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From: urban@spp2.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Esperanto->English translator and grammar posted to net.sources
Message-ID: <298@spp2.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Dec-84 11:41:30 EST
Article-I.D.: spp2.298
Posted: Wed Dec  5 11:41:30 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 04:45:14 EST
References: <1379@druxv.UUCP>
Reply-To: urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban)
Organization: TRW, Redondo Beach  CA
Lines: 56
Summary: 


How easy is Esperanto to learn?

(1) Well, Esperanto is the only "natural language"* that people
regularly are able to learn, to a degree of fluency, with only
a book as a teacher and model.  The attendees at the first
international Esperanto congress are said to have been
themselves pleasantly surprised at how well they were able
to speak the language "for real" for the first time.

(2) Because of the European admixture of root-words that contribute
to the basic Esperanto vocabulary, and because of English's own
peculiar history, English speakers have a particularly easy
time learning to read Esperanto (of course, recognition is always
easier than recall).  In fact, an English speaker with a
normal high-school exposure to any Latin-derived language will
probably be able to make good guesses at the content of most
Esperanto publications before beginning to learn the language.

(3) Because it has a regularized grammar and morphology (although
the phonological properties like nasal assimilation and secondary
accent seem to be left somewhat undefined), Esperanto can be
more "fun" to learn than "real" languages.  Since you tend to get
a more immediate psychological payoff from Esperanto, you tend
to be less likely to abandon the learning task before you're
fairly good at it.

(4) There are native speakers (denaskaj parolantoj).  The
language is evidently so well-crafted  that a child whose
parents speak Esperanto (perhaps as their only common language)
will analyze and model the language internally in such a way as
to produce the same language as the parents, even producing
unexpected, novel, but grammatically correct and comprehensible
utterances**.  I consider this to be, somehow, a remarkable
achievement of linguistic engineering, even if it WAS
accomplished by copying "standard average European" grammar.

I don't necessarily claim that Esperanto is in any sense "useful"
for most people.  It IS an excellent linguistic hobby item,
and many tourists and "korespondemuloj" (uh, people who like
to write letters) find it quite rewarding.

	Mike

................................................................
*by "natural" I am playing Humpty-Dumpty and refer to the fact
 that its domain of discourse is the real world.  Is there
 a more accurate and equally concise term?  Maybe I should
 just say "human" language to distinguish it from AI languages
 or mathematical notations?

**I once read an anecdote about such a speaker who surprised
  her parents by asserting that her father worked "maldiman^ce",
  lit. "un-sundaily" (i.e. every day but Sunday).  Quite
  correct, but her parents had certainly never heard this
  novel compound before.