Esperanto, why bother?

[Sae]

Point is, why study any language, especially "dead" languages or low density languages? Why study any language if you don't have access to native speakers right next door?

I don't. That was kind of my point. I'm not interested in a language I can't use to speak with lots of people.

Everyone seems to assume I started this thread in order to be hateful to Esperanto. But actually I was just looking at the C1 in 8 months challenge thing and wondered if it would be worth trying it out again. But this thread turned into another dog's dinner. I wasn't asking if anyone loved or hated Esperanto, or ringing the bell to start yet another fight about it. I just wanted to know who you'd speak to if you learned it without wearing a shirt that says "I speak Esperanto", or travelling to Esperanto conferences.

The conclusion I have come to is that there isn't anyone outside specialist places or clubs and so, just like Latin, or Old English or Provençal or Manx, I'm not interested. I'm not interested in languages as an intellectual challenge, I have programming, electronics and mathematics for that.

I would hope that people don't look at this statement and say "See he runs a language forum, and he hates Esperanto too!" and it all kicks off again. I am simply stating that as a personal preference I only invest time, energy and money into a language where I have an interest in the culture behind it, and the ability to use it with large numbers of people.

I can fully appreciate the stance of wanting to learn a language only if you can use it, all my target language have a goal of my using them.

With regard to people assuming you're trying to hate on Esperanto, perhaps update the original post and threat title to reflect your true intentions.

I feel like people would have to peruse through most of the thread to learn of your true intentions because your original post communicates something more insidious and kinda rings that bell. And if they don't catch follow up posts with your true intentions, they'll take you on your original post as it's the subject of the thread.

[IronMike]

Then I realized there's a huge literature out there that isn't translated into English, especially in areas of interest to me (not only sci-fi, but WWI and WWII memoirs...
...
Maybe I'll work on that after I finish Bronshteyn's book.)

I'm not too familiar with that genre. How does the Esperanto selection of world war memoirs compare to the selection of world war memoirs in, say, BCS?

I don't know because my BCS isn't that good. The Russian (Soviet) ones I've read (mostly smaller articles, not entire books; didn't find a lot of them in the 5 years I lived in Biblio Globus in Moscow) are a bit different. More like the English (Brit and American) ones I've read: more to the point, more on how they survived, more on how they fought. I get much of that in the Esperanto ones, with the added benefit of how the Esperanto world (Esperantujo, if you will) came together to help people escape (that Masquerade book I mention), or how they helped discover the ultimate fate of many disappeared Esperantists (La Dangxera Lingvo/Esperanto: The Dangerous Language has recently been translated into English and is a good read; it's a bit expensive, but perhaps one can find it through interlibrary loan). I guess you could say this strange mix of genre combines two things I love to read: war memoirs and language policy/politics.

[rdearman]

This thread has been very problematic, and I greatly regret asking in the first place. I did temporarily lock it while it went under moderator review. Following the review, large numbers of posts have been deleted and purged. Some members have been banned and others given warnings.

Familiarise yourself with the rules! Below I have quoted the rules which resulted in banning and warnings.

Flaming, personal attacks and inflammatory statements: Some people enjoy flaming, personal attacks, starting trouble, and fighting online. But many people dislike these things greatly, and they will leave the forum rather than put up with that kind of atmosphere. So given the choice, we choose to exclude the flamers, trolls and chronic jerks. If a moderator warns you to cut something out, please listen—if you don't, the next step is usually a temporary or permanent ban.

Harassment: This forum is dedicated to providing a harassment-free language-learning experience for everyone, regardless of national origin, native language(s), linguistic skill, race, religion/atheism, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, or age. We do not tolerate harassment of forum participants in any form.

This also includes member choices of what language they are learning, not just what native language they speak. Harassment will not be tolerated.

