I'm surprised by the attitude of some that something must be immediately practical to be of any value. I say if something makes you happy and makes you more likely to be in a good enough mood to pass the happiness on or to help others, then that is a very admirable reason. Maybe if more people made time to do what brings them joy, the world would be a slightly better place.

With languages in particular, I've discovered a whole new world of literature, art, music, people, and a perspective on my own culture that could never have been gained by just expecting people to speak English to me all the time. I've also made a friend of ten years that I'll keep in touch with for many more to come. That alone has been worth the effort of learning a foreign language.

An Esperanto forum of all places is the last place I would have expected to see English language chauvinism.

Of course, it's a very harmless hobby learning other languages and one would have to be a total Grinch to deny people who enjoy that their pleaure.

However, I think I might see where Genjix is coming form. It is an undeniable fact that to acquire (in adulthood) a sufficient command of a foreign language to get a real feel for the culture of another country, to easily read books in that language, to socialise with native speakers of that language - in short to really profit from knowing the language - a major investment in time (if not money) is required.

This point is confirmed by some of the posts in this thread.

So Genjix might argue that if all you end up doing is communicating at a level not much different to that you would experience in taking advantage of the eksterlandano's knowledge of your own language, then it could seem a bit pointless.

I imagine also that he might justify his own interest in Esperanto by pointing out that most learners of Esperanto can quickly see the possibility of reaching a decent level in Esperanto without anywhere near the same massive investment require to obtain mastery of a national language.

To this he might add that Esperanto provides access to people in many different countries who would not so quickly tire of his lack of proficiency in the Esperanto, as they would surely do faced with an inadequate command of their mother tongue. This is the classic 'Esperanto puts everybody on the same footing' argument.

Whether English is quite so universal (and at what level of command) - well that's a different issue.

So when I hear of people studying umpteen different languages I do think, maybe you are a gifted polyglot, but if you are like most of us I doubt that you really speak these languages, that you would be socially comfortable with a native speaker.

I could say that I speak French, my pronunciation is quite good, and my ability to guess the meaning of many words in context is also good, and I know quite a bit of grammar. But, at the same time, I am well aware that my command of the language is pretty paltry compared to that of an educated native speaker.

I use Linux, edit Wikipedia, speak Esperanto, study astronomy (our future is in space), write articles, promote Bitcoin and develop Free Software.

I see these as assembly pieces for a grander future narrative. Our development into a non-coercive free world. Likely a few of these inchoate projects will turn out to be evolutionary cul-de-sacs, but the ideas and concepts are there. That's my personal reason for learning Esperanto (as you asked). Call me techno-anarchist or hacker. The benefits of Esperanto are definite.

My #1 goal is free information. Esperanto facilitates information transfer. The thought of an entire body of Chinese duplicating our progress is shocking. One day English will fade and maybe our minor accomplishments too due to lack of recognition. If we had Esperanto then everybody would be making many redundant cultural backups in their own languages.

The "90-9-1" rule states that 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content without contributing.

When you sell language learning as anything beyond a hobby then that's a lie. If you do then I'll ruthlessly rationalise like a businessman; are people really suggesting that you invest hours learning a language you'll hardly use? But to say I need to learn French because we're neighbours and that's what neighbours do is a false dilemma. Yet I certainly see the language-learning siren song of words and beautiful writing.

I'm not a philistine. English is great. It's fun to marvel at words and appreciate the language-sex of a well constructed word-assembly. But it's easy to forget wrapped in this cocoon of language-geeks, the existence of history-geeks, sports-geeks, computer-geeks, art-geeks, science-geeks, ...

So, no-one here speaks jive??

Genjix:As someone said above, once you learn one programming language you've learnt them all (especially a difficult one).

C++, Python, GNU Assembly, PHP, Perl, clisp/scheme, ... bunch of others

Never cared enough to learn another language. What's the point? It's a gigantic waste of time unless you plan to live in the country and not worth the time investment. Whole world speaks English and in places that don't (and these are very few having spent 5 years travelling) you can point and make chicken sounds or learn the alphabet. Usually if you stop enough people in the street someone will speak passable English to help out.

But if you enjoy learning languages then more power to you. But not everyone does and it's wrong that some on this forum think it should be forced on people as mandatory.

Yes it is "wrong" that some on this forum think it should be forced on people as mandatory - because I believe that statement is incorrect. I don't think anyone here seriously reckons it should be mandatory outside the education system, in which case I'd also say I don't think it should be mandatory for people to be good at maths, writing, reading, public speaking, being able to recite the alphabet, or knowing what "Mars" is. But I think they should all be mandatory in the education system, and I think that's how most people feel. Otherwise we don't empower children, and force them into a tight mould of "things that are most popular".

