12 ms·

A couple years ago, I sat down to check out Esperanto the same way that any of us programming language nerds check out another programming language. Polyglot B

by sivers 7y ago

A couple years ago, I sat down to check out Esperanto the same way that any of us programming language nerds check out another programming language. Polyglot Benny Lewis recommends that if you don't know any foreign language, the best place to start is Esperanto, because it's so easy. See https://www.fluentin3months.com/2-weeks-of-esperanto/ https://www.fluentin3months.com/2-weeks-of-esperanto/ I intended to give it about an hour, one Sunday, so I sat down in my chair at 4pm, and went to the most recommended tutorial: https://lernu.net/ https://lernu.net/ I had so many “whoa!” and “wow!” and “this is amazing!” moments while checking it out that I didn't get out of my chair until almost midnight. I didn't even notice the house had grown dark around me. It's a really fun, simple, easy language to learn. I ended up learning it for six months to a conversational level. I found someone fluent in https://www.italki.com/ https://www.italki.com/ and we talked by Skype for three hours per week. I used Anki flashcards to memorize vocabulary. I slowly read a few books in Esperanto. After six months, I attended the international Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea, and spoke only Esperanto for a few days. I was glad I was doing it, and somewhat glad I did it, but in hindsight maybe should have used that time to learn Mandarin or another language where I can communicate with people that don't speak English. Still, I miss it. Esperanto is wonderfully designed. I highly recommend anyone curious go to https://lernu.net/ https://lernu.net/ and work their way through the course there, even if that's all you do.

