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Esperanto

Wtf is esperanto?
 
fishonjazz said:
Wtf is esperanto?
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It's an invented language designed to make communication between cultures easier. Some people think it would be a better language for international communication than English. It's quite easy to learn. I got fairly good at it in a short period of time, but since I had no one to practice it with I've now forgotten most of it.
 
I started learning this a few weeks ago with my wife using the duolingo app on my phone. I only spend about 5-10 minutes a day and have picked up a bit already. It is Easy to learn plus I know a bunch of people who speak it so it will be easy to retain. I think this language will continue to grow. Since the duolingo app added Esperanto it has grown pretty rapidly.
 
bigb said:
You have experience to speak of?
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I do.
I've studied Spanish, French, German, and Chinese with limited success in all of them - probably most successful with Spanish.
Esperanto is much, much easier to learn and retain. The grammar rules are completely consistent across the entire language, there are no exceptions.
Blah blah, more praise, more proselytizing, blah blah.
 
Broncster said:
I started learning this a few weeks ago with my wife using the duolingo app on my phone. I only spend about 5-10 minutes a day and have picked up a bit already. It is Easy to learn plus I know a bunch of people who speak it so it will be easy to retain. I think this language will continue to grow. Since the duolingo app added Esperanto it has grown pretty rapidly.
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Yep, THIS.

It's amazing to me that in one year on DuoLingo, it's now in the middle third of languages to learn for English Speakers. Just hit 458K learners. It's going to go up when Esperanto for Spanish Speakers comes out (any time now).

I'm excited for the advanced tree. It looks like it will be out in September.
 
For those interested in the language that use DuoLingo, here is the web page for the course:

https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto-Online

Here is the Wikipedia for the language itself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

One of the most interesting parts of the Wiki article is this, for me:

The Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy at Paderborn (Germany) has compared the length of study time it takes natively French-speaking high-school students to obtain comparable 'standard' levels in Esperanto, English, German, and Italian.[66] The results were:

2000 hours studying German = 1500 hours studying English = 1000 hours studying Italian (or any other Romance language) = 150 hours studying Esperanto.
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Broncster, how many people do you know that speak it?
I've been giving thought to trying to establish a local Esperanto group again - the old one died off, and no one has replaced it.
 
leftyjace said:
Well... your opinion of it suffered because I was the one that brought it up. I mean... why take me seriously? Seriously? :)
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Nah, I just assumed it was a bunch of dorks creating a niche for themselves so they could finally fit in somewhere. Like Trekkies speaking Klingon.
 
leftyjace said:
I do.
I've studied Spanish, French, German, and Chinese with limited success in all of them - probably most successful with Spanish.
Esperanto is much, much easier to learn and retain. The grammar rules are completely consistent across the entire language, there are no exceptions.
Blah blah, more praise, more proselytizing, blah blah.
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Plus there is no gender, no weird spellings, no confusing sentence structures, etc.
 
Joe Bagadonuts said:
Plus there is no gender, no weird spellings, no confusing sentence structures, etc.
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Yep.
One of my favorite things, as trivial as it sounds, is a single definite article, no need for an indefinite article.
I also love that all nouns end in -o and all adjectives end in -a.
Makes it handy to figure out what words you don't know, and also makes it easier to derive what the word means due to the context of the sentence.
 
leftyjace said:
Broncster, how many people do you know that speak it?
I've been giving thought to trying to establish a local Esperanto group again - the old one died off, and no one has replaced it.
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I personally know about 10 people. I have heard there are groups in Utah. I am still too new so I haven't looked into it much. I also have heard there is a website kind of like air bnb for Esperanto speakers. So when you travel, especially foreign, you can stay where people speak Esperanto.
 
Aaaaand, DuoLingo Esperanto is up to 476K learners. At this rate it will hit a million by the 2 year mark.

The Esperanto for Spanish Speakers course is now done. It'll be fun to watch it grow too.
 
Meet an Esperanto acolyte on my mission. He was convinced it would be the world language inside 20 years. 25 years later still waiting.
 
LogGrad98 said:
Meet an Esperanto acolyte on my mission. He was convinced it would be the world language inside 20 years. 25 years later still waiting.
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Not surprised. There were a lot of people waiting decades, to no avail.

I just can't help but feeling that this momentum built by DuoLingo users could be a substantial change that could help the language get established specifically for the purpose it was created for.

Or maybe I'm a bit Utopian in my thinking. I don't know.
 
So I decided to download the duo lingo app and start learning this made up language. Personally, I don't think it will ever get to the point [MENTION=2283]leftyjace[/MENTION] thinks it will. I'm kind of thinking it will be a cool thing for a group of people to brag about (Dude, I speak Esperanto. Do you?)

I might use it to learn Italian and/or German, though.
 
bigb said:
So I decided to download the duo lingo app and start learning this made up language. Personally, I don't think it will ever get to the point @leftyjace thinks it will. I'm kind of thinking it will be a cool thing for a group of people to brag about (Dude, I speak Esperanto. Do you?)

I might use it to learn Italian and/or German, though.
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Stick to Esperanto, it is easier to learn than those other languages. Plus even if it doesnt get big at least some of us here can talk to each other.

I took 4 years of German and I speak more Esperanto in 1 month of Duo Lingo lessons for 5-10 minutes a day.
 
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