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Esperanto is finding new life online

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Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#11

Post by panglott »

athenot wrote: post #7

All languages have a culture associated to them. It's hard to dissociate the culture from the language. Even English, which is used in different cultures, has local optimizations when it is used daily. Latin is bound to an ancient culture (and a religious one). Even Klingon and Quenya are bound to the universes and cultures created by their authors & fan bases. But I don't see any culture associated with Esperanto. I…

There is a very distinctive culture to Esperanto: people who continue to hope for positive social transformation and international and intercultural harmony.

Esperantist and conlanger William Annis (on the Conlangery podcast) said something to the effect that, if you go to a Esperanto congress, you should start with the default assumption that everyone you meet is a gay vegetarian. [1]

I cannot speak to the truth of this myself ;)

[1] http://conlangery.com/2011/12/05/94/

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#12

Post by ketralnis »

panglott wrote: post #2

It's been a long time since I was in high school, but I've long thought that the American educational system should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto. If all you're going to do is make high schoolers take a year of foreign language in a classroom, they'd get a lot more from a year of Latin or Esperanto. Edit: The Klingon Duolingo course should be pret…

> should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto

Why teach Latin, Greek, or Esperanto badly? How does that help?

And if you can solve the "badly" problem, why not teach something that can be used day-to-day?

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#13

Post by neverartful »

panglott wrote: post #11
athenot wrote: post #7

All languages have a culture associated to them. It's hard to dissociate the culture from the language. Even English, which is used in different cultures, has local optimizations when it is used daily. Latin is bound to an ancient culture (and a religious one). Even Klingon and Quenya are bound to the universes and cultures created by their authors & fan bases. But I don't see any culture associated with Esperanto. I…

There is a very distinctive culture to Esperanto: people who continue to hope for positive social transformation and international and intercultural harmony. Esperantist and conlanger William Annis (on the Conlangery podcast) said something to the effect that, if you go to a Esperanto congress, you should start with the default assumption that everyone you meet is a gay vegetarian. [1] I cannot speak to the truth of…

That sounds more like a philosophy than a culture.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#14

Post by jkot »

panglott wrote: post #2

It's been a long time since I was in high school, but I've long thought that the American educational system should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto. If all you're going to do is make high schoolers take a year of foreign language in a classroom, they'd get a lot more from a year of Latin or Esperanto. Edit: The Klingon Duolingo course should be pret…

Why? I have basic french and german and it was usefull many times.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#15

Post by panglott »

psychometry wrote: post #10
panglott wrote: post #2

It's been a long time since I was in high school, but I've long thought that the American educational system should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto. If all you're going to do is make high schoolers take a year of foreign language in a classroom, they'd get a lot more from a year of Latin or Esperanto. Edit: The Klingon Duolingo course should be pret…

The point is that many students continue learning that language past that one year. It's much better to give students practical skills in a living language.

What percentage of American high-school students who take their mandatory year of foreign language continue on to speak that language proficiently and competently? What "practical skills"?

The supposed economic value from learning modern national languages is wildly overstated, for English monolinguals. It's better to learn languages because learning languages is valuable for its own sake, and pick the language you learn simply because you like it.

There is a huge disconnect between our implicit goals for language learning in this country and the effort we expend upon it.

I strongly believe in the value of language education, but given the amount of time and money we're willing to spend on it, we'd get as much or more benefit from making them study Latin.

With Latin, all the people who want to learn a Romance language would get a leg up on it, and all the people who want to study biology would get a leg up on that, and people who are fine with just speaking English will get more insight into their own language.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#16

Post by panglott »

ketralnis wrote: post #12
panglott wrote: post #2

It's been a long time since I was in high school, but I've long thought that the American educational system should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto. If all you're going to do is make high schoolers take a year of foreign language in a classroom, they'd get a lot more from a year of Latin or Esperanto. Edit: The Klingon Duolingo course should be pret…

> should give up on teaching modern foreign languages badly and just mostly teach Latin, Greek, and Esperanto Why teach Latin, Greek, or Esperanto badly? How does that help? And if you can solve the "badly" problem, why not teach something that can be used day-to-day?