martinrue 7y ago
Thanks for the useful links Derek. I still remember your email to me, telling me you had started learning the language. I'd love to read a future blog post about your experience :)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Nadya 7y ago
>After six months, I attended the international Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea, and spoke only Esperanto for a few days. I was glad I was doing it, and somewhat glad I did it, but in hindsight maybe should have used that time to learn Mandarin or another language where I can communicate with people that don't speak English. Esperanto is a language where you can communicate with people that don't speak English ;) If you weren't already bilingual - the best part about Esperanto is it teaches you how to learn a second language by doing it. It also gets out of your way since, for Romantic-based languages, the grammar and vocabulary mostly stays out of your way and you can focus more on "actually learning" than on building vocab or remembering weird edge cases in the grammar. Your time spent learning Esperanto may have actually created a solid foundation to learning Mandarin, if that's what you desire to learn! There are studies that learning Esperanto can aid in learning other languages [0], although many of them are quite dated. It seems many of the studies agree that unless you're already particularly adept at learning a new language - learning Esperanto will aid you in learning other languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant...
- jcranmer 7y ago
  The studies listed on the Wikipedia page are not particularly persuasive, and some of them have a heavy pro-Eseperanto bias in construction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 has a more thorough criticism of one of the studies in particular.
  - hk__2 7y ago
    It’s probably the same for Wikipedia in English ; in French the minute you touch the Esperanto-related articles you get hordes of Esperantists reverting your changes. If you introduce some (sourced) criticism of the language or anything about its low number of speakers you’re labeled as anti-Esperanto. This is an area of Wikipedia I don’t want to touch anymore.
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      Aside, there is an Esperanto Wikipedia: https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio
- bctnry 7y ago
  > Your time spent learning Esperanto may have actually created a solid foundation to learning Mandarin, if that's what you desire to learn! As a native Mandarin speaker who also knows Esperanto I can tell you this is almost 100% (if not exactly 100%) not the case. If learning Esperanto gives you motivation to learn more, maybe; but the two languages are way too different that it wouldn't help much.
  - Nadya 7y ago
    Your case is not only different from the one I'm claiming it helps (you already spoke Mandarin natively) but also I'm specifically claiming it helps monolinguals who are learning their first non-native language. So unless you went Mandarin --> Esperanto --> English and found Esperanto didn't help you learn English at all then I what I said doesn't apply to you. If you were either bilingual before learning Esperanto I don't think it'd have been very useful as a "diving board" to learning another language as you've already have the knowledge of speaking two languages. And I don't wish to make any assumptions, but if you've been bilingual your entire life I don't think you can even accurately imagine what it is like to be monolingual. Bilinguals have an easier time learning a third language than monolinguals have learning a second [0] [1] [2]. I personally give credit to 3 months of learning Esperanto for helping me get over a huge hurdle in my Japanese studies (after 2 years of studying). Not because Esperanto and Japanese have anything in common - but because learning certain grammatical structures in Esperanto helped the Japanese equivalents finally "click" after I had been struggling with learning them for so long. This doesn't seem to be an uncommon occurrence within the Esperanto community (for those with non-Esperanto target languages). The plural of anecdotes is of course not "data" but the studies (however criticized) and experiences of countless people (including myself) all point to it helping. I hear plenty of stories from people who've never bothered to learn it saying they won't learn it because they'd rather learn their target language instead. It's difficult to even find a story from someone who's learned it and claims it didn't help them at all in learning a non-Esperanto target language. I've tried Googling around a bit - I can only ever find people who shit on conlangs as a concept and refuse to learn one. The longest and hardest thing when learning a language is learning how to learn a language and that's what I personally believe Esperanto (or any conlang really) helps with. I would only ever personally recommend a brief stint (no more than a month or two) of Esperanto for monolinguals. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583091/#b22-cer-13-12 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583091/#b22-ce... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19648456 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19648456 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201110915.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201110915.h...
gwbas1c 7y ago
Makes me wonder, if a highly international organization could make Esperanto part of onboarding? If it's so easy to learn, at some point shouldn't it just be "worth it" if you're going to do something with lots of different people who are all different native language speakers?
- kingbirdy 7y ago
  Highly international organizations uses English, more people are estimated to speak it as a primary or secondary language than any other language in the world (including Mandarin).
- freehunter 7y ago
  The problem with widespread Esperanto adoption (in the Western world at least) isn't that English is an easy language, but it's so pervasive of a language. There is a lot of English-language media to study, and a lot of people speak English to practice with. If one person speaks French and another speaks Polish, it would probably be easier and more beneficial for each of them to learn English than each of them to learn Esperanto. And once they do, they'll be able to communicate with others who know English but don't know Esperanto, which is a huge number of people. I've studied Esperanto in the past and I love the concept, but getting TV shows, movies, and books in Esperanto is much much much harder than getting them in English. Which means people are exposed to English far more often and in more real-life scenarios than they would be in Esperanto. This is a similar problem with any non-English language, I've found. I speak German and trying to keep up with the language in America is nearly impossible because I can't find any good source of German language books or TV shows or movies here in the US. And beyond trying to legally purchase them, it's difficult to even pirate German language media. It just doesn't exist.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Yeah, English isn't easy to learn as a language but it's easy to learn in general because as a non-native speakers it's impossible to escape. I had private language lessons for German and English as well as had both languages taught at school since the age of 7, but by the age of ~16 I was only fluent in one - English. I attribute this 100% to the fact that English media and games are literally everywhere, while German ones were a bit harder to come by. If I wanted to explore the internet as a kid it has to be done in English, so my English grew at an exponential rate, despite both languages getting the same amount of learning time.
tasogare 7y ago
Don’t regret anything about taking this path. Six months of Mandarin is barely enough to learn the consonant and tone system right, starting getting the writing system and learning few patterns and vocabulary. In any case, you wouldn’t have held conversations in it like you did with Esperanto.
- nilkn 7y ago
  They probably could've learned Spanish to a degree of conversational fluency in the same time period, though. Esperanto has about 1,000 native speakers. Spanish has about 480 million. You can visit entire beautiful countries with fascinating histories where everyone speaks Spanish or its variants. Beyond that, once you can understand spoken Spanish, you can likely understand a bit of Portuguese as well, and you'll be able to learn French and Italian probably at least twice as fast coming from Spanish vs. coming from English.
  - sudosteph 7y ago
    That's actually a matter of debate. I studied spanish throughout my high school years, and while I was decent enough at speaking and reading/writing, my ability to comprehend spoken spanish in the real-world was still effectively zero because I never learned how to process it at the speed that native speakers used. I had better luck with French in college though, and Esperanto was still the easiest by far. That said, there are some who claim that learning 1 year of Esperanto and 3 years of French leads to better fluency than studying just french for 4 years. This article on wikipedia has some interesting information on those claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... The latin-roots that you learn from spanish and french are also present in Esperanto for the most part, so the semi-mutual understanding part you mention is actually still a benefit from Esperanto.
    - nilkn 7y ago
      Virtually nobody in the US gains any sort of fluency from high school instruction in any foreign language unless they supplement the class with their own study. We could discuss why, but that remains true either way. If there's anything I've learned from studying the studying of foreign languages, it's that sufficient interest and passion to pursue a language in your free time is by far the most significant indicator of success.
zubi 7y ago
> I had so many “whoa!” and “wow!” and “this is amazing!” moments while checking it out that I didn't get out of my chair until almost midnight. I didn't even notice the house had grown dark around me. I had pretty much the same experience, but the medium was Duolingo. I studied Lernu later. Don't agree with Chinese, as you would probably be just starting in 6 months, whereas you can reach near fluency in Esperanto in that timeframe.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Chris Lonsdale gave a TED talk in 2013 about language learning, and asserts "in 6 months I was fluent in Chinese": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0
imtringued 7y ago
Esperanto is only easy because you already know a European language. This gives you a major head start. I can easily add 100 french words a day to my Anki deck and review more than 300 cards without breaking a sweat. With Asian languages I have trouble adding 30 cards a day and then I need to take a break.

