Of course international conferences in Esperanto would be more 'lively', it's a one-language conference. But you forget the fact that if we adopt with a universal language there will be no originality of countries, no unique cultures. It sounds nice and all but remember that not many people speak Esperanto!! English is still the most popular language hands down. I'm not saying learning Esperanto is a waste of time but the language may not be as useful as 'Esperantists' make it seem to be.
Esperanto should never be a national language, but the language of communication ONLY. English is the language of people, Esperanto the language for all. It is necessary to keep for each one his language, his originalities and his culture. Esperamto is the language easiest to learn for all. English is not a popular language… too difficult to learn and to know perfectly. Esperanto is neutral.
@MrLingualistic Ugh. Esperanto as the ONLY language? That is the worst idea I've ever heard. Nobody wants that, anyway. Esperantists (the majority) want Esperanto to be a universal second language. Imagine a world where you could go anywhere and talk to anyone, and STILL get to keep the languages and cultures! It would be a much better world. Plus, it would be so much easier to learn other languages, which are among man kind's greatest gifts to itself.
Ok, but i didn't say that italian is perfect (even if infinitively much more logical than english, anyway). You are right the accent is not written in every word because would be quite annoying (in dictionaries it is). But italian doesn't claim to be an international language, even if would be more clear than english as pronunciation ;-)
Tial mi parolas esperante, kaj mi opinias ke esperanto estas la plej bona lingvo internacia, Ciao ;)
Esperanto is interesting, but will never supplant any natural language. It's too complex with too many strange characters that don't exist in any language or keyboard. Ido is a bit better. Interlingua is easier to pronounce, more natural looking. Glossa is nice, but an isolating language is hard to adjust to. English is too widespread and too powerful. It's easy to learn, with little grammar. Exceptions, who cares? No one speaks English perfectly. Accents are different. It's acceptable.
Albert Einstein: "It's easier to dismantle an atom than a prejudice".
"estas pli facila malmunti atomon ol antaŭjuĝon."
That the problem all people that speaks Esperanto has to face when they say it.
Why you say Esperanto will kill any language? it was created to be a 2nd language. The first one would be the mother tongue. English will kill other languages, it has a very strong culture of 2 countries behind the language. It is killing for example the beautiful Swedish.
@alejandro31192 What is intended by an idealist is not required by the universe to coincide with what will happen if the idealist's intent is carried through.
What evidence do you have to present for English killing Swedish? What evidence do you have Esperanto wouldn't do the same in turn? (Hint: English is propagated in Sweden in what way?)
@MrKrov ...mmm.. i didn't understand very well the first sentence...
Well... i send you a link about all that problem... and I believe Esperanto won't do the same cause it will be learned as a second language and will get people intererest to learn other languages. At universities, for example, swedish people writes more in English. Their schools are all teached in English and their swedish writing is worse due to that...
@alejandro31192 Intent does not equal consequence. I can intend to make a harmless cleaning supply, but if I mix ammonia and bleach, chemistry says I'll get deadly chloramine anyways.
I'm going to need an actual study when you say native language skill somehow go away when learning a new one. I'll also need one for why Esperanto wouldn't have the same effects if it became the big prestige language. English is just a 2nd language in Sweden, afterall. (BTW Swedish universities are bilingual.)
take the swedish link i sent to you and google translate it. There it says that schools are bilingual there and everything is teached in English but Swedish class (of course! XD).
Therefore, they learn more English but what they learn is more superficial and their Swedish, comparing to the others who learned in a non bilingual school, is worse.
Well... i don't know if there's any study out there, but i think that learning Esperanto for 2 years would be better than learning English for at least 7 years... the other 5 years in school could be used to learn others languages, not only English, nobody asked me if I wanted to learn English rather than any other language...
but maybe there's some idealism behind this, but anyway I don't think Esperanto would be use a family language, only, as it happens, for those who met in EO.
@MrKrov : C'est pourtant très clair et très juste ! Moi je le comprends et vous comprends. Me comprenez-vous ? ;-)) Si nous apprenions tous l'espéranto, on se comprendrais beaucoup mieux et plus facilement. It's what I believe !
Well, I think you are wrong. English it's a hard language. Tell an asian guy that their teaching methods are inadequate... Esperanto is easier for everybody, including them. Learning a non fair and difficult language to "intercommunicate" is a nonsense and a waste of time. read this... mondeto.com/uploads/4/5/5/2/4552219/integrated_lote_in_the_primary_curriculum.pdf
@alejandro31192 I will be happy to tell him that, I know for a fact that the methods used in schools are - in all areas, but particularly so in language learning - hideously inadequate in being effective as well as acknowledging individual dispositions to learning etc. English may well be hard, but the reason so many fail language studies is not simply because it is "hard", I don't believe.
@kokorodokoro Well. maybe it's not only because it's hard, maybe they don't want to learn a language they didn't elect to learn, maybe their language is so different to English that they have to spend lots of hours a day (like a chinese girl I know,... poor girl), yes, you're right... there's a lot of other reasons out there... but they all show that English isn't as good as Esperanto for intercommunication.
Where are you from? where are you parents from? I love swedish language :D
@alejandro31192 You're correct, there's a whole host of reasons why people have difficulty learning languages, and I'm all for developing some kind of global auxlang, though perhaps more for the benefit of it being ethnically/nationally neutral (or as neutral as can be). I have my reservations about Esperanto, but I won't go into them here.
I'm born and raised in Sweden, so are my parents. Happy to hear you like my mother tongue :)
@kokorodokoro well, i know that Esperanto is not perfect, but by learning it, I saw it would be very helpful for all of us, There's another auxlang, but quite more difficult and new... What I want is Esperanto to succeed, and then, we can the whole world debate about a better auxlang... I'll teach my children Esperanto to facilitate them learning faster other languages, even Spanish, my mother tongue... =)
Well, Swedish sounds to me very germanic, that's one more reason you all speak it great :)
Konsentas mi kun Claude Piron. Estus pli bone, ke la angla konservu en Usonon, Anglon, Aŭstralion, kaj alian landon, kiu jam parolas la angla. Mi mem preferus paroli la esperanton ekstere mia propra lando, kaj la anglan interne ĝi. Tiel, neniu havus avantaĝon super alia. Bedaŭrinde, tio neniam okazos, do mi parolos nur kun la malmulta, kiu jam parolas esperanton.
Konsentas mi kun Claude Piron. Estus pli bone, ke la angla konservu en Usonon, Anglon, Aŭstralion, kaj alian landon, kiu jam parolas la angla. Mi mem preferus paroli la esperanton ekstere mia propra lando, kaj la anglan interne ĝi. Tiel, neniu havus avantaĝon super alia. Bedaŭrinde, tio neniam okazos, do mi parolos nur kun la malmulta, kiu jam parolas esperanton.
I think some people here underestimate how complex english words even are, not to mention it's not just the number of casses or what ever but how ambiguos they are both internally and from a purely logical perspective.
Cxiuj devu doni okazo al Esperanto por lerni gxin, kaj uzi gxin, sed cxi tio estas neposibla, kriza maso estas cxiam tre malproksima tre obstrukca.
Angla Lingvo estas malfacila por lerni kaj gxia prononco estas peniga, sed gxi havas grandegajn avantagxojn cxar gxia cxieesteco en la medioj de komicado de la mondo kaj monda komerco. Esperantisto movado bezonas unu gvidanton kiu havas multe prestigxon, multe monon, multe simpation. Iu kiel Bill Gates, Clinton kaj Teresino Patrino kune en unu.
While I will admit that English is a difficult language to master, I think the speaker greatly underestimates the number of fluent English speakers (both first language and non-natives) in the world. Further, other national languages (some of which are far easier than English) are very easy to master. Fluency can be achieved in Spanish in six months or less; conversational ability takes 2 months to achieve.
Of course, with national languages, there's someone to talk to. Not with Esperanto.
@hailvishnu "I think the speaker greatly underestimates the number of fluent English speakers in the world."
Well, speaking as a Dutchman, most of the people around me are very bad at English, even the ones that think they're quite good at it. Myself, I often still have trouble finding words for certain things, so I must search them up in the Wiktionary or Google Translate. And when I go to other countries such as Germany or Czechia, it's even worse.
Although his points are spot on from a practical standpoint, I think he is a bit negative with people's abilities to teach and learn other national languages. I say continue refining teaching and learning methods, but also teach Esperanto as something to fall back on.
However, teaching Esperanto in the US would do wonders for a country where monolingualism is a source of pride.
I guess the key phrase in here is "a political will to promote it". Only political will from a globally-influential consortium can take one auxiliary language and push it toward common use. Esperanto would 'hit the ground running' in that regard if it were chosen.
As a newcomer to the notion of a constructed auxiliary language I kinda wish the early Esperanto community had taken advantage of Zammy's work on reforms and adopted a few of those proposed reforms. People get by without reforms, but fixing the top 3 difficulties would have meant complainers wouldn't have much to complain about.
