Fastest C1 Ever

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Sprachprofi
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Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Sprachprofi » Sun Nov 06, 2022 12:58 pm

I think it would be awesome if a small group of forum-goers took up this challenge and I'd be happy to take a supporting role...

"Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto" is a self-study textbook containing 18 units leading up to a B1/B2 level. A very modern book, first published in 2018. Full disclosure: I co-authored it.
"Enjoy Esperanto" is designed to be the continuation of it, with 10 more units leading up to C1.

Having checked the sample exams, I believe that someone thoroughly studying both can pass the C1 exam for Esperanto. To pass the oral part of the exam, which is available separately, they'd need an hour of speaking for each unit studied.

This comes out to only 28 units. Working at a pace of only one unit a week, someone starting right now would be finished before the end of May, and there will be official CEFR Esperanto exams in June that can be taken online. Each unit should take about an hour of study, plus that hour of speaking practice for those who want to pass the oral exam, so if you're starting from scratch, you could still pass a complete C1 language exam at a leisurely pace of 2h / week for half a year. It helps that in Esperanto, there is no "we don't say it that way" and most of the vocabulary transfers over from other European languages.

I'm currently helping a friend who will take the exam in June and I'd be happy to set up a study group and weekly conversation practice if more people are interested in this challenge.
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Sprachprofi
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Sprachprofi » Sun Nov 06, 2022 1:24 pm

I don't get this raw hatred of Esperanto or the need to wear this hatred on your chest as if that somehow makes you a better polyglot.

Esperanto is in the top 10% of languages worldwide when it comes to number of speakers, literature, and Youtube content available in it. Roughly a quarter of all participants at the Polyglot Gathering or Polyglot Conference have studied it, which places it in the top 0.3% of languages for polyglots.

I personally have decided never to learn Welsh because I have other priorities, but I wouldn't say "I won't be seen using if it were the last language on earth" and I definitely wouldn't barge in on a thread about Welsh to inform the Welsh-learners there assembled that I hate their language.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby LupCenușiu » Sun Nov 06, 2022 1:40 pm

Granted, Esperanto is an easy language, even recommended by some as the first step for monolingual persons trying to break through the wall surrounding terra incognita of language learning. But C1 after 56 hours of study, at a leisurely pace of 2h/week? I feel like I'm missing something obvious in this picture. At the very least, few hundred hours of content (can't really call it "native" in this particular case)? And this is a genuine curiosity, not some sort of hidden mocking attempt. I have no bone to pick with team Esperanto, and I'm all for time efficient learning style.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Iversen » Sun Nov 06, 2022 2:04 pm

I have listened to the first five minutes of the C1, and it doesn't appear to be too scary. I had to look one word up (rubujo = trash), which of course is irritating, but if this is the level you need to pass the exam then I do think that it could be done in one half year or less.

The big question for me is whether getting those 28 lessons is enough - or even the right way to do it. One advantage of Esperanto is that polyglots who already know several European languages already will be acquainted with most of the words, so maybe the emphasis should be on reading and listening to stuff you have chosen yourself - and then maybe experimenting with the prefixes inside your own head if you want to make it an active language. I'm not fond of premade courses in general.

Personally I have attained a level where I can read it fluently and apparently also understand it without warning (though I rarely test that skill), but I hardly ever speak it, so even while I still attended the gatherings I usually came quite unprepared to have conversations in it, and having people speak other languages around me was a problem back then. On the other hand it just took a few hours to get it back into shape at the UEA conferences, where I could focus on listening to Esperanto and nothing else. So I count Esperanto among my weaker languages, but apparently it's strong enough to cope with that C1 auditive test.

And like Sprachprofi I find it absurd that some people loath Esperanto just because it was put together by one person (Zamenhof). After all, it has been in existence for so long that it now has not only a history, but also native speakers in the 2. and 3. generation. And you learn it using the same methods as you would learn any other language on this planet. Esperanto is just one more language for heaven's sake, so why bother about its origins?
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Sprachprofi
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Sprachprofi » Sun Nov 06, 2022 2:24 pm

LupCenușiu wrote:Granted, Esperanto is an easy language, even recommended by some as the first step for monolingual persons trying to break through the wall surrounding terra incognita of language learning. But C1 after 56 hours of study, at a leisurely pace of 2h/week? I feel like I'm missing something obvious in this picture. At the very least, few hundred hours of content (can't really call it "native" in this particular case)? And this is a genuine curiosity, not some sort of hidden mocking attempt. I have no bone to pick with team Esperanto, and I'm all for time efficient learning style.


