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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
by 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 agoThat'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 agoVirtually 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.
- tasogare 7y ago> 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. Exactly. 10 or 12 years of German instruction have been thrown into my throat, I can't discuss anything in this language. I've becoming good in English at university level only after I start reading programming related stuff. On the other hand, I have degree in Japanese and got non-null Chinese skills without too much efforts (it seems).
- fiblye 7y agoI’ve learned more in 2 months of language self-study than I got from 3 years of public school study. Being in a room with 30 kids who just want to squeak by with a passing grade and really don’t want to learn is no way to learn a language. There’s not enough practice with output and your brain just turns off.
- telesilla 7y ago>I never learned how to process it at the speed that native speakers used Magic words: más espacio, por favor. I also find having radio or TV in the background in the language I want to learn is very helpful in the longterm. A flatmate of mine used to watch the Simpsons in her non-native language every day to pick up the local accent.
- firethief 7y agoEsperanto isn't intended to be anyone's native language (it's an "international auxiliary language") so that's a weird way to compare speakership.
- nilkn 7y agoIt has as few as 63k speakers, native or otherwise. The language is barely spoken compared to languages of similar difficulty.
- rickycook 7y agothe very point of esperanto is that nothing is of “similar difficulty”, so even comparing to spanish is disingenuous
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- nickserv 7y agoThere are other languages of similar difficulty (all constructed), but they are spoken even less than Esperanto.
- yorwba 7y agoThat's a bit of a strong claim to make, considering that there are thousands of languages with more speakers than Esperanto, most of which you probably never heard of. My guess is that some contact language has similar difficulty, while having more speakers. Pichinglis [1] seems like a good candidate: 70,000 to 100,000 speakers in Equatorial Guinea; formed as a creole from English and various languages of Western Africa, so you should get a high number of cognates similar to Esperanto and a simplified grammar. It might even help you learn other languages of the region faster. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pichinglis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pichinglis
- firethief 7y agoIs that still a good choice for someone who doesn't plan to go to equatorial guinea?
- 6thaccount2 7y agoVery wrong I'd say. I was able to read more at 3 weeks than I could with 3 years of Spanish. Spanish might be easier than Latin, but verb conjugations and irregularities in the grammar is no joke. Esperanto gives you a detour around all of that.
- sweeneyrod 7y agoI suspect that is at least partly due to Esperanto content using a smaller vocabulary. Irregular Spanish grammar makes writing/speaking perfectly harder, but in my experience it's not a big barrier for reading.
- aaaaaar 7y agoYou can literally learn most of Esperanto grammar in the time it takes to learn the difference between "soy/estar" and "por/para" in Spanish. Those are just two Spanish concepts that students spend days learning. Look at a table of contents in a Spanish textbook and count the concepts. Now review an Esperanto textbook. It was designed for fast acquisition. Things that you have to learn in any language - like numbers, verb forms, days of the week, time, spelling, etc - are designed to be as simple as possible. Take a book like "501 Spanish verbs" and adapt it to Esperanto. The book will shrink down to one page, since all verbs are regular. That page will further shrink down because there are fewer conjugations. All conjugations that do exist are composable - each conjugation dimension can be applied separately. They are even consistent between parts of speech. How many people, who are making a serious multi-year effrot in learning a foreign language, no how to say "flutter" in that language? It's not unlikely that Esperanto learners will know that word in the month or so (after they learn the word for "fly", and learn how to make diminutives). Through these mechanisms you only need to learn a fraction of vocabulary, since from a root word you can drive many others.
- benhurmarcel 7y agoCan confirm. I've been living for 3 years in Spain, I work in Spanish and live with a Spanish, and I still get ser/estar wrong very often.
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