Has Anyone Here Studied Esperanto?

Language Learning
1

I’ve recently been reading about Esperanto. It appears that a US Esperanto organization is just a few miles from where I live.

I took a look at the language, and it looks very easy to learn. It might be possible to have a conversation with very little work beyond memorizing vocabulary. One study showed that 150 hours of studying Esperanto can bring a native French speaker up to the level that it would take 2000 hours to reach in German.

Check out some of these studies on language acquisition:

Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required for other languages...

The Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy at Paderborn (Germany) has compared the length of study time it takes Francophone high school students to obtain comparable ‘standard’ levels in Esperanto, English, German, and Italian. The results were:
• 2000 hours studying German = 1500 hours studying English = 1000 hours studying Italian = 150 hours studying Esperanto.

…In one study, a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years.

The grammar is very regular–just take a simple root word and modify it:

  • Nouns
    • all nouns end in -o
    • to make them for a change the suffix to -oj
    • to mark the object of a sentence add -n
  • Adjectives
    • all adjectives end in -a
  • Verbs
    • all verb infinitives end with -i
    • present tense: -as
    • past tense: -is
    • future tense: -os
    • no other verb conjugations
  • Adverbs: take an adjective and add -e
  • to make a noun diminutives add -et- between the root and the suffix
  • to reverse a word's meaning, prefix with mal-

Here is a basic introduction to the language:
http://en.lernu.net/enkonduko/lingvoprezento/index.php

1 Like
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Anyone interested in giving Esperanto a try? I have an idea to run three-month language marathons and see how much can be accomplished. Since Esperanto is so simple, and the studies show that it helps with future language learning, it might be worth spending just a month on Esperanto as an experiment.

If a trained mnemonist like Daniel Tammett can learn a complicated language like Icelandic in a week, and high school students can learn Esperanto in 150 hours, mnemonists-in-training should be able to pick up quite a lot of Esperanto within 30 days. :slight_smile:

I propose April 16th to May 16th as the 30-day period to see how much of an unfamiliar language can be learned. Anyone else interested in taking up the challenge?

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Count me in :slight_smile: … I guess this will count as my first official mind hack. Woohoo… time to write a blog post.

4

Great… I’ve created a group for the project–that way we won’t clutter up the forum with posts about Esperanto that other people might not be interested in. [Edit: the group was removed, but you can comment below if you want to learn Esperanto.]

Here’s a quick intro to the language:
[Edit: the page was removed, but you can search for it on https://lernu.net/]

I’m browsing around Lernu.net, but won’t start officially memorizing anything until April 16.

5

Count me in as well! I’m about done with this book on French. I may as well switch to Esperanto before worrying about memorizing French grammar, though, can I make a motion to add that to the next three month challenge? I’ve also always wanted to learn Gaelic…

Chinese may be a bit more of an advanced project. The syllabary is a bit intensive, though the vocab isn’t that bad. http://voxy.com/blog/2011/03/hardest-languages-infographic/?view=infographic

6

Great – I’ve added those to the list of possibilities in the wiki.

For Gaelic, Irish or Scottish?

From what I’ve heard, Mandarin is fairly easy to learn to speak because the grammar is simple. It’s only the writing is difficult, though I think it would be easy to learn at least a few hundred characters.

The World Memory Championships are going to be in China again, so it would be good to speak a little bit and read enough to decode menus.

The voxy.com chart is interesting. Their “hard languages” seem less daunting than most of the medium ones. From what I understand, Finnish has a lot of grammatical cases which are difficult for English speakers.

Turkish has many suffixes that get piled on top of each other. Check this out:

You can make a whole sentence out of suffixes:
Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = You are apparently one of those we weren’t (or haven’t been) able to make a Czechoslovakian

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Difficult isn’t necessarily bad though. If this project works, it would be interesting to work up to studying a language with very complex grammar. :slight_smile:

8

If you want difficult grammar, go for Japanese. I have multiple dictionary sized books that go into the detail of Japanese grammar. Japanese is incredibly nuanced, with at least three or four levels of politeness, and the rules change at each level. On top of that, what may be communicated in a word in English is communicated in a grammatical form in Japanese, each with their own particular idiosyncraticies.

kiyote

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I own this book and the basic Japanese grammar book. The Advanced Japanese Grammar book is kinda like a ghost, whenever I looked for it, it was either sold out, or priced unreasonably, like it is now… On second thought, it’s the most reasonable I’ve ever seen on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Dictionary-Intermediate-Japanese-Grammar/dp/B001PS7NL0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1302842369&sr=8-2

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Have you studied Japanese? I almost bought some flashcards a couple of weeks ago, but the store was sold out…

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Yeah, when I was an undergrad, I was a comp sci major. I decided to spend a month in Japan on a foreign exchange program, but fell in love with the place and kept extending the trip. By the time I came back, I was a year behind in computer science, but half way to a Japanese studies major, so I just took an extra year and double majored.

12

Nice… What part of Japan?

I visited Japan for a couple of months a few years ago, but only learned katakana and hiragana–not much of the language. We run a site called JapanGuidebook.com–I have a blog from my trip here.

13

I lived in a town called Hirakata-shi. It’s claim to fame was that it was smack dab in the middle between Osaka and Kyoto.

