Why learn Esperanto?

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Cainntear
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jul 18, 2021 3:20 pm

Le Baron wrote:I'm only addressing this bit:

Cainntear wrote:It wasn't explicit, but it's a consequence of the situation of Esperanto. Esperanto is a hobby language -- practically everyone who learns it does so because they want to. There are a handful of people who've learned it as part of university experiments and a handful of journalists who've learned it simply to develop an article. No-one has been forced to learn it for work or to integrate in a new society.

That means that pretty much everyone who has learnt it actively chose to do so, which means that everyone who speaks it actively likes it.

Unintended it may be, but liking the language is a logical entailment of your criteria; you cannot deny that simply because it wasn't part of the explicit criteria.

In the UK French, as just one example, is primarily a hobby language.

People learn French as a hobby, but most people who speak French don't do it because they decided they wanted to learn French -- that's my point.
A lot of people are actually forced to learn it on an official curriculum (and most don't really learn it) for no good reason.

And how does this address anything I said? Stating a fact without relating it to the discussion is not an argument.

Strictly speaking I think you actually have the entire argument backwards, because...

That's not a counter-argument. They learn it because they want to learn it. No-one learns Esperanto who doesn't want to learn Esperanto.

If the only people who are allowed to comment on Esperanto are people who actively chose to start studying and actively decided to continue to fluency, then you only have a sample of people who are predisposed to considering Esperanto something good. It's classic selection bias, and you're shifting the goalposts and writing tangential arguments that completely fail to address that.

There are no solid figures on who learns it and why so where do you get your 'handful of journalists' ('handful' a noun carefully chosen to denote smallness, randomness and insignificance) and these hobbyists and experiments? Can you point to them without right now scouring the web to try and find some examples? I doubt it.

Of course I can't. I would definitely need to search the web to find examples.
But once again you're hammering me for trying to have an open and honest conversation. I wasn't using "handful" to talk down someone else's data, but introducing stuff myself. I think I've only read one newspaper column on learning Esperanto. I know most language researchers don't use Esperanto, because it is more effective to use a specifically designed research conlang or a well-documented natural language that directly addresses features under study.

I could have claimed that no-one ever studies Esperanto except for personal interest, and I doubt anyone would have called me on it.

Plenty people here and in the wider world have tried many languages (for how else can you find if its appeal for whatever reason translates to real motivation?) and then don't pursue them past 'dabble' stage or A1. Simply because the motivation doesn't happen. In this thread some people have said 'I tried it, but...' then their reasons for why it never worked out or went any further. What were they doing at all that was any different from most languages people take up? Was it really 'liking' at work? More likely candidates are: simple curiosity, the desire to add a simpler language to the polyglot language count, interest in constructed languages...many more. But 'liking'? Liking the idea of something and actually developing a liking/love for something are two different things. So no it isn't a logical entailment of my "criteria". There was no 'logical' argument made which included or suggested it and no such outcome reached.

Another non-argument. I never once claimed that the only reason anyone stops learning a languages is that they didn't like it; I claimed that actually liking the language was a necessary precondition to learning Esperanto, unlike languages where there is external pressure. "Neutral communication" is not an external pressure -- it's the learner's personal view.

If you were familiar with what goes on regarding Esperanto, the actual diverse reasons for learning it, the actual different views of its value, uses and future held by speakers, rather than the cardboard cut-out, bare-bones characterisation propped-up by speculative analysis, you probably wouldn't make these utterances.

This just sounds like the whole "do your own research" line -- you are incapable of explaining where I'm wrong, so just keep blaming me for not agreeing with you.
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 18, 2021 4:42 pm

Cainntear wrote:People learn French as a hobby, but most people who speak French don't do it because they decided they wanted to learn French -- that's my point.

Your point? I was specifically referring to the huge number who embark upon French who just fancy it rather than the sum total of people taking it up or being taught it without choice on a curriculum, or those who specifically need to show plenty of 'real' languages are taken up on a whim. It was in answer to your irrelevant point, because there will be a mixture of motivations for ALL language take-up. Most people who really speak French are actually French/in a Francophone country, we know why this particular state of affairs exists compared Esperanto's existence as a language with no country.

It happens in all languages and invalidates your imagined idea that Esperanto in comparison is largely taken-up by people who just 'like it'. A silly idea anyway because to know if you like something, anything, you must first try it and stick with it for some time. This is a rather basic idea.

Cainntear wrote:If the only people who are allowed to comment on Esperanto are people who actively chose to start studying and actively decided to continue to fluency, then you only have a sample of people who are predisposed to considering Esperanto something good. It's classic selection bias, and you're shifting the goalposts and writing tangential arguments that completely fail to address that.

Well no. Other people who don't actively speak it certainly have the right to comment upon and assess the language, but only after properly looking at it over a period of time without biases rehearsing all the vacuous complaints - also known as 'making a neutral study', which doesn't have to be 'actively learning and using the language'. This is wholly different than skimming the surface and throwing out guesswork analysis.

Cainntear wrote:I could have claimed that no-one ever studies Esperanto except for personal interest, and I doubt anyone would have called me on it.

Remember this reply when I get down to what you say (repetitively) below about other people not actually addressing things.

Cainntear wrote:Another non-argument. I never once claimed that the only reason anyone stops learning a languages is that they didn't like it; I claimed that actually liking the language was a necessary precondition to learning Esperanto, unlike languages where there is external pressure. "Neutral communication" is not an external pressure -- it's the learner's personal view.