Also, certain kinds of personal remarks tend to turn threads into nasty fights. For example, please avoid making remarks like "Grow a thicker skin", "You don't have a sense of humour" etc, and if there's a conflict, consider using the Report or "!" button to contact the moderators. In particular, do not attack people or their personalities. You can argue about ideas and language learning techniques, but individuals are off limits.

I would like to point out that this fourm supports "Friend" and "Foe". Rather than responding to trolls and thereby getting yourself a warning or being banned, just flag them as a "foe" and the forum will no longer show you any post they publish. You need never hear from them again. From the moderators point of view, all the people involved in arguments, flaming and trolling are equally guilty of disrupting the fourm. So you may be thinking that you're just "defending yourself after being attacked" but the moderators may regard this as participation in the disruption of the smooth operation of forum debates.

[Lisa]

thanks, rdearman, I appreciate moderation a great deal.

On a positive note (at least for the pro-esperantoists), this thread has inspired me to pull out my esperanto material, though other reason for not continuing was availability of materials, especially printed books, so who knows. When I look at french now I wish the grammar was as easy as esperanto...

[Andreo]

Esperanto(EO) is worth studying just because by doing this you contribute to a juster world where everybody has to meet each other halfway to communicate.

Think about the wast majority of people that are ungifted language learners and especially all the non-germanic ones. Is it fair to subject them to all the arbitrarities and irregularities of English, that even a lot of the native speakers can't seam to fully master?

A basic working knowledge of EO can be acquired very quickly and effortlessly by people with an European language background and no knack for languages , which cannot be said for the most national languages.

With this little investment you gain access to a very varied multicultural and inclusive community with truly international human values that no other national language can provide (learning English for instance is exposing the students mainly to the Anglo-Saxon culture and values). EO community members are sharing the best of their culture with the rest, so chances are that if you only know EO you are more multiculturally aware than if you learn any other language.

Many people that had previously problems learning a foreign language, after having learned EO (unburdened by arbitrarities and irregularities at every step of the way) got the taste of it and became polyglots (that is my case with 10+ languages). The introductory and preparatory value of EO is enormous and worth every second of your time.

I had for a very long period of time (years and years) neglected most of my languages and now I discovered that I can actively use mainly the regular and logical features of the learned languages, so only EO and my native languages remained fully unaffected.

No wonder that reading books in EO now feels very native in a way and not so foreign like in the other learned languages. There are many good books to keep anyone busy for a very long time and translations are usually done by the native speakers of the original. EO is especially good for translations due to its extreme flexibility. For example the best translations from Russian I ever read were in EO.

[Nogon]

On a positive note (at least for the pro-esperantoists), this thread has inspired me to pull out my esperanto material,

Today I borrowed a book in Esperanto from the library, inspired by this and other Let's-quarrel-about-Esperanto-threads. Thanks.
(If someone is curious: Erich Maria Remarque - La vojo returne (Der Weg zurück/The Road Back))

[Henkkles]

I've actually thought about this a little more now and I think the idea that everyone is a second language speaker is actually a strength. I've been engaging in more "vehicular" languages as they are called and to me it is very comforting to think that maybe 70% of all speakers of a language like Swahili are second language speakers. Not only are natives of such languages usually very tolerant of L2 speakers, you're more likely to meet another L2 speaker who isn't interested in criticizing your skills but only in communicating. Also imagine that virtually all speakers of Esperanto are already some kind of language aficionados, those are the people I like to talk to otherwise as well! Plenty of good reasons to bother. It's a weird relic of a weird time.

[golyplot]

For me all the languages I learn are for communication purposes. Communication with an easily identifiable group of people, e.g people who live in Italy and speak Italian. I already speak an international language with a wide distribution, English.

I was looking at the Quickest C1 challenge and wondering what these people would do after getting to C1. I am not interested in arguments about the value of learning Esperanto, I am interested in the value of having learnt it.

