Al la enhavo

New Member with questions

de Traduku, 2006-marto-04

Mesaĝoj: 33

Lingvo: English

Esben87 (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-26 00:36:44

I'd like to add my actual reason for learning Esperanto. A couple of years ago, a couple of friends and I thought it would be fun to be able to speak together without anyone else's understanding. A very childish idea, I'm quite aware of that. Nevertheless, it made us all begin to take courses using Kurso de Esperanto.

I guess my reasons for learning Esperanto are somewhat different from everyone else's, however I'm having a lot of fun with it which is the point, right?

vaelen (Montri la profilon) 2006-julio-27 22:07:03

I'm all over the board. Part of the reason I'm learning Esperanto is that I've studied German and Japanese and I wanted to learn another language. Japanese was really frustrating to me, because after 4 semesters of college study I couldn't even read a newspaper or converse about anything more detailed than what a tourist would need to know how to say. I had a friend who is an Esperantist, and he was always telling me about Esperanto so I thought I'd give it a try. I really want to teach it to my wife and daughter (she's 3), so that we can speak it when we need some privacy. (In fact, maybe not to my daughter just yet... haha)

On the other hand, I'm a nerd and I have friends who are fluent (or as fluent as you can be) in Klingon and Quenya. I'm a computer programmer by trade and am studying Linguistics at my University. But those weren't my main reasons for learning Esperanto. (After all, if I wanted to learn a crazy language just to learn it, I would have gone for Klingon or Quenya.) I wanted a language that I could use to talk to real people about real things. I wanted a language with a literary and musical tradition that I could enjoy. Esperanto offers these things where other conlangs don't.

g12345 (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-03 19:56:29

I started learning esperanto in October 2005. After three months of learning I translated the Kurso de esperanto in the slovenian language!!! Now I know that I made some mistakes while translating from esperanto but from this you can realise that learning esperanto is very easy especially if you know any other language. I'm fluent in italian and I studied latin in secondary school.

The first time I heard of esperanto was in secondary school when studying english. In the classroom we red one text about esperanto. I liked very much the idea of one language easy to learn that is no'ones property.
I'm 27 years old, I'm a teacher by profession.

Shawna (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-04 20:59:55

I have taken classes in Spanish, Russian, and Cherokee. Because I moved around a lot growing up, I had to deal with varying degrees of teachings. I was in a Spanish 3/4 combined class in high school in Alaska, but when I moved to Oklahoma, it turned out that, for a Spanish 4 student, I was really behind, and had to cram a lot of catch-up to get up to speed.

I had to do the same thing when I went from two years in Russian in high school and I attempted to continue in college. My college had placement tests for Spanish, French, and German, but none for Russian, so they just placed me in Beginning Russian II. I found out that my pronunciation was wrong, I hadn't learned two verb cases, etc. All this because my high school teacher was formerly from East Germany and learned Russian there, and my college professors were from Moscow and the Baltic Republics. I ended up dropping the Russian.

When I took Cherokee, I had another problem. We had a teacher and a native speaker. Our teacher knew maybe a little more than we did, but because the native speaker didn't have a certificate to teach, he could only sit there and correct the teacher when she screwed up. Needless to say, in a year and a half of Cherokee, I learned very little.

In Russian and Cherokee, I had to learn a new alphabet (cyrillic) and a syllabary (Cherokee). The Cyrillic wasn't bad, but the Cherokee syllabary is a horror. Many of the symbols used closely resemble each other, differentiated by a squiggle here or there. I never could memorize it.

Spanish drove me nuts because of all the irregularities and the different cases.

I got interested in Esperanto when a guy I dated turned out to know a little. I looked into using an email correspondance course, but it didn't click with me. This time, with the help of a computer program, this site, plus watching the online Esperanto channel and listening to Esperanto music, I'm actually getting better.

Right now, correlatives are making my head hurt, but I know I'll get it down eventually. It's still much easier than other languages. I jumped for joy when I saw how easy verb construction was. No irregular verbs, yay!

Shawna

Talking Pie (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-04 22:15:01

My dad used to mention Esperanto a bit when I was growing up. Just here and there every couple of years. He wasn't quite accurate in his description of what it was, but he told me enough that I would know what 'Esperanto' meant when I heard it.

Then, a couple of years ago, whilst browsing Wikipedia quite randomly, I came across the entry for Esperanto. It would suffice to say that I very much liked the idea of the language. And I was very happy to then find at the bottom of the page a link to Lernu!

So I began to learn. On and off, but I've always considered myself an Esperantist, even in my off-periods.

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Mia patro foje menciis Esperanton, kiam mi estis maljuniĝas. Nur foje ĉiu malmultaj jaroj. Li ne estis preciza, kun kion li diris, sed li diris al min sufiĉa, ke mi scius signifon de 'Esperanto', kiam mi aŭdis ĝin.

Tiuokaze, antaŭ du jaroj, dum hazarde rigardadas Vikipedion, mi trovis la 'Esperanto' paĝon. Sufiĉus diri (ĉu tio valida diraĵo en Esperanto?), ke mi tre ŝatas la ideon de Esperanto. Kaj tiuokaze, mi estis tre feliĉa trovi ĉe suda la paĝo ĉeneron (korekta vorto?) al Lernu!