This is gobbledygook. Liking the language is a 'necessary precondition'? Rather than just sampling it or agreeing with the idea of the goal? You're all over the place. And then have the temerity to accuse someone else of 'non-arguments'. :lol: Give me a break.

Cainntear wrote:This just sounds like the whole "do your own research" line -- you are incapable of explaining where I'm wrong, so just keep blaming me for not agreeing with you.

Incapable? It's all there, you just don't 'like' the argument because it challenges your psychological comfort of being a 'professional' linguist. Whether or not you agree with me doesn't register on my radar. It looks a lot more like you want to be agreed with. I'm afraid your entire approach throughout the whole thread has been over-hasty, incoherent, inconsistent, superficial, goalpost-shifting, weasel-wording, learning on-the-fly, backtracking. Constant complaints of imaginary anger, 'attacks' and perceived personal insults rather than that your 'ideas' (such as they are) are being rejected because they are just not very robust and don't describe reality. I have no control over where they issue from. You know if I happened say Krashen's views seem to me 'dubious', it doesn't mean I personally despise the man called Krashen and have libelled/slandered him.

It has become exhausting and boring. I really hope a moderator locks this thread to save anyone else the misery of its visibility. This horse is dead, have the dignity and mercy to spare it any further flogging.
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:27 pm

Maybe the thread is running in circles, but as moderators we try to let such threads die quietly by themselves.

BUT .....

I wrote the following passage between the last messages of Cainntear and LeBaron, and I have the intention of referring to it in a message in my log which I'm writing right now, so I'm NOT going to kill the thread before that.

Here it comes:

Maybe it is true that most people who learn Esperanto have chosen to do so, but likewise most people who learn more than a couple of languages have deliberately chosen to learn at least some of them for fun - they weren't forced to do so. The difference with Esperanto is very few people are forced to learn it - off my head I can only come up with offspring of fanatic Esperantists - so it is easy to point to Esperanto and say that this one is a hobby language, French or Italian or Japanese aren't. The simple reality is that almost any language which is learned by a number of human beings people is a hobby language for at least some of them. So why do they do it? Maybe for the same reasons that lure some people into learning Esperanto.

Actually you can end up learning any language without becoming infatuated by it. I have a degree in French, and that didn't make me a Francophile - mostly because I also have learned some other languages, and I can't be infatuated by them all.

My somewhat lukewarm attitude to Esperanto is mostly caused by the lack of scientific and historical articles in the languages - basically there is Wikipedia plus the writings and lectures of Amri Wandel, not much more. I have the same problem with a couple of other languages - like Low German, where I have read the collected works of Ina Müller, and the rest is slightly less fascinating, and Laland Scots, which seems not to be written down by any of its speakers. But on top of that there is an idealistic (read 'irrealistic') fume over the whole Esperantean scene, and I feel somewhat uncomfortable with that atmosphere. But it doesn't change anything. By now I have more or less learned the language, and once included in the collection it stays there...
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:31 pm

All fair points.
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Cainntear
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:38 pm

Le Baron wrote:
Cainntear wrote:People learn French as a hobby, but most people who speak French don't do it because they decided they wanted to learn French -- that's my point.

Your point? I was specifically referring to the huge number who embark upon French who just fancy it rather than the sum total of people taking it up or being taught it without choice on a curriculum, or those who specifically need to show plenty of 'real' languages are taken up on a whim. It was in answer to your irrelevant point, because there will be a mixture of motivations for ALL language take-up.

And?
How many people do you personally know who speak Esperanto who didn't actively choose to learn it?

It happens in all languages and invalidates your imagined idea that Esperanto in comparison is largely taken-up by people who just 'like it'.

Not "just like it", just "like it". I believe that practically everyone who speaks Esperanto likes it.
A stronger argument that tangents and dismissing my original point as "irrelevant" would be to tell me that you know loads of Esperanto speakers who are totally totally "meh" about the language. Do you?

Cainntear wrote:I could have claimed that no-one ever studies Esperanto except for personal interest, and I doubt anyone would have called me on it.

Remember this reply when I get down to what you say (repetitively) below about other people not actually addressing things.

I don't see what you're saying here.

Cainntear wrote:This just sounds like the whole "do your own research" line -- you are incapable of explaining where I'm wrong, so just keep blaming me for not agreeing with you.

Incapable? It's all there, you just don't 'like' the argument because it challenges your psychological comfort of being a 'professional' linguist.

No, it's because you never address my points. Even when you claim to address them, you call them irrelevant, and in your mind that's clearly enough to justify not actually addressing them.
It looks a lot more like you want to be agreed with.

No -- I'm happy to be disagreed with. But that means disagreeing with what I've actually said. This is why I've had perfectly productive exchanges with other people who have genuinely engaged with the points I've raised, rather than waving things away as irr
I'm afraid your entire approach throughout the whole thread has been over-hasty, incoherent, inconsistent, superficial, goalpost-shifting, weasel-wording, learning on-the-fly, backtracking. Constant complaints of [...] perceived personal insults

Take a good long look in that mirror. A good long look.
Do you really not think that's insulting?

It has become exhausting and boring. I really hope a moderator locks this thread to save anyone else the misery of its visibility. This horse is dead, have the dignity and mercy to spare it any further flogging.

Again, as before, you have a go at me and then suggest that I should not speak. That's not how things work.

If you want the conversation to end, either stop replying, or leave space to agree to differ.
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Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby rdearman » Sun Jul 18, 2021 5:39 pm

Thread locked.
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