Why learn Esperanto?

General discussion about learning languages
Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8657
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Fri Jul 16, 2021 1:31 pm

Whether computer languages are "languages" or not is just a matter of how you define the word.

Is a human like an tardigrade?
If I say "yes, because they're both animals" and you say "no, because humans are mammals and tardigrades are not" then we establish nothing.

Computer languages are radically different from Esperanto in many ways:
Computer languages don't have tenses. Esperanto does.
Computer languages don't have lexical vocabulary. Esperanto does.
Computer languages have a near infinite number of pronouns. Esperanto has a finite number.

Computer languages tell us nothing about Esperanto.
7 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8657
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Fri Jul 16, 2021 1:36 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Looping back to Esperanto: as I believe has been said earlier in the thread, there have been many native speakers of Esperanto, and as expected, their native Esperanto is a bit different from Zamenhof's standard Esperanto. These differences are summarized here. These differences are actually fairly minor, indicating that Esperanto is actually quite a naturalistic language. It helps that the initial definition was quite minimal and a lot of the gaps were filled in by common usage as the language evolved.

I'd caution against drawing any firm conclusions from such a small sample size, but I feel it's worth pointing out that one of the changes the researchers highlighted was the weakening of the vowel in pronouns, which ties in with my point that languages prefer to have higher distinctiveness between words in a closed set -- the "i" doesn't distinguish between members of the set, so it's lost. Has this been recognised by Esperantists, or is the clear vowel still taught?
1 x

User avatar
Deinonysus
Brown Belt
Posts: 1216
Joined: Tue Sep 13, 2016 6:06 pm
Location: MA, USA
Languages:  
• Native: English
• Advanced: French
• Intermediate: German,
   Spanish, Hebrew
• Beginner: Italian,
   Arabic
x 4620

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Jul 16, 2021 2:24 pm

Cainntear wrote:I'd caution against drawing any firm conclusions from such a small sample size, but I feel it's worth pointing out that one of the changes the researchers highlighted was the weakening of the vowel in pronouns, which ties in with my point that languages prefer to have higher distinctiveness between words in a closed set -- the "i" doesn't distinguish between members of the set, so it's lost. Has this been recognised by Esperantists, or is the clear vowel still taught?

I can't speak on behalf of Esperantists, not being one myself, but in the learning materials I am familiar with (Lernu.net and Duolingo), standard grammar and pronunciation are taught, with no influence from colloquial native speech as far as I am aware. I would have to defer to those who are active in the community and have been to conventions, regarding the influence of native speakers, but given their small size I'd imagine it's low.

By analogy with Hebrew, I think you would need to reach a critical mass of native speakers to significantly influence the standard language. My mother has told me that when she lived in Israel in the 70s, the standard and "correct" pronunciation of Hebrew that was used in the news had a tapped (not uvular) r and pronounced the pharyngeal ʿayin and ḥet sounds as they are found in Arabic. However, nowadays the influence of native speakers has won the pronunciation battle and these sounds are uniformly absent from the standard language. I imagine that for that for native speakers' colloquialisms to displace the current standard in Esperanto, native speakers would probably have to outnumber non-native speakers for a couple of generations.
8 x
/daɪ.nə.ˈnaɪ.səs/

User avatar
devilyoudont
Blue Belt
Posts: 571
Joined: Tue Jun 26, 2018 1:34 am
Location: Philadelphia
Languages: EN (N), EO (C), JA (B), ES (A)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=16424
x 1829
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby devilyoudont » Fri Jul 16, 2021 11:40 pm

Native speakers do not have a huge impact on trends in the language.

Second and third generation children of immigrants illustrate the typical scenarios for Esperanto natives.

Issue 1: The majority of children lose interest in a non-prestige language once they enter school. This is the case for Esperanto natives as well. For every native speaker who is in the movement, there are several native speakers who only use the language with their parents and have never joined the movement. For every native speaker who continues to use the language in their family, there are even more who totally left the language and started to refuse to use it even when speaking to their parents. For every native speaker who totally refuses to use the language, there are several thousand learners who are active in the community. So, the influence of native speakers is extremely diluted, even compared to what their influence would be if you compared estimates of the total number of learners vs the total number of natives.

Issue 2: Native speakers are fairly likely to have a poor level. There is a real possibility that natives who enter the community have only ever spoken to one other speaker: Their father, who was not their primary caregiver, and who did not have a great command of the language himself. Some natives left the language when they entered primary school, but then regained interest at some later time and are more similar to heritage learners who have strong passive abilities than what we generally think of when we think of native speakers. Even natives who never left the language will often have much weaker skills in Esperanto than their other native language. Their parents may not have had the resources available to ensure that they had a peer group of other native children. At a certain age, they would have started to run out of age appropriate media in Esperanto. It's not unheard of for a native to have strong skills in certain domains but weak skills in other domains. When many native speakers in the community unfortunately struggle with these kinds of issues, it is not really surprising that the community at large does not turn to the small native population as models of correct usage.

