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Two kinds of people learn Esperanto. Which are you?

de 314 Rory, 20 de março de 2010

Mensagens: 27

Idioma: English

314 Rory (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 03:45:19

It seems to me like there are two kinds of people who learn Esperanto. Those that love languages and are gifted at them. Then there are those like me, who are truly awful at them, but are determined to break out of the confines of their own language.

I came to study Esperanto out of desperation. I'm at seminary at the moment and had a horrible time trying to learn Biblical Greek (24 ways to say the word "The"!!!) and a worse time learning Hebrew. I felt overwhelmed by the amount of paradigms I had to learn for both languages, and because I never mastered those, nothing else made sense either.

This also comes after various other attempts to learn French, German, and even Swedish.

So, after all these, Esperanto has been bliss! Its the first language that made sense at every step of the way, and while I've still got a long way to go, I can sustain a lengthy conversation in Esperanto, and read quite a lot with out the aid of a dictionary. I'm encouraged enough to want to become fluent.

Anyone else out there learning Esperanto because you failed in your attempts to any other language?

ceigered (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 04:06:53

Somewhat unrelated, but because EO has a regular "declension-like" system (ekz. -on, -an, -en, -ojn, -ajn kaj tiel plu), I reckon you'll probably find (Ancient) Greek a lot easier - at least I did with Latin ridulo.gif I found that because of EO it's easier to pick the general tendencies of declension patterns, e.g. accusatives in Latin always end in -m.

Anyone else have that?

RiotNrrd (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 05:15:11

German: Three years in high school, one and a half in college. Straight A's.

French: Three years in high school. Also straight A's.

Ability to speak either, at even a two-year old child's level: HAHAHAHA I wish[1].

With Esperanto, I blew past the equivalent maximum proficiencies I had achieved in German and French within months. AND it stuck with me.

I had a desire to be bilingual, but the talent of a monolingualist. Esperanto let me achieve my goal in spite of my talent.

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[1] Although, to be fair, those classes were thirty years ago, and I was probably a better speaker right after school than I am now. I could, perhaps, have been at the level of a three year old[2] back then.

[2] OK, a three year old who was forced to read Goethe.

Evildela (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 05:45:32

I studied Japanese for five years, and after four years all I can remember is how to say my name, and where I live... oh I can also count, and for some odd reason I remember the word for flower.

But there is only one reason I started learning Esperanto, and that's because I believe in an international language. Thus the only way a language will become international, is if people actually learn it.

The thing that keeps me going is the way Esperanto pulls you in. After one month of study I can already converse with people – though my grammar sucks, but at least people understand me.

ceigered (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 10:47:17

@ riotnrrd - then again, school based language learning is notoriously horrible. I think it's only until one gets to uni that language classes actually manage to teach you things lango.gif (I've learnt more Indonesian in 3 weeks at University than I have during 8 years at school).

jan aleksan (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 11:24:35

@314 Rory

Interesting, but i don't think you are in the category of people that have difficulties with languages.

At least, you're interest for foreign language is not a common thing ( I don't speak about the US only, also for europe). So, the fact that you went into a language like ancient greek is a proof that you have a real interest for languages.

I suggest you to take a look at the dutch (because it's quite close to English) and Malaysian (because it has an easy grammar, and use latin alphabet).

Demian (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 12:30:34

I'm one of those who have been trying to learn a language for years but never succeeded. I've tried my hands on Russian, French, German, Spanish and Arabic in the past five years but all I've learnt is how to say 'Hello'!

Then I came across Esperanto and the information that was available in English about Esperanto took me to seventh heaven. I thought, may be this was what I'd always been looking for! I couldn't find any books here. Even the local library didn't have even a single book either on or in Esperanto. I began to work, saved money bought a computer and learnt Esperanto with the help of e-books. I made quick progress with the basics but now it seems to me that ESPERANTO IS JUST ENGLISH WITH Os! and nothing else! It has been more than an year since I heard about Esperanto for the first time and I've already spent more than three months learning it. And as I'm making progress, I'm finding Esperanto is not as logical as its proponents claim it to be. Here are a couple of famous examples:

poemo, poeto, poezio (three radicals)
hospitalo, malsanulejo, apoteko, klinko (four radicals)
malsimpla, komplika (two radicals)
komputilo, komputero (two radicals)....

And there is no reason, why can't we use

Vivscienco (biology), bilkomputilo (abacus), astroscienco (astronomy)....

The list is long but I guess you got the idea! When it comes to sciences, the condition is so despairing that sometimes I regret why I did learn this language. The terminology which exists is, in any sense of the word, is as difficult as it can be. Instead of creating words, the vanguards of our language, the PIV and the AdE simply prefer to copy them from SO-CALLED-INTERNATIONAL languages! This is hypocrisy!

So in a nutshell:

I'm one of those who was awful at languages before I learnt Esperanto and after having learnt that(although only basic), I feel forlorn of all hope because I could not even learn the easiest language in the whole world!

Goodbye!

maratonisto (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 12:40:12

Kiam mi komencis lerni esperanton, mi parolis tri lingvojn perfekte kaj tri aliajn flue. Post un jaro de lernado mi parolas esperante pli bone ol tri "fluajn" lingvojn kiujn mi lernis ekde jardekoj.

When I started to learn esperanto, I spoke perfectly three langages and three other fluently. After one year of learning esperanto I speak esperanto better than the three "fluent" languages (including English) which I learned decades.

Evildela (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 12:57:14

ESPERANTO IS JUST ENGLISH WITH Os!
Doesn’t seem like it to me, it would be more correct to say "Esperanto is just French with Os" as there’s more French words then English in Esperanto...

I believe that if Esperanto fails to become the international language, then there is no hope for any constructed language against the rise of English and Chinese.

5KFunRun (Mostrar o perfil) 20 de março de 2010 13:51:28

314 Rory:
Anyone else out there learning Esperanto because you failed in your attempts to any other language?
Well, I had three years of high school French, and know (almost) nothing now. But I'm not sure if I would call that a failure because it wasn't really an attempt. I didn't care that much back then.

I wish that I had, at that age, the interest in languages that I have now.

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