I was so excited when I discovered there was a purposefully-built language to form a simpler and functional mode of communication...(cont)
(cont) I was deeply disappointed when I discovered that not only was there ONE viable auxiliary language, but there are many, many more, and what's worse, the most popular one is 120 years old and I only heard about it for the first time last year at the age of 37. I'm glad Esperanto is in daily use, but I'm not partial to any one particular selection for an auxiliary language. I'm just partial to any *one* being adopted.
@OgeronimonominoregO Yes but can you tell me that those people are not made fun of, when speaking english with accents, or speak awekwardy (word order wise). with esperanto there is less of this. Also people are more comfortable speaking new languages with people in the same situation
@CRG2100 I may have misinterpreted the sense of your statement, but people who speak English with an accent are not the subject of ridicule. I'm sure in every culture there are some morons who will laugh at anyone for any reason, but they're to be ignored. Normal people don't laugh at mispronunciation (unless it's actually a humorous mistake, and then it's only polite to explain it if possible, e.g. "My friend pooped in for a visit the other day"). When the meaning is clear, there is no problem.
And english speakers, not being used to be "at the other side of the wall", aren't very cooperative when speaking to a foreiner...
Moreover how about the 24 vowels of english against the 6 of spanish, a pronunciation totally random and a huge use of idiomatic expressions such as phrasal verbs Etc.. ;-)
On the side of the mere "intelligibility" English has resulted just as the 10h language, behind italian and spanish.
@OgeronimonominoregO well...i like languages, and i studied several of them: of course every natural language presents its difficulties, English is not that "easy on the mouth" it requires YEARS to be spoken to an average level: Paradoxically even japanese is easier on the mouth of a foreigner. Maybe people never notice that,but English has 24 vowel sounds (Ship/sheep cup/cap hop/hoop want/won't) against the 5 of Spanish and the 8 of German. ;-)
@AriodanteITA I know the vowels A,E,I,O,U, and Y, What are the other 18? No, seriously, what are they? English is my native language and I have only heard of 6? Do you by any chance mean vowel combinations (ou, ea, ee)?
@jgt2598 Native speakers never realize how really "complex" is their own language.. ʌ in cup ɑ: in arm æ in cat e in met ə in away ɪ in hit ɒ in hot ʊ in put Long Vowels: u: in blue ɔ: in call i: in see; Rotacized vowels: ɜ:ʳ in turn; Diphthongs: aɪ in five aʊ in now eɪ in say oʊ in go ɔɪ in boy eəʳ in where ɪəʳ in near ʊəʳ in pure ...Actually there are even more than in French...:-)
Traditionally English had the vowels a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū, y, ȳ (Both y sounds are dead in modern English), æ, ǣ and sometimes ġ. We simply became lazy though and started to represent each of them based on the first six short vowels.
Esperanto is not the only language of its kind, but it has one enormous advantage over Interlingua, Volapuk, and Ido: the enormous amount of original and translated literature in Esperanto that has been produced over more than a century. As a person who loves reading belles-lettres from all cultures, I would say this achievement of Esperanto is quite remarkable and that anyone who likes world literature should learn it.
Estu Eulingu un projektu novus a kreir un lingu simplus por Europu in ordu a unir populi europis, por mori informazoni visir eurolanguage.blogspot.com, multi danki :-)
Estu Eulingu un projektu novus a kreir un lingu simplus por Europu in ordu a unir populi europis, por mori informazoni sur Eulingu visir eurolanguage.blogspot.com, multi danki!
I thought about a common language for all many years ago. At one time Latin was the language of intellectuals. God confused the language of people when they decided to build the Tower Of Babel. Up to that time all people spoke only one language. One common language would bring people of the world closer together. The accomplishments would be exponential. The savings in translation would also be exponential.
I just discovered Esperanto yesterday and it's the answer to a wish I've expressed for years but never thought would ever be answered: "I wish there was a language without stupid rules that would be consistent (or is that consistant?) and easy to learn, easy enough for most people to speak pronounce, and adopted globally." Well, it was here all along.
As a native English speaker I agree completely that English is not a suitable language for international communication. It's not horrible, but it's full of arbitrary nonsense in spelling and grammar which regularly confounds and frustrates native English speakers regularly.
Cet homme était un génie. Étant Canadien, je vis cette barrière linguistique à tous les jours. Ayant vécu dans un milieu majoritairement francophone au cours de ma jeunesse, je peux maintenant témoigner des difficultés rencontrées lorsque que vient le temps de communiquer avec des personnes unilingues anglophone. J'ai souvent été victime de moquerie en raison de mon accent sur certains mots en anglais. L'espéranto me semble être la langue idéale, suite à mes recherches.
To me language is the vehicle of thought and an element of culture. When you learn a new language you acquire a sense of other people's conception of things. You get to penetrate their culturally intrinsic interpretation of life. It contains their love story (or lack of it) with nature; their desiderata are transparently shown through its semantic constructions and even grammar
I must disagree with greensofa1, because in Esperanto I've read stories and cultural things about people who lives far in Africa, in the last book I've bought, that I couldn't found in any other language. That brings to me a new reality about how those people think and reacts. I don't know if I could translate that in my language without lose something, there are many adjectives in E-o that would be an entire phrase in my native language.
If we don't appreciate women for what they are and women don't appreciate us men for what we are, thus completing each other then we will always be doomed...but that's another story...
Another point is that i personally sense Esperanto, coming from nowhere, would lack the essential soulful cachet that native languages have. We should start by accepting that all languages are equally important. We will always have problems with differences if we do not resort to embracing them. It's like the issue of men vs women.
I don't see how Esperanto would improve communication among people; i see it hindering it even more. I think we get by just fine. The need for Esperanto in the way it's presented is just a non-issue. The world is plagued with other much more important issues we need to seriously and massively address -- by converging our resources -- such as diseases, famine and access to education.
If Esperanto is not taught for free it would mean and recreate the same status quo. It would soon represent a billion dollar industry for language schools and printing companies (of course totally profitable for some)... ain't that just what we have today in the world with other languages?
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexic, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like it because so many creative people left their messages in it.
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
Dear Claude Piron, your voice from beyond threatens to rob those billions of euros from millions of English teachers and publishers who thrive on our illiteracy
Esperanto was never intended to replace natural languages. It was supposed to to be an addition. It could be used in world travel, at international meetings, or to talk to your relatives in south america that you couldn't preciously talk to without a mediator. I think the people who say that it is going to kill culture are just not willing to look past what immediately comes to mind. Everyone wants to keep there own language, so that will only motivate people to keep their native languages.
@baldrickmammoth the thing most people don't understand is...if everyone were to learn one language, right now the trend is English, all other languages get severely influenced by the language and eventually die out. its inevitable.
everybody should be multilingual and not all learn the same language to communicate, but rather learn each others.
@Codylangaugesblog "if everyone were to learn one language, right now the trend is English, all other languages get severely influenced by the language and eventually die out. its inevitable."
@baldrickmammoth to me, it's a review and/or change in human values, not changing the world's lingua franca alone, that will save smaller and endangered languages. in my country, the national language is seen by some as a liability to national progress; this is because we lack positive values needed to uphold it, they rather over-depend on English than translate works to the local lingo for the masses. i'm not so sure how that'll change if another language becomes lingua franca in the future.
Esperanto claims to be an easy language, NOT the easiest language. The regular and no-exception rules are the key to the ease of learning it compared to other languages. There may be other natural languages that are as easy or much easier than Esperanto, but always bear in mind that people take pride in their own languages, and would not easily accept some other country's language as the lingua franca, especially of that country is not as powerful and wealthy as the other nations.
For exceptions to the grammar, look no further than the pronouns which are suppletive for person and number.
History has shown people can't wait to give up their native language for one more prestigious. A global one would be extremely prestigous. People also tend not learn one if it's not more prestigious than one they already speak.
So in the extremely unlikely event there's ever a global language, and somehow it's Esperanto, it'll be responsible for widespread language death.
Saying it's been chosen actually implies some significance; there's no point to saying it's been chosen by people who've chosen to propogate it. A tautology, you see.
I don't understand how the length of time you need to acquire a language correlates to the fairness factor. Esperanto is deemed fair because NO COUNTRY owns Esperanto. With all the politics present today, it would be a total mess if you pick the language of any particular country. France wouldn't be very happy if English was to be made the sole lingua franca of the world. The "what about us, we're a superpower, too" syndrome would inevitably surface.
It's very simple reasoning. Forget fairness or neutral its ease that is the key. Plus, Indoeuropean languages dominate the globe either way.
If learning english takes a china man 6 years or the equivlalent of a masters degree, and esperanto is a one year diploma. Esperanto is much more fair. Now if you can't get this fact, you simply lack reason.
This video is in English because English speakers are his target audience for this video. Also, the comments about ethnocentrism show an obvious lack of knowledge about Esperanto and how it works. It is immensely popular and receives government support in Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa and even less in Europe but it is growing there as well. In non-Anglophone America, it is also growing and receiving government support in some areas. Esperanto is the least ethnocentric choice available.
It's easy to talk the talk, but can you name a single non-Eurocentric fact about it?
