MAJOR CRITICISM: Esperanto asserts its neutrailty with all the languages in the world and yet it is based on European Languages.
The concept of a universal language like esperanto is a very good step for our future but we need to develop a totally new language instead of basing it on languages that are already here, as it conjures up unfairness to other languages that aren't involved!!!
@nahcey while esperanto is designed in a way that people with a native language that is latin based find it easier to learn i do not think it is needed to have a new language designed. esperanto is a beautiful language and i cant wait to start learning it. the majority of languages with a large speaking population is latin based or have strong influences from it like english, french, spanish, italian, etc. esperato is able to reach as many people as possible people in china seem to like it also
@nahcey It is not true. Truly, Esperanto has the western body (vocabulary) and the Eastern Soul (structure - morphology). It serves, therefore, to a neutral communication and more equitable than that we're having.
I find it hard to believe that this is a neutral language when the roots of the words are undeniably European in origin. How is that fair to the Asian language speakers?
no jodan, esperanto es una lengua mas , ni mejor ni peor, solo una mas y mas facil, al que le guste aprender que la aprenda. y al que no le gusta, que siga su curso . sirve tanto para hablarla y usarla como para poner en funcionamiento el cerebro y no hablar tantas pelotudeces como las que muchos dicen aca porque tiene panico de poner la cara. VIVAN Y DEJAN VIVIR EN PAZ.
Neutrality: Esperanto is not neutral. An auxiliary language can not be neutral unless it is completely a priori. Esperanto's grammar and vocabulary is based solely on Western Indo-European languages.
You're pathetic paranoid statement is typical of an impotent powerless hate filled moron. Blame the Jews for everything .... even Esperanto ..... LOL.
Ya, blame the Jews for your thinning grey h air too.
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
How many people speak Esperanto outside Europe and the US? Only 1 or 2 people on this video were nonEuropeans, one African and one Asian. I'm all for Esperanto becoming a lingua franca for the whole world but it looks like it's mostly a European thing.
its sounds latin based.. they don't want a world languiage cause then we might all get along and no more will there be wars and stuff.. its simple concept i will learn it
@HojoOSanagi thanks for feedback. its ver yinteresting i will learn it and then go to the simpler form IDO and... well the world neeeds a language and it does not hafta be english...
... Does Esperonto have a DEFINARY of words that fully define all abstract human concepts itself? Like God, Marriage, Calendar, Normal, Religion, Law, Sin, Perversion, Degeneracy, Bastard, Freak, Crime, Justice, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong?
... Or is Esperonto just another undefined vernacular whose word meaning requires reference to the words of another undefined vernacular like English?
this socialist bullshit is going to start another world war. fuck international language, fuck opening borders, and fuck people roaming free doing what they want. you want to know why I say that? because this very concept is saying fuck your country, fuck your heritage, fuck your language, fuck your flag. I say FUCK YOU. I will NEVER speak this BULLSHIT attempt at global socialization.
I never cease to be amazed at how people like you do not seem to have any brain capacity whatsoever. Go and die for your fucking country in a pub fight before you disgrace the Internet with any more vicious stupidity, you fucking idiot.
@grazhdaninrossii i served my country. i will defend my country until my diying breath before this bullshit. you are a hippie commie socialist piece of shit that amazes me and jumps off at the mouth before you know who you are talking to.
@00RSZEX Right on! The speakers of this crap are totally forgetting what language is all about: heritage, history, culture. By erasing the languages of the world, we are forgetting the pasts that shaped society and tongue to be what they are today. Languages are not just about communicating with people (which is ironic, as no one even speaks this language), they're so much more.
@pinkygirl1999 It should be. Those that are ranting against Esperanto are truly ignorant. The purpose of Esperanto isn't to have a universal language at the expense of national languages. The purpose is to have a language that everyone can learn as an auxiliary (or secondary language). IF everyone were to learn Esperanto in school you would be able to communicate on even terms with everyone else in the world.
"It's neutral, because it belongs to no single people or country"
Incorrect. Esperanto is purely European. In its time (late 1800s), Esperanto was great because Europe and America were the most powerful nations. But now China is becoming a world power and Chinese has to be taken into consideration.
These "rules" of Esperanto... why do certain cities get the letter "o" stuck on the end, and some not? Londono and Edinburgo but then you have Liverpool and Birmingham. Looks a bit random to me.
@JohnPersonage Well, smaller places generally are not translated, but you can say Liverpulo and Birminghamo. Like the cities here in Brita Kolumbio, Kanado: Surio (Surrey), Burnabio (Burnaby), Nov-Okcidentministro/Novŭestministro (New Westminster), Riĉmondo (Richmond), Vankuvero, Norda Vankuvero, Langlio (Langley), Abocfordo (Abbotsford), etc.
The unattractive features of the language are surpassed by the simple fact it exists at all. The most exciting news I've had in a very long time was to discover this language 2 days ago. The most disappointing news in a while was to discover there were newer and essentially failed attempts to replace it instead of just promoting it.
@sirach Dankon! I have a very bad memory so it will take a while but it's pretty exciting to know that the language exists and there's lots of help and information on the internet.
@P00P0STER0US Well, it still has its flaws, mainly its own expressions and grammatical quirks, but it is a fun endeavour nevertheless! I don't like the way its spelled, but it sounds actually very beautiful!
I began learning Esperanto around 13, and since then I have been on and off with the language, never really reaching any complete fluency. I hope now to actually take the endeavour seriously. I learned it; I might as well go all the way in terms of fluency, lol. I am now 21, still going!
@sirach Hey good for you! That's real dedication. I speak only English so some of the pronunciation is very challenging but I'd expect that. I can pronounce the sounds faithfully if I speak very slowly, but putting them together can be difficult. The phonetic "tri" still gives me a lot of trouble even though it should be simple. It's the ri that makes it hard. I'm still puzzled that the language includes a rolling r. I don't understand why.
@P00P0STER0US, Don't worry. I stil lhave problems with the consonantal cluster, 'str' like 'strato' (street) or 'strangulo.' I can't say "tre stranga!" without having to force myself, lol. Zamenhof's society was, well, a socio eŭropema, and the rollled 'r' is more common than the French r or the English r. But just as an introduction to languages, Esperanto provides an excellent basis. Se vi volas praktiki, ne hezitu kontakti min per mia e-poŝto. I need to practice Esperanto! :D Ĝis!
@sirach Esperanto is teaching me about English :) Learning the grammar and how it's compared with English has helped me recall that english grammar I learned in grade 8 twice a week. I made a learning CD for my car, so I just listen to my own Esperanto grammar lessons as I drive. Ĝis :)
@P00P0STER0US Kiel estas via Esperanto? Ĉu vi povas nun skribi kaj legi bazajn frazojn kiel tio ĉi? Yes, it definitely teaches you grammar clarifications, that is for sure.
From what I have heard it seems to have Latin as one of it's bases. I think that is why so many people think they hear Spanish and Portuguese. I think I will look into learning it this Summer online. Just to walk up to William Shatner and say hello how are you in Esperanto to see his face might be a priceless moment.
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me informe sobre su estupida lengua no hay lengua mas rica que el castellano usa todas las reglas y su mierda de idioma fue el sueño de una mierda de hombre que quiso antes de morir que otras mierdas hablen su mierda de creacion ya que no servia como oculista y mas encima es como estar escuchando a cualquier europeo hablar su idioma por fonetica para los sed americanos nos suena aleman o italiano voy a hacer lo posible para erradicar su mierda de lengua inventada
Que mal te expresas, y no me refiero a tus sentimientos hacia el esperanto, sino a la manera que estupras el castellano. Ve a avergonzarte a ti mismo con tus amigos arios; no te auto nomines hispanófila hasta que sepas expresarte bien.
if your going to put time aside for a language no body really speaks, why not try learning a already accepted language, such as italian, german, english, or spanish not this useless stuff
@whitesoxfan1293 You obviously didn't watch the video or else you'd learn that the language IS used and it only takes a few months to master. Compare this to the years it takes to learn natural languages!
