5 ms·

If you're considering learning Esperanto, you should learn Chinese or Spanish instead

chillacy 7y ago
I think you’re getting at the usefulness of the language but I’d offer a counterpoint which is the time you’d need to invest. The FSI estimates 500 hours until Spanish proficiency and 2000 hours for mandarin. Esperanto is more like 50, and studies show faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  There's one key flaw in those studies, at least in my opinion. It's that they were done among children who had no choice. I can't imagine that someone who was actually interested and motivated to learn French would get the benefit from Esperanto. I also don't think that the benefit is all that great, and would like to see the studies repeated now, 100-years later.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Anecdotally I found it helpful because it trains some sort of "meta-learning" for languages. Once you learn a new language once, the next gets a little bit easier, things are less discouraging.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > Esperanto is more like 50 Whats your standard for "proficiency" here? After 50 hours, you're not going to have a very extensive vocabulary. > studies show faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time. Which studies? If you mean those listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... then they don't actually support that conclusion. Some more details on one of those studies in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019
  - chillacy 7y ago
    I guess it's more like 150 according to the studies in the second link. Anecdotally vocab acquisition is much faster in Esperanto due to the regularity and afix system, where learning a single new word root tends to give another dozen variants "for free". By the way the second link is a critique of a single study, and it makes a pretty wild claim: "To see whether previous study of Esperanto would assist children in the subsequent learning of East-Asian languages (particularly Japanese)." The claim that Eo helps French acquisition is much better supported from the links in the wikipedia article, considering the more similar grammars and vocabulary.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      Most languages have some kind of derivational morphology that gives you variants "for free". The Wikipedia article on morphological derivation gives some examples for English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation I don't doubt that pre-existing knowledge of Esperanto helps with learning French due to the large number of cognates, but it's implausible it helps so much that you get "faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time". Cognates would at best allow you to learn Esperanto + French in the same time it takes to learn French alone, but Esperanto isn't 100% Romance-based, so even that is unlikely.
      - jodrellblank 7y ago
        In English getting the exceptions wrong ("I washed, I jumped, I readed, I runned, I eated, I writed") makes you sound like a child or an idiot (Ralf Wiggum from the Simpsons). In Esperanto, ending a word in "-e" makes it an adverb which means you can stick it on any root word to force adverbness. In English "-ly" makes something an adverb, except when it doesn't; "brolly" which is a noun, "fly" which is a noun, a verb, maybe an adjective, maybe sometimes an adverb ("fly-tipping"?), or "scaly" which is an adjective and doesn't become "scalyly" to make it an adverb. They aren't "for free" in English because you can't trust the pattern. but it's implausible it helps so much that you get "faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time" I'm not convinced that it's true, but it surely is plausible; the other side of "can't trust the pattern" is that you can't easily see the pattern. Learning arithmetic then calculus seems better than trying to learn both at the same time; learning an instrument first then playing in an orchestra would be better than trying to join an orchestra and play with them while learning to play an instrument at all. People recommend beginners start with Python rather than 3D engine development in C++, or work on a model of an engine before they take a helicopter apart, right? Why not "learn European grammar rules in simple patterns" then "use that knowledge to climb faster through native languages which aren't so simple where the patterns are less clear"?
- nilkn 7y ago
