Why do people still study Esperanto?

[Andreo]

And you talk about respect and disrespect, you used an AI to form your argument against people who're willing to put the effort and time into considering and responding to points, which is lazy and disrespectful.

Sorry - sorry! I am so rusty after 8 years not actively using your native language, that I needed some help to make my point. I hope this did not offend you too much.

That's why we must fight for the right to linguistic justice! I really agree with the AI in every aspect.

[Le Baron]

Learning Esperanto doesn't aid peace nor does it connect people...because learning a language cannot do that. Diplomacy & understanding and actively connecting with people achieves peace and connects people.

Clearly diplomacy doesn't, it barely ever does and diplomacy is delivered through language and understanding. And understanding means just that...understanding. The point is being unnecessarily complicated. It isn't that Esperanto has special innate magic qualities for world peace. It's a practical consideration about furthering the possibility of mutual communication, simply yet completely. With an attempt to remove murky layers of meaning or opacity, very present in long-established 'natural' languages. Also to remove the unbalanced position of using a language in which one or more groups have an advantage.

All that has been discussed and I think established.

In the sense of learning as a 'springboard'. We should forget the average member of this forum. Language learning is a chore. It is difficult and something which is slowed down by time available, money, people not knowing how to learn, what to learn; often not even knowing how a language works or anything about their elements. Not a gateway to a specific language group. The point of using Esperanto as a springboard is an attempt and idea to put many people - not established language enthusiasts - in a position to feel what it is like to learn a language to a point of being able to use it. Something a lot of people fail to achieve, so never get their foot in the door. Stripping away all those irritating elements like extensive and daunting conjugation misery ( ), chaotic orthography and pronunciations, rule upon rule upon exception,.. all the stuff which makes learning languages hard. Additionally the psychological factors of being embarrassed speaking to e.g. a 'real' German and sounding really bad. Judgement is much reduced.

Theoretically it doesn't have to be Esperanto, but there are no other serious candidates. It isn't going to be a national language either. It might well be nothing at all if that suits some people.

[Sae]

And you talk about respect and disrespect, you used an AI to form your argument against people who're willing to put the effort and time into considering and responding to points, which is lazy and disrespectful.

Sorry - sorry! I am so rusty after 8 years not actively using your native language, that I needed some help to make my point. I hope this did not offend you too much.

That's why we must fight for the right to linguistic justice! I really agree with the AI in every aspect.

Yet, I still had the respect to address the points and made no attempt to disrespect your opinion even if they were generated by an AI you happened to agree with. But your response is a fairly backhanded remark and are making clear that you're not interested in providing discourse in good faith, and are seemingly here to proselytise because you think you're morally superior.

By which point I disengage.

Learning Esperanto doesn't aid peace nor does it connect people...because learning a language cannot do that. Diplomacy & understanding and actively connecting with people achieves peace and connects people.

Clearly diplomacy doesn't, it barely ever does and diplomacy is delivered through language and understanding. And understanding means just that...understanding. The point is being unnecessarily complicated. It isn't that Esperanto has special innate magic qualities for world peace. It's a practical consideration about furthering the possibility of mutual communication, simply yet completely. With an attempt to remove murky layers of meaning or opacity, very present in long-established 'natural' languages. Also to remove the unbalanced position of using a language in which one or more groups have an advantage.

All that has been discussed and I think established.

In the sense of learning as a 'springboard'. We should forget the average member of this forum. Language learning is a chore. It is difficult and something which is slowed down by time available, money, people not knowing how to learn, what to learn; often not even knowing how a language works or anything about their elements. Not a gateway to a specific language group. The point of using Esperanto as a springboard is an attempt and idea to put many people - not established language enthusiasts - in a position to feel what it is like to learn a language to a point of being able to use it. Something a lot of people fail to achieve, so never get their foot in the door. Stripping away all those irritating elements like extensive and daunting conjugation misery ( ), chaotic orthography and pronunciations, rule upon rule upon exception,.. all the stuff which makes learning languages hard. Additionally the psychological factors of being embarrassed speaking to e.g. a 'real' German and sounding really bad. Judgement is much reduced.

Theoretically it doesn't have to be Esperanto, but there are no other serious candidates. It isn't going to be a national language either. It might well be nothing at all if that suits some people.

I am oversimplifying on the diplomacy as to not detract from the point, though peace can be achieved through diplomacy, not through learning and speaking a language. Whilst I could understand Esperanto /could/ serve as a language of communication whether diplomacy is held if there is a perceived neutrality by all parties...but I fail to see how that means learning the language is a civic duty and morally superior.

And I wholly understand the benefits Esperanto can give a language learner as per the other Esperanto thread, and it's why in my opening comment I've said that I get that Esperanto's ease primes itself as a good gateway. Just as I am also making serious considerations as far as Toki Pona goes, because I see a potential benefit to aid my own approach. But what I don't see is that it is unique in that it can offer a springboard into language learning only that it is easier, my examples are better springboards to the aforementioned language groups, Vietnamese's grammar is simple, so it's a good place to get used to tones and shares features you might find more common in other Asian languages. Mongolian is probably a good gateway to other Mongolic languages given the scarcity of material in English for say, Kalmyk. Tuvan arguably is not a great choice for a gateway for Turkic when Turkish has oodles of great (and some free) resources, but if coming from Mongolian, maybe it is, it is of course entirely subjective to what is best for the learner and there is no point of superiority here, nor a greater moral one... And I still struggle to see how it makes Esperanto a high moral choice. Nor how Esperanto can connect you to other cultures is more moral than actually learning the language of the culture. Or how again...it's morally great for even being able to do that.

It's all pretty much to do with this guy's perceived moral supriority complex about Esperanto. I understand the benefits of Esperanto, absolutely, what I don't understand is how it's morally superior, a civic duty, and how its greatness has to be so over stated like it has achieved its potential & its greater ideals when it hasn't.

[Lisa]

springboard into language learning only that it is easier, my examples are better springboards to the aforementioned language groups, Vietnamese's grammar is simple, so it's a good place to get used to tones and shares features you might find more common in other...

You aren't seriously trying to say learning vietnamese can be compared to learning esperanto, for an english speaker? The sounds are not easy for an english speaker (or vice versa). Before you can glide through A2 with easy grammar, you have to not give up at A1 with basic phrases. I'm a better learner now and I might manage; but age 18 having studied spanish and german I found vietnamese very difficult if not impossible to understand or produce. I have been very much in awe of your learning this language.

Quite likely esperanto would not be the easiest language to learn coming from some other NL, if the sounds are difficult.

I do wish we could leave aside the moral aspect of esperanto. I just don't think that languages can be objectively and universally judged, good or bad, useful or useless, interesting or boring... even easy or hard depends on where you are coming from. It's too bad a few esperantists are like vegans, mac/iphone users, and morning people who are annoying superior about their preferences, but you can't let them spoil your day. And while one could, for example, keep hating macs/iphones themselves, just because of those annoying people, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to blame the tool.

[vonPeterhof]

Just wanted to say that I don't believe Koreanic is considered to be Altaic any longer. Although I may be mistaken.

From what I understand it's depends where you stand in the "Altaic" argument. Some will include Koreanic and Japonic, some won't.

My impression was that the "Micro-Altaic" proposal (Turkic + Mongolic + Tungisic only) was as good as dead, with most of its supporters either having long switched to "Macro-Altaic" (the above plus Koreanic and usually also Japonic) or having jumped ship entirely, joining the mainstream view that there is no strong evidence for any form of Altaic. There's a fourteen year old discussion to that effect on the talk page of Wikipedia's Altaic languages article, although things may well have changed a lot since the Etymological dictionary debacle and the emergence of "Transeurasian" as an alternative hypothesis of sorts. Here's a good summary of the history of the debates. Could have sworn there was another one specifically addressing the "rebranding" of Altaic as Transeurasian, but I can't find it right now.