It doesn't have too much of a practical application outside of the Esperanto community, but it's certainly not worthless.
If you want a International Language that really sounds like Spanish take a look at interlingua...its like listening and actually undertanding a person speak spanish with a weird accent. In conclusion Esperanto is the biggest and most succesful International language I say why not follow the road for HUMAN UNITY.
Spanish words are classified, its where the accents its suppossed to be. Take the word rapido (sorry i cant do the accent because my lap top wont let me) any way its supposed to sound like this; RA-pi-do. Now in Esperanto all the accents are made on the 2nd vowel so same word sounds like this in Esperanto ra-PI-do. And all Spanish words have accents on either on the 3rd to the last, 2nd to the last or last syllable without following a especific rule, Esperanto follows a simple rule....
...thing and if more people uses it the richer it gets. For example. (true story) in Mexico there was a comedian named Cantinflas and most of his jokes he would talk and talk and not say anything at all and some people found it funny so the made up a word "Cantinflear", and now it a verb in the Real Spanish Academy Dictionary. So Esperanto would get so much richer if more people would use it. One quick example how Esperanto is not like Spanish, i dont want to get into the rules but the way ...
...some people around the world doesn't like English because they associate the language with a nation, so if they dont like the US or Australia or UK they wont like to speak English. So keep in mind Esperanto is meant to be NEUTRAL. I dont see Asian people who are learning English or any other European language complaining because of the roots of the language, or because it doesn't resemble their mother language, or because they sound like Spanish or another language. The language is a living..
Also, I can't understand how we are not equal with eachother when we speak other languages. I can't speak english fluently but that doesn't mean I feel "inferior" or something like that when I speak with english people. The argument of "equality" and "same oportunities" has no ground at all. Moreover, how can a language be rich when it uses the same verb type for all the persons??? Estas, estas, estas..It's miserable, compared with spanish for example. Not to speak about the "usefull" argument..
Ok I have read all the comments and without insulting anyone i think everybody is missunderstanding the point of Esperanto..(This comment is my contribution for Dec 15th for those who are Lernu members they understand!!)
Four days ago I found about Esperanto and like everybody here I too had my negative comments about this relative new language. But after a few minutes thinking about it I became convinced that a true Neutral language is needed to unite all people. Not as a forced big culture
But as a Bigger Culture with many little cultures within. Esperanto is just a tool that will help us understand each other regarless if the language came from Latin roots or any other. English is used by many countries, and it might be easier to learn than some other languages like French for example, but English is still a national language and lets face it some people doesnt like English at all.
I really wanted to write some more, but I have to go to a "session" (4/20)
estas estas estas = is is is- English is no more "rich" in this sense. You don't feel inferior because apparently you are sufficiently competent in English. However, for many others, English is not so easy. After you master the basics, and attempt to delve deeper in the language, it would be difficult to be on par with a native speaker. It would take years of dilligent effort.
Esperantists say that the ideal would be to have our native language and esperanto, so that we can communicate with people from all over the world. This is silly. I already have a great native language (greek) and I know english and spanish (more that 400.000.000 speakers). Why should someone learn esperanto?? Why? Moreover, judging from the video, esperanto sounds stupid. It sounds like a mentaly retarded person trying to speak spanish...
Where is Esperanto most widely used? In Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the former satellite nations of the old Soviet Union (including its Baltic republics), and in East Asia, particularly mainland China. It is also fairly well known in certain areas of South America, notably Brazil, and Southwest Asia. It is less well known in English-speaking North America, Africa, and the Muslem world.
Although Esperanto takes most of it's root words from Latin and Germanic language, the way the language functions with its numerous prefixes and suffixes appeals to people who speak agglutinative languages such as Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian. The great flexibility of its word order appeals to people who speak languages like Chinese . And its easy-to-learn 16 rules of grammar have no exceptions! Esperanto's brilliance truly reveals itself only after you begin studying it.
I'll study it when you use dead languages for your root words, the way it should be done to make it international (or at least unbiased), instead of the current espanol clusterfuck
Does it matter what it stems from? Seriously? What matters is the possibility of a global language. That is something to be excited about. Can we please stop bickering about who loses and wins, we all win!
It does if you're trying to keep it neutral/international because the cultures which it DOESNT stem from basically lose and get overwritten by the culture it does stem from
The only way to keep it neutral is to choose a language which is dead or to invent an ENTIRELY new language (instead of borrowing from current ones)
People who speak Spanish, Italian or Portuguese do not understand Esperanto unless they study it. Esperanto is its own language and has its own culture that has developed in the last 100 years. Zamenhof DID choose a dead language to borrow from - LATIN! 70% of Esperanto vocabulary comes from a dead language. And BTW, Esperanto is most popular in China, Korea and Japan and none of the vocabulary was borrowed from those languages.
Well, moron, you're the one who thinks Esperanto and Spanish are the same language/culture. I speak Esperanto and Spanish and they're very different. You barely speak English.
Ah, yes, the response of the mentally inept. You can no longer defend your ludicrous views so you resort to name calling. Your argument is faulty. So much for you.
YAWN... You bore me... You know nothing about Esperanto. In the future you may want to refrain from making a fool out of yourself by trying to weigh in on subjects you know nothing about. Or not, suit yourself.
Somewhere there's a therapist waiting for your call.
Vi estas infaneca frenezulo kaj ege bezonas terapiiston antau ol vi dolorigas iun.
Since you're an expert on Esperanto I know you can read this - Oh, I forgot! You no NOTHING about Esperanto! Well, maybe you could get someone who speaks "Spanish" to translate it since Esperanto is, to quote you, an "Espanol clusterfuck." (You have such an impressive vocabulary.)
No I don't know Esperanto, but I know enough about romance languages to know that you just called me an infantile, crazy person and that I need a therapist
BECAUSE ESPERANTO IS A FUCKING SPANISH/ROMANCE LANGUAGE
Not bad! You got some of it. But I've spoken it around people who speak Spanish and Italian and they don't understand it at all. And you shouldn't comment on a language you haven't studied and don't speak.
P. S. - The reason you understood what you did of the Esperanto is because you speak ENGLISH! So much of English is also based on Latin. So maybe English is an Espanol clusterfuck too!
OK, backing off the name calling for the moment... You were able to read some of what I wrote because of similarity to English words, not Spanish. No one's denying Esperanto has vocab taken from European languages, especially Latin. Neutral words are a good idea but that's been tried over the centuries and they have a major flaw. People can't relate to them. I studied Suma by Barnett Russell which has no words common to any language. It didn't take off. Volapük preceded Esperanto and (Cont...)
was hugely successful... for a while. It turned out that it was too complex and the words, mostly taken from English, were too strange. Vola - from English "World", Pük - from English "speak." I happen to like Volapük myself but most people found it too difficult. Then Esperanto arrived a few years later and many of the Volapük people switch to easier, more familiar Esperanto. Volapük's words, though taken from English, were so distorted as to be unrecognizable.
You are unbelievably dense! Esperanto isn't USED??? Esperanto is all over the web! Esperanto has had continuous usage by a community of speakers for over a century! Esperanto is used in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio broadcasting. There are over 120,000 articles in Wikipedia and is the 21st largest Wikipedia. There's even a Google Esperanto!! You're ignorant. Study Klingon like Panzercannon suggests. Moron.
@rinntin English is the de facto Esperanto. As for "belonging" to English speaking countries, one could say Esperanto "belongs" to people who have been speaking it for years. A newcomer will always have difficulty fitting in. Esperanto might be easier to master, but English more than compensates it with the "installed base". English is the language we learn when we want to communicate across borders. Esperantists end up bitter like you, protective about Esperanto as if it was a national lang.
@Eikinkloster - You're wrong - I'm not bitter in the least! I have no delusions that Esperanto is likely to become the international language. I don't care. I use Esperanto and enjoy doing so. I love to travel and though I speak English, Italian, Finnish and some German, I don't have the time to learn Japanese or Korean so I check into those countries with Esperanto and have a ball!