  If learning Esperanto really solved the same problem that learning, say, Spanish or Mandarin would solve, then you might have a point. But Mandarin has just under a billion native speakers and another 200 million second language speakers, whereas Esperanto has as few as 63k speakers combined from both categories. The combined number for Spanish is easily 500+ million. The only compelling argument I see is the one you mentioned about using Esperanto as a quick path to, say, French. However, if we use your Spanish numbers, it'd need to reduce Spanish acquisition time from 500 hours down to at most 450 in order for it to be a net gain. Personally, as someone who's studied Spanish as a second language, I just can't imagine it would have helped me going through Esperanto first.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Again it depends what you're looking for, if you just want to talk to as many speakers as possible and don't care how long it takes, then yes, spend 5 years intensely learning Mandarin, everything else is a waste of time. But if you want a fast path to learning a foreign language (which plugs you into a meta language learning community), then Esperanto is very interesting. Research is fairly promising for French, doesn't look like it helps as much with spanish, or at least nobody's done research on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... Anecdotally it works well for french because you're secretly learning French word roots, and it builds confidence in the process of language learning.
    - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
      Learning Esperanto first may lead to faster proficiency in French, but it may not be good proficiency. This is because learning the words first through Esperanto would ingrain some bad habits in the learner that will be hard to eradicate after he or she moves on to French. What I have in mind is the fact that French distinguishes between the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/, and between /ɛ/ and /e/. When learning new words, foreigners must get this distinction down right, it is key to having a decent accent in French, and in some cases avoiding misunderstandings. Yet when French roots were used in Esperanto, those vowels were leveled as just /o/ and /e/, respectively. That means that the learner does not learn the right French vowels from the start, and is likely to continue using in French the /o/ learned from Esperanto when the vowel is actually /ɔ/ etc. In modern language teaching, it is considered vital to avoid pronunciation mistakes from the very start, because otherwise they become too firmly rooted to get rid of later.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  500 or 2000 hours for an extremely useful outcome vs. 50 for completely useless. I'll take the former, please. If you're a polyglot who wants to learn two dozen languages, then go for it, but don't prioritize Esperanto over Klingon or Elvish.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    Esperanto has a Wikipedia of a quarter million articles, the Klingon Wikipedia was locked because there weren't enough speakers (last estimate from the 1996: 12 speakers) and the language is fixed and too limited to make for reasonable articles. "Don't prioritize Esperanto over Klingon" is trolling.
larnmar 7y ago
If you’re considering learning Esperanto I’d suggest spending some time teaching English instead.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Klingon, Elvish, and Pig Latin are also better choices than Esperanto for most people.
jodrellblank 7y ago
If you're considering going to work in China, and wondering if you should learn Spanish instead of Mandarin, what are you doing. If you're trying to get a promotion in a Spanish-speaking company and considering learning Mandarin instead of Spanish, what are you doing. If you're considering learning Chinese or Spanish for utility, it seems extremely unlikely that they would lead you to exactly the same opportunies; if you can't tell which would lead to better opportunities AND you can't tell which you have more interest in, that suggests you don't have much utility for either, much interest in either, and should do something else more immediately beneficial instead. e.g. skills training for a specific promotion at your place of work, or sought after skills in your local job market. If you're considering learning anything for fun or interest, then learn the thing which you find fun or interesting, not the thing which internet people tell you that you "should" based on something so completely irrelevant as how popular it is. Keeping up with the Jones's is a mistake, not a desirable way to live.