by sivers 7y ago

martinrue 7y ago

Thanks for the useful links Derek. I still remember your email to me, telling me you had started learning the language. I'd love to read a future blog post about your experience :)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Nadya 7y ago

>After six months, I attended the international Esperanto conference in Seoul, Korea, and spoke only Esperanto for a few days. I was glad I was doing it, and somewhat glad I did it, but in hindsight maybe should have used that time to learn Mandarin or another language where I can communicate with people that don't speak English. Esperanto is a language where you can communicate with people that don't speak English ;) If you weren't already bilingual - the best part about Esperanto is it teaches you how to learn a second language by doing it. It also gets out of your way since, for Romantic-based languages, the grammar and vocabulary mostly stays out of your way and you can focus more on "actually learning" than on building vocab or remembering weird edge cases in the grammar. Your time spent learning Esperanto may have actually created a solid foundation to learning Mandarin, if that's what you desire to learn! There are studies that learning Esperanto can aid in learning other languages [0], although many of them are quite dated. It seems many of the studies agree that unless you're already particularly adept at learning a new language - learning Esperanto will aid you in learning other languages. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant...

jcranmer 7y ago
The studies listed on the Wikipedia page are not particularly persuasive, and some of them have a heavy pro-Eseperanto bias in construction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 has a more thorough criticism of one of the studies in particular.
- hk__2 7y ago
  It’s probably the same for Wikipedia in English ; in French the minute you touch the Esperanto-related articles you get hordes of Esperantists reverting your changes. If you introduce some (sourced) criticism of the language or anything about its low number of speakers you’re labeled as anti-Esperanto. This is an area of Wikipedia I don’t want to touch anymore.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    Aside, there is an Esperanto Wikipedia: https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikipedio
bctnry 7y ago
> Your time spent learning Esperanto may have actually created a solid foundation to learning Mandarin, if that's what you desire to learn! As a native Mandarin speaker who also knows Esperanto I can tell you this is almost 100% (if not exactly 100%) not the case. If learning Esperanto gives you motivation to learn more, maybe; but the two languages are way too different that it wouldn't help much.
- Nadya 7y ago
  Your case is not only different from the one I'm claiming it helps (you already spoke Mandarin natively) but also I'm specifically claiming it helps monolinguals who are learning their first non-native language. So unless you went Mandarin --> Esperanto --> English and found Esperanto didn't help you learn English at all then I what I said doesn't apply to you. If you were either bilingual before learning Esperanto I don't think it'd have been very useful as a "diving board" to learning another language as you've already have the knowledge of speaking two languages. And I don't wish to make any assumptions, but if you've been bilingual your entire life I don't think you can even accurately imagine what it is like to be monolingual. Bilinguals have an easier time learning a third language than monolinguals have learning a second [0] [1] [2]. I personally give credit to 3 months of learning Esperanto for helping me get over a huge hurdle in my Japanese studies (after 2 years of studying). Not because Esperanto and Japanese have anything in common - but because learning certain grammatical structures in Esperanto helped the Japanese equivalents finally "click" after I had been struggling with learning them for so long. This doesn't seem to be an uncommon occurrence within the Esperanto community (for those with non-Esperanto target languages). The plural of anecdotes is of course not "data" but the studies (however criticized) and experiences of countless people (including myself) all point to it helping. I hear plenty of stories from people who've never bothered to learn it saying they won't learn it because they'd rather learn their target language instead. It's difficult to even find a story from someone who's learned it and claims it didn't help them at all in learning a non-Esperanto target language. I've tried Googling around a bit - I can only ever find people who shit on conlangs as a concept and refuse to learn one. The longest and hardest thing when learning a language is learning how to learn a language and that's what I personally believe Esperanto (or any conlang really) helps with. I would only ever personally recommend a brief stint (no more than a month or two) of Esperanto for monolinguals. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583091/#b22-cer-13-12 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3583091/#b22-ce... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19648456 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19648456 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201110915.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110201110915.h...

gwbas1c 7y ago

Makes me wonder, if a highly international organization could make Esperanto part of onboarding? If it's so easy to learn, at some point shouldn't it just be "worth it" if you're going to do something with lots of different people who are all different native language speakers?

kingbirdy 7y ago
Highly international organizations uses English, more people are estimated to speak it as a primary or secondary language than any other language in the world (including Mandarin).
freehunter 7y ago
The problem with widespread Esperanto adoption (in the Western world at least) isn't that English is an easy language, but it's so pervasive of a language. There is a lot of English-language media to study, and a lot of people speak English to practice with. If one person speaks French and another speaks Polish, it would probably be easier and more beneficial for each of them to learn English than each of them to learn Esperanto. And once they do, they'll be able to communicate with others who know English but don't know Esperanto, which is a huge number of people. I've studied Esperanto in the past and I love the concept, but getting TV shows, movies, and books in Esperanto is much much much harder than getting them in English. Which means people are exposed to English far more often and in more real-life scenarios than they would be in Esperanto. This is a similar problem with any non-English language, I've found. I speak German and trying to keep up with the language in America is nearly impossible because I can't find any good source of German language books or TV shows or movies here in the US. And beyond trying to legally purchase them, it's difficult to even pirate German language media. It just doesn't exist.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Yeah, English isn't easy to learn as a language but it's easy to learn in general because as a non-native speakers it's impossible to escape. I had private language lessons for German and English as well as had both languages taught at school since the age of 7, but by the age of ~16 I was only fluent in one - English. I attribute this 100% to the fact that English media and games are literally everywhere, while German ones were a bit harder to come by. If I wanted to explore the internet as a kid it has to be done in English, so my English grew at an exponential rate, despite both languages getting the same amount of learning time.

tasogare 7y ago

Don’t regret anything about taking this path. Six months of Mandarin is barely enough to learn the consonant and tone system right, starting getting the writing system and learning few patterns and vocabulary. In any case, you wouldn’t have held conversations in it like you did with Esperanto.

nilkn 7y ago
They probably could've learned Spanish to a degree of conversational fluency in the same time period, though. Esperanto has about 1,000 native speakers. Spanish has about 480 million. You can visit entire beautiful countries with fascinating histories where everyone speaks Spanish or its variants. Beyond that, once you can understand spoken Spanish, you can likely understand a bit of Portuguese as well, and you'll be able to learn French and Italian probably at least twice as fast coming from Spanish vs. coming from English.
- sudosteph 7y ago
  That's actually a matter of debate. I studied spanish throughout my high school years, and while I was decent enough at speaking and reading/writing, my ability to comprehend spoken spanish in the real-world was still effectively zero because I never learned how to process it at the speed that native speakers used. I had better luck with French in college though, and Esperanto was still the easiest by far. That said, there are some who claim that learning 1 year of Esperanto and 3 years of French leads to better fluency than studying just french for 4 years. This article on wikipedia has some interesting information on those claims: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... The latin-roots that you learn from spanish and french are also present in Esperanto for the most part, so the semi-mutual understanding part you mention is actually still a benefit from Esperanto.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    Virtually nobody in the US gains any sort of fluency from high school instruction in any foreign language unless they supplement the class with their own study. We could discuss why, but that remains true either way. If there's anything I've learned from studying the studying of foreign languages, it's that sufficient interest and passion to pursue a language in your free time is by far the most significant indicator of success.

zubi 7y ago

> I had so many “whoa!” and “wow!” and “this is amazing!” moments while checking it out that I didn't get out of my chair until almost midnight. I didn't even notice the house had grown dark around me. I had pretty much the same experience, but the medium was Duolingo. I studied Lernu later. Don't agree with Chinese, as you would probably be just starting in 6 months, whereas you can reach near fluency in Esperanto in that timeframe.

jodrellblank 7y ago
Chris Lonsdale gave a TED talk in 2013 about language learning, and asserts "in 6 months I was fluent in Chinese": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0

imtringued 7y ago

Esperanto is only easy because you already know a European language. This gives you a major head start. I can easily add 100 french words a day to my Anki deck and review more than 300 cards without breaking a sweat. With Asian languages I have trouble adding 30 cards a day and then I need to take a break.