Disclaimer: There are also many active native speakers who have an extremely good level in Esperanto. It's just that natives who both participate in the community and have a great level of Esperanto are an extremely small group.

Issue 3: Ideological opposition to teaching children Esperanto. Some people believe that Esperanto should be a language of choice and parents shouldn't make the choice for a child to learn a constructed language. Some people believe that Esperanto should only ever be a second language, and that teaching it as a first language undermines the goals of the movement and threatens language diversity. Some people believe that language evolution can be prevented. Whatever the reason, there is a sizeable chunk of the community which is ideologically disinclined to view native speakers as a model for correct usage. I don't think this is a majority view, but it is a sizeable and noticeable minority view.

Issue 4: As Cainntear noted, small sample size in the available studies (and the above issues) makes it absolutely impossible to determine what are authentic differences between native and non-native Esperanto.

Before ending my post, I do want to address one thing which is, in my experience, not an issue: Native speakers, regardless of their level are not speaking a different language even tho we can detect differences between natives with adult-level abilities in the language vs advanced learners even without a study. In other languages where learners outnumber natives substantially and learners nearly exclusively learn from other learners, we often see mutual intelligibility issues occur (I am aware that this is an issue with Hawaiian and Irish). This is not happening in Esperanto, and I don't think anyone knows why. I have my theory (effectively all Esperantists learn Esperanto from non-natives), but it's just a theory.
14 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3505
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Le Baron » Sat Jul 17, 2021 12:24 am

Devilyoudont's post is informative and true. It tallies with what I know of native Esperanto speakers (I have had contact with just a single one from Germany). Which also is not that much different from speakers of other 'heritage' languages where it isn't the primary language of the country they live in - which was my case having a French-speaking mother living in England. I was less interested in it as a child and didn't feel compelled to speak it, even though I naturally understood my mother (to a certain level of comprehension).

I am of the opinion that Esperanto is best as a second language (for international communication as conceived) so that no-one is seen as 'owning' the language or that is it is the language of one group above any other.

As is probably evident by now I don't give a hoot what amateur linguists thing about its structure/qualities. Mostly because the majority of them don't even speak the language or some have attempted to learn it (or have learned it to some level), but have given up because they have no real opportunity to use it/have not bothered to use it. Perhaps because they live in some isolated backwater where they can't find anyone who speaks any other language at all.
2 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8657
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:28 pm

Le Baron wrote:I am of the opinion that Esperanto is best as a second language (for international communication as conceived) so that no-one is seen as 'owning' the language or that is it is the language of one group above any other.

Which (whether you like it or not) means that there's a fundamental difference between Esperanto and most of the world's other languages.

Again, this is not to say that Esperanto is inferior per se, just that its different. If you get offended by that, and feel the need to insult me again because of it, you should maybe ask yourself why.

As is probably evident by now I don't give a hoot what amateur linguists thing about its structure/qualities.

Two questions:
1) Why are you joining in on a discussion in a forum full of amateur linguists, then?
2) Does that mean you care what I say more than most of the posters here? I'm a professional, after all.

Mostly because the majority of them don't even speak the language or some have attempted to learn it (or have learned it to some level), but have given up because they have no real opportunity to use it/have not bothered to use it. Perhaps because they live in some isolated backwater where they can't find anyone who speaks any other language at all.

So the only people who can have an objective opinion are the ones who like it enough to have learned it to fluency...? i.e. Only people who like it can be considered neutral...?
5 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8657
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Sat Jul 17, 2021 7:37 pm

devilyoudont wrote:Native speakers do not have a huge impact on trends in the language.
[...]
Before ending my post, I do want to address one thing which is, in my experience, not an issue: Native speakers, regardless of their level are not speaking a different language even tho we can detect differences between natives with adult-level abilities in the language vs advanced learners even without a study. In other languages where learners outnumber natives substantially and learners nearly exclusively learn from other learners, we often see mutual intelligibility issues occur (I am aware that this is an issue with Hawaiian and Irish). This is not happening in Esperanto, and I don't think anyone knows why. I have my theory (effectively all Esperantists learn Esperanto from non-natives), but it's just a theory.

This opens up an intriguing (but uninvestigatable) possibility: Esperanto-as-men's-language.

There exist natural languages in the real world that are only spoken by adults. These are generally spoken by isolated tribal groups, and mostly it's something taught to boys as part of their coming of age rites. Some of these tribes also have a "women's language", but "men's languages" are much more common.

We know basically nothing about these languages, because the tribes won't teach them to outsiders -- before you can learn the language, you have to be initiated into adulthood in the tribe. That typically means having your penis altered in some way, which is unappealing enough before you think about the lack of proper analgaesia (if you're lucky, the tribe in question will give you some kind of semi-hallucinogenic leaf to chew on, if you're unlucky, they'll do it to you completely lucid) and the fact that your immune system probably won't be developed enough for you to undergo such primitive surgery without your intimate areas becoming septic.

