have an advantage.
For grammar, I suppose it's relatively simple for most people.
Ironchef (User's profile) August 4, 2009, 3:34:48 PM
russ:...For phonetics, I've often heard that Croatians have the easiest time with Esperanto since the sounds in the 2 languages are most similar......Polish also has the word accent on the penultimate syllable like Esperanto (except for various exceptions in Polish...When "Radio Verda" used a computerized (TTS or Text to Speech) voice to read some Esperanto a couple of months ago, I asked Arono what software he was using to create it; he pointed me to Ivona.com, a Polish TTS software. Much to my amazement I found that with just a basic knowledge of Polish phonology I could make it speak almost perfect Esperanto. So it does seem that Polish is closest, but is that just to be expected given Zamenhof being a Pole?
08/05/09: Correction -- my citation should have shown it was Russ I was quoting. thanks.
Miland (User's profile) August 4, 2009, 8:35:30 PM
Ironchef:In all honesty, I can't claim Russ's expertise on comparative East European phonetics. Mi vere ne skribis tion.Miland:...For phonetics, I've often heard that Croatians have the easiest time with Esperanto ..(except for various exceptions in Polish...
trans: I didn't actually write that.
Pharoah (User's profile) August 4, 2009, 8:54:00 PM
.The grammar reminds me of a very simple version of spanish with an added accusative. The vocab reminds me of Spanish and german.
No new observations here, but I thought I'd ad my