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Fair Comment?

de sudanglo, 7 mai 2011

Contribuții/Mesaje: 63

Limbă: English

sudanglo (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 09:04:00

I came across this opinion in whilst browsing the Net.

The Esperantists consist of two groups. The polyglots who don't need to speak Esperanto, and the eternal beginners who will never speak Esperanto.

Miland (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 09:28:46

I'm not a polyglot. As for being an eterna komencanto, I suspect that if I had claimed to be one at Eastbourne, some people might not have believed me!

geo63 (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 10:48:42

sudanglo:I came across this opinion in whilst browsing the Net.

The Esperantists consist of two groups. The polyglots who don't need to speak Esperanto, and the eternal beginners who will never speak Esperanto.
All is black, the rest is white lango.gif

I can speak several languages but esperanto was my first foreign language and it has initiated the rest. And it's true - I don't have the need to use esperanto.

erinja (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 12:35:24

Maybe Esperanto is not so necessary for a speaker of English. A speaker of English can go anywhere in the world and in large cities, hotels will usually have an English speaker on staff, the English speaker can use a community like couchsurfing to get help in English, etc. But if a monolingual speaker of Lithuanian visits China, the Lithuanian speaker probably has no choice but to use an organized tour, because I doubt that any hotels or signage will use any Lithuanian. Lithuanian is a small language and the Lithuanian will furthermore have a big problem finding other Lithuanians abroad, outside of Europe. Esperanto could be helpful to this Lithuanian; it is a way to avoid using a large tour group and to meet the local population using a common language.

bartlett22183 (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 20:27:21

I am beginning to be of two minds about the eternaj komencantoj. For a long time I considered myself one, and I still would not considered myself genuinely competent in the language. (I have never even had the opportunity to enter into a conversation.) However, in my own case, I am finding it a matter of usage more than anything else. About all I did was look at some instructional books but never actually used the language. Consequently, although I could grasp the grammar, I could not retain much vocabulary. (I had the problem with French almost fifty years ago.)

Now, however, I am in a brief correspondence in Esperanto with someone whose language I do not know and who does not know English. Our exchanges have been short (she also is a learner), but even so, I find that I am remembering a few more words. Whether there is an E-o group in my area for spoken practice I don't know, but correspondence (paper or email) with someone more competent in the language would probably improve my skill considerably.

The point, obviously, is that many eternaj komencantoj never really get around to using the language in practice, so they never really master it. To be sure, that is probably not so for everyone, but it may be the case for many.

Paŭlo

qwertz (Arată profil) 7 mai 2011, 21:15:56

sudanglo:I came across this opinion in whilst browsing the Net.

The Esperantists consist of two groups. The polyglots who don't need to speak Esperanto, and the eternal beginners who will never speak Esperanto.
I believe, if the network of language teachers and courses would be more closer, these beginners could plibonigi quite fast and realigi their ideas esperantlingve. I.e. some E-o lingve farmer's market idea. I.e. edukado.net (Katalin) and others are still working on this promoting. Maybe that eternal beginners are not very good at self-motivation without a teacher. I'm probably part of that learner group which are eternal looking for motivation to plibonigi their Esperanto language skills. I try to motivate myself with the small offer of contemporary E-o music (Vinilkosmo etc.)

3rdblade (Arată profil) 8 mai 2011, 09:49:44

I'm neither, I'm no super-fluent speaker yet (i.e. not as close as my level of English) but I speak it functionally every week and am not a beginner. And I'm no polyglot either. So therefore it's not a fair comment. It's a bit glib, really. True, I seem to be taking a while to get to the next level of fluency. I have 'plateaued' as language teachers say, but I can see my progess.

ceigered (Arată profil) 8 mai 2011, 10:42:22

It seems to be highlighting the far edges of both sides of the scale and then making a hyperbolic claim about them lango.gif Very black and white.

Those groups certainly do exist, and I think that they both coexist is a bit funny (which seems to be the point of the statement), but it's better put as "In Esperantujo, there's the polyglots who don't need Esperanto, the monolingual eternal beginners who can't figure out how to speak it, and then everyone else who's wondering why both of those prior mention groups are being used to represent EOujo as a whole"

erinja (Arată profil) 8 mai 2011, 12:19:23

bartlett22183:Whether there is an E-o group in my area for spoken practice I don't know
It seems from your profile that you live in NoVA, is that right? There is a DC group that used to meet monthly, now perhaps somewhat less than monthly, in a cafe on Capitol Hill. There is an annual Zamenhof banquet that many more people come to, with everyone (including me) who never shows up at the cafe meetings.

---

On polyglots, I think it isn't fair to say that polyglots don't need Esperanto. You could speak many languages and still not speak the language of the place you're in. You could speak ten European languages and it wouldn't help you very much if you're interested in tourism in Thailand, but the network of Esperanto speakers might be useful to you in that case.

paulopolo (Arată profil) 8 mai 2011, 14:59:34

Here you have these groups, in this poll:
http://en.lernu.net/pri_lernu/enketoj.php?id=5

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