There are three factors imho:

1. The number of word roots that you're expected to know, as an educated non-native Esperanto speaker, is around 500, whereas for German it's 5000, i.e. a factor of 10. I could imagine someone breaking into C1 German after 560 hours of study, if done wisely. The difference in word roots is mainly due to Esperanto's affix system (try it, you'll love it), but also due to a difference in philosophy: the Akademio de Esperanto advises everyone that "good language" is language that is easy to understand for beginners, i.e. using mainly basic word roots with a liberal helping of affixes. National language academies would never advise people to use more basic word roots, hence consuming and producing advanced content in these languages requires a much larger vocabulary.

2. Those "few hundred hours of content" mainly serve to acquaint you with "the way things are said". There are many perfectly grammatical phrases that are nevertheless not "the way things are said", and for C1 you are expected to eliminate those. This effort is unnecessary in Esperanto because anything that is grammatical and understandable is also acceptable. A practical example: in English you're supposed to say "I'm hungry", in German you're supposed to say "I have hunger" and in Chinese you're supposed to say "I hunger". In Esperanto, there is no "you're supposed to say"; you can use any of these three :) And this goes for thousands of little things. If you don't have to acquire all these implicit rules that are not mentioned in grammar books, you also don't need to consume as much content before you can produce content of a similar language level. Obviously it's still fun to consume the content, but it's not a necessary step.

3. The two books I mentioned were developed with a particular eye towards the vocabulary/grammar/content requirements of the exams, so they present as much of a straight line as there could be.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Xenops » Sun Nov 06, 2022 4:24 pm

STT44 wrote:Shame it's about Esperanto, a language I won't be seen using if it were the last language on earth.


I bet you would if you wanted to communicate. Unless, of course, you are the last person on earth.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby lavengro » Sun Nov 06, 2022 6:16 pm

Sprachprofi wrote:I think it would be awesome if a small group of forum-goers took up this challenge and I'd be happy to take a supporting role...

....

I'm currently helping a friend who will take the exam in June and I'd be happy to set up a study group and weekly conversation practice if more people are interested in this challenge.

That is an extraordinarily generous offer on your part Sprachprofi. I would be very interested in taking up the challenge (to my detriment in life, I can rarely say "no" to a challenge, bet or dare), but I am in the process of learning Spanish and am still at a relatively early stage with that. Do you think it would present a disadvantage to my Spanish learning if I were to concurrently throw a couple of hours of Esperanto per week into the mix?
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Iversen » Sun Nov 06, 2022 6:45 pm

Esperanto may be more lenient on its users than most other languages, but I remember it was hard for me not to use an ungrammatical compound perfect (*Mi havas farito ion) when I first started to learn it. All the words exist, but you are told to use the simple past instead (mi faris) - so even Esperanto doesn't allow everything. I wonder whether it was Zamenhof's Slavic background that made him outlaw the compund perfect or he just thought that it didn't really fit into his triple layer temporal system with i, a and o (plus u). And I'm not happy at all with the idea that mal- should be used to cut the number of adjectives down to less than half. The problem is that for me "juna" (young) stops at something like 20-25 years, and English "old" only starts at maybe 60 or so - so it grieves me to have to use "maljuna" for old, and "antikva" is for me older than old (and mostly relevant for things). I simply lack a word for old that doesn't include the 'mezaĝojn'. My feeling is that "maljuna" starts where "juna" ends, but that's apparently not something that bothers the samideanojn. I would prefer having to learn a few more words and then be able to be more precise.

But I could point to similar annoyanc-etoj in my other languages, and it doesn't hinder me from finding that Esperanto is worth learning.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Le Baron » Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:38 pm

Iversen wrote:My feeling is that "maljuna" starts where "juna" ends, but that's apparently not something that bothers the samideanojn.

But isn't this the same in any language? There are young people and 'old' people (depends on your view) and the people in-between seem to have no designation as to whether they are young or old or whatever.
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Re: Fastest C1 Ever

Postby Le Baron » Sun Nov 06, 2022 7:44 pm

Sprachprofi wrote:"Teach Yourself Complete Esperanto" is a self-study textbook containing 18 units leading up to a B1/B2 level. A very modern book, first published in 2018. Full disclosure: I co-authored it.

So that's you! Well, I've been through that book, even though I'd been through the very old TY book a long time before. The complete... is perhaps the best book anyone can use for Esperanto from English. I gave the copy I bought to someone who wanted to learn Esperanto.
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