I think you’re getting at the usefulness of the language but I’d offer a counterpoint which is the time you’d need to invest. The FSI estimates 500 hours until Spanish proficiency and 2000 hours for mandarin. Esperanto is more like 50, and studies show faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time.

dorchadas 7y ago
There's one key flaw in those studies, at least in my opinion. It's that they were done among children who had no choice. I can't imagine that someone who was actually interested and motivated to learn French would get the benefit from Esperanto. I also don't think that the benefit is all that great, and would like to see the studies repeated now, 100-years later.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Anecdotally I found it helpful because it trains some sort of "meta-learning" for languages. Once you learn a new language once, the next gets a little bit easier, things are less discouraging.
yorwba 7y ago
> Esperanto is more like 50 Whats your standard for "proficiency" here? After 50 hours, you're not going to have a very extensive vocabulary. > studies show faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time. Which studies? If you mean those listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... then they don't actually support that conclusion. Some more details on one of those studies in particular: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019
- chillacy 7y ago
  I guess it's more like 150 according to the studies in the second link. Anecdotally vocab acquisition is much faster in Esperanto due to the regularity and afix system, where learning a single new word root tends to give another dozen variants "for free". By the way the second link is a critique of a single study, and it makes a pretty wild claim: "To see whether previous study of Esperanto would assist children in the subsequent learning of East-Asian languages (particularly Japanese)." The claim that Eo helps French acquisition is much better supported from the links in the wikipedia article, considering the more similar grammars and vocabulary.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Most languages have some kind of derivational morphology that gives you variants "for free". The Wikipedia article on morphological derivation gives some examples for English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_derivation I don't doubt that pre-existing knowledge of Esperanto helps with learning French due to the large number of cognates, but it's implausible it helps so much that you get "faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time". Cognates would at best allow you to learn Esperanto + French in the same time it takes to learn French alone, but Esperanto isn't 100% Romance-based, so even that is unlikely.
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      In English getting the exceptions wrong ("I washed, I jumped, I readed, I runned, I eated, I writed") makes you sound like a child or an idiot (Ralf Wiggum from the Simpsons). In Esperanto, ending a word in "-e" makes it an adverb which means you can stick it on any root word to force adverbness. In English "-ly" makes something an adverb, except when it doesn't; "brolly" which is a noun, "fly" which is a noun, a verb, maybe an adjective, maybe sometimes an adverb ("fly-tipping"?), or "scaly" which is an adjective and doesn't become "scalyly" to make it an adverb. They aren't "for free" in English because you can't trust the pattern. but it's implausible it helps so much that you get "faster French acquisition after first learning Esperanto than learning French the whole time" I'm not convinced that it's true, but it surely is plausible; the other side of "can't trust the pattern" is that you can't easily see the pattern. Learning arithmetic then calculus seems better than trying to learn both at the same time; learning an instrument first then playing in an orchestra would be better than trying to join an orchestra and play with them while learning to play an instrument at all. People recommend beginners start with Python rather than 3D engine development in C++, or work on a model of an engine before they take a helicopter apart, right? Why not "learn European grammar rules in simple patterns" then "use that knowledge to climb faster through native languages which aren't so simple where the patterns are less clear"?
nilkn 7y ago
If learning Esperanto really solved the same problem that learning, say, Spanish or Mandarin would solve, then you might have a point. But Mandarin has just under a billion native speakers and another 200 million second language speakers, whereas Esperanto has as few as 63k speakers combined from both categories. The combined number for Spanish is easily 500+ million. The only compelling argument I see is the one you mentioned about using Esperanto as a quick path to, say, French. However, if we use your Spanish numbers, it'd need to reduce Spanish acquisition time from 500 hours down to at most 450 in order for it to be a net gain. Personally, as someone who's studied Spanish as a second language, I just can't imagine it would have helped me going through Esperanto first.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Again it depends what you're looking for, if you just want to talk to as many speakers as possible and don't care how long it takes, then yes, spend 5 years intensely learning Mandarin, everything else is a waste of time. But if you want a fast path to learning a foreign language (which plugs you into a meta language learning community), then Esperanto is very interesting. Research is fairly promising for French, doesn't look like it helps as much with spanish, or at least nobody's done research on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant... Anecdotally it works well for french because you're secretly learning French word roots, and it builds confidence in the process of language learning.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    Learning Esperanto first may lead to faster proficiency in French, but it may not be good proficiency. This is because learning the words first through Esperanto would ingrain some bad habits in the learner that will be hard to eradicate after he or she moves on to French. What I have in mind is the fact that French distinguishes between the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/, and between /ɛ/ and /e/. When learning new words, foreigners must get this distinction down right, it is key to having a decent accent in French, and in some cases avoiding misunderstandings. Yet when French roots were used in Esperanto, those vowels were leveled as just /o/ and /e/, respectively. That means that the learner does not learn the right French vowels from the start, and is likely to continue using in French the /o/ learned from Esperanto when the vowel is actually /ɔ/ etc. In modern language teaching, it is considered vital to avoid pronunciation mistakes from the very start, because otherwise they become too firmly rooted to get rid of later.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
500 or 2000 hours for an extremely useful outcome vs. 50 for completely useless. I'll take the former, please. If you're a polyglot who wants to learn two dozen languages, then go for it, but don't prioritize Esperanto over Klingon or Elvish.
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  Esperanto has a Wikipedia of a quarter million articles, the Klingon Wikipedia was locked because there weren't enough speakers (last estimate from the 1996: 12 speakers) and the language is fixed and too limited to make for reasonable articles. "Don't prioritize Esperanto over Klingon" is trolling.

larnmar 7y ago

If you’re considering learning Esperanto I’d suggest spending some time teaching English instead.

oarabbus_ 7y ago
Klingon, Elvish, and Pig Latin are also better choices than Esperanto for most people.

jodrellblank 7y ago

If you're considering going to work in China, and wondering if you should learn Spanish instead of Mandarin, what are you doing. If you're trying to get a promotion in a Spanish-speaking company and considering learning Mandarin instead of Spanish, what are you doing. If you're considering learning Chinese or Spanish for utility, it seems extremely unlikely that they would lead you to exactly the same opportunies; if you can't tell which would lead to better opportunities AND you can't tell which you have more interest in, that suggests you don't have much utility for either, much interest in either, and should do something else more immediately beneficial instead. e.g. skills training for a specific promotion at your place of work, or sought after skills in your local job market. If you're considering learning anything for fun or interest, then learn the thing which you find fun or interesting, not the thing which internet people tell you that you "should" based on something so completely irrelevant as how popular it is. Keeping up with the Jones's is a mistake, not a desirable way to live.