Esperanto or Interlingua ?

[starionwolf]

Does anyone know Esperanto or Interlingua? I'm reading about these two languages. Both of them are interesting. I might learn them when I have more time.

Feel free to share your opinons about Esperanto or Interlingua.

Just wondering.

Edit: I just found a few communities about Esperanto. I'll join these groups now and ask questions there

Comments

[pendragoness]

I can't speak/write Interlingua, but I'm a native English speaker who has studied French, and I can read the language without much difficulty at all, whereas I had a lot of difficulty looking at Esperanto (especially because there appears to be a lot of funky spelling rules and gramatical contructions), due to differences in how vocabulary is contructed in the two languages.

Re: Interlingua

[starionwolf]

I envy you because you understand French. I can't. lol

Thanks for the reply. I agree that the words in Esperanto look strange. maybe I should learn Interlingua first, or at least learn about it. I read that Interlingua is based on the romance languages.

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

Re: Interlingua

[allegrox]

Interlingua is, more or less, uninflected vulgar Latin. I spent a few minutes reading about Interlingua and was able to unterstand some simple sentences without any background in any language but English. I read something about Swedish children who learned it and then were able to read newspapers in Spanish and French without knowing them. I never really got into it, though.
It's fairly easy, but Esperanto is much simpler. Some of the vocabulary is weird, but I was conversational within hours. My vocabulary isn't very good yet, but it doesn't take long to learn more. People complain that the words aren't very intuitive, but if you speak a European language, you likely won't have a very hard time finding word associations to help you remember.

Re: Interlingua

[allegrox]

To be fair, I should also point out that Esperanto has some weird quirks. As pointed out below, there's an accusative case, which it could probably do without (I've read of some people dropping it), and the really weird table of correlatives. It's phonology is also not very universal, but pretty easy if you can handle Polish. Of course, a good number of people in the world probably can't very easily.

[eee_eph]

In my opinion, an artificially created language is unnecessary and unnatural. There are other languages which can be used as a lingua franca if needs be. In many circles it's English, but Arabic and Mandarin Chinese are also used by large groups of people.

[miwasatoshi]

But then, that also implies a good deal of political prestige upon nations who primarily speak those languages ... yes, in reality that is often quite true, but that doesn't mean people aren't going to look for neutral alternatives.

[lakehmm]

I don't really spend my time on them, but I wouldn't be that harsh. There is some logic to it. I mean, if you're going to have a lingua franca you might as well make it easy. There's no use in using languages with useless complications like grammatical gender or non-phonetic spelling.

[sollersuk]

The problem with that is the cultural imperialism and downright snobbery of the native speakers. There are points in favour of languages that don't bring any cultural baggage with them.

[bugtilaheh]

I'm a native English speaker, and I've been learning Spanish for about 6-7 years now. I'm conversational in Esperanto and can certainly read a lot of it and like it 'cause I'm nerdy like that. I love foreign languages and I also like constructed languages (conlangs).

I was able to learn Esperanto in about two hours from www.lernu.net. It was really easy to learn because I already have a background in a foreign language. The only thing I need to work on is vocabulary. Some of the words are totally out there/not romance language-influenced /not from Latin, but it's still fun learning new words.

I'm taking Elementary French this summer even though I don't have to and it's unrelated to my major (Spanish - I don't have to take another foreign language - all my classes are in Spanish as is!), and I'm so excited about it it's almost not normal. XD

Re: Esperanto

[starionwolf]

Hi! Thanks for the reply. I like foreign languages too. I'll try to learn Esperanto and Interlingua when I have some time.

Good luck in your Spanish class. I took one Spanish course in college.

[muckefuck]

Personally, I think that's exactly what's wrong with it. The only way to "learn" a language that quickly is if you mostly know it already because it has a grammar very similar to those languages you already speak. So much for neutrality.

[tisoi]

I studied Esperanto in high school and dabbled a bit in Interlingua (no serious studies, though), but I lost interest in both of them and auxlangs in general because I feel natural languages are the way to go. Also compound the fact that at the time, there wasn't a wide range of Esperanto media as there is now (like Esperanto TV)

Anyway, Esperantists bill the language as being easy to learn, but I remember having some difficulty with some of the concepts it presented (I was inexperienced with languages and linguistics at the time, so keep i mind) such as the finer points of using the accusative and the table of correlatives, but I easily understood Interlingua without having learned it.

Ten years later, I have to make some effort in trying to read Esperanto texts but Interlingua comes out easier. To be fair, I can make grammatical sentences in Esperanto because of my 3 years of studies but I haven't learned to do such in Interlingua - I don't think it will be hard if I have the desire to do so.

[exentric]

I learned to read and write Interlingua in four hours - two hours each day over the weekend. There are a lot of grammar site.

Of course, I already knew like three Romance languages before then. *blush* So, it was kind of unfair.

I can read basic sentences of Esperanto having been told some rules on MSN.

My overall verdict? - Natural languages are still so much more interesting, *blush*.