@lianikam As I said in the post above - I really don't care. Esperanto was never designed to replace any language. I have used Esperanto many times in my travels and I enjoy doing so. I've met a lot of great people that way!
@rinntin Not really, Esperanto is mostly used in European countries and N. and S. America. Countries in Asia and Africa will have a harder time learning this because its to European, the way it is is very much based on Romance languages. A person who speaks Spanish or English can grasp this faster than a person who speaks Arabic or Mandarin.
@whiteipod2000@whiteipod2000 Actually, Esperanto is more popular in Japan and China than it is in many European countries. Although you are correct in stating that its vocabulary comes primarily from European languages (Latin & German) the grammar and syntax are very flexible and it has many agglutinative traits similar to Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish. This flexibility extends itself to include grammatical similarities with Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese.
I know how to speak spanish, so this language looks very easy to learn. im sure a speaker of any other romance language would agree as well. But i think English is the ruling language and will be for a long time. Its a shame that most languages have so many exception to their rules
I find it to make more sense to use a language with Latin base for international language rather than Chinese...Most the countries can at least Understand/Pronounce easily the words in Latin based languages. Plus the writting system is NOT very good. It would take YEARS and HOURS of schooling to learn ALL the characters as a second language, but sense they dont use them all the time like the Chinese they will forget them all very fast,Same happend to me in Japanese... Almost immposible...
er this is spanish, why can't you get it everyone speaks some English unless they are Chinese or course and there is no way you are going to get more than 10 percent of Anglosaxon speaking people to learn Chinese. Esperanto is the Sinclair C5 of languagues now f .off
I agree with christocr, ALL LANGUAGES ARE AMAZING!
and I should add - ALLES SPRACHEN SIND ERSTAUNLICH
y TODOS LOS LENGUAGES SON ASOMBROSOS!
but lets face it, you know how to read this and all these other comments and this website and the description and title of this video because you are speaking the lingua franca of the world, you guessed it - ITS ENGLISH. I doubt Esperanto - an amalgam of European languages - will ever enjoy the level of global usage that English has.
i imagine the EU might adopt it for political reasons, and then other bodies might insist on it e.g UN, then it will be hard for those who only speak english to function internationally...
i think esperanto is creepy, but might learn it just to stay ahead of the game.
yes, I just typed a multipage report on the globalization of English so I got some knowledge in mind. EU already uses ENGLISH to communicate, its de-facto. now that i hear this 'Esperanto' again, I must say it sounds very much like Romanian, a latin language with slavic features. true about anglophones not knowing other languages, there is really not an exceptional reason for a monolingual anglophone to learn anyother languages. I speak spanish, this, and am learning German so yeah.
I'd say that it is neutral in that it was intended to be neutral. The fact that the person who invented it based it more on what he happened to know about, European type languages, only speaks to a design choice not necessarily any intention to exclude.
It might have some problems, such as not being as natural as it could be physiologically speaking and in today's world with the use of computers and keyboards, the accents are unfortunate. The alphabet could have been purer.
Really? I thought I saw Ks and Cs and Ss or something like that. Please excuse me if I was wrong. There seems to be no way to have all three and not have overlap unless the sound is something different than English. Maybe.
@Maver - Careful there, at least in "regular" American English: 'sc' in science sounds exactly the same as 's' in snake or snape (whatever that means).
And the 's' in shake is nothing as it must combine with the 'h' to make a unique 'sh' sound that is different from 's'.
Just saying, that is not a good explanation of anything, but christocr's was, though I'll have to learn what 'ts' is. I'll take your word for it.
"The alphabet is one of the best features of the language: one sound per symbol and one symbol per sound."
The problem: Esperanto has far too many sounds. Zamenhof was heavily biased towards his native Polish when he chose the sound system of Esperanto. There is no reason for, say, a S-TS distinction of a SH-CH distinction in an IAL, let alone individual letters for consonant clusters like "ts."
Well, Esperanto has 28 distinct sounds and 28 symbols for those sounds (not counting digraphs). I don't care what those sounds are; I just care about the east of keeping track of them. English, on the other hand, has around 45 sounds (depending on which linguist you trust) with just a touch over half that many symbols to represent the sounds (and they do a very poor job at it). Which makes more sense to you?
There will never be any need for a spelling bee in Esperanto, thank god.
Comparing Esperanto to English is a moot point. The thing is, you aren't comparing Esperanto to other, modern IALS. Most modern IALS have a one-letter-one-sound alphabet without diacritic marks other letters you wouldn't be able to type on most keyboards. Lingua Franca Nova is a good example - they use X for the "sh" sound (which is the sound of that letter in Portuguese and Old Spanish.)
From what I've seen of LFN, it's quite good. I could understand much of it the first time I read a sample. The main reason I chose Esperanto is because of the consistent parts of speech markers (and the slightly slavic sound). I like having the pattern of specific endings being specific parts of speech.
LFN may have been easier for me initially since I know Spanish and some French, but like I said, the logical patterns of Esperanto drew me in. To each his own. All languages are fascinating.
Esperanto's part-of-speech markers are the worst. They simply don't work. The conversions between parts of speech are not regular at all. Justin B. Rye's "Learn Not to Speak Esperanto" (google it) has specific examples, such as timo/timi vs. nauzo/nauzi.
But the categories themselves are unnecessary (and Eurocentric.) The vast majority of the world's languages do not have an "adverb" category. Heck, most languages merge "adjectives" with nouns or verbs.
Yet you are perfectly okay with the thousands of anomalies in English, right? As I said, Esperanto is not perfect. But as a non speaker of either language, which language would be easiest and quickest for you to learn and use?
Your website link has given me an idea: Learn Not To Speak English. The only problem is that I doubt any website server has the hard disk space to accommodate all of the imperfections and exceptions to rules that would need to be listed for English.
Have I advocated English as an IAL? If someone advertised English as a simple language which is easy to learn, they would be lying. Likewise for Esperanto. A hypothetical English-ist might go around saying "Hey, English is less complicated that Sanskrit, man!" But it's irrelevant, because the question is not whether it's simpler than other languages, but whether it's simple enough for an IAL.
English is the mutt's nuts right now, and let's face it, most people don't get how badly natural languages suck for an IAL. Even at that, there are better candidates than English.
With that in mind, learning an IAL is a bit pie-in-the-sky anyway. Of the IALs, only Esperanto has a decent base of speakers right now (up to 2 million). I can listen to radio, write, and speak with people all over the world. I can't do that with any other IAL. Maybe LFN (or whatever) someday, but for now, no.
Oh it matters; we're stuck with English aren't we? I may suggest something logical like Turkish as a global language, but that won't really matter much (outside of Turkey) unless I can convince everyone else in the world.
All I'm saying is that between English as a world language and Esperanto, Esperanto wins in my mind because it takes about 10% of the time to be functional. There are some features I'd change a bit (like case markers), but all in all it blows English out of the universe.
The claim that Esperanto is 'neutral' is highly disputable. I'm a native French and Japanese speaker, and I'm pretty certain Esperanto is by far easier to study for French people than for Japanese people.
It was created before the development of modern linguistics, by an oculist. It no longer lives up to the modern standard of what we might call a universal language. Neutrality-wise, there are other languages that are far more competent, such as Lojban.
Yes, i agree with you when you say it's easier to learn if you speak French natively. I speak Brazilian Portuguese natively, and it's easy for me too, since i speak English as well.
I recognize a lot of traits in Esperanto. Some slavic traits, anglic traits, latin, but i'm not sure if i've seen an oriental trait yet.
My point is: if Esperanto has a trait from your root language (or one that you speak) , it's easier than otherwise.
The trait of the more eastern languages is the way words are composed of prefix, postfix, and infix. Japanese and Korean do this sort of thing (agglutinate).
sano = healthy
mal- = opposite (prefix)
-ul- = relating to person (infix)
-ej- = relating to place (infix)
malsanulejo = mal - san - ul - ejo
opposite of healthy person place
Hospital !
That is the power and logic of Esperanto. It makes words easy to remember and easy to form new ones that you didn't even know!
"The trait of the more eastern languages is the way words are composed of prefix, postfix, and infix. Japanese and Korean do this sort of thing (agglutinate)."
Japanese and Korean are 2 Eastern languages. The Chinese languages are analytic (meaning no prefixes or suffixes,) as are the languages south of China. An analytic language would be a much better model for an IAL than an agglutinative one.
That's a personal choice issue. Personally I find it easier to remember the suffixes as opposed to completely new words for each instance. I also like the idea of freeing up the word order a bit. It's really an apples and oranges thing. I think the agglutinative model appeals more to 'mathematical' type minds. It just seems a bit more logical. Moot point though. Obviously they all work and are all time-tested...
I've only been studying Esperanto a short time. I'm amazed by its logic and ease. What takes months or years to understand in other languages takes days or weeks to understand in Esperanto. It really is amazing. I've studied a number of languages. Esperanto is so refreshing. I think you can read/write in only a matter of weeks. You could probably be fluent within 6 months if you really put the time in. The patterns/spelling are easy and there are no exceptions.
Cause in my humble opinion english is the perfect language, both in structural simplicity and adaptability.
I am not a native speaker, natively I speak portuguese, although it just took me 4 years to master english. Today I believe I use it more then portuguese, most of my college books and sites I go are in english, even when there is a portuguese version available, I rather use the english one instead as it is richer in content.
Yes it is. The agglutinative structure of Esperanto is easier once you understand it. Another thing that makes Esperanto way easier is that it has absolutely no grammatical exceptions and spelling is 100% regular. Not English! Esperanto is more elegant and powerful in its construction and grammar. You hear a lot of people say it's Eurocentric. Yes, the vocab is romance-languages-like, but the structure (affix, infix) is more like Turkish or Malay.
Portuguese is ugly and hard with all those accentuations and verbal conjugation, while no language has a standard pronunciation (Portugal portuguese looks alien to me), english respect that and allow pronunciation to vary from speaker to speaker maintaining the same writing. And the auxiliary verb structure is far superior and flexible, as such we are by little also adopting it in portuguese, soon we no longer will make use of conjugation to express future, as we already do with past perfect.
Th.up.Hu. !
ThupHu325 3 weeks ago
Simple + Sophisticated = Elegant
ttthttpd 4 weeks ago
Esperanto exists thanks to the Polish Jew, so sorry that they do not teach it all over the world.
trebor650 7 months ago
MAJOR CRITICISM: Esperanto asserts its neutrailty with all the languages in the world and yet it is based on European Languages.
The concept of a universal language like esperanto is a very good step for our future but we need to develop a totally new language instead of basing it on languages that are already here, as it conjures up unfairness to other languages that aren't involved!!!
nahcey 7 months ago
@nahcey while esperanto is designed in a way that people with a native language that is latin based find it easier to learn i do not think it is needed to have a new language designed. esperanto is a beautiful language and i cant wait to start learning it. the majority of languages with a large speaking population is latin based or have strong influences from it like english, french, spanish, italian, etc. esperato is able to reach as many people as possible people in china seem to like it also
craigistheman101 5 months ago
@nahcey It is not true. Truly, Esperanto has the western body (vocabulary) and the Eastern Soul (structure - morphology). It serves, therefore, to a neutral communication and more equitable than that we're having.
Gofzamen 4 months ago
this would only work in countries with european languages. fail imo
callowaymotorcompany 9 months ago
I find it hard to believe that this is a neutral language when the roots of the words are undeniably European in origin. How is that fair to the Asian language speakers?
AndreCorona 9 months ago
no jodan, esperanto es una lengua mas , ni mejor ni peor, solo una mas y mas facil, al que le guste aprender que la aprenda. y al que no le gusta, que siga su curso . sirve tanto para hablarla y usarla como para poner en funcionamiento el cerebro y no hablar tantas pelotudeces como las que muchos dicen aca porque tiene panico de poner la cara. VIVAN Y DEJAN VIVIR EN PAZ.
gustodetodo 11 months ago
Just another spin off of the late 19th century Marxist dream of some non-sense of utopian one world collectivism bull.
urdaddy4321 11 months ago
@urdaddy4321
I hope not!
duosayso 10 months ago
What a great video, thank you sharing.
21stcenturyphantom 1 year ago
what's my problem that you're a jew? Is democracy or what?
Alexander02885 1 year ago
It helps to have learned another romance language though.
Quelquefois1793 1 year ago
Makes learning languages easy: Which ones? Certainly not Persian, Swahili, Chinese, Korean, Hindi, or Arabic.
TheMontageBW 1 year ago
Neutrality: Esperanto is not neutral. An auxiliary language can not be neutral unless it is completely a priori. Esperanto's grammar and vocabulary is based solely on Western Indo-European languages.
TheMontageBW 1 year ago
it is closer to European languages .. i find it very hard to learn because my native language is a whole another world of language...
DRm2mon 1 year ago
is not latin...is a mixture of language...with a fucking grammar...
Alexander02885 1 year ago
is a fucking jews language....to enslave the world....the banks are not enough..is a poket language....fuck
Alexander02885 1 year ago
@Alexander02885
OMG!
You're pathetic paranoid statement is typical of an impotent powerless hate filled moron. Blame the Jews for everything .... even Esperanto ..... LOL.
Ya, blame the Jews for your thinning grey h air too.
Lagolop 1 year ago
@Alexander02885 I'm Jewish.
Pieishman 1 year ago
esperanto is bullshit. it only includes european languages.
thegrandpoobah1990 1 year ago
and that makes it bs why?
Pieishman 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
abrahampetit 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
abrahampetit 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Esperanto will fail, because it excludes the germanic sounds including english and german, which are the most used world wide...Esperanto is easy for spaniards, italian, french and portugues speakers but really hard to the rest of the world....If you want to create a new artificial languale it has to be derived from english, not from latin....
abrahampetit 1 year ago
So is latin.
GodmyX 1 year ago
arent there enough languages in the world?? why did they make a new one?
lianikam 1 year ago
How many people speak Esperanto outside Europe and the US? Only 1 or 2 people on this video were nonEuropeans, one African and one Asian. I'm all for Esperanto becoming a lingua franca for the whole world but it looks like it's mostly a European thing.
bearnurse1 1 year ago
its sounds latin based.. they don't want a world languiage cause then we might all get along and no more will there be wars and stuff.. its simple concept i will learn it
IsCumaFut2 1 year ago
@IsCumaFut2
It's Latin and Germanic with Slavic phonology.
HojoOSanagi 1 year ago
@HojoOSanagi thanks for feedback. its ver yinteresting i will learn it and then go to the simpler form IDO and... well the world neeeds a language and it does not hafta be english...
IsCumaFut2 1 year ago
its sounds latin based
IsCumaFut2 1 year ago
... Does Esperonto have a DEFINARY of words that fully define all abstract human concepts itself? Like God, Marriage, Calendar, Normal, Religion, Law, Sin, Perversion, Degeneracy, Bastard, Freak, Crime, Justice, Good and Evil, Right and Wrong?
... Or is Esperonto just another undefined vernacular whose word meaning requires reference to the words of another undefined vernacular like English?
CivilizedMan444 1 year ago
this socialist bullshit is going to start another world war. fuck international language, fuck opening borders, and fuck people roaming free doing what they want. you want to know why I say that? because this very concept is saying fuck your country, fuck your heritage, fuck your language, fuck your flag. I say FUCK YOU. I will NEVER speak this BULLSHIT attempt at global socialization.
00RSZEX 1 year ago
@00RSZEX
I never cease to be amazed at how people like you do not seem to have any brain capacity whatsoever. Go and die for your fucking country in a pub fight before you disgrace the Internet with any more vicious stupidity, you fucking idiot.
grazhdaninrossii 1 year ago
@grazhdaninrossii i served my country. i will defend my country until my diying breath before this bullshit. you are a hippie commie socialist piece of shit that amazes me and jumps off at the mouth before you know who you are talking to.