So the linguistics world has no idea what the natural properties of a language not spoken by children are.
5 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3505
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:10 am

Cainntear wrote:Again, this is not to say that Esperanto is inferior per se, just that its different. If you get offended by that, and feel the need to insult me again because of it, you should maybe ask yourself why.

I haven't insulted anyone..and I'm not 'angry'. I don't why you keep on saying this. Should anyone care to go back and read your other posts in this thread (especially early on) they will see that what you say about Esperanto above is almost the exact opposite of what you said previously when inventing reasons for why it is 'problematic'. Champion goalpost-shifting. If it was an Olympic event you'd have a gold medal.

Cainntear wrote:Two questions:
1) Why are you joining in on a discussion in a forum full of amateur linguists, then?
2) Does that mean you care what I say more than most of the posters here? I'm a professional, after all.

Two answers:
1) Why not? It's an open question and I'm talking about the sum total of frivolous linguistic opinion, not specifically people here or you.
2) No, because despite being a 'professional' your opinion of Esperanto is untutored and short-sighted. Didn't you already say yourself you know little about it?

Cainntear wrote:So the only people who can have an objective opinion are the ones who like it enough to have learned it to fluency...? i.e. Only people who like it can be considered neutral...?

I don't think 'like' was given as a criterion. I clearly meant the people who actually speak/understand/read it, as opposed to those who've dabbled or not even that. It's not taken well when people fail to learn this simple language, so there's a tendency to blame a lack of materials, 'not enough speakers', 'problematic structure' or other imaginary internal failures; which strangely never hinders the people who do learn it. It's psychologically more comfortable than saying: 'I failed to learn Esperanto' or 'I was too lazy to push through with it'.
2 x

Cainntear
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3468
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2015 11:04 am
Location: Scotland
Languages: English(N)
Advanced: French,Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
Intermediate: Italian, Catalan, Corsican
Basic: Welsh
Dabbling: Polish, Russian etc
x 8657
Contact:

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Cainntear » Sun Jul 18, 2021 10:27 am

Le Baron wrote:
Cainntear wrote:Again, this is not to say that Esperanto is inferior per se, just that its different. If you get offended by that, and feel the need to insult me again because of it, you should maybe ask yourself why.

I haven't insulted anyone..and I'm not 'angry'. I don't why you keep on saying this. Should anyone care to go back and read your other posts in this thread (especially early on) they will see that what you say about Esperanto above is almost the exact opposite of what you said previously when inventing reasons for why it is 'problematic'.

There you go again -- insulting me. My subjective but informed views on the language are not "inventions". You are belittling me by suggesting my opinions are invalid.

Champion goalpost-shifting. If it was an Olympic event you'd have a gold medal.

Here's the thing: I have never once said I was unassailably correct, have I? Instead I have engaged with each argument on its own merits, rather than responding to every single one with a consistent response of "you're wrong and your views don't merit consideration". I brought up the notion of an adults' language because I'm interested in discussing issues from all angles, including ones I disagree with. I don't personally believe it likely that Esperanto works like an adult language, because adult languages are spoken exclusively in pre-literate societies, so there are no textbooks to maintain a standard across generations. However, I do accept that there are likely to be some similar pressures on Esperanto, and that there may be unique insights to be gleaned from the places where the learner community has reshaped the language, as there is no other language open to study which is spoken almost exclusively by adult learners.

If that's what you consider shifting the goalposts then fine... but I don't agree with that.

Also, see if you were having a discussion that started with you telling someone they're wrong, and during the discussion they started coming round to your views, would you call them out on it and attack them for changing their minds? Do you want people to change their minds or do you actually want them to continue to believe the same thing so that you can continue to tell them they're wrong...?

Cainntear wrote:So the only people who can have an objective opinion are the ones who like it enough to have learned it to fluency...? i.e. Only people who like it can be considered neutral...?

I don't think 'like' was given as a criterion. I clearly meant the people who actually speak/understand/read it, as opposed to those who've dabbled or not even that.

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.
6 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3505
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Why learn Esperanto?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:52 am

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. Not that many people learning it really need it. Lots of prospective learners, especially online, cite fairly frivolous and dreamy reasons for wanting to learn: 'It sounds so romantic!', 'I'd love to visit Paris one day...', 'I'd like to read Les Misérables in the original...' or 'Watch Amélie without subtitles...' etc etc. 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. Latin is also a hobby language for a large number of people who have a go at learning it. The majority of people here are learning languages at a hobby level and may never use a good deal of them in the field. Learning languages for that reason is actually rather normal.
Strictly speaking I think you actually have the entire argument backwards, because quite a goodly number of people who learn Esperanto do so precisely for the original purpose of international communication on simple, neutral terms. That's a goal, not a hobby. The people who learn it primarily for social reasons (and there are plenty of these too) also end up indirectly doing the same.

Everyone already knows that there is no place called Esperantoland and that its non-existent government isn't insisting everyone learn it in order to integrate, so that observation is entirely redundant. It isn't a national language and it is offered for voluntary adoption. 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.

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.

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.
2 x


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests