Esperanto

[apollotiger]

So, I’ve heard a lot about Esperanto, and I know that at least a few of the members of this community speak it. So, what’s the deal? Is it really as easy to learn as they say? Is it possible to learn Esperanto without ever hearing Esperanto and have a good pronunciation?

Comments

[progenies]

I'd say yeah, if your native language is Indo-European, its very easy to learn, the easiest I've encountered.

Pronunciation isn't too different, and a native English speaker shouldn't have too much of a problem with it.

[ini]

.. though it was remarked by a couple at the Esperanto meeting in Vienna that English people have a terrible pronunciation ;) (Can't vouch for that, never heard a native English speaker talking Esperanto. I guess they meant that this English person they were talking about pronounced the 'e's as in English, if that makes any sense.)

For the original poster: I had no problems learning Esperanto and started to speak coherent sentences very quickly - though, as in any language, my passive knowledge is much bigger.

[dnlr]

Unless that indo-European language happens to be, for example, Punjabi or Hindi ;).

[dulcinbradbury]

I second that. I got a good giggle out of it. :)

[mexonxpedestal]

I third it. :P

[bekkle]

it's relatively easy, especially if you've learned another language before.

www.lernu.org is pretty good for learning it online.

but if you don't honestly want to learn it, know it, or use it, you'll probably give up after a month.. like i did a year ago.

but i think i'm going to take it up again. :)

[pegadasnalua]

It's easy if your native tongue is indo-european because it has lots of indo-european words. Grammar is relatively easy, words are easy. lernu is a good site to learn.

I've just picked it up again =D

[pne]

There are very few native speakers of Esperanto, so I'm not sure how standardised the pronunciation is anyway :)

If you're a native speaker of English, you may have difficult producing "pure" vowels, though; I think those are considered fairly standard for Esperanto (think Italian vowels, for an example).

[pegadasnalua]

I thought conlangs didn't have native speakers?

[pne]

Why not?

Native speaker means that it's someone's first language, and there are children who grow up with Esperanto as their first language. (For example, if their parents come from different countries and have Esperanto as their only common language, so they speak it amongst themselves and the child learns it from them naturally.)

Or do you doubt that, say, Hebrew has native speakers? That was a "conlang" at one point, in the sense of being a language with no native speakers, which was "artificially" made children's first langauge.