00RSZEX 1 year ago
@00RSZEX Right on! The speakers of this crap are totally forgetting what language is all about: heritage, history, culture. By erasing the languages of the world, we are forgetting the pasts that shaped society and tongue to be what they are today. Languages are not just about communicating with people (which is ironic, as no one even speaks this language), they're so much more.
opalfinity 1 year ago
why don't they teach this instead of French at my school? I suck at French XD
pinkygirl1999 1 year ago
@pinkygirl1999 It should be. Those that are ranting against Esperanto are truly ignorant. The purpose of Esperanto isn't to have a universal language at the expense of national languages. The purpose is to have a language that everyone can learn as an auxiliary (or secondary language). IF everyone were to learn Esperanto in school you would be able to communicate on even terms with everyone else in the world.
batboy49 1 year ago
Hideous music. Therefore an absolute thumbs down.
1919georgekelly 1 year ago
Is there a version of this with decent audio? Very hard to make out what the narrator is saying.
bluedresscasting 1 year ago
@bluedresscasting Yes, there's a new, better version with a code Hsb4Jf8f4BI
Or just search for "esperanto estas" here on YouTube
Oleg326756 1 year ago
Looks and sounds like spanish to me, romance languages ftl :/ I'd rather speak german and I'm danish
NorthStarAritharo 1 year ago
"It's neutral, because it belongs to no single people or country"
Incorrect. Esperanto is purely European. In its time (late 1800s), Esperanto was great because Europe and America were the most powerful nations. But now China is becoming a world power and Chinese has to be taken into consideration.
Long story short: Esperanto is outdated.
TheMontageBW 1 year ago
I like this language better than English
emzademon 1 year ago
These "rules" of Esperanto... why do certain cities get the letter "o" stuck on the end, and some not? Londono and Edinburgo but then you have Liverpool and Birmingham. Looks a bit random to me.
JohnPersonage 1 year ago
@JohnPersonage Well, smaller places generally are not translated, but you can say Liverpulo and Birminghamo. Like the cities here in Brita Kolumbio, Kanado: Surio (Surrey), Burnabio (Burnaby), Nov-Okcidentministro/Novŭestministro (New Westminster), Riĉmondo (Richmond), Vankuvero, Norda Vankuvero, Langlio (Langley), Abocfordo (Abbotsford), etc.
sirach 1 year ago
The unattractive features of the language are surpassed by the simple fact it exists at all. The most exciting news I've had in a very long time was to discover this language 2 days ago. The most disappointing news in a while was to discover there were newer and essentially failed attempts to replace it instead of just promoting it.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
@P00P0STER0US Bonan shancon kun via komenco! Good luck with your beginning! :D
sirach 1 year ago
@sirach Dankon! I have a very bad memory so it will take a while but it's pretty exciting to know that the language exists and there's lots of help and information on the internet.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
@P00P0STER0US Well, it still has its flaws, mainly its own expressions and grammatical quirks, but it is a fun endeavour nevertheless! I don't like the way its spelled, but it sounds actually very beautiful!
I began learning Esperanto around 13, and since then I have been on and off with the language, never really reaching any complete fluency. I hope now to actually take the endeavour seriously. I learned it; I might as well go all the way in terms of fluency, lol. I am now 21, still going!
sirach 1 year ago
@sirach Hey good for you! That's real dedication. I speak only English so some of the pronunciation is very challenging but I'd expect that. I can pronounce the sounds faithfully if I speak very slowly, but putting them together can be difficult. The phonetic "tri" still gives me a lot of trouble even though it should be simple. It's the ri that makes it hard. I'm still puzzled that the language includes a rolling r. I don't understand why.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
@P00P0STER0US, Don't worry. I stil lhave problems with the consonantal cluster, 'str' like 'strato' (street) or 'strangulo.' I can't say "tre stranga!" without having to force myself, lol. Zamenhof's society was, well, a socio eŭropema, and the rollled 'r' is more common than the French r or the English r. But just as an introduction to languages, Esperanto provides an excellent basis. Se vi volas praktiki, ne hezitu kontakti min per mia e-poŝto. I need to practice Esperanto! :D Ĝis!
sirach 1 year ago
@sirach Esperanto is teaching me about English :) Learning the grammar and how it's compared with English has helped me recall that english grammar I learned in grade 8 twice a week. I made a learning CD for my car, so I just listen to my own Esperanto grammar lessons as I drive. Ĝis :)
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago 2
@P00P0STER0US Kiel estas via Esperanto? Ĉu vi povas nun skribi kaj legi bazajn frazojn kiel tio ĉi? Yes, it definitely teaches you grammar clarifications, that is for sure.
sirach 1 year ago
sounds like Portuguese..
frdrcksncn 1 year ago
From what I have heard it seems to have Latin as one of it's bases. I think that is why so many people think they hear Spanish and Portuguese. I think I will look into learning it this Summer online. Just to walk up to William Shatner and say hello how are you in Esperanto to see his face might be a priceless moment.
hoosierarcher 1 year ago
Larga vida al idoma más completo, el Español
getzemenudre 1 year ago
This sounds almost exactly like a mix of Portuguese and Spanish.
CarmineEternity 1 year ago
no problem. as long as it's easy to learn and no country own it, it's fair enough to be an international language.
english is way too difficult
donieking 1 year ago 4
cor blimey me viejo hombre je parle esperanta tout les jour et je suis mucho doloroso parce que niemand comprendo que icho parlo.
poussecafe3 2 years ago
Comment removed
poussecafe3 2 years ago
Toki Pona FTW! :D
Lambocoon 2 years ago
3:39 ugliest mouth I've ever seen
stinky51012 2 years ago
La mondaj popoloj ne scias ke ĉi lingvo estas uzema. Sed mi kredas vere ke Esperanto vivos senfine tra venontajn jarojn. Viva Esperanto!
trabvozar 2 years ago
I'd rather preder ENGLISH
semaz94 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
me informe sobre su estupida lengua no hay lengua mas rica que el castellano usa todas las reglas y su mierda de idioma fue el sueño de una mierda de hombre que quiso antes de morir que otras mierdas hablen su mierda de creacion ya que no servia como oculista y mas encima es como estar escuchando a cualquier europeo hablar su idioma por fonetica para los sed americanos nos suena aleman o italiano voy a hacer lo posible para erradicar su mierda de lengua inventada
JAJAJAJOKER 2 years ago
O que amargado estas !
success72 2 years ago
Que mal te expresas, y no me refiero a tus sentimientos hacia el esperanto, sino a la manera que estupras el castellano. Ve a avergonzarte a ti mismo con tus amigos arios; no te auto nomines hispanófila hasta que sepas expresarte bien.
KeithKriza 2 years ago
Esperanto isn't neutral, it's practically spanish, also, the c and the r are hard for most americans to pronounce
ArandurKing909 2 years ago
if your going to put time aside for a language no body really speaks, why not try learning a already accepted language, such as italian, german, english, or spanish not this useless stuff
whitesoxfan1293 2 years ago
@whitesoxfan1293 You obviously didn't watch the video or else you'd learn that the language IS used and it only takes a few months to master. Compare this to the years it takes to learn natural languages!
It doesn't have too much of a practical application outside of the Esperanto community, but it's certainly not worthless.
DallasisaLeo 2 years ago
hey dont diss esperanto william shatner did movie in esperanto called incubus lol
POPEATRON 2 years ago
Just speak Klingon, entirely invented language
panzercannon01 2 years ago
couldn't agree more with you bro!
Klingon is at least two times easier to learn!
bakalarko 2 years ago
Qapla'!
rinntin 2 years ago
If you want a International Language that really sounds like Spanish take a look at interlingua...its like listening and actually undertanding a person speak spanish with a weird accent. In conclusion Esperanto is the biggest and most succesful International language I say why not follow the road for HUMAN UNITY.
julegon2 2 years ago
Spanish words are classified, its where the accents its suppossed to be. Take the word rapido (sorry i cant do the accent because my lap top wont let me) any way its supposed to sound like this; RA-pi-do. Now in Esperanto all the accents are made on the 2nd vowel so same word sounds like this in Esperanto ra-PI-do. And all Spanish words have accents on either on the 3rd to the last, 2nd to the last or last syllable without following a especific rule, Esperanto follows a simple rule....
julegon2 2 years ago
...thing and if more people uses it the richer it gets. For example. (true story) in Mexico there was a comedian named Cantinflas and most of his jokes he would talk and talk and not say anything at all and some people found it funny so the made up a word "Cantinflear", and now it a verb in the Real Spanish Academy Dictionary. So Esperanto would get so much richer if more people would use it. One quick example how Esperanto is not like Spanish, i dont want to get into the rules but the way ...
julegon2 2 years ago
...some people around the world doesn't like English because they associate the language with a nation, so if they dont like the US or Australia or UK they wont like to speak English. So keep in mind Esperanto is meant to be NEUTRAL. I dont see Asian people who are learning English or any other European language complaining because of the roots of the language, or because it doesn't resemble their mother language, or because they sound like Spanish or another language. The language is a living..
julegon2 2 years ago
Also, I can't understand how we are not equal with eachother when we speak other languages. I can't speak english fluently but that doesn't mean I feel "inferior" or something like that when I speak with english people. The argument of "equality" and "same oportunities" has no ground at all. Moreover, how can a language be rich when it uses the same verb type for all the persons??? Estas, estas, estas..It's miserable, compared with spanish for example. Not to speak about the "usefull" argument..
Giannis109 2 years ago
Ok I have read all the comments and without insulting anyone i think everybody is missunderstanding the point of Esperanto..(This comment is my contribution for Dec 15th for those who are Lernu members they understand!!)
Four days ago I found about Esperanto and like everybody here I too had my negative comments about this relative new language. But after a few minutes thinking about it I became convinced that a true Neutral language is needed to unite all people. Not as a forced big culture
julegon2 2 years ago 2
But as a Bigger Culture with many little cultures within. Esperanto is just a tool that will help us understand each other regarless if the language came from Latin roots or any other. English is used by many countries, and it might be easier to learn than some other languages like French for example, but English is still a national language and lets face it some people doesnt like English at all.
I really wanted to write some more, but I have to go to a "session" (4/20)
'll finish later
julegon2 2 years ago
estas estas estas = is is is- English is no more "rich" in this sense. You don't feel inferior because apparently you are sufficiently competent in English. However, for many others, English is not so easy. After you master the basics, and attempt to delve deeper in the language, it would be difficult to be on par with a native speaker. It would take years of dilligent effort.
triniguy999 2 years ago 2
Esperantists say that the ideal would be to have our native language and esperanto, so that we can communicate with people from all over the world. This is silly. I already have a great native language (greek) and I know english and spanish (more that 400.000.000 speakers). Why should someone learn esperanto?? Why? Moreover, judging from the video, esperanto sounds stupid. It sounds like a mentaly retarded person trying to speak spanish...
Giannis109 2 years ago
Where is Esperanto most widely used? In Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the former satellite nations of the old Soviet Union (including its Baltic republics), and in East Asia, particularly mainland China. It is also fairly well known in certain areas of South America, notably Brazil, and Southwest Asia. It is less well known in English-speaking North America, Africa, and the Muslem world.
rinntin 2 years ago 3
Although Esperanto takes most of it's root words from Latin and Germanic language, the way the language functions with its numerous prefixes and suffixes appeals to people who speak agglutinative languages such as Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian. The great flexibility of its word order appeals to people who speak languages like Chinese . And its easy-to-learn 16 rules of grammar have no exceptions! Esperanto's brilliance truly reveals itself only after you begin studying it.
rinntin 2 years ago
I'll study it when you use dead languages for your root words, the way it should be done to make it international (or at least unbiased), instead of the current espanol clusterfuck
adrastea99 2 years ago
You obviously don't know what your talking about, adrastea99. Esperanto takes most of its root words from Latin - a DEAD language!
rinntin 2 years ago
Wrong
It's a romance language that preserves spanish culture and eliminates every other culture
How international
adrastea99 2 years ago
opinionative
agreeableviews816 2 years ago
Does it matter what it stems from? Seriously? What matters is the possibility of a global language. That is something to be excited about. Can we please stop bickering about who loses and wins, we all win!
EdgePitSwing 2 years ago
It does if you're trying to keep it neutral/international because the cultures which it DOESNT stem from basically lose and get overwritten by the culture it does stem from
The only way to keep it neutral is to choose a language which is dead or to invent an ENTIRELY new language (instead of borrowing from current ones)
adrastea99 2 years ago
People who speak Spanish, Italian or Portuguese do not understand Esperanto unless they study it. Esperanto is its own language and has its own culture that has developed in the last 100 years. Zamenhof DID choose a dead language to borrow from - LATIN! 70% of Esperanto vocabulary comes from a dead language. And BTW, Esperanto is most popular in China, Korea and Japan and none of the vocabulary was borrowed from those languages.
rinntin 2 years ago
You're an idiot
That's like claiming english words are latin
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Well, moron, you're the one who thinks Esperanto and Spanish are the same language/culture. I speak Esperanto and Spanish and they're very different. You barely speak English.
rinntin 2 years ago
HAhahaha, the elitism is absolutely oozing out of you isn't it?
Get bent shitcake
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Ah, yes, the response of the mentally inept. You can no longer defend your ludicrous views so you resort to name calling. Your argument is faulty. So much for you.
rinntin 2 years ago
>calling me mentally inept
>accusing me of name calling at the same time
Cool story bro!
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Mentally inept is based on reading your ridiculous comments (that Esperanto is some kind of weird Spanish). So it's an observation.
Shitcake, on the other hand, something a 12 year old would say, is name calling.
rinntin 2 years ago
Shitcake is based on your general elitist behavior. So it's an observation.
BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? BR? BR?
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
And mentally inept is proving itself with each new post.
rinntin 2 years ago
Hahhahahahah!
You're a fucking idiot!
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
YAWN... You bore me... You know nothing about Esperanto. In the future you may want to refrain from making a fool out of yourself by trying to weigh in on subjects you know nothing about. Or not, suit yourself.
Somewhere there's a therapist waiting for your call.
rinntin 2 years ago
Somewhere there is a tranny escort waiting for your call
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
I rest my case.
rinntin 2 years ago
My case is already rested, in your mother's vagina
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
You lose.
rinntin 2 years ago
*You lost
lrn2propergrammar
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Such a wounded child. BTW, impressive vocabulary.
rinntin 2 years ago
Wounded child? WTF you sicko?!
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Yeah, you make comments worthy of a scorned 10 year old.
rinntin 2 years ago
Don't talk to me again pedophile rapist/murderer
Why do you want to hurt children?
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
You are so childish. Get therapy.
rinntin 2 years ago
Again about children
Do yourself a favor. Get. Psychological. Help.
adrastea99 2 years ago
@adrastea99
Vi estas infaneca frenezulo kaj ege bezonas terapiiston antau ol vi dolorigas iun.