[Sae]

springboard into language learning only that it is easier, my examples are better springboards to the aforementioned language groups, Vietnamese's grammar is simple, so it's a good place to get used to tones and shares features you might find more common in other...

You aren't seriously trying to say learning vietnamese can be compared to learning esperanto, for an english speaker? The sounds are not easy for an english speaker (or vice versa). Before you can glide through A2 with easy grammar, you have to not give up at A1 with basic phrases. I'm a better learner now and I might manage; but age 18 having studied spanish and german I found vietnamese very difficult if not impossible to understand or produce. I have been very much in awe of your learning this language.

Quite likely esperanto would not be the easiest language to learn coming from some other NL, if the sounds are difficult.

I do wish we could leave aside the moral aspect of esperanto. I just don't think that languages can be objectively and universally judged, good or bad, useful or useless, interesting or boring... even easy or hard depends on where you are coming from. It's too bad a few esperantists are like vegans, mac/iphone users, and morning people who are annoying superior about their preferences, but you can't let them spoil your day. And while one could, for example, keep hating macs/iphones themselves, just because of those annoying people, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to blame the tool.

I am saying that Vietnamese would make for a better springboard into other tonal languages than Esperanto. It is still a difficult hurdle to climb because of it's tones and sounds, but I think it is going to be a challenge regardless of which tonal language you go for and my consolation with Vietnamese is that it's SVO like English, it uses a Latin alphabet, it is very consistent, it's logical and it doesn't use any complex grammar structures. But ultimately the message I want to go for is that what works ultimately comes down to the learner and what they're trying to get out of something, there is no superiority or greater moral (and tying morality to language learning is just weird to me).

But yes, I can see why now my earlier comparison to vegans was apt when it was explained to me why Esperanto gets a bad rep. Of course, vegans aren't bad and being one shouldn't mean you're poorly judged or ridiculed but there's a holier-than-thou obnoxious few who turn people off.

But yes, I agree you shouldn't let them spoil it. If I had an incentive to learn Esperanto, for sure I wouldn't let them do that. Though it may have indirectly lead me to also think about Toki Pona, which was created by an Esperantist and start weighing whether it'd have a benefit with a skill I am still trying to learn/get used to and it doesn't take long to learn 120 words.

[Sae]

Just wanted to say that I don't believe Koreanic is considered to be Altaic any longer. Although I may be mistaken.

From what I understand it's depends where you stand in the "Altaic" argument. Some will include Koreanic and Japonic, some won't.

My impression was that the "Micro-Altaic" proposal (Turkic + Mongolic + Tungisic only) was as good as dead, with most of its supporters either having long switched to "Macro-Altaic" (the above plus Koreanic and usually also Japonic) or having jumped ship entirely, joining the mainstream view that there is no strong evidence for any form of Altaic. There's a fourteen year old discussion to that effect on the talk page of Wikipedia's Altaic languages article, although things may well have changed a lot since the Etymological dictionary debacle and the emergence of "Transeurasian" as an alternative hypothesis of sorts. Here's a good summary of the history of the debates. Could have sworn there was another one specifically addressing the "rebranding" of Altaic as Transeurasian, but I can't find it right now.

I figured there'd still be micro-Altaic supporters, but maybe good as dead as you say.

Trans Eurasian isn't one I've heard of. But I will curiously look it up.

[Cainntear]

springboard into language learning only that it is easier, my examples are better springboards to the aforementioned language groups, Vietnamese's grammar is simple, so it's a good place to get used to tones and shares features you might find more common in other...

You aren't seriously trying to say learning vietnamese can be compared to learning esperanto, for an english speaker?

Well the implicit comparison to Esperanto demonstrates that in can be compared to learning Esperanto.

The sounds are not easy for an english speaker (or vice versa).

You aren't clear on what your direct problem with Sae's point is. Sae was talking about sounds, and suggesting that the only complexity was tone, suggesting that makes it a good introduction to tonal languages. Having taken a quick glance at wikipedia, I'm assuming you're talking about the diversity of phonemes. But you didn't make any of that clear, so you're leaving a choice: either everyone takes five minutes of their life to read up on what you mean or people don't, and instead respond without actually understanding your message.