This espousing of just how "popular" it downright propogandic.
There's more speakers of Batak than those of any degree of fluency in Esperanto, and I'm more than willing to bet you've never so much as heard of the former.
Yes, there may be more speakers of Batak--but learning Batak would only let you communicate with Batak speakers! That is severely limiting yourself to a certain group of people--unless of course you have a deep seated interest in learning their culture--in which case learning Batak would indeed be more profitable.
Esperanto on the other hand, lets you communicate to more people of different cultures.
And Esperanto only lets you speak with users of Esperanto. It's up to the speakers to know more. Point remains it's not so profitable to know Esperanto, and that's not a selling point you want to be advertising.
As is, there are far more languages that'll let you communicate with a wider audience. I'm sure you've heard of what a lingua franca is?
this statement makes no sense. No matter which language one speaks it can only be understood by a person that speaks that language. If one would try to speak French to a Chinese person and that person didn't know French thta Chinese wouldn't understand the French speaker. If an Italian speaker speaks Esperanto to a korean speaker , who knows Esperanto there is no problem. All languages work this way.
How does it not make sense? You have to speak Esperanto to understand it. You just reiterated my point to somehow try to turn it into a disproof.
Let's try it this way: If one would try to speak Esperanto to a Chinese person who didn't know Esperanto, that Chinese guy wouldn't understand the Esperanto speaker. See?
Plus, Esperanto speakers do not deny the fact that it's vocabulary IS Euro-centric. The selling point of Esperanto is not the diversity (or lack thereof) of its vocabulary, but the EASY grammar rules it has that helps you learn it more easily.
Of course, Romance language speakers would find it easier, but speakers of other languages WILL STILL find Esperanto easier to learn compared to, for example, English or French.
Having a language that uses words from a good number of major languages would only result in a jumbled mess, don't you think? ^^
No, I don't. Not only would that actually meet a goal of fairness, but there's no reason it shouldn't be feasible; languages don't disintegrate just because they borrow foreign words (often as high as 70-80% of vocab).
Besides, Romance words aren't all that international. Most peoples tend to form calques or idioms eventually displacing them.
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled mess? Celtic, Latin, Viking, Norman. French - the main sources not to mention spicy ones , a terrible mixture of meanings and idioms, and twisted pronunciation, supported by auxiliary intonation - but I like it. Lithuan
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
If i ever had kids, I'd love to speak Esperanto to them, at least I will encourage them to learn and speak it. There are lots of similarities with many European languages in Esperanto, so it'd help to learn other languages as well. Esperanto should be taught in schools voluntarily, not that English wouldn't matter, but the pronouncing is way too illogical for non-native speakers that it's very hard to learn and speak understandable to everyone.
Sorry for late response, but your comment was so ... I can't find the right euphemism... that I don't know from where I would start.
The thing is, one would expect that with logic you could go from the written word to it's sound. But in english you can never be sure about the right way to say a word after reading it. Much less you can know how to write an word after hearing it. You have to hear/write it, respectively, to know. Esperanto is light-years better.
It depends on the time spent weekly, and small children seems to take longer to learn, because you can't use the strutural gramatical aproach.
In most schools that teach esperanto in the first grades, it is an 1~2 year course. Often it is intended to have an propedeutic effect. It has been shown many times that children that have say 2 years of esperanto and 3 of french have an better level in french than those who studied 5 whole years of french.
I see the claims of times needed to learn Esperanto vs French have yet again been elevated. Last week it was "4 whole years of French". Why not a comparison, to say, Tok Pisin or Hawaiian if Esperanto is so easy?
It's really a pointless endeavor to boast language X is better for globalness despite not being better able to learn natively, which is what it'd have to do to reach globalness.
I was not comparing with the time to learn french. Read again. Tok Pisin and Hawaiian are indeed way easier than french or english too, but I don't know of any comparison of the learning time of those. You are free to make one.
I don't understand the "natively factor". Anyway, Esperanto is not an crazy language that you can only learn well once you spend a lot of money and time to go to an country where it is spoken natively.
Did I say French? No. And why are they easier? Would it be because they don't have redundant inflection? Hm?
The natively factor is what'd it have to do to reach globalness. Not everyone is going to learn a 2nd language if it won't help them in their daily lives. A good deal of people who know Esperanto are already fluent in other languages, making it rather unncessary.
It doesn't require a lot of money, just effort, and there are easily more "teach yourself X" books/sites than Esperanto.
Yes, you said french. What redundant inflection are you talking about?
Again, I don't see exaclty where the native esperanto speakers help esperanto to reach globalness. As for usefullness, there is a lot of it already. Helping the learning of other languages, as I said above, Passaporto Servo, reading books originaly written in esperanto or only translated to esperanto (there is an chinese book that I want to read), talking better to other countries people, etc.
For starters: morphological number and agreement, case and agreement, and an article when a demonstrative could do the same thing. Morphological moods = Ha.
The whole native thing comes in because what you call problems for non-Esperanto languages are not problems for native speakers. And because if group A and group B both have their own languages, they're not going to learn group C's. They either shift to A's, to B's, or learn both A's and B's. It just doesn't happen any other way.
Actually, no, the proper antecedent was languages like Tok Pisin or Hawaiian.
I can't find the one post, so I put it here:
Esperanto exceptions: note the pronouns which are suppletive for number instead of suffixing (vi is twice an exception.)thematic vowel endings are inconsistent. The question particle doesn't follow the pattern of correlatives and is transparently Slavic.
Questioning efficiency: why not just 2 pronouns taking regular pluralizers, with demonstratives as 3rd person?
The fact we are "fluent" in other languages don't mean anything. Almost any active esperanto speaker is more fluent in esperanto than any other foregin languages he know, so talking in esperanto is an more pleasant and fullfiling expericence.
Also, one of the objectives of esperanto is that you don't have waste thousands hours of your life learning English if you don't want to. You can chose to learn any other language instead, or any other thing, like nuclear physics.
"One needs at least 10,000 hours of study and practice to put in place the hundreds of thousands of reflexes one needs, whose number cannot be brought down."
Grammar is not just a list of suffixes (which Esperanto has a fair few of, and more so than this constantly compared English), it still has to have an inverse level of syntax, and vocabulary will always take take years to perfectly master.
@HailCthulhu Eternaj komencantoj are usually people who started but don't continue, because don't have possibilit`y to practice. But if they practice, they will progress. Why the criticists take all their material by the same websites, but don't learn esperanto and practice 1/2 years before talking?
I also can criticize kung fu and karate, because i watched Karate kid and Kung fu panda, and self-learned martial arts...
@HailCthulhu If you criticize something you don't know, this means that you just read something from some website and just repeat it. [citazione sufficiente]
Why there are million of eternaj komencantoj in English? Because we can learn the written language (not very good) and don't understand a song or movie without reading text. tre free three; beach and bitch; flower and flour have for me EXACTLY the same pronunc. run out of = go run
source: The italian man who went to Malta (your ex. colony)
@cicciontek "Because we can learn the written language (not very good) and don't understand a song or movie without reading text" This isn't an explanation. Also, name your source this's an improvement over other languages people don't get fluent in. Name your source all critics get their material from the same websites. Name your source none have ever learned it. I don't get the significance of saying English phonology can be learned imperfectly.
@cicciontek Further, flower & flour are normally homophones & I find it implausible you find tree and free as homophones. This's just reaching.
Yeah, so about that insistence on learning things with the intent of proficiency. This is a terrible criteria. I don't need to be a member of religion w, philosophy X, political party Y or pseudo-science Z to know about its flaws. This's the same thing that makes it possible to pick undocumented language J & make a description sans becoming fluent in it.
@HailCthulhu You said it's possible to make criticism without studying. I am sure that such criticism is wrong, because to criticize something, you have to understand it; else you can only incompetently copy-paste other's words.
I, as learned esperanto and english, can talk because of my experience and I am an excellent source, but i don't want to be a source, too easy.
@cicciontek I said it's possible to criticize without becoming fluent, rather like the way I can learn about Xenu and thetans in $cientology without becoming a $cientologist. Unnecessary cases, fussy valency marking & wonky vocabulary don't stop being in Esperanto if I've never tried gaining fluency.
Name your source all critics get their material from the same websites. Name your source none have ever learned it. If you can't, you should ask why you feel compelled to say it anyways.
@HailCthulhu «I said it's possible to criticize without becoming fluent» you didn't write exactly that. Anyway without studying, you will not be able to understand what is really important in the topic you are learning. You think it's important a detail, you cannot assign importance to things... If you use it, you know what's important in communication. I studied piano 5 years, but i couldn't be in the jury at Chopin contest, but esperanto needs only 1 month + a friend for practice.
@HailCthulhu Honestly i can't understand 50% of your message.
Yahoo dictionary: flower [ˋflaʊɚ] flour [flaʊr].
Anyway, any masochistic gain from writing homophones in different way?
The esperanto-obsessed find ciriticism on wikipedia or personal sites & blogs.
I am an eterna komencanto for english as all people i speak with because of my job, except native speaker. do you also live on my planet? Did you talk with somebody not native english in your life?
@cicciontek Syllabic r and coda r are not distinguished in any dialect and is simply an inconsistency in transcription. It's not so much masochistic as a need arose to differentiate between the meanings in writing. (Disambiguating context is inherently lesser in writing than speech.)
Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question since I think you just said you weren't?
@HailCthulhu «need arose to differentiate between the meanings» So, why some words are written the same but read differently?
E.G. nobody can read the word "read": its pron. depends by the context (present, past...). A huge barrier for us to learn your language, listen your movies/songs. Italian it's "almost" perfect: you see a word and KNOW how to read it; you hear, and KNOW how to write it. Chinese ortography is more sincere. The whole read/writing system in english is sado/masochistic.
One generation and the children of Gaulish chieftains spoke in fluent Latin to the Senate. That's the power of a natively learned lingua franca.
All languages are easy to learn as a child.
It'd be better to think in terms of:
-What is the easiest/most difficult language for Russian/Quechua/Arukay speakers to learn?
The answer to what the easiest language to learn is: what ever is most closely related. There is no magically "easy for all" answer, which you ironically admit elsewhere.
It was shown that esperanto propedeutic effect remain strong for non-latin languages like learning Japanese.
The propedeutic effect of esperanto is much greater than average because it:
- Is much faster to learn, and thus takes less time to have the generic propedeautic effect as any other language.
- Gives students more confidence in themselfs as it is relatively easy and fast to reach fluency. Also, it trains their brain to fluently think/talk in another language than their own.
It'd just be easier to sit a bunch of students in front of typology articles instead of making them learn an entire language intermediate to the one they'd rather learn.
"So that's what a case is!"
"So that's ergativity! (which btw is rather harmful to your cause to ignore such a common morphosyntactic alignment)"
- Make the meaning of gramatical terms visible and helps to generate quicker an "understanting of languages structure" as this is not hidden by complicated grammar or exeptions.
- Makes students like learning languages much more, because the international exposure and rapid results they achieve with esperanto.
I totally agree with you on the language learning basics : it's unbelievable to see that people who have been learning English for 7 years cannot understand simple daily statements..
Anyway , very interesting video. It's nice to share some experience !
Noone around me prefers perfect tools to make their life easier life and while accomplishing more advanced things. They like to waste their time and energy for producing garbage. People aspire to waste their time and kill the nature because, in the crazy capitalist world, they are narrow-minded to have job. Without doing useless things, they tell, we would live in the caves -- nobody would do anything. The complex english grammar creates jobs. Translation creates jobs. This world is impaired.
What was your first language? Your accent is quiet good.
mechatech70 6 days ago
@mechatech70 Piron's first language was French, i suppose (from Belgium). Died in 2008, you can read of him in internet.
cicciontek 6 days ago
@cicciontek Ah, that is very sad. Thank you for replying though.
mechatech70 6 days ago
Of course international conferences in Esperanto would be more 'lively', it's a one-language conference. But you forget the fact that if we adopt with a universal language there will be no originality of countries, no unique cultures. It sounds nice and all but remember that not many people speak Esperanto!! English is still the most popular language hands down. I'm not saying learning Esperanto is a waste of time but the language may not be as useful as 'Esperantists' make it seem to be.
MrLingualistic 1 week ago
Esperanto should never be a national language, but the language of communication ONLY. English is the language of people, Esperanto the language for all. It is necessary to keep for each one his language, his originalities and his culture. Esperamto is the language easiest to learn for all. English is not a popular language… too difficult to learn and to know perfectly. Esperanto is neutral.
DannirLsne 1 week ago in playlist Uploaded videos
@MrLingualistic Ugh. Esperanto as the ONLY language? That is the worst idea I've ever heard. Nobody wants that, anyway. Esperantists (the majority) want Esperanto to be a universal second language. Imagine a world where you could go anywhere and talk to anyone, and STILL get to keep the languages and cultures! It would be a much better world. Plus, it would be so much easier to learn other languages, which are among man kind's greatest gifts to itself.
mechatech70 6 days ago
i wounder if Esperanto websites would be immune to censorship...this would be a great help
timigaguy 3 weeks ago in playlist English films about Esperanto
Seems easy to learn for everyone except those who speak english as a native language.
junit483 1 month ago
@junit483 Why do you say so? Ask esperanto speakers which speak English as native language.
English seems easy to learn for everyone except those who do not speak a germanic language as a native language
(93% of the world population do not speak a germanic language as native language).
alejandro31192 3 weeks ago
@coldmilkishot Ciao.
Ok, but i didn't say that italian is perfect (even if infinitively much more logical than english, anyway). You are right the accent is not written in every word because would be quite annoying (in dictionaries it is). But italian doesn't claim to be an international language, even if would be more clear than english as pronunciation ;-)
Tial mi parolas esperante, kaj mi opinias ke esperanto estas la plej bona lingvo internacia, Ciao ;)
cicciontek 2 months ago
@cicciontek Italian is a amazing language.
mechatech70 6 days ago
Saluton, mi komencas lerni Esperanto! -- el Usono
cornbagel 3 months ago
Hey can I mirror this on my channel?
okayillgonow 7 months ago in playlist Foreign Languages
Esperanto is interesting, but will never supplant any natural language. It's too complex with too many strange characters that don't exist in any language or keyboard. Ido is a bit better. Interlingua is easier to pronounce, more natural looking. Glossa is nice, but an isolating language is hard to adjust to. English is too widespread and too powerful. It's easy to learn, with little grammar. Exceptions, who cares? No one speaks English perfectly. Accents are different. It's acceptable.
ravendon 7 months ago
@MrKrov
Albert Einstein: "It's easier to dismantle an atom than a prejudice".
"estas pli facila malmunti atomon ol antaŭjuĝon."
That the problem all people that speaks Esperanto has to face when they say it.
Why you say Esperanto will kill any language? it was created to be a 2nd language. The first one would be the mother tongue. English will kill other languages, it has a very strong culture of 2 countries behind the language. It is killing for example the beautiful Swedish.
alejandro31192 9 months ago
@alejandro31192 What is intended by an idealist is not required by the universe to coincide with what will happen if the idealist's intent is carried through.
What evidence do you have to present for English killing Swedish? What evidence do you have Esperanto wouldn't do the same in turn? (Hint: English is propagated in Sweden in what way?)
MrKrov 5 months ago
@MrKrov ...mmm.. i didn't understand very well the first sentence...
Well... i send you a link about all that problem... and I believe Esperanto won't do the same cause it will be learned as a second language and will get people intererest to learn other languages. At universities, for example, swedish people writes more in English. Their schools are all teached in English and their swedish writing is worse due to that...
alejandro31192 5 months ago
@alejandro31192 Intent does not equal consequence. I can intend to make a harmless cleaning supply, but if I mix ammonia and bleach, chemistry says I'll get deadly chloramine anyways.
I'm going to need an actual study when you say native language skill somehow go away when learning a new one. I'll also need one for why Esperanto wouldn't have the same effects if it became the big prestige language. English is just a 2nd language in Sweden, afterall. (BTW Swedish universities are bilingual.)
MrKrov 5 months ago
@MrKrov ok thanks, now i understand...
take the swedish link i sent to you and google translate it. There it says that schools are bilingual there and everything is teached in English but Swedish class (of course! XD).
Therefore, they learn more English but what they learn is more superficial and their Swedish, comparing to the others who learned in a non bilingual school, is worse.
alejandro31192 5 months ago
@MrKrov
Well... i don't know if there's any study out there, but i think that learning Esperanto for 2 years would be better than learning English for at least 7 years... the other 5 years in school could be used to learn others languages, not only English, nobody asked me if I wanted to learn English rather than any other language...
but maybe there's some idealism behind this, but anyway I don't think Esperanto would be use a family language, only, as it happens, for those who met in EO.
alejandro31192 5 months ago
@MrKrov : C'est pourtant très clair et très juste ! Moi je le comprends et vous comprends. Me comprenez-vous ? ;-)) Si nous apprenions tous l'espéranto, on se comprendrais beaucoup mieux et plus facilement. It's what I believe !
Ludovic98 9 months ago
@Ludovic98 See, that's that problem where everybody says "Oh, if only everybody would just pick my solution!" It's not a reason to "believe".
MrKrov 5 months ago
"The reason is not that [teaching methods] are inadequate."
Yes, that is precisely the reason.
kokorodokoro 9 months ago
@kokorodokoro
Well, I think you are wrong. English it's a hard language. Tell an asian guy that their teaching methods are inadequate... Esperanto is easier for everybody, including them. Learning a non fair and difficult language to "intercommunicate" is a nonsense and a waste of time. read this... mondeto.com/uploads/4/5/5/2/4552219/integrated_lote_in_the_primary_curriculum.pdf
alejandro31192 9 months ago
@alejandro31192 I will be happy to tell him that, I know for a fact that the methods used in schools are - in all areas, but particularly so in language learning - hideously inadequate in being effective as well as acknowledging individual dispositions to learning etc. English may well be hard, but the reason so many fail language studies is not simply because it is "hard", I don't believe.
kokorodokoro 6 months ago
@kokorodokoro Well. maybe it's not only because it's hard, maybe they don't want to learn a language they didn't elect to learn, maybe their language is so different to English that they have to spend lots of hours a day (like a chinese girl I know,... poor girl), yes, you're right... there's a lot of other reasons out there... but they all show that English isn't as good as Esperanto for intercommunication.