Once you've learned Esperanto and participated in a couple of events, the chances are that you now have friends and acquaintances all over the world. So next time you travel to country X, perhaps you don't speak the national language very well but through Esperanto you do know someone who lives there and who will be happy to show you around and help you have some more interesting local experiences.

We've established in this thread that I don't speak Spanish But last time I was in Madrid, I met up with an Esperanto friend and he gave me a behind-the-scenes tour of the national library there. And last time I went to Catalonia, I was coincidentally there for some sort of local festival which I didn't know anything about. But the old Esperanto friend I met up with invited me and my partner to the family party his brother was throwing where we got to try all kinds of cool local food and then took us out to see the procession and fireworks which were happening in his town. I have vague memories of acquiring a large Catalan flag and consuming ice-cream mixed with champagne.

I doubt I would have had the same experiences without speaking Esperanto. I don't always look up Esperanto speakers when I travel, though there is an app you can use if you want to do that. But if I compare Esperanto to Croatian, Esperanto enables me to communicate with a small number of people in a large number of places, whereas Croatian enables me to communicate with many people in one specific place. I find value in both.

As an introvert with trouble making friends, testimonials like this make me wonder if I should take up Esperanto simply for the sake of the secret club membership. But then again, I probably wouldn't actually benefit from it for the same reason.

Esperanto(EO) is worth studying just because by doing this you contribute to a juster world where everybody has to meet each other halfway to communicate.

Think about the wast majority of people that are ungifted language learners and especially all the non-germanic ones. Is it fair to subject them to all the arbitrarities and irregularities of English, that even a lot of the native speakers can't seam to fully master?

A basic working knowledge of EO can be acquired very quickly and effortlessly by people with an European language background and no knack for languages , which cannot be said for the most national languages.

With this little investment you gain access to a very varied multicultural and inclusive community with truly international human values that no other national language can provide (learning English for instance is exposing the students mainly to the Anglo-Saxon culture and values). EO community members are sharing the best of their culture with the rest, so chances are that if you only know EO you are more multiculturally aware than if you learn any other language.

Many people that had previously problems learning a foreign language, after having learned EO (unburdened by arbitrarities and irregularities at every step of the way) got the taste of it and became polyglots (that is my case with 10+ languages). The introductory and preparatory value of EO is enormous and worth every second of your time.

I had for a very long period of time (years and years) neglected most of my languages and now I discovered that I can actively use mainly the regular and logical features of the learned languages, so only EO and my native languages remained fully unaffected.

No wonder that reading books in EO now feels very native in a way and not so foreign like in the other learned languages. There are many good books to keep anyone busy for a very long time and translations are usually done by the native speakers of the original. EO is especially good for translations due to its extreme flexibility. For example the best translations from Russian I ever read were in EO.

I think comments like this are a large part of what inspires the anti-Esperanto backlash. How is it "fair" to force everyone to learn a Romance pastiche with Polish phonology instead? The world isn't just central Europe anymore. If Zamenhof had been born on the other side of the world, perhaps you'd be touting Chinese characters as the "obvious" neutral universal writing system now.

[Factoid]

If Zamenhof had been born on the other side of the world, perhaps you'd be touting Chinese characters as the "obvious" neutral universal writing system now.

Unlikely... Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn, which is something than chinese writing isn't...

[Cainntear]

If Zamenhof had been born on the other side of the world, perhaps you'd be touting Chinese characters as the "obvious" neutral universal writing system now.

Unlikely... Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn, which is something than chinese writing isn't...

But that's hardly the point. Why did Zamenhof choose Latin characters?

You could reframe the question as "Why did Zamenhof choose Latin characters over Cyrillic?" I mean, he was reportedly natively bilingual in Yiddish and Russian, so he could have used either. I'm not sure if there's ever been anything given as an explanation to why he did, so I'd be interested in any answers. However, the thought that maybe it was because of the family background teaching French and German is likely to feed into him taking what was a unilateral decision. Arguably Cyrillic would have been better because it has more characters, so diacritics could have been avoided.