Since you're an expert on Esperanto I know you can read this - Oh, I forgot! You no NOTHING about Esperanto! Well, maybe you could get someone who speaks "Spanish" to translate it since Esperanto is, to quote you, an "Espanol clusterfuck." (You have such an impressive vocabulary.)
rinntin 2 years ago
No I don't know Esperanto, but I know enough about romance languages to know that you just called me an infantile, crazy person and that I need a therapist
BECAUSE ESPERANTO IS A FUCKING SPANISH/ROMANCE LANGUAGE
adrastea99 2 years ago 2
@adrastea99
Not bad! You got some of it. But I've spoken it around people who speak Spanish and Italian and they don't understand it at all. And you shouldn't comment on a language you haven't studied and don't speak.
rinntin 2 years ago
@adrastea99
P. S. - The reason you understood what you did of the Esperanto is because you speak ENGLISH! So much of English is also based on Latin. So maybe English is an Espanol clusterfuck too!
rinntin 2 years ago
No, English is just a general clusterfuck of Germanic, Latin, Spanish, French and so on
But we aren't discussing English here
Why not choose neutral words and terms?
adrastea99 2 years ago
OK, backing off the name calling for the moment... You were able to read some of what I wrote because of similarity to English words, not Spanish. No one's denying Esperanto has vocab taken from European languages, especially Latin. Neutral words are a good idea but that's been tried over the centuries and they have a major flaw. People can't relate to them. I studied Suma by Barnett Russell which has no words common to any language. It didn't take off. Volapük preceded Esperanto and (Cont...)
rinntin 2 years ago
was hugely successful... for a while. It turned out that it was too complex and the words, mostly taken from English, were too strange. Vola - from English "World", Pük - from English "speak." I happen to like Volapük myself but most people found it too difficult. Then Esperanto arrived a few years later and many of the Volapük people switch to easier, more familiar Esperanto. Volapük's words, though taken from English, were so distorted as to be unrecognizable.
rinntin 2 years ago
"People can't relate to them."
I suppose Chinese people relate to Romance languages very well
Just stop arguing, it's a shit engineered language that isn't going anywhere
Esperanto isn't used anyways, if you think it is, you're lying to yourself
adrastea99 2 years ago
You are unbelievably dense! Esperanto isn't USED??? Esperanto is all over the web! Esperanto has had continuous usage by a community of speakers for over a century! Esperanto is used in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio broadcasting. There are over 120,000 articles in Wikipedia and is the 21st largest Wikipedia. There's even a Google Esperanto!! You're ignorant. Study Klingon like Panzercannon suggests. Moron.
rinntin 2 years ago 14
I tried studying Klingon and I found it stupid and pointless
adrastea99 2 years ago
@rinntin English is the de facto Esperanto. As for "belonging" to English speaking countries, one could say Esperanto "belongs" to people who have been speaking it for years. A newcomer will always have difficulty fitting in. Esperanto might be easier to master, but English more than compensates it with the "installed base". English is the language we learn when we want to communicate across borders. Esperantists end up bitter like you, protective about Esperanto as if it was a national lang.
Eikinkloster 2 years ago
@Eikinkloster - You're wrong - I'm not bitter in the least! I have no delusions that Esperanto is likely to become the international language. I don't care. I use Esperanto and enjoy doing so. I love to travel and though I speak English, Italian, Finnish and some German, I don't have the time to learn Japanese or Korean so I check into those countries with Esperanto and have a ball!
rinntin 2 years ago 14
@rinntin the fact is most of the stuff are in english and i dont think esperanto can take over :/
lianikam 1 year ago
@lianikam As I said in the post above - I really don't care. Esperanto was never designed to replace any language. I have used Esperanto many times in my travels and I enjoy doing so. I've met a lot of great people that way!
rinntin 1 year ago
@rinntin Not really, Esperanto is mostly used in European countries and N. and S. America. Countries in Asia and Africa will have a harder time learning this because its to European, the way it is is very much based on Romance languages. A person who speaks Spanish or English can grasp this faster than a person who speaks Arabic or Mandarin.
whiteipod2000 9 months ago
@whiteipod2000@whiteipod2000 Actually, Esperanto is more popular in Japan and China than it is in many European countries. Although you are correct in stating that its vocabulary comes primarily from European languages (Latin & German) the grammar and syntax are very flexible and it has many agglutinative traits similar to Turkish, Hungarian and Finnish. This flexibility extends itself to include grammatical similarities with Asian languages like Chinese or Japanese.
rinntin 9 months ago
I've heard before that esperanto is popular in China and Japan. Can you tell me how many people speak esperanto in Japan?
Giannis109 2 years ago
I don't see how this language would be practical or easier than English for non-europeans to learn. It just sounds like Spanish with Swedish.
tangos 2 years ago
Felichojn per filmo!
benitogarciaweblog 2 years ago
This has been flagged as spam show
i speak french spanish and english, so learned esperanto in two months
ashleygonzalez1991 2 years ago
i speak french soanish and english, so learned esperanto in two months
ashleygonzalez1991 2 years ago
yea this language is sort of easy cuz i speak spanish and some of the words and sentence structures were basically the same
HechoenBelice 2 years ago
I know how to speak spanish, so this language looks very easy to learn. im sure a speaker of any other romance language would agree as well. But i think English is the ruling language and will be for a long time. Its a shame that most languages have so many exception to their rules
busysignal2006 2 years ago
I find it to make more sense to use a language with Latin base for international language rather than Chinese...Most the countries can at least Understand/Pronounce easily the words in Latin based languages. Plus the writting system is NOT very good. It would take YEARS and HOURS of schooling to learn ALL the characters as a second language, but sense they dont use them all the time like the Chinese they will forget them all very fast,Same happend to me in Japanese... Almost immposible...
GuamKomudo 2 years ago 3
er this is spanish, why can't you get it everyone speaks some English unless they are Chinese or course and there is no way you are going to get more than 10 percent of Anglosaxon speaking people to learn Chinese. Esperanto is the Sinclair C5 of languagues now f .off
v74Bvdmp 2 years ago
for me it's sounds like Catalan or Italian, with a little Russian accent.
oidualclaudi0 2 years ago
I agree with christocr, ALL LANGUAGES ARE AMAZING!
and I should add - ALLES SPRACHEN SIND ERSTAUNLICH
y TODOS LOS LENGUAGES SON ASOMBROSOS!
but lets face it, you know how to read this and all these other comments and this website and the description and title of this video because you are speaking the lingua franca of the world, you guessed it - ITS ENGLISH. I doubt Esperanto - an amalgam of European languages - will ever enjoy the level of global usage that English has.
gamrkidd 2 years ago 2
i imagine the EU might adopt it for political reasons, and then other bodies might insist on it e.g UN, then it will be hard for those who only speak english to function internationally...
i think esperanto is creepy, but might learn it just to stay ahead of the game.
ttimothymurphy 2 years ago
yes, I just typed a multipage report on the globalization of English so I got some knowledge in mind. EU already uses ENGLISH to communicate, its de-facto. now that i hear this 'Esperanto' again, I must say it sounds very much like Romanian, a latin language with slavic features. true about anglophones not knowing other languages, there is really not an exceptional reason for a monolingual anglophone to learn anyother languages. I speak spanish, this, and am learning German so yeah.
gamrkidd 2 years ago
to me it sounds like
Spanish German Italian and portuguese -
all with a Russian (otherwise Slavic) accent!
coming from an english spanish speaker who is learning german
gamrkidd 2 years ago
I'd say that it is neutral in that it was intended to be neutral. The fact that the person who invented it based it more on what he happened to know about, European type languages, only speaks to a design choice not necessarily any intention to exclude.
It might have some problems, such as not being as natural as it could be physiologically speaking and in today's world with the use of computers and keyboards, the accents are unfortunate. The alphabet could have been purer.
NickRoman 2 years ago
The alphabet is one of the best features of the language: one sound per symbol and one symbol per sound. No spelling nonsense as in English.
It's easy to format the keyboard for Esperanto characters.
christocr 2 years ago
Really? I thought I saw Ks and Cs and Ss or something like that. Please excuse me if I was wrong. There seems to be no way to have all three and not have overlap unless the sound is something different than English. Maybe.
NickRoman 2 years ago
Yes, they are all in the alphabet, but each has a distinct sound:
K is the same hard K sound in English (and only that sound).
S is the same sound as English (and only that sound).
C is a sharp 'ts' sound, similar to Slavic languages and Romanian (and only that sound).
Also the letter ŝ is the English 'sh' sound and the letter ĉ is the English 'ch' sound.
Kind of cool! Never a spelling issue. If you can say it, you can spell it.
christocr 2 years ago
K - as in Kick, king
C - as in science (ts sound)
S - as in snake, shake, Snape
None of these overlap, none will EVER be the others
Maverynthia 2 years ago
@Maver - Careful there, at least in "regular" American English: 'sc' in science sounds exactly the same as 's' in snake or snape (whatever that means).
And the 's' in shake is nothing as it must combine with the 'h' to make a unique 'sh' sound that is different from 's'.
Just saying, that is not a good explanation of anything, but christocr's was, though I'll have to learn what 'ts' is. I'll take your word for it.
NickRoman 2 years ago
"The alphabet is one of the best features of the language: one sound per symbol and one symbol per sound."
The problem: Esperanto has far too many sounds. Zamenhof was heavily biased towards his native Polish when he chose the sound system of Esperanto. There is no reason for, say, a S-TS distinction of a SH-CH distinction in an IAL, let alone individual letters for consonant clusters like "ts."
vezrig 2 years ago
Well, Esperanto has 28 distinct sounds and 28 symbols for those sounds (not counting digraphs). I don't care what those sounds are; I just care about the east of keeping track of them. English, on the other hand, has around 45 sounds (depending on which linguist you trust) with just a touch over half that many symbols to represent the sounds (and they do a very poor job at it). Which makes more sense to you?
There will never be any need for a spelling bee in Esperanto, thank god.
christocr 2 years ago
Comparing Esperanto to English is a moot point. The thing is, you aren't comparing Esperanto to other, modern IALS. Most modern IALS have a one-letter-one-sound alphabet without diacritic marks other letters you wouldn't be able to type on most keyboards. Lingua Franca Nova is a good example - they use X for the "sh" sound (which is the sound of that letter in Portuguese and Old Spanish.)
vezrig 2 years ago
From what I've seen of LFN, it's quite good. I could understand much of it the first time I read a sample. The main reason I chose Esperanto is because of the consistent parts of speech markers (and the slightly slavic sound). I like having the pattern of specific endings being specific parts of speech.
LFN may have been easier for me initially since I know Spanish and some French, but like I said, the logical patterns of Esperanto drew me in. To each his own. All languages are fascinating.
christocr 2 years ago
Esperanto's part-of-speech markers are the worst. They simply don't work. The conversions between parts of speech are not regular at all. Justin B. Rye's "Learn Not to Speak Esperanto" (google it) has specific examples, such as timo/timi vs. nauzo/nauzi.
But the categories themselves are unnecessary (and Eurocentric.) The vast majority of the world's languages do not have an "adverb" category. Heck, most languages merge "adjectives" with nouns or verbs.
vezrig 2 years ago
Yet you are perfectly okay with the thousands of anomalies in English, right? As I said, Esperanto is not perfect. But as a non speaker of either language, which language would be easiest and quickest for you to learn and use?
Your website link has given me an idea: Learn Not To Speak English. The only problem is that I doubt any website server has the hard disk space to accommodate all of the imperfections and exceptions to rules that would need to be listed for English.
christocr 2 years ago
Have I advocated English as an IAL? If someone advertised English as a simple language which is easy to learn, they would be lying. Likewise for Esperanto. A hypothetical English-ist might go around saying "Hey, English is less complicated that Sanskrit, man!" But it's irrelevant, because the question is not whether it's simpler than other languages, but whether it's simple enough for an IAL.
vezrig 2 years ago
English is the mutt's nuts right now, and let's face it, most people don't get how badly natural languages suck for an IAL. Even at that, there are better candidates than English.
With that in mind, learning an IAL is a bit pie-in-the-sky anyway. Of the IALs, only Esperanto has a decent base of speakers right now (up to 2 million). I can listen to radio, write, and speak with people all over the world. I can't do that with any other IAL. Maybe LFN (or whatever) someday, but for now, no.
christocr 2 years ago
Oh, so number of speakers doesn't matter with natural languages, but it matters with the IALs? Special pleading, I say.
vezrig 2 years ago
Oh it matters; we're stuck with English aren't we? I may suggest something logical like Turkish as a global language, but that won't really matter much (outside of Turkey) unless I can convince everyone else in the world.
All I'm saying is that between English as a world language and Esperanto, Esperanto wins in my mind because it takes about 10% of the time to be functional. There are some features I'd change a bit (like case markers), but all in all it blows English out of the universe.
christocr 2 years ago 3
Not to mention that the globalized english is killing the richness of the original english.
Varanor 2 years ago
The claim that Esperanto is 'neutral' is highly disputable. I'm a native French and Japanese speaker, and I'm pretty certain Esperanto is by far easier to study for French people than for Japanese people.
It was created before the development of modern linguistics, by an oculist. It no longer lives up to the modern standard of what we might call a universal language. Neutrality-wise, there are other languages that are far more competent, such as Lojban.
mirandansa 2 years ago
Yes, i agree with you when you say it's easier to learn if you speak French natively. I speak Brazilian Portuguese natively, and it's easy for me too, since i speak English as well.
I recognize a lot of traits in Esperanto. Some slavic traits, anglic traits, latin, but i'm not sure if i've seen an oriental trait yet.
My point is: if Esperanto has a trait from your root language (or one that you speak) , it's easier than otherwise.
jorgeguberte 2 years ago
The trait of the more eastern languages is the way words are composed of prefix, postfix, and infix. Japanese and Korean do this sort of thing (agglutinate).
sano = healthy
mal- = opposite (prefix)
-ul- = relating to person (infix)
-ej- = relating to place (infix)
malsanulejo = mal - san - ul - ejo
opposite of healthy person place
Hospital !
That is the power and logic of Esperanto. It makes words easy to remember and easy to form new ones that you didn't even know!
christocr 2 years ago
"The trait of the more eastern languages is the way words are composed of prefix, postfix, and infix. Japanese and Korean do this sort of thing (agglutinate)."
Japanese and Korean are 2 Eastern languages. The Chinese languages are analytic (meaning no prefixes or suffixes,) as are the languages south of China. An analytic language would be a much better model for an IAL than an agglutinative one.
vezrig 2 years ago
That's a personal choice issue. Personally I find it easier to remember the suffixes as opposed to completely new words for each instance. I also like the idea of freeing up the word order a bit. It's really an apples and oranges thing. I think the agglutinative model appeals more to 'mathematical' type minds. It just seems a bit more logical. Moot point though. Obviously they all work and are all time-tested...
christocr 2 years ago
how do we say: I don't speak your language on esperanto ?
Sossy567 2 years ago
Mi ne parolas via lingvo.
I've only been studying Esperanto a short time. I'm amazed by its logic and ease. What takes months or years to understand in other languages takes days or weeks to understand in Esperanto. It really is amazing. I've studied a number of languages. Esperanto is so refreshing. I think you can read/write in only a matter of weeks. You could probably be fluent within 6 months if you really put the time in. The patterns/spelling are easy and there are no exceptions.
christocr 2 years ago 2
Is it easier then english?
Cause in my humble opinion english is the perfect language, both in structural simplicity and adaptability.
I am not a native speaker, natively I speak portuguese, although it just took me 4 years to master english. Today I believe I use it more then portuguese, most of my college books and sites I go are in english, even when there is a portuguese version available, I rather use the english one instead as it is richer in content.
marlls1989 2 years ago
Yes it is. The agglutinative structure of Esperanto is easier once you understand it. Another thing that makes Esperanto way easier is that it has absolutely no grammatical exceptions and spelling is 100% regular. Not English! Esperanto is more elegant and powerful in its construction and grammar. You hear a lot of people say it's Eurocentric. Yes, the vocab is romance-languages-like, but the structure (affix, infix) is more like Turkish or Malay.
Portuguese is way prettier than English!
christocr 2 years ago
Portuguese is ugly and hard with all those accentuations and verbal conjugation, while no language has a standard pronunciation (Portugal portuguese looks alien to me), english respect that and allow pronunciation to vary from speaker to speaker maintaining the same writing. And the auxiliary verb structure is far superior and flexible, as such we are by little also adopting it in portuguese, soon we no longer will make use of conjugation to express future, as we already do with past perfect.
marlls1989 2 years ago