Where are you from? where are you parents from? I love swedish language :D
alejandro31192 6 months ago
@alejandro31192 You're correct, there's a whole host of reasons why people have difficulty learning languages, and I'm all for developing some kind of global auxlang, though perhaps more for the benefit of it being ethnically/nationally neutral (or as neutral as can be). I have my reservations about Esperanto, but I won't go into them here.
I'm born and raised in Sweden, so are my parents. Happy to hear you like my mother tongue :)
kokorodokoro 6 months ago
@kokorodokoro well, i know that Esperanto is not perfect, but by learning it, I saw it would be very helpful for all of us, There's another auxlang, but quite more difficult and new... What I want is Esperanto to succeed, and then, we can the whole world debate about a better auxlang... I'll teach my children Esperanto to facilitate them learning faster other languages, even Spanish, my mother tongue... =)
Well, Swedish sounds to me very germanic, that's one more reason you all speak it great :)
alejandro31192 6 months ago
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Konsentas mi kun Claude Piron. Estus pli bone, ke la angla konservu en Usonon, Anglon, Aŭstralion, kaj alian landon, kiu jam parolas la angla. Mi mem preferus paroli la esperanton ekstere mia propra lando, kaj la anglan interne ĝi. Tiel, neniu havus avantaĝon super alia. Bedaŭrinde, tio neniam okazos, do mi parolos nur kun la malmulta, kiu jam parolas esperanton.
dbiswinner 10 months ago
Konsentas mi kun Claude Piron. Estus pli bone, ke la angla konservu en Usonon, Anglon, Aŭstralion, kaj alian landon, kiu jam parolas la angla. Mi mem preferus paroli la esperanton ekstere mia propra lando, kaj la anglan interne ĝi. Tiel, neniu havus avantaĝon super alia. Bedaŭrinde, tio neniam okazos, do mi parolos nur kun la malmulta, kiu jam parolas esperanton.
dbiswinner 10 months ago
‹(O.O)›' while it's most certainly easier to oh let's use the same construct for two things it also makes that construct harder to understand.
Spieldamelenium 10 months ago
I think some people here underestimate how complex english words even are, not to mention it's not just the number of casses or what ever but how ambiguos they are both internally and from a purely logical perspective.
Spieldamelenium 10 months ago
Cxiuj devu doni okazo al Esperanto por lerni gxin, kaj uzi gxin, sed cxi tio estas neposibla, kriza maso estas cxiam tre malproksima tre obstrukca.
Angla Lingvo estas malfacila por lerni kaj gxia prononco estas peniga, sed gxi havas grandegajn avantagxojn cxar gxia cxieesteco en la medioj de komicado de la mondo kaj monda komerco. Esperantisto movado bezonas unu gvidanton kiu havas multe prestigxon, multe monon, multe simpation. Iu kiel Bill Gates, Clinton kaj Teresino Patrino kune en unu.
powerdriller10 10 months ago
While I will admit that English is a difficult language to master, I think the speaker greatly underestimates the number of fluent English speakers (both first language and non-natives) in the world. Further, other national languages (some of which are far easier than English) are very easy to master. Fluency can be achieved in Spanish in six months or less; conversational ability takes 2 months to achieve.
Of course, with national languages, there's someone to talk to. Not with Esperanto.
hailvishnu 1 year ago 2
@hailvishnu "I think the speaker greatly underestimates the number of fluent English speakers in the world."
Well, speaking as a Dutchman, most of the people around me are very bad at English, even the ones that think they're quite good at it. Myself, I often still have trouble finding words for certain things, so I must search them up in the Wiktionary or Google Translate. And when I go to other countries such as Germany or Czechia, it's even worse.
doom032 11 months ago
propaganda with few facts
gamrkidd 1 year ago
@gamrkidd I guess you're trolling, because if you really wanted to make a case for that you'd probably have at least one argument.
doom032 11 months ago
Although his points are spot on from a practical standpoint, I think he is a bit negative with people's abilities to teach and learn other national languages. I say continue refining teaching and learning methods, but also teach Esperanto as something to fall back on.
However, teaching Esperanto in the US would do wonders for a country where monolingualism is a source of pride.
plaidchuck 1 year ago
I've read some of Piron's articles on his website, and I love how candid and intelligent he is.
RIP M. Piron.
Moose6960 1 year ago
I guess the key phrase in here is "a political will to promote it". Only political will from a globally-influential consortium can take one auxiliary language and push it toward common use. Esperanto would 'hit the ground running' in that regard if it were chosen.
gposhto 1 year ago
As a newcomer to the notion of a constructed auxiliary language I kinda wish the early Esperanto community had taken advantage of Zammy's work on reforms and adopted a few of those proposed reforms. People get by without reforms, but fixing the top 3 difficulties would have meant complainers wouldn't have much to complain about.
I was so excited when I discovered there was a purposefully-built language to form a simpler and functional mode of communication...(cont)
gposhto 1 year ago
(cont) I was deeply disappointed when I discovered that not only was there ONE viable auxiliary language, but there are many, many more, and what's worse, the most popular one is 120 years old and I only heard about it for the first time last year at the age of 37. I'm glad Esperanto is in daily use, but I'm not partial to any one particular selection for an auxiliary language. I'm just partial to any *one* being adopted.
gposhto 1 year ago
Nawitka.... +ush pus wawa kapa ntsayka!
Totorohat 1 year ago
Excellent points sir, and i found this very informative and it has made me interested in learning Esperanto
thank you
123Johnny77123 1 year ago
I don't see why he says people feel awkward with English.
In America, we've heard people speak every possible accent
and level of English. We really don't care as long as you are
understandable. You don't have to perfect your accent.
If you are asian, you don't have to say Rs or Ls perfectly. No one
cares. We are a nation of immigrants. English is a mish-mash
already anyway.
Nothing against Esperanto, it's not a bad idea, but there's just
no market demand. Natural languages work fine.
OgeronimonominoregO 1 year ago
@OgeronimonominoregO Yes but can you tell me that those people are not made fun of, when speaking english with accents, or speak awekwardy (word order wise). with esperanto there is less of this. Also people are more comfortable speaking new languages with people in the same situation
CRG2100 1 year ago
@CRG2100 I may have misinterpreted the sense of your statement, but people who speak English with an accent are not the subject of ridicule. I'm sure in every culture there are some morons who will laugh at anyone for any reason, but they're to be ignored. Normal people don't laugh at mispronunciation (unless it's actually a humorous mistake, and then it's only polite to explain it if possible, e.g. "My friend pooped in for a visit the other day"). When the meaning is clear, there is no problem.
gposhto 1 year ago
English doesn't have genders or the baggage of romance
language verb conjugations. Adjectives are simple. Plurals
are simple. The future is formed just by adding "will".
There are a huge number of words, but you don't need to know
much in order to speak simply. So you can express yourself
lavishly or just communicate very basic thoughts.
English speakers are not as jealous of their language as
many others seem to be. It's a natural for int'l communication
due to its exposure and history.
OgeronimonominoregO 1 year ago
@OgeronimonominoregO English is not as "easy" as commonly people think...
And english speakers, not being used to be "at the other side of the wall", aren't very cooperative when speaking to a foreiner...
Moreover how about the 24 vowels of english against the 6 of spanish, a pronunciation totally random and a huge use of idiomatic expressions such as phrasal verbs Etc.. ;-)
On the side of the mere "intelligibility" English has resulted just as the 10h language, behind italian and spanish.
AriodanteITA 1 year ago
@AriodanteITA Maybe English has more phrasal verbs
and idioms than others, but that's one of the things that
makes languages interesting.
I guess the random pronunciation and spelling is the
worst feature of English for a new learner. The th sound
is hard for some to learn. On the other hand, I've always
thought English was easy on the mouth, tongue, and lips,
and not requiring as much energy to speak - if that makes
any sense.
I didn't know English speakers were not cooperative though.
OgeronimonominoregO 1 year ago
@OgeronimonominoregO well...i like languages, and i studied several of them: of course every natural language presents its difficulties, English is not that "easy on the mouth" it requires YEARS to be spoken to an average level: Paradoxically even japanese is easier on the mouth of a foreigner. Maybe people never notice that,but English has 24 vowel sounds (Ship/sheep cup/cap hop/hoop want/won't) against the 5 of Spanish and the 8 of German. ;-)
AriodanteITA 1 year ago
@AriodanteITA By "easy on the mouth" I meant it takes less
physical energy, not that it isn't difficult to learn so many
vowel sounds. I say this because in learning French and
Swedish, for me, it seems there are more pronounced
movements, lip rounding, rolling Rs, etc. English
seems to sit comfortably at the front of the mouth. It
seems more relaxed than other languages, but I could
be wrong. It's hard to be objective with your native language.
OgeronimonominoregO 1 year ago
@AriodanteITA I know the vowels A,E,I,O,U, and Y, What are the other 18? No, seriously, what are they? English is my native language and I have only heard of 6? Do you by any chance mean vowel combinations (ou, ea, ee)?
jgt2598 1 year ago
AriodanteITA 1 year ago
@jgt2598 each vowel in english has at least 2 different sounds, long and short. There are more, and then there are vowel combinations as well.
I guess AriodanteITA's comment that "Native speakers never realize how really "complex" is their own language" is true.
talcottsk 1 year ago
@jgt2598
Traditionally English had the vowels a, ā, e, ē, i, ī, o, ō, u, ū, y, ȳ (Both y sounds are dead in modern English), æ, ǣ and sometimes ġ. We simply became lazy though and started to represent each of them based on the first six short vowels.
HojoOSanagi 1 year ago
CLAUDE PIRON QUOQUE IPSE MAGNUS SCRIPTOR EST IN LINGUA ESPERANTO
alkantre 1 year ago
Esperanto is not the only language of its kind, but it has one enormous advantage over Interlingua, Volapuk, and Ido: the enormous amount of original and translated literature in Esperanto that has been produced over more than a century. As a person who loves reading belles-lettres from all cultures, I would say this achievement of Esperanto is quite remarkable and that anyone who likes world literature should learn it.
alkantre 1 year ago
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Estu Eulingu un projektu novus a kreir un lingu simplus por Europu in ordu a unir populi europis, por mori informazoni visir eurolanguage.blogspot.com, multi danki :-)
tvlingu 1 year ago
well done
tvlingu 1 year ago
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Estu Eulingu un projektu novus a kreir un lingu simplus por Europu in ordu a unir populi europis, por mori informazoni sur Eulingu visir eurolanguage.blogspot.com, multi danki!
tvlingu 1 year ago
Excellent video! Thank you very much for taking the time to post this.
mythof1 1 year ago
I thought about a common language for all many years ago. At one time Latin was the language of intellectuals. God confused the language of people when they decided to build the Tower Of Babel. Up to that time all people spoke only one language. One common language would bring people of the world closer together. The accomplishments would be exponential. The savings in translation would also be exponential.
director337 1 year ago
I wonder what he thinks about Lojban.
PatchworkMyth 1 year ago
@PatchworkMyth
Well, he thinks nothing because he's dead. :( But I thought Lojban was created as an experiment to prove a linguistic hypothesis.
Mutusen 1 year ago
I just discovered Esperanto yesterday and it's the answer to a wish I've expressed for years but never thought would ever be answered: "I wish there was a language without stupid rules that would be consistent (or is that consistant?) and easy to learn, easy enough for most people to speak pronounce, and adopted globally." Well, it was here all along.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
@P00P0STER0US And phonetic. :) "consistent"
petitalastair 1 year ago
@petitalastair And phonetic! Yes indeed :) I really like that about Esperanto, reading is enough to know the pronunciation.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
As a native English speaker I agree completely that English is not a suitable language for international communication. It's not horrible, but it's full of arbitrary nonsense in spelling and grammar which regularly confounds and frustrates native English speakers regularly.
P00P0STER0US 1 year ago
Cet homme était un génie. Étant Canadien, je vis cette barrière linguistique à tous les jours. Ayant vécu dans un milieu majoritairement francophone au cours de ma jeunesse, je peux maintenant témoigner des difficultés rencontrées lorsque que vient le temps de communiquer avec des personnes unilingues anglophone. J'ai souvent été victime de moquerie en raison de mon accent sur certains mots en anglais. L'espéranto me semble être la langue idéale, suite à mes recherches.
ubuntuforever 1 year ago
Quite persuasive!
IpsaPaphum 1 year ago
Great video, I always hesitated to learn Esperanto, but I 'll start learning it now!
atphalix 1 year ago
Im gonna give the language a shot. who knows, ive just read about it for like 2 hours and i know ALL grammar and sentance strukture ^^
Tzumachiru 1 year ago
To me language is the vehicle of thought and an element of culture. When you learn a new language you acquire a sense of other people's conception of things. You get to penetrate their culturally intrinsic interpretation of life. It contains their love story (or lack of it) with nature; their desiderata are transparently shown through its semantic constructions and even grammar
greensofa1 1 year ago
Try to learn it ... and you can see the wolrd completly different... simple. Be open...
DannirLsne 1 year ago 14
you miss the point entirely
Herbyourenthusiasm 1 year ago
I must disagree with greensofa1, because in Esperanto I've read stories and cultural things about people who lives far in Africa, in the last book I've bought, that I couldn't found in any other language. That brings to me a new reality about how those people think and reacts. I don't know if I could translate that in my language without lose something, there are many adjectives in E-o that would be an entire phrase in my native language.
skeptikulo 1 year ago
If we don't appreciate women for what they are and women don't appreciate us men for what we are, thus completing each other then we will always be doomed...but that's another story...
greensofa1 1 year ago
Another point is that i personally sense Esperanto, coming from nowhere, would lack the essential soulful cachet that native languages have. We should start by accepting that all languages are equally important. We will always have problems with differences if we do not resort to embracing them. It's like the issue of men vs women.
greensofa1 1 year ago
I don't see how Esperanto would improve communication among people; i see it hindering it even more. I think we get by just fine. The need for Esperanto in the way it's presented is just a non-issue. The world is plagued with other much more important issues we need to seriously and massively address -- by converging our resources -- such as diseases, famine and access to education.
greensofa1 1 year ago
If Esperanto is not taught for free it would mean and recreate the same status quo. It would soon represent a billion dollar industry for language schools and printing companies (of course totally profitable for some)... ain't that just what we have today in the world with other languages?
greensofa1 1 year ago
I like him.
zwan94 1 year ago
whole world speaking same language :) Good job mr Zemenhof... Pole
Grealsa 1 year ago
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Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexic, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like it because so many creative people left their messages in it.
mykolasb 1 year ago
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To Happycat
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
A Lithuan
mykolasb 1 year ago
Dear Claude Piron, your voice from beyond threatens to rob those billions of euros from millions of English teachers and publishers who thrive on our illiteracy
mykolasb 1 year ago
But, could there be Esperanto teachers instead? Respectively.
elPlatoIsPaulCharles 1 year ago
Esperanto was never intended to replace natural languages. It was supposed to to be an addition. It could be used in world travel, at international meetings, or to talk to your relatives in south america that you couldn't preciously talk to without a mediator. I think the people who say that it is going to kill culture are just not willing to look past what immediately comes to mind. Everyone wants to keep there own language, so that will only motivate people to keep their native languages.
baldrickmammoth 1 year ago 26
@baldrickmammoth the thing most people don't understand is...if everyone were to learn one language, right now the trend is English, all other languages get severely influenced by the language and eventually die out. its inevitable.
everybody should be multilingual and not all learn the same language to communicate, but rather learn each others.
Codylangaugesblog 1 year ago
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@Codylangaugesblog "if everyone were to learn one language, right now the trend is English, all other languages get severely influenced by the language and eventually die out. its inevitable."
That's a completely unprovable hypothesis.
doom032 11 months ago
@baldrickmammoth to me, it's a review and/or change in human values, not changing the world's lingua franca alone, that will save smaller and endangered languages. in my country, the national language is seen by some as a liability to national progress; this is because we lack positive values needed to uphold it, they rather over-depend on English than translate works to the local lingo for the masses. i'm not so sure how that'll change if another language becomes lingua franca in the future.
fanatix2008 4 months ago
Esperanto claims to be an easy language, NOT the easiest language. The regular and no-exception rules are the key to the ease of learning it compared to other languages. There may be other natural languages that are as easy or much easier than Esperanto, but always bear in mind that people take pride in their own languages, and would not easily accept some other country's language as the lingua franca, especially of that country is not as powerful and wealthy as the other nations.
happykatkat 2 years ago
For exceptions to the grammar, look no further than the pronouns which are suppletive for person and number.
History has shown people can't wait to give up their native language for one more prestigious. A global one would be extremely prestigous. People also tend not learn one if it's not more prestigious than one they already speak.
So in the extremely unlikely event there's ever a global language, and somehow it's Esperanto, it'll be responsible for widespread language death.
MrKrov 2 years ago
@MrKrov What a bunch of bullshit.
doom032 11 months ago
@doom032 How persuasive.
MrKrov 11 months ago
@happykatkat I completely agree with you. That's the reason why Esperanto has been choosen
nzifini 2 years ago
Chosen by who? By what authority?
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
no autirity chosed it, but it is obvious that no language on this planet would have been chose, so they invented one! against parochialism
nzifini 1 year ago
You just said it was chosen. That implies someone is actually in a position to impose it on people.
And against parochialism? Have you not read the comments already posted here?
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
please, read what happykatkat wrote '=_=
nzifini 1 year ago
And she said nothing about it being "chosen", much less by anyone who matters.
And if you think she dealt with the parochialism, I think you need to read what the people responding to her wrote.
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
people selected it for communication under a equal banner. you dont need them to be authority of any kind.
KOGR11 1 year ago
Why, you make it sound as though more people than the propogandists picked it.
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
i didnt make it sound like anything you just see propagandists everywhere.
KOGR11 1 year ago
Saying it's been chosen actually implies some significance; there's no point to saying it's been chosen by people who've chosen to propogate it. A tautology, you see.
Good or bad, propoganda's still propoganda.
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
owo so there are more than a million propagandist you will have to deal with no? bless your wise soul then.
KOGR11 1 year ago
The funniest part is the number of them that can actively speak it is only about a third of that.
HailCthulhu 1 year ago
I don't understand how the length of time you need to acquire a language correlates to the fairness factor. Esperanto is deemed fair because NO COUNTRY owns Esperanto. With all the politics present today, it would be a total mess if you pick the language of any particular country. France wouldn't be very happy if English was to be made the sole lingua franca of the world. The "what about us, we're a superpower, too" syndrome would inevitably surface.
happykatkat 2 years ago
It was made by a Polish guy. That alone'll offend many people.
If you're going to actively impose something on people, have the good courtesy to allow a little democracy in picking design features first.
It's a good thing I checked back for replies in case someone forgot to hit the reply button.
MrKrov 2 years ago
It's very simple reasoning. Forget fairness or neutral its ease that is the key. Plus, Indoeuropean languages dominate the globe either way.
If learning english takes a china man 6 years or the equivlalent of a masters degree, and esperanto is a one year diploma. Esperanto is much more fair. Now if you can't get this fact, you simply lack reason.
MikDonsen 2 years ago
This guy is such a quack. Hahaha.
illasduck 2 years ago
This video is in English because English speakers are his target audience for this video. Also, the comments about ethnocentrism show an obvious lack of knowledge about Esperanto and how it works. It is immensely popular and receives government support in Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa and even less in Europe but it is growing there as well. In non-Anglophone America, it is also growing and receiving government support in some areas. Esperanto is the least ethnocentric choice available.
mtgarren 2 years ago
It's easy to talk the talk, but can you name a single non-Eurocentric fact about it?
This espousing of just how "popular" it downright propogandic.
There's more speakers of Batak than those of any degree of fluency in Esperanto, and I'm more than willing to bet you've never so much as heard of the former.
MrKrov 2 years ago
Yes, there may be more speakers of Batak--but learning Batak would only let you communicate with Batak speakers! That is severely limiting yourself to a certain group of people--unless of course you have a deep seated interest in learning their culture--in which case learning Batak would indeed be more profitable.
Esperanto on the other hand, lets you communicate to more people of different cultures.
happykatkat 2 years ago
And Esperanto only lets you speak with users of Esperanto. It's up to the speakers to know more. Point remains it's not so profitable to know Esperanto, and that's not a selling point you want to be advertising.
As is, there are far more languages that'll let you communicate with a wider audience. I'm sure you've heard of what a lingua franca is?
MrKrov 2 years ago
this statement makes no sense. No matter which language one speaks it can only be understood by a person that speaks that language. If one would try to speak French to a Chinese person and that person didn't know French thta Chinese wouldn't understand the French speaker. If an Italian speaker speaks Esperanto to a korean speaker , who knows Esperanto there is no problem. All languages work this way.
nalikideyu 2 years ago
How does it not make sense? You have to speak Esperanto to understand it. You just reiterated my point to somehow try to turn it into a disproof.
Let's try it this way: If one would try to speak Esperanto to a Chinese person who didn't know Esperanto, that Chinese guy wouldn't understand the Esperanto speaker. See?
MrKrov 2 years ago
Plus, Esperanto speakers do not deny the fact that it's vocabulary IS Euro-centric. The selling point of Esperanto is not the diversity (or lack thereof) of its vocabulary, but the EASY grammar rules it has that helps you learn it more easily.
happykatkat 2 years ago
The grammar rules are needlessly baroque and still perfectly mimics western Indo-European.
Are you aware there's an inverse correlation between grammatical complexity and syntactic complexity?
Example: compare American languages to those in Southeast Asia.
MrKrov 2 years ago
Of course, Romance language speakers would find it easier, but speakers of other languages WILL STILL find Esperanto easier to learn compared to, for example, English or French.
Having a language that uses words from a good number of major languages would only result in a jumbled mess, don't you think? ^^
happykatkat 2 years ago
No, I don't. Not only would that actually meet a goal of fairness, but there's no reason it shouldn't be feasible; languages don't disintegrate just because they borrow foreign words (often as high as 70-80% of vocab).
Besides, Romance words aren't all that international. Most peoples tend to form calques or idioms eventually displacing them.
MrKrov 2 years ago
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled mess? Celtic, Latin, Viking, Norman. French - the main sources not to mention spicy ones , a terrible mixture of meanings and idioms, and twisted pronunciation, supported by auxiliary intonation - but I like it. Lithuan
mykolasb 1 year ago
Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
mykolasb 1 year ago
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Then isn't English one of the most jumbled messes - a mixture of Celtic, Latin, Norman, French lexics, not to mention spicy impacts from all over the world? Plus the twisted pronunciation, the chaos of idioms, and the necessity of auxiliary intonation to make all this comprehensible - but I like i because so many creative people left their messages in it.
Lithuan
mykolasb 1 year ago
Interesting that he makes this videon in...drumroll....English!
csacta 2 years ago
He made similar videos in French too...
Mutusen 2 years ago
I appreciate this post.
I am learning esperanto simply because I wish to. I enjoy this language, and am glad to see the movement posted about.
ripperzane 2 years ago 2
Bonvenon!
DannirLsne 2 years ago
wikipedia: Total speakers Native: 200 to 2000
Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million
so I would say its very rare to go to a country and find someone who speak esperanto
akumie 2 years ago
Unless you know where to go.
Mutusen 2 years ago
If i ever had kids, I'd love to speak Esperanto to them, at least I will encourage them to learn and speak it. There are lots of similarities with many European languages in Esperanto, so it'd help to learn other languages as well. Esperanto should be taught in schools voluntarily, not that English wouldn't matter, but the pronouncing is way too illogical for non-native speakers that it's very hard to learn and speak understandable to everyone.
Telstar85 2 years ago
"..pronouncing is way too illogical for non-native speakers"
*facepalm*
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
For native speakers it is also illogical, but at least "natural". I can't master english pronounciation, it is chaotic and full of sutilities.
Caroliano 2 years ago
I see the zealousness of Esperanto has fried your brain.
Sounds can not be logical or illogical; they're not math problems or puzzles.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
Sorry for late response, but your comment was so ... I can't find the right euphemism... that I don't know from where I would start.
The thing is, one would expect that with logic you could go from the written word to it's sound. But in english you can never be sure about the right way to say a word after reading it. Much less you can know how to write an word after hearing it. You have to hear/write it, respectively, to know. Esperanto is light-years better.
Caroliano 2 years ago
Notice how it goes from the sounds being illogical to writing being illogical.
If writing's supposed to be some benefit, we could all do Basque, Italian, Turkish or Korean. It's not some magic benefit exclusive to Esperanto.
~85% of the time is not never. And spelling reforms are a hell of a lot easier to introduce entirely new languages. (Note: writing != language.)
Morphemic spelling would last longer and be more recognizable for more people anyways.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
I'm not really fond of the evangelical nature surrounding the language or the divided opinions on how it should be used to achieve its' goal
torrynebejer 2 years ago
i don't think people should be required to learn it at school.
ttimothymurphy 2 years ago
esperanto sounds like a fun game.
and english has its limititations for international communication.
but i think esperanto is kind of creepy - like george orwell's newspeak.
ttimothymurphy 2 years ago
esperanto just rocks, like seriously, its amazing
jabdirector 2 years ago
Esperanto should be taught from 1st grade on up!
Shriner66 2 years ago
yes but it only takes like 5 months to learn it ! lol
ashleygonzalez1991 2 years ago
It depends on the time spent weekly, and small children seems to take longer to learn, because you can't use the strutural gramatical aproach.
In most schools that teach esperanto in the first grades, it is an 1~2 year course. Often it is intended to have an propedeutic effect. It has been shown many times that children that have say 2 years of esperanto and 3 of french have an better level in french than those who studied 5 whole years of french.
Caroliano 2 years ago
I see the claims of times needed to learn Esperanto vs French have yet again been elevated. Last week it was "4 whole years of French". Why not a comparison, to say, Tok Pisin or Hawaiian if Esperanto is so easy?
It's really a pointless endeavor to boast language X is better for globalness despite not being better able to learn natively, which is what it'd have to do to reach globalness.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
I was not comparing with the time to learn french. Read again. Tok Pisin and Hawaiian are indeed way easier than french or english too, but I don't know of any comparison of the learning time of those. You are free to make one.
I don't understand the "natively factor". Anyway, Esperanto is not an crazy language that you can only learn well once you spend a lot of money and time to go to an country where it is spoken natively.
Caroliano 2 years ago
Did I say French? No. And why are they easier? Would it be because they don't have redundant inflection? Hm?
The natively factor is what'd it have to do to reach globalness. Not everyone is going to learn a 2nd language if it won't help them in their daily lives. A good deal of people who know Esperanto are already fluent in other languages, making it rather unncessary.
It doesn't require a lot of money, just effort, and there are easily more "teach yourself X" books/sites than Esperanto.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
Yes, you said french. What redundant inflection are you talking about?
Again, I don't see exaclty where the native esperanto speakers help esperanto to reach globalness. As for usefullness, there is a lot of it already. Helping the learning of other languages, as I said above, Passaporto Servo, reading books originaly written in esperanto or only translated to esperanto (there is an chinese book that I want to read), talking better to other countries people, etc.
Caroliano 2 years ago
For starters: morphological number and agreement, case and agreement, and an article when a demonstrative could do the same thing. Morphological moods = Ha.
The whole native thing comes in because what you call problems for non-Esperanto languages are not problems for native speakers. And because if group A and group B both have their own languages, they're not going to learn group C's. They either shift to A's, to B's, or learn both A's and B's. It just doesn't happen any other way.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
Actually, no, the proper antecedent was languages like Tok Pisin or Hawaiian.
I can't find the one post, so I put it here:
Esperanto exceptions: note the pronouns which are suppletive for number instead of suffixing (vi is twice an exception.)thematic vowel endings are inconsistent. The question particle doesn't follow the pattern of correlatives and is transparently Slavic.
Questioning efficiency: why not just 2 pronouns taking regular pluralizers, with demonstratives as 3rd person?
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
The fact we are "fluent" in other languages don't mean anything. Almost any active esperanto speaker is more fluent in esperanto than any other foregin languages he know, so talking in esperanto is an more pleasant and fullfiling expericence.
Also, one of the objectives of esperanto is that you don't have waste thousands hours of your life learning English if you don't want to. You can chose to learn any other language instead, or any other thing, like nuclear physics.
Caroliano 2 years ago
Ever hear of "eternaj komencantoj"?
To quote this Piron:
"One needs at least 10,000 hours of study and practice to put in place the hundreds of thousands of reflexes one needs, whose number cannot be brought down."
Grammar is not just a list of suffixes (which Esperanto has a fair few of, and more so than this constantly compared English), it still has to have an inverse level of syntax, and vocabulary will always take take years to perfectly master.
Less morphology = more syntax.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
@HailCthulhu Eternaj komencantoj are usually people who started but don't continue, because don't have possibilit`y to practice. But if they practice, they will progress. Why the criticists take all their material by the same websites, but don't learn esperanto and practice 1/2 years before talking?
I also can criticize kung fu and karate, because i watched Karate kid and Kung fu panda, and self-learned martial arts...
/watch?v=_q4FYKMAPck
cicciontek 6 months ago
@cicciontek "Eternaj komencantoj are usually people who started but don't continue, because don't have possibilit`y to practice." [Citation needed]
"Why the criticists take all their material by the same websites" [Citation needed]
"but don't learn esperanto and practice 1/2 years before talking?" [Citation needed]
Take note that it is possible to criticize something without actively taking part in it. It's an essential daily skill.
HailCthulhu 5 months ago
@HailCthulhu If you criticize something you don't know, this means that you just read something from some website and just repeat it. [citazione sufficiente]
Why there are million of eternaj komencantoj in English? Because we can learn the written language (not very good) and don't understand a song or movie without reading text. tre free three; beach and bitch; flower and flour have for me EXACTLY the same pronunc. run out of = go run
source: The italian man who went to Malta (your ex. colony)
cicciontek 5 months ago
@cicciontek "Because we can learn the written language (not very good) and don't understand a song or movie without reading text" This isn't an explanation. Also, name your source this's an improvement over other languages people don't get fluent in. Name your source all critics get their material from the same websites. Name your source none have ever learned it. I don't get the significance of saying English phonology can be learned imperfectly.
HailCthulhu 5 months ago
@cicciontek Further, flower & flour are normally homophones & I find it implausible you find tree and free as homophones. This's just reaching.
Yeah, so about that insistence on learning things with the intent of proficiency. This is a terrible criteria. I don't need to be a member of religion w, philosophy X, political party Y or pseudo-science Z to know about its flaws. This's the same thing that makes it possible to pick undocumented language J & make a description sans becoming fluent in it.
HailCthulhu 5 months ago
@HailCthulhu You said it's possible to make criticism without studying. I am sure that such criticism is wrong, because to criticize something, you have to understand it; else you can only incompetently copy-paste other's words.
I, as learned esperanto and english, can talk because of my experience and I am an excellent source, but i don't want to be a source, too easy.
cicciontek 5 months ago
@cicciontek I said it's possible to criticize without becoming fluent, rather like the way I can learn about Xenu and thetans in $cientology without becoming a $cientologist. Unnecessary cases, fussy valency marking & wonky vocabulary don't stop being in Esperanto if I've never tried gaining fluency.
Name your source all critics get their material from the same websites. Name your source none have ever learned it. If you can't, you should ask why you feel compelled to say it anyways.
HailCthulhu 5 months ago
@HailCthulhu «I said it's possible to criticize without becoming fluent» you didn't write exactly that. Anyway without studying, you will not be able to understand what is really important in the topic you are learning. You think it's important a detail, you cannot assign importance to things... If you use it, you know what's important in communication. I studied piano 5 years, but i couldn't be in the jury at Chopin contest, but esperanto needs only 1 month + a friend for practice.
cicciontek 5 months ago
@HailCthulhu Honestly i can't understand 50% of your message.
Yahoo dictionary: flower [ˋflaʊɚ] flour [flaʊr].
Anyway, any masochistic gain from writing homophones in different way?
The esperanto-obsessed find ciriticism on wikipedia or personal sites & blogs.
I am an eterna komencanto for english as all people i speak with because of my job, except native speaker. do you also live on my planet? Did you talk with somebody not native english in your life?
cicciontek 5 months ago
@cicciontek Syllabic r and coda r are not distinguished in any dialect and is simply an inconsistency in transcription. It's not so much masochistic as a need arose to differentiate between the meanings in writing. (Disambiguating context is inherently lesser in writing than speech.)
Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question since I think you just said you weren't?
HailCthulhu 5 months ago
@HailCthulhu «need arose to differentiate between the meanings» So, why some words are written the same but read differently?
E.G. nobody can read the word "read": its pron. depends by the context (present, past...). A huge barrier for us to learn your language, listen your movies/songs. Italian it's "almost" perfect: you see a word and KNOW how to read it; you hear, and KNOW how to write it. Chinese ortography is more sincere. The whole read/writing system in english is sado/masochistic.
cicciontek 5 months ago
One generation and the children of Gaulish chieftains spoke in fluent Latin to the Senate. That's the power of a natively learned lingua franca.
All languages are easy to learn as a child.
It'd be better to think in terms of:
-What is the easiest/most difficult language for Russian/Quechua/Arukay speakers to learn?
The answer to what the easiest language to learn is: what ever is most closely related. There is no magically "easy for all" answer, which you ironically admit elsewhere.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
Any language will do. It is well known each foreign language becomes easier the more of them a speaker already knows.
I don't know how I overlooked this part.
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
It was shown that esperanto propedeutic effect remain strong for non-latin languages like learning Japanese.
The propedeutic effect of esperanto is much greater than average because it:
- Is much faster to learn, and thus takes less time to have the generic propedeautic effect as any other language.
- Gives students more confidence in themselfs as it is relatively easy and fast to reach fluency. Also, it trains their brain to fluently think/talk in another language than their own.
Caroliano 2 years ago
It'd just be easier to sit a bunch of students in front of typology articles instead of making them learn an entire language intermediate to the one they'd rather learn.
"So that's what a case is!"
"So that's ergativity! (which btw is rather harmful to your cause to ignore such a common morphosyntactic alignment)"
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
- Make the meaning of gramatical terms visible and helps to generate quicker an "understanting of languages structure" as this is not hidden by complicated grammar or exeptions.
- Makes students like learning languages much more, because the international exposure and rapid results they achieve with esperanto.
Caroliano 2 years ago
I'm seeing a bunch of meaningless buzzwords typical of advertising. The copypasta isn't impressive.
Ex: "Make the meaning of gramatical terms visible"
Why would I possibly need to learn a language to tell me what an imperative is?
HailCthulhu 2 years ago
I totally agree with you on the language learning basics : it's unbelievable to see that people who have been learning English for 7 years cannot understand simple daily statements..
Anyway , very interesting video. It's nice to share some experience !
6Jossiel6 2 years ago
Noone around me prefers perfect tools to make their life easier life and while accomplishing more advanced things. They like to waste their time and energy for producing garbage. People aspire to waste their time and kill the nature because, in the crazy capitalist world, they are narrow-minded to have job. Without doing useless things, they tell, we would live in the caves -- nobody would do anything. The complex english grammar creates jobs. Translation creates jobs. This world is impaired.
valtih1978 2 years ago