Kanji are difficult, until you get about a couple hundred in and can recognize the radicals. Once you get a basic idea of those, you start to recognize what sort of words use certain radicals, and it turns it into a memory exercise. I would recommend learning the three, four hundred radicals first to anyone who wants to learn kanji

kiyote

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I might try learning some kanji eventually, though probably will start with Chinese characters because of the 2011 World Memory Championship. I’ll keep the idea of learning radicals in mind…

15

There’s actually a large amount of cross over. The meaning will be the same but some of the reading is different.

Kiyote

16

I wonder which kind of Memory Techniques would you use to learn Esperanto. Are you going to learn word by word?

I don’t recommend that. But it will be a good try if you use lists of full sentences instead of words.

Giving the easiness of its grammar, it is a good idea to try to learn basic grammar … not all the details. The details could be a little confusing when you don’t know the language.

Most of my students that complete the basic course do that in less than 20 hours. Then they will need between 50 and a 100 hours to get some fluency. But most students start to use the language (with errors) half a way through the basic course.

I would like very much to help some of those that decide to learn Esperanto. Unfortunately, your choice of dates coincide with my choice of being away from Internet. I will connect again by May 12. But I would be able to help after that date.

  http://esperantofre.com/edu/lernua.htm

For some kind of immersion, you may try a couple of animations (almost 3 hours)

  http://esperantofre.com/edu/kino01a.htm

and videos with the participation of Esperanto speakers from 12 countries … (different accents?) (about 7 hours and a half):

  http://esperantofre.com/edu/kino02e.htm

Best wishes

Enrique
Fremont, California, USA

17

Enrique,

Thanks for stopping by. I live in El Sobrante, not too far from Fremont.

This was my plan:

  1. First memorize the basic grammar rules using the method of loci or just a mind map. I think that will take me a day or two to research, mind map, and memorize. I already accidentally memorized some of the grammar just browsing around. :)
  2. Memorize a couple hundred root words. I think I can do that in a couple of days.
  3. Then throw myself into some Esperanto forums and chat rooms to practice making sentences.
  4. Attend the Esperanto meetups in the Bay Area.
  5. Maybe find a place to practice speaking online over Skype.
  6. Continue to memorize more vocabulary with the linkword-town method (though Esperanto might not require an entire town because it doesn't look like words are either masculine or feminine).

After I get that far, I’ll figure out what the next step is.

Your site looks great. I will check it out while I’m learning…

18

Josh,

First memorize the basic grammar rules using the method of loci or just a mind map. I think that will take me a day or two to research, mind map, and memorize.

Two days looks like a lot of time. Try this 2 pages:

16 rules by Don Harlow

http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html

Don’t believe those Esperanto speakers who say that the whole Esperanto grammar consist of 16 rules which can be written in a single page. Here Don explains a little more … but it is just a little longer page.

Don Harlow was one of the best, may be THE best, Esperanto speaker in USA. He passed away a couple of years ago. He was your neighbor from Pinole.

If that grammar is not enough, you may also read

Esperanto grammar - Wikipedia

That grammar should be enough to start using Esperanto. A complete grammar called PMEG, available on line, is sold as a big book … but I never read it not intend to read it. This book is Esperanto only.

I already accidentally memorized some of the grammar just browsing around. Smile

No congratulations here … this is a common occurrence.

Memorize a couple hundred root words. I think I can do that in a couple of days.

I don’t like that method. Following the lessons in any basic Esperanto book, will teach more words in less time, with better retention.

Any way, it took me 2 full-time days to read the whole book, enough to start using Esperanto. This happened half a century ago, and I am very glad that I was sick in bed and couldn’t do anything else.

Then throw myself into some Esperanto forums and chat rooms to practice making sentences.

I am sorry I cannot offer contact through skype … But it is better to complete at least half a course before trying to use it.

Attend the Esperanto meetups in Berkeley.

The group from the Bay Area meets the first Saturday of
every month at the police station on the south east corner
of Golden Gate Park, one block west of Mac Donalds.

http://www.esperanto.org/us/sfero/index-english.html

Maybe find a place to practice speaking online over Skype.

Most Esperanto speakers from any place in the world, who are already in Skype, will be very happy to talk to you … but most of them don’t speak English.

Continue to memorize more vocabulary with the linkword-town method

I will advise just read through a couple of courses, and after that read books for beginners, available on my pages.

The courses I use:
Basic course:

http://www.kurso.com.br/index.php?en

Intermediate level:
Download the file DktA0004.zip (258 KB) from

That file has the full book “Gerda Malaperis” and
“La Gerda Kurso”, and a vocabulary Esperanto-English
with the new words for each chapter.

You can listen to the reading of the book, downloading
the 25 chapters of the book (numbers 01 - 25) from the
same page.

You will find a simple translation of the first 3 chapters at

esperantofre means Esperanto Fremont

Your site looks great. I will check it out while I’m learning…

Thank you.

19

I guess it will take fewer than two days then. :slight_smile:

I will definitely check that out. I think there’s another one in Berkeley too.

If they don’t speak English, that is perfect.

Thanks for all the useful information!

20

Enrique,
Thanks for the links to all the materials! I’ve studied Esperanto before, myself. Unfortunately, there are no clubs in my area (I thought about starting one, but I’m graduating college soon.) At any rate, I’m going to France all of next year and I’m going to try to learn a lot of Esperanto before then – enough to possibly use the Pasporta Servo!