Do, mi komenciĝis lerni. Parte. Sed mi ĉiam kontemplis min kiel Esperantisto, eĉ kiam mi ne tro ekzercas.

dygituljunky (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-09 06:50:44

Saluton, Ben.

I'm Bill, I'm a police officer, and I've been studying Esperanto for two years. For me, the most difficult part about learning Esperanto is that there are just enough word roots similar to Spanish and Esperanto is so easy to learn, that I started throwing Esperanto roots into my Spanish conversations at work. Needless to say, I had to shelve Esperanto for a while.

As to why I started learning Esperanto: I've been interested in linguistics since college (where I got a degree in Anthropology). The problem was that, until I found Ido, there weren't any easy languages to learn. While initially reading about Ido, I discovered Esperanto and the far greater number of speakers and jumped right on the band-wagon.

To me, it seems that most Esperantists have at least one thing in common: the desire to speak to someone who speaks a different natural language. From that, I'm guessing that most Esperantists are either globally-minded and/or culturally curious. As for me, I'm both.

Whatever your reason for joining the Esperanto community, it's valid. And there are people of all ages and walks of life in the 2+ million strong community, including folks your age who are native speakers (who grew up in an Esperanto-speaking household and in the Esperanto commnunity).

Bonvolu kaj bonan ŝancon,

Bill

william (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-12 12:12:55

hello, i am 15 years old and learning esperanto for over a year now. I think the idea of an international language is great! I myself am fluent in three languages including english and i know a bit of spanish and italian.

esperanto was quite easy for me to learn but i am not yet fluent in speaking it since i am the only esperantist here.

william

Soma N. (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-16 18:13:15

Novico Dektri:Saluton. Im 15, from Ottawa, Ontario.
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Why hello there, my name is Mason and I'm also 15 and living in Ottawa, Ontario. If you would be so kind as to post the website for the ottawa club I'd appreciate it. ridulo.gif Maybe I'll see you there.

As to why I started to learn Esperanto, no reason really. I've known about it for a while and one day just before the summer started I opened up Firefox and typed in Esperanto in Google and that's pretty much it.

By the way, which school do you go to Novico Dektri? I go to Glebe Collegiate Institute (GCI).

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-17 03:26:50

Novico Dektri:
I think that with a 1/2 hour of study every day, you cn acheive reasonable fluency in maybe five or six months. I'm trying the "intensive study" method so I believe that at the rate I'm progressing I might be able to function okay at a Universala Kongreso in another two or three months. And "average intelligence"? I don't think it matters much. Didn't Zamenhoff design la Internacia Lingvo to be learned by rural farmers and such with little to no time on their hands as well as everyone else? I think half an hour study and being of average intelligence would be more than sufficient.
I'm always somewhat wary of pronouncements of how long it should take someone of average intelligence to learn. I don't the facility with languages and intelligence are necessarily very closely linked. I have met extremely smart people who have had a horrible time studying languages and never had much success with it, and people who were not necessarily that bright in any other aspects of their life, who were pretty good with languages. Sort of like how someone can be awesome at math and science but horrible at writing, or vice versa. Who's to say if this person is of "average" intelligence, whatever that means anyway?

This is why I hate it when beginners ask me (not that anyone here is asking me, btw) how long it should take someone of average intelligence to learn the language, studying X hours a day. I never know what to tell them, not only because I don't know how good they personally are with languages, but also because there are so many other factors in play - when they "study", exactly what are they doing? Memorizing vocab, reading, writing, speaking, some combination of the above? There are lots of ways to "study" a language that will get you nowhere fast. Have they studied other languages before and if so, which ones? And so forth.

Anyway. I just want to let you guys know that just because you're perhaps not progressing as fast as you wanted doesn't mean you're stupid and doesn't mean you're bad at languages, there are other factors. Not to mention that one person's "I'm doing great, I'm moving so fast!" might be (objectively) less progress than someone else's "I'm so frustrated, I'm not moving nearly as fast as I wanted", depending on what kind of expectations each person had of the language, how fast they wanted to move, etc.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2006-aŭgusto-17 03:33:37

By the way, to actually reply with someone on topic for this thread - I originally learned Esperanto because I wanted to speak something other than English fluently, and I heard Esperanto was easy. And I was 14 years old and I had a friend who spoke 2 languages other than English fluently (due to her parents, who were from foreign countries with two different languages) and I was jealous that she spoke three languages and I spoke only one. And I told myself that a goal of mine was to "beat" her at languages, and I had to start somewhere.

And building on the "secret language" thread, it wasn't the reason why I learned Esperanto, not at all. But it does give a certain satisfaction when I'm with Esperanto speakers, and I can speak with them loudly, in public places, about personal things that I definitely wouldn't speak about in public if I were speaking the local language, or even a language that very many people speak ("Hey you know that bad case of athete's foot I had? Well my entire toe oozed green fluid then it turned blue and fell off! So are you still having that problem with that anal rash you were telling me about?" and so forth)

It gets to the point where in some cases you almost regret it when you're at Esperanto events and you can no longer gossip/complain about the people/things/events around you in Esperanto, because they will understand you - no more complaining about how long and boring presentations are, within earshot of the organizers.

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