That most Americans do not have occasion to speak a language other than English day to day is exactly the reason most of them will not learn another language.

The "badly" problem is actually a really huge one.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#17

Post by notahacker »

panglott wrote: post #5
weinzierl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You live a new life for every new language you speak. If you know only one language, you live only once." -- Czech proverb Dead languages like Latin and Old Greek don't add lives. You don't even speak them. More seriously: I'm all for offering Latin, Greek, and even Esperanto but why would you give up teaching modern foreign languages? Why do you think they'd get a lot more from a year of Latin or Esperanto?

The key premise is that one year of mandatory classroom teaching isn't actually going to get someone speaking proficiently, unless perhaps it's something like Esperanto. They won't be speaking Latin either, but at least some written knowledge of Latin will be useful. The basic paradigm of classroom language education started when Latin was commonly taught... and since it focused on teaching passive, literary use of t…

Sure, but the point is that a superficial literary understanding of Spanish is a stepping stone towards plonking yourself in a Spanish-speaking country and realising just how much Spanish you don't know, not to mention a substantial step towards being able to read a vast and growing quantity of Spanish-only written material.

A superficial literary understanding of Latin gives you middle class bragging rights and a substantial step towards being able to parse the original text of a literature which has been exhaustively translated into English, complete with notes on shades of meaning. (And an even more limited grasp of some of the fundamentals of Spanish, I suppose) And since the source material is all ancient texts, you can't even pep the teaching up with some relevant and modern material or motivate the students by the prospect they can use it to backpack in Peru or do language exchange in Madrid.

I'm not persuaded that the inadequacy of languages teaching is an argument for the same time to be devoted to devoted to something which is even further removed from being useful and the teacher is even less likely to be adequately equipped to teach.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#18

Post by martinrue »

For anyone interested in learning a little more about Esperanto, Duolingo just put their Esperanto course into public beta and there's a good amount of learning content already: https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto-Online.

There's also http://lernu.net, probably the most well-known source of Esperanto news, lessons and other stuff.

Amuziĝu!

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#19

Post by psychometry »

panglott wrote: post #15
psychometry wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that many students continue learning that language past that one year. It's much better to give students practical skills in a living language.

What percentage of American high-school students who take their mandatory year of foreign language continue on to speak that language proficiently and competently? What "practical skills"? The supposed economic value from learning modern national languages is wildly overstated, for English monolinguals. It's better to learn languages because learning languages is valuable for its own sake, and pick the language you l…

Every year spent learning Latin in advance of a living language pushes the learning of that living language further out of the critical period of language acquisition.

What's wildly overstated is the benefit learning Latin has on anything other than taking the SAT. Studying French is much more beneficial to speaking French than studying Latin and I shouldn't have to explain why that is the case.

Re: Esperanto is finding new life online

#20

Post by mason240 »

psychometry wrote: post #19
panglott wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of American high-school students who take their mandatory year of foreign language continue on to speak that language proficiently and competently? What "practical skills"? The supposed economic value from learning modern national languages is wildly overstated, for English monolinguals. It's better to learn languages because learning languages is valuable for its own sake, and pick the language you l…

Every year spent learning Latin in advance of a living language pushes the learning of that living language further out of the critical period of language acquisition. What's wildly overstated is the benefit learning Latin has on anything other than taking the SAT. Studying French is much more beneficial to speaking French than studying Latin and I shouldn't have to explain why that is the case.

>Every year spent learning Latin in advance of a living language pushes the learning of that living language further out of the critical period of language acquisition.

Let's be honest here - nothing of value is lost.

The opportunity costs of even one year of any non-English language for American HS students makes it simply not worth it.

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