Thank you for your contribution. Especially about the numbers of native Esperanto speakers. That’s a larger number than I imagined and is good to know.

I have been an Esperantist “officially” since 1980. I have continued to support and promulgate the language for all these years primarily because I feel that this is the best contribution I can make to the promotion of peace and good will in the world.

I have found that learning Esperanto has given me a vast insight into my own language of English. Despite all the English classes during high school, I never really grasped “grammar” very well. It was to tangled and confusing. UNTIL I started learning Esperanto. Now I finally comprehend such terms as “subject” and “object” nouns, and realize it was never complicated (except in the context of English).

I would also point out that Esperanto is not, and was never intended to be, a “universal” language; rather, it is an auxilliary language. If everyone could learn this one simple language as a second tongue, then everyone could communicate with each other (on an equal basis) thruought the world. This is simply impossible with any national/ethnic language. Someone always has the upper hand. Learning a national/ethnic language takes 2-4 years and usually, the moment you speak, everyone knows its not your native tongue. But if must both speak a language that is not your first language, you are placed on equal footing.

I saw mention of “real languages.” Esperanto IS areal language. It is not an artificial language (since it has a true etymology). It is a young language, and it is a structured and devised language, but it is quite real. In fact, there are today an estimated 200 people for whom Esperanto is their FIRST language (being born of parents who only speak Esperanto mutually). Most of these people are actually tri-lingual.

I want to say more, but I suspect the amount of text I can enter is limited and that will have exceeded it.

It was certainly an interesting discussion.

To summarise my point of view: Esperanto as an end-goal is probably not for everyone, just like any other skill or hobby. However, Esperanto as a step towards learning another language is very useful as the research showed.

Whether or not people believe either of these statements, is a personal thing and not something I am going to cry over. I talk about it in the same way I talk about my Scottish Country Dancing; if the topic does not appeal, I move on to other things.

And I think this concludes the discussion for this particular article. I hope some of the articles I wrote/will write on Esperanto, dancing or computational linguistics will be just as interesting. Thank you to all participants and I hope to meet with you again later.

I followed your link to the earlier blog post and failed to see where you had previously acknowledged that it was ‘not for everyone’. But even if you did, I never claimed that you had changed your mind as a result of my arguments; I simply meant that at least we now seemed to be in agreement on that point. Earlier (in the above post) it seemed that you were saying that Esperanto was for everyone who wanted to learn a foreign language. Maybe I misinterpreted you there, maybe I didn’t, but I certainly disagree with that view.

I had a look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I guess it depends on how you interpret it. I believe that everyone who is capable (profound disabilities would obviously hamper acquisition of these skills) should learn how to cook and learn a sport/exercise. I don’t believe that these skills fit into the Hierarchy of Needs, any more than dancing does (which is but one method among many to enhance social belonging). But I do believe cookery and sport are essential for health and well being and make one a more complete and happy human being.

Dancing: something people enjoy, something that keeps them fit, something that helps in certain social situations.
Esperanto: something people enjoy, something that keeps them mentally fit, something that helps them in certain social situations.

I fail to see a difference! It may not do it for you, but when speaking for the ‘common man’ as you did, I do not see how you can justify dancing/knitting to be a good skill while still rejecting Esperanto as one.

On the universality of the language, is hard to say that I acknowledged your not-for-everyone arguments, when I had written a whole blog article about it 9 months before you posed the question (see the Raumists link for details).

And to generalise, can you actually name something outside of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs that is for everyone?

I will write about why I learned Esperanto in a new blog article, as it is not a quick response. But for now I will just say that it is not because I have learnt it.

So (playing devil’s advocate again), what’s the *real* reason you think learning Esperanto is a good idea? Is it because you’ve learnt it?

Learning Esperanto is more on par with learning how to make paper. It might be fun and interesting in its own right but I don’t think it’s useful.

In any case you have acknowledged my argument when you said above that Esperanto is not very everybody.

On learning as children:
Children learn from patterns they hear and read. They spend early years of their life to acquire common patterns and extrapolate the language knowledge from them. If they were not exposed to the patterns, they would lose the ability to acquire them easily (e.g. Japanese R/L distinction and african click languages).

However, just pattern acquisition will not get you all the rules of language. That’s why (IMHO) only commonly used verbs (have/get/go/eat, etc) survive with irregular forms. Other, less common verbs, get extrapolated from common patterns. Historical linguistics has examples of that for verbs no longer popular (e.g. hang).

Therefore, even children have to study grammar and special case usage to have full fluency of the language.

Adults have at least two problems: they do not have as much time and energy as children do to spend on learning and they already have built in patterns (of the 1st language) they have to explicitly rewrite and generalise to be able to learn several languages. As an example, many people learning 2nd language start by translating to and from 1st language constructs, something children do not do.

There were actually studies showing the the brain works differently for monolingual and bilingual speakers.

So adults have to develop special rules for all of the 2nd language, not just the corner bits. Grammar and other meta-language is just a way to present information in explicit adult-style patterns with - if done correctly - reduction in the learning time.

There are obviously exceptions to any rule. An adult moving to a new country can probably spend years to acquire language knowledge by absorption (still slower than children though). In other cases, some people just can’t handle grammar-patterns, so they have to do it the other way.

Of course, with any language, if you get bored then you’ll give up. My point was that people were more likely to stay motivated if it was a “real language” with tangible benefits. Okay, Esperanto offers some benefits but it’s not on par with learning a major world language.

I do wonder (slightly playing devil’s advocate here) if the meta language learning skills are not in fact acquired when learning your native tonge rather than your first second language?

After all, it’s believed that wild children who are not taught to speak in their early years will, in fact, never learn to speak. http://www.feralchildren.com/en/language.php.

In this case it’s perhaps a little redundant to argue about which second language is better to acquire meta language learning skills, since - unless you’re a wild person - you’ve already got them.

‘Aha!’, you might say, ‘but learning a foreign language is different - you have to actually study it, learn the rules, consciously acquire it’. But weren’t you the one who said that children have to be rigorously taught the theory of their own language in order to learn it? So it’s not that different after all? (Unless, you now agree with me that children do learn their own language through immersion and the study is secondary).