(Leaving things up to children after all is educational suicide, since their overconfidence that they already know all they need to would mean they wouldn't bother learning anything deemed "useless" if they could. Eudemonic, maybe, but with the scales tipped that far to blind happiness and leisure it'd be a sin. Another example - my sister couldn't remember what a conical flask is however many times we told her. If she had been given the linguistic insight that "con" in "conical" is the same as "con" in "cone", it would have been much easier (in the end I explained that to her). The education system rarely teaches that useful stuff though because it's considered silly and incorrect to look at words like that (it's consider far more intelligent to make new, completely removed meanings for existing words and then berate people for not understanding you because your using the word in your new inverted-logic-over-thought-out sense), and thus it's rather inefficient and increasing the strain on students).

While I mostly disagree with what you've said, it's more the way you've said it that has caused me to do so. I do agree that if someone doesn't want to learn extra languages when they have no reason to (e.g. going to the country, interest in the country, interest in languages in general, empowerment so you can choose WHO you speak to rather than having to be forced to speaking to the small population of English speakers), it's not productive at all and a waste of time - I believe that's what you're saying yes? After all I can't disagree with that, no way I can be stuffed learning Romanian etc seriously when I've neither the time nor energy, and if it wasn't for the fact that languages is my hobby, I doubt I'd be working on them (EO included) at all.

3rdblade:So, no-one here speaks jive??

Stuff Esperanto for the International language lets all learn this!

The ironic thing I find about colloquial Australian English and African American Vernacular English is that both actually have a relatively large amount of similarities as far as vowels go (minus some obvious differences, like the American "r") and a few smaller similarities colloquially, and the reason why they don't seem to sound alike at all seems to be the tempo and intonation

erinja:

samueldora:In between I discovered that with some extra vocabulary I could understand basic Yiddish (if not written in hebrew letters).

I encourage you to learn the Hebrew writing system for writing Yiddish. The alphabet is not too hard and the spelling system used for writing English Yiddish is much easier than the spelling system used for Hebrew (though Hebrew loanwords maintain their Hebrew spelling, which means you have to make a guess or look up the pronunciation in a dictionary)

Yiddish reading at the "Yiddish Academy" online

Yiddish at Omniglot

Thank you for the links, erinja!

ceigered:(Leaving things up to children after all is educational suicide,

While I am egalitarian, even for those who are less so, it is incredibly wasteful, for productivity, to have the top 1% of students, which I always was on these state exams, have to do the kind of rote, teach for the test learning that the bottom 1% of students on the test take. I was self-directed and go on a Deweyite learning curve where I would really be learning, and advancing at my own speed, not going along with everyone else and doing this rote for the test memorization.

Standardization is the thief of creativity and creativity robs standardization.

Education is moving to a point where there is no depth, no love of learning, and no respect for the transormative power of education. Much of this is a direct result of standardized tests and limited teacher autonomy and resources. The weekly cycle of cover the standard: Powerpoint Lecture -> Read the Chapter -> Do your worksheet -> Scantron on Friday. move on to next state standard then rinse and repeat crushes any love of learning.

I would rather see that we foster a love of learning, go deep on interesting topics then work on them in a meaningful project based way rather than the drive-by, inch-deep mile wide education system that we have become. If we work in a meaningful way the questions about math and science will come and apply to a realworld situation instead of being taught in abstract isolation.

I feel the same as you Genjix. Unfortunately, the problem with the education system is that it's not doing a good enough job to the point where some might as well just be off on their own tangent.

Anyway, high achievers are a completely different mess, and should probably be handled on case-by-case basis as should many other outliers in the education system (although even then I am very cautious of the idea of giving them extra freedom - I feel a chronic problem with the "high achiever" mentality with schools is that smart kids are given more credit than they deserve, unrealistic expectations and are treated as if they are a higher being than their peers (once again, a hard to nail down problem) - humility may be required). The rest should be subjected to a more compatible and flexible regime, without a lot of the bureaucracy educators are subject to and thus students are too.

(about abstract isolation, it's not all too bad. I can imagine that if relevant context is always used to teach, students will only become accustomed to what's relevant and thus situations they are not prepared for will stump them - a balance is needed maybe? In fact, the current balance isn't too bad, just a whole mass of minor problems in the entire system isn't helpful lol)

Genjix:Education is moving to a point where there is no depth..Much of this is a direct result of standardized tests and limited teacher autonomy and resources...

Agreed. I hope the present government reverse this trend (I'm making an effort not to name political parties here).