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What National Language Does Esperanto Most Closely Resemble?

af jsewell94, 27. jul. 2009

Meddelelser: 29

Sprog: English

jsewell94 (Vise profilen) 27. jul. 2009 22.23.27

Saluton cxiuj!

The title of this post is pretty self explanatory. So what do you guys think?

jchthys (Vise profilen) 27. jul. 2009 23.58.16

It’s really hard to say. On the outside, it resembles Spanish and Russian, soundwise. Most of its roots are also from Romance languages. However, its grammar is much closer to non-Romance languages. I recommend that you read Claude Piron’s article Esperanto, a western language?.

69UM24OSU12 (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 03.17.13

The pronunciation of the letters is pretty close to Italian, with a few exceptions of course. (c,j for example), but as jchtys noted, the structure and grammar isn't along the lines of romance languages. The accusative frees the word order. There are fewer rules than in most other languages. For example, adjectives may either precede or follow nouns. I've noticed that many speakers tend to place these elements in the order that they would be placed in their native languages. Esperanto allows that freedom.

languagegeek (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 04.54.40

I think the phonology is unarguably Slavic.

In my opinion, the similarity of Esperanto grammar to Chinese or other east Asian languages is exaggerated. Chinese, for example, doesn’t generally mark plurals, doesn’t have a definite article, doesn’t mark tense, doesn’t mark case, doesn’t have pronouns specific to gender, certainly doesn’t have the whole correlative system...

While Korean and Japanese do have case, they largely ignore plural suffixes and pronouns, lack articles, use postpositions, use participles for subordination, have strict SOV word order, and have complex systems of honourifics. At least Korean doesn’t really have adjectives (uses participles instead).

I would say that Esperanto has an English-like vocabulary (a mix of Romance and Germanic roots).

In the end, I think Esperanto is basically a simplified and consistent western European language. Things like tense-marking, participles+auxiliaries, definite articles, pronouns instead of verb affixes marking person, the ability of roots to flow between different parts of speech, are all pretty north-western European (English and French esp.) One can add a few eastern European concepts like ĉu and ek. And there are certainly Esperanto innovations, like the correlatives and using suffixes as roots (aĵo, ino). But have a look at the tense/aspect system as outlined on this page:
http://esperanto.davidgsimpson.com/eo-verbforms.ht...
That is very very Romance/Germanic I think.

Miland (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 17.31.50

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.

jsewell94 (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 19.23.01

Miland, that is a good point. I would think that an English speaker would find it easiest just because many words/grammar is derived from English.

Frankouche (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 20.01.51

As french, i'm very happy that a lot of the Eo vocabulary is similar as french language. Grammar is far from latin languages but sometimes i find it too much indoeuropean.

But at least, Z did a good job okulumo.gif

Ironchef (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 20.03.48

If you ask the question "Which language do other people think you are speaking, when you speak Esperanto?" then at least in my experience the answer has to be Spanish. If they listen for a few more moments they then become confused as it stops sounding like Spanish and then....what? Portguese? Italian?" ... Maybe a dialect like Sardinian or Venetian? At which point the person says "please tell me, WHAT are you speaking?"

And then the explanations and the epiphany begins ridulo.gif

jchthys (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 20.11.42

I’ve got it! Soundwise, Esperanto resembles Romanian—Romance-sounding, but with lots of [ĉĝĵŝ] sounds that remind one of a Slavic language.

Ironchef (Vise profilen) 28. jul. 2009 20.18.04

jchthys:I’ve got it! Soundwise, Esperanto resembles Romanian—Romance-sounding, but with lots of [ĉĝĵŝ] sounds that remind one of a Slavic language.
I was going to say Romanian too. Romanian is very much a romance language; it has been argued that it's the closest language still resembling vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire but it's been invaded itself from Bulgarian, Hungarian and Turkish so it's as much as mix as Esperanto in that way ridulo.gif

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