I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about online communication strategies at the moment.
If five minutes of your time as a writer saves five minutes of a reader's time, that means it potentially saves hours of reader time across all readers. The argument on social media of "It's not my job to explain my point to you -- go and read something" is basically self-centred because the writer is considering their individual time as being more valuable than the possible hours they're demanding of the untold number of readers.

Quite likely esperanto would not be the easiest language to learn coming from some other NL, if the sounds are difficult.

Agreed. Esperanto appears to have a very Eurocentric phonology, including quite a few consonant clusters.

It's too bad a few esperantists are like vegans, mac/iphone users, and morning people who are annoying superior about their preferences, but you can't let them spoil your day.

That's a great analogy. I have no problem with vegans and I'd probably be one myself if I wasn't a scatterbrain who can't track what I'm eating closely enough to be safe on a vegan diet.

[Sae]

If talking about phonemes, then I can understand a point there too, because they're not so easy either. Especially when differences in sounds are more subtle, like trưa vs chưa, học vs họp etc.

[Iversen]

It's hard for me to know exactly how a speaker of an Asiatic language would perceive Esperanto since the only one I have studied seriously is Indonesian (which counts as an Austronesian language). But I can't see why a speaker of an Austronesian language language should have any particular problems with Esperanto - at least Indonesian is a heavy user of prefixes (plus a few postfixes), and the morphology of Esperanto is relatively limited and more regular than in other Europan languages. An Indonesian speaker would however have to learn to use where to use articles - just as a speaker of a Slavic language has to. I remember that when I started to learn Indonesian it remindeded me of English - the same fluid wordclasses, a similarly limited morphology and a roughly similar word order. As for dropping the need to express number of substantives and tempus and mode and number and person of verbs and all that stuff and just indicate it with adverbium-like thingies when needed, well - it's easier to drop something than to learn how and when to use it. The Indonesians would just have to drop their 'counters' and their "yang" connector.

I recently opened my pocket Tuttle Vietnamese to see how many of the words I could recognize - and it was close to zero percent. The big question then is whether speakers of for instance Burmese or Hindi or Cantonese or Tagalog would be in a better position than me - otherwise they would be faced with problems at the same level as they would have with a Eurocentric language such as (for example) Esperanto. I have read that Khmer is related to Vietnamese - but does that mean that there is a sizeable common vocabulary, or even a degree of intercomprehensibility? And what about Lao or Thai, which belong to a totally different family?

I have already mentioned in another thread that tonality is one of the things that learning Esperanto can't prepare you for, so maybe knowing Vietnamese could make it easier to add other Asiatic languages later (including those from the Sino-Tibetan family) - but I also read in the English Wikipedia article about Vietnamese that "Proto-Viet–Muong had no tones to speak of. The tones later developed in some of the daughter languages from distinctions in the initial and final consonants.". That might conceivably indicate that the distribution (and even number) of the tones has nothing in common with for instance the systems of Cantonese or Mandarin or Thai or Lao - but still, knowing one tonal language must helpful in learning one more.

The Vietnamese writing system is based on latin letters, but with a bewildering number of accent signs. Learning that can't possibly help you to learn any of the other writing systems from the region (one per language, it seems). And just based on my dictionary I could see another problem, namely that I would need a magnifying glass to see the accent signs attached to each and every letter (I already use one to separate 'l' from 'ł in Polish). So learning the Vietnamese writing system might be easier for a poor Eurocentric European from Europe like me, but not necessarily for anyone from Asia. Summa summarum: the only real advantage in learning Vietnamese first instead of Esperanto would be that you had to learn to deal with tones, and if your native language already was a tonal language you wouldn't need that.

PS (having read Cainntear's post below): If you can make a chatbot both defend and reject Esperanto based on what you asks it to do, then nothing it comes up with can be taken at face value, and it wouldn't matter if it even was correct some of the time. The only real use of chatbots is to assist lazy and/or incompetent people evade their obligations, like helping sneaky school children to cheat their teachers.