Third, it is by far the easiest living language to learn and hence a great stepping stone to becoming a polyglot. Zamenhof from Bialystok (now in Poland and then in the Russian Empire). Esperanto is not going to overcome this advantage of incumbent languages. Although, it also depends on whether the target language has a lot of similar vocabulary, grammar, etc as Esperanto. Alphabet. So, to conclude everything, learning Esperanto, just as any other thing that is worth doing, takes some time and persistence. It never caught on (and I have my personal reasons why it did not), and today, English has taken the spot originally created for Esperanto. But I am sure you already researched some history. Some people don’t think so. Minus the fact that this constructed language required no actual linguistic creation from me. There are hundreds or thousands of years worth of literature, history, culture, etc tied to the major languages that already exist. I have to say they are deeply mistaken. a lingua franca; to play the role globally that is played by English, Russian, French, Mandarin and other languages in various contexts today. See more ideas about Esperanto language, Learning languages, Language. im just interested to see what u can come up with. How can your child start learning Esperanto? When you learn a natural language, such as Spanish, its grammar will always be somewhat obscured by irregularities. 6. The Internet has plenty of Esperanto content; the Esperanto Wikipedia has more than 130,000 entries (more than Arabic). And if you don’t mind paying a little fee, LingQ is the best commercial system to learn Esperanto vocabulary (or the vocabulary of any major language). Esperanto is the closest thing to living out that childhood dream of speaking in a language that only you and your best friend know. 2008 An Esperanto version of Wikipedia - the largest online encyclopedia - reached 100.000 articles. Do you find Esperanto as much worth learning as a national language? Since I plan on learning six languages (AKA as many as possible), it only makes sense to do everything to make the process easier and more fun. I would like to know if the Esperantists here feel satisfied about learning Esperanto. Indeed, it’s this history and community of speakers that makes Esperanto worth learning, compared to any of the other possible unused language projects which have been proposed over the years. I take my hat off to Mr. Zamenhof who designed Esperanto to resemble those ideals. There are two problems with those letters. This is a question many people have when they hear about Esperanto. “What Would Be the Best Universal Language? If you want to use Esperanto for learning other romance languages, it helps, because many words have similarities. Whether finding a hobby whose main benefit is the ability to make friends almost everywhere in the world is the right thing for you depends on your nature (as an introvert, I would not count that as one of the perks). With that being said, bear in mind that if you learn Esperanto, you will be able to start appreciating the content available in it in just a few months, whereas you will need many years to reach the same level of proficiency in a language like Russian. 28 Funny Problems Polyglots Face on a Regular Basis, How to Fine-Tune Your Ear to the Poetry All Around You, Skirting Gender: A Common Mistake Made by Parents of Trans Kids, 7 Awful Tips About Language Learning You Should Never Follow. 4. I'm considering to learn Esperanto because they say that it will make learning another foreign language easier. There will be many new films to watch. Esperanto was designed to be an international auxiliary language, i.e. igi” to become proficient in the language. Most people who decide to learn Russian give up before they can actually reap the benefits, whereas most people who decide to learn Esperanto reach proficiency so fast they pretty much don’t have enough time to give up. Having the ability to learn Esperanto so quickly can allow you to move on to learning other foreign languages. How is that possible? Why learn Esperanto? This is supplemented by punctuation marks and by various logograms, such as the digits 0–9, currency signs such as $, and mathematical symbols.The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, declared a principle of "one letter, one sound", though this general guideline is not strictly … Answer for question: Your name: Answers. One cannot really say that about Esperanto. Every language I have learned allows me to communicate with more people than I could before, either actively or passively. Grammar. How could I ask for more motivation than that? Isn’t a designed language just a waste of time? Most of the people who advice this are saying it's good for monolingual people as their second language and would like to learn European languages. My man Mr. Zamenhof borrowed heavily from the Romance and Germanic language families. No objective discussion would be complete without discussing also the negatives. There is a 1-1 correspondence between graphemes (letters) and sounds. The argument made by Esperanto advocates is that it is intended to hold a little of each country’s linguistic characteristics. Esperanto is a “bridge” language whose sole purpose is to be easy to learn, easy to speak and able to connect people from different cultures. Strange as it may seem, if you are monolingual and invest a year in learning Esperanto and then four years in learning French, you may end up speaking better French than if you just learned French for five years straight (really, I am not making this up; there have been studies on children proving that). Translation for 'worth' in the free English-Esperanto dictionary and many other Esperanto translations. I'd say they aren't worth consideration. many times from random strangers, but I have yet to meet a person asking me Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? It doesn’t reach (by far) even the top 100 spoken languages. a text I'am actually semi-multilingual now, I can speak English, Filipino, and intermediate Spanish. ... Part 4 - Esperanto is worth learning and is learnable by all. if you become member of Pasporta Servo - an Esperanto couchsurfing initiative - you can save on your hotel expenses while traveling abroad This is a utopian idea—the languages of the world are too diverse to construct a language that would be equally easy to learn for everyone. So, to conclude everything, learning Esperanto, just as any other thing that is worth doing, takes some time and persistence. Esperanto is a language with a colorful movement. Learning Esperanto first makes other languages easier to learn. tago, from German Tag, meaning “day” (a word like “dejo”, pronounced “day-oh”, would have been a better choice because speakers of English as well as many Romance languages would find it intelligible). Much the same has happened in all countries. It’s worth noting that pretty much all the reform proposals and splinter languages from Esperanto (like Ido) have made it more not less Latin based. I know I’m one among the many who thought it would be cool to communicate with my childhood friends in a language that only we could understand. Had Esperanto been constructed today, I believe its vocabulary would have looked slightly different. Esperanto uses several letters with diacritical marks that do not exist in other languages: ĉ, ĝ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ (and infrequently also the ugly letter ĥ, but fortunately the words that use it are quite rare). Esperanto is a language suitable for international communication, travel,surfing the internet, cross cultural learning, finding new friends, international conventions, free stayovers in foreign countries and much more. First and foremost, they are not present on a normal keyboard, so in order to type Esperanto properly, you will have to use an Esperanto keyboard layout (or a special international one that contains various diacritical marks). While this makes Esperanto a tiny bit harder to learn than it theoretically could have been, it also introduces a small amount of vocabulary from various European languages in a context that is easy to understand (and hence easy to remember). Esperanto lives in the classroom – my Granddad Ray taught it for many years – and at conferences for enthusiasts. I am relating to brain stimulation. Esperanto in 12 Days The Fastest Course for the Basics. Esperanto is heavily influenced by Romance and Germanic languages leaving out Afro-Asiatic, Sino-Tibetan, and other language families. Esperanto is so easy you can supposedly be fluent by tomorrow. Teachers explain grammatical concepts without providing any intuitive insight, and students memorize conjugation tables and lists of exceptions without being able to use them in fluent speech. For example, the following sentence is taken from Wikipedia: It looks like something hardly comprehensible, and yet one can manage to learn the language many times faster than languages which look much easier at first sight (because what makes Esperanto look strange are mostly the prefixes and suffixes, but those also make it really easy to understand when you learn what they mean). Esperanto is written in a Latin-script alphabet of twenty-eight letters, with upper and lower case. First, it will help you learn other languages, if you decide to do that later. Esperanto is a nice idea but impractical. It is like learning to play the piano—it will take less time overall if you master the basic principles with easy études before playing harder compositions. Indeed, it’s this history and community of speakers that makes Esperanto worth learning, compared to any of the other possible unused language projects which have been proposed over the years. But until then, Esperanto may be useful for beginners. Nowadays,even teachers of modern languages have hardly heard of Esperanto, except for the comment that it is not worth learning. Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken conlang. Esperanto has only 5 … The previous efforts produced complex languages. It can be fun, it can be educational, and it can allow you to meet new people, but it is nowhere near its original goal of becoming an international language (which is something many Esperanto speakers still believe could happen). Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3381537&ty=hLearn Esperanto with my free Esperanto lessons! I also made the mistake of thinking its purpose was that simple. If you think of languages in terms of "worth", you also may not fit into Esperanto culture. ... Esperanto is a language that is learnable and worth learning. Learning Esperanto will allow you to understand various grammatical concepts in their pure, unadulterated form. They make the language look even weirder at first sight (it reminded me of Romanian when I first saw it). His goal was to design Esperanto in such a way that people can learn it much more easily than any other national language.. At first, Zamenhof called the language La Internacia Lingvo, which means "The … Learning Esperanto is absolutey worth it! When you finally read a sentence like this one and understand it without trouble (which is a level of proficiency you can reach in just a few weeks of intense learning), it just feels good. The club activities revolve around using Esperanto and noticing the operation of language in general. I can only express my opinion and I thought it was worth it. Esperanto is easy to learn When you get to the point when you'll be able to understand and speak Esperanto relatively well, you'll gain confidence that it's not that difficult to learn a language, which may make you start learning some other language you always wanted to learn … As an idealist and an optimist, as a lover of words and culture, the idea of a universal language that helps to preserve, not replace, already existing languages and facilitate easy communication sounds like a future I want to be a part of. Laŭ indikoj de la projekto Ethnologue estas la suma kvanto de la parolantoj taksata je du milionoj, el kiuj du milojn konsistigas denaskuloj. To follow my journey to learn six languages this year in some capacity, check out my site. The fact is that only a tiny fraction of the world’s population (only about 2 million people) are able to speak Esperanto (and most of them are not even fluent in it). I, for myself, am learning Esperanto from time to time, but it is not my main goal at the time. Many passionate Esperanto speakers would try to convince you that there are none, but not everything about Esperanto is that great: For me, the primary purpose of any language is communication. But what is Esperanto? Esperanto is a great language if you want to learn a second language just for the sake of experiencing the process of language learning Some peo­ple want to learn Es­peranto just for the sake of learn­ing some for­eign lan­guage. There’s no country I can go to where the population speak it. When considering how to say something in Esperanto… The Internet has plenty of Esperanto content; the Esperanto Wikipedia has more than 130,000 entries (more than Arabic). Esperanto-USA. Learning a new language grants you access to a whole new culture. Maybe, then, in terms of its ‘constructed’ nature, Esperanto is not so different from other languages after all. By the way, I have written several educational ebooks. The beautifully wrapped package only seems empty until you start using it. Whether it is worth or not depends on what you consider worth. I believe it would have been better to base Esperanto’s orthography on major European languages whose orthography is relatively phonemic, such as Italian and Spanish. If you decide to learn a foreign language just in order to experience the process of language learning, learning Esperanto may be a great start. The argument made by Esperanto advocates is that it is intended to hold a little of each country’s linguistic characteristics Still, these pre-existing languages are surely more significant, and more worth learning than Esperanto. It’s really easy, however, and does not take nearly as much practice as the other natural languages. Watch the video below for a quick video recap of these 4 main reasons why we think the Esperanto language is worth learning. If you spend a lot of time in the club and then leave it, you will take with you the improved understanding of language although you may lose whatever ability you had in using Esperanto. Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire but now part of Poland.According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labour we spend in learning foreign tongues" and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an … If you’re learning Esperanto and are traveling anywhere in the world, you just need to contact other Esperanto speakers. In this guide I’ll try and look into the personal, linguistic and social benefits that one might obtain simply by learning Esperanto, and I'll also provide resources and courses for how to learn Esperanto quickly. Unlike other conlangs, Esperanto is 100% ideologically motivated. One last thing: we’re thinking of developing an app to help you learn Esperanto. If you are looking for a more practical hobby, learning some other natural language (like German or French) would be objectively more useful than learning Esperanto, but you must also be ready to spend significantly more time before they start being useful. (Earth 2.0 Series),” Freakonomics Radio (2017). I’ve heard around the interwebs, that learning Esperanto first makes other languages much easier to learn. Not only is Esperanto familiar, there are no idioms, no irregularities, and no strict grammar rules. While you’re there, be sure to subscribe to our channel for more language learning videos. If you want to learn a language to expand the number of people with whom you are able to communicate, a language like Spanish would be a much better choice (there are over 400 million native Spanish speakers, most of whom are not proficient in English… or Esperanto). Why would I learned a constructed language that only two million people in the world speak when there are other “more useful” languages I could learn? Learning Esperanto is like deciding to join a club. One thing is for sure: Being able to understand Esperanto feels good. The previous efforts produced complex languages. Part 6. Studies even show that learning Esperanto helps to learn other languages and a year of Esperanto and a year of French gives better results than two years of French. So why have I decided never to learn it after learning 10 other languages? It can reduce difficulty, but not truly the amount of time needed (not significantly). IS ESPERANTO WORTH LEARNING? Is Esperanto worth learning? The second problem I see is that these letters scare off (or rather put off) potential new speakers of the language. Part 5. I somehow feel that reading Russian classics while being able to discuss them with 150 million people who lived their whole lives within the culture will be much more useful in my intellectual and personal development than reading a few novels from a tiny body of literature that does not have any real cultural impact. But imagine if you become and esperanto translator and had to translate from a chinese speaker who speaks esperanto to say polish, lots of cash. 2008. Teaches you the most important 500 words; No registration needed: Just click Start; mobile-optimized for smartphones; not only free of charge, but also free to use in other projects; The course consists of 12 lessons, each with. But I enjoy it. It’s true that Esperanto is only based on European languages, but it’s impossible to fairly and proportionately represent all … The logical and regular construction of Esperanto gets you out of the tangles of grammar and into fluency, or what feels like fluency, faster than other languages. The problem is that it was created predominantly by a single person during a time when linguistics was still a very young scientific field, so it shouldn’t be surprising that it could have been constructed better than it was. is launched - the largest website for learning Esperanto, free of charge. Note: This section explains why Esperanto is not the best candidate for a “universal” language, but it probably should not influence your decision whether to learn it or not, unless introducing a truly international lingua franca is your main goal. All in all, practice has shown the following fact: Reaching proficiency in German may take between 3 to 10 years, depending on how active you are, whereas becoming fluent in Esperanto will take about three months up to a year, with the same amount of effort. If you need to learn a language for practical reasons or job opportunities or just want to have access to a vast body of literature, Esperanto is not a good choice. In this respect, Esperanto is a hobby, just like playing chess or skiing. At this point in time, learning Esperanto is a nice pastime. Esperanto will teach you grammatical concepts (such as how to use various tenses, prefixes, endings, etc.) The popular language-learning app Duolingo has an Esperanto course, and over 1 million people have started it. Esperanto speakers often emphasize that Esperanto allowed them to make lots of new friends; they like the fact that, unlike other hobbies, Esperanto has the inherent advantage of being a means of communication as well as a hobby (you would hardly be able to discuss strategic ideas in chess if you are not able to communicate in a common language). For a long time, the place to go to learn Esperanto was Lernu!, but I simply find Duolingo better. Where Esperanto shines is in its aim to be as inclusive and easy as possible. Just consider this: AN INVENTED LANGUAGE SPOKEN BY ONE SINGLE PERSON MORE THAN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO IS NOW SPOKEN IN MORE THAN A … What also plays a role is that learning Esperanto will teach you how to learn foreign languages. Zamenhof borrowed heavily from the Romance and Germanic language families makes Esperanto a,! Marianne Maurer 's board `` Esperanto '', you just need to cost a single cent the of... 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