Due to time limitations, recently I gave up reading and writing Interlingua in order to concentrate on reading and writing Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) and to continue my long-term commitment to learning to read French.
I had finally discovered that I could read French much more easily than I could read Interlingua, assuming in each case that I had a good dictionary and grammar available to which to refer. I would not have predicted that a natural language would prove to be easier to read than an auxlang, once an intermediate level of proficiency had been acquired in both, so this was quite a surprising finding. I suppose the best way to interpret this is that perhaps the study of Interlingua acted to accelerate my progress in French; once it had done so, it no longer seemed necessary to continue with Interlingua.
All this followed my earlier conclusion that, contrary to the sales pitch, it probably takes about five years to master any auxlang. So I was finally in a frame of mind in which I was willing to study for years, not mere months, to learn auxlangs. In this state of mind, then, having given up Interlingua, but still being interested in the passive use of an auxlang for reading only, it seemed reasonable to take another look at Esperanto. Regular readers of this blog will know Esperanto is a language which I have been bitterly disappointed by and which in general I have strongly disliked; however, that was mostly when I expected results in mere months instead of years.
As a writer, I am enthusiastically doing a literary translation in LdP and intend to keep doing so. As a reader, however, there is not yet any opportunity to read news and current affairs and opinions from all around the world in that language. Interlingua to some extent offered me that benefit but my Romance language of choice for such reading is now French rather than Interlingua. So I decided to try some reading in Esperanto, with a good dictionary and grammar to refer to, but without any further study. Having had bad experiences with Esperanto in the past, I did not want to waste any more of my time formally studying it. Either I could read it or not.
To my great surprise, something really weird happened in the past few days.
I returned to Claude Piron's introductory novella, Gerda Malaperis!, which had previously been almost totally impenetrable to me despite extensive Esperanto study and repeated attempts. With great difficulty many months ago I had managed to get a few pages into the novella after studying several Esperanto textbooks over several months and basically getting nowhere. Giving up in disgust, I turned to other auxlangs and even gave up on all auxlangs for a time. Over the last few months I have studied mainly Interlingua and to a lesser extent LdP; I have done no Esperanto study.
Now, just as Interlingua seems to have helped me to learn French, it seems Interlingua and LdP and French must have helped me to learn Esperanto, because without having done any Esperanto study for several months, suddenly out of nowhere I find that I can now easily read Piron's novella! In a few days I have read the first 26 pages of Gerda Malaperis! without having any English translation available yet having no difficultly.
Now that is very, very weird and totally unexpected.
I now see that Esperanto, although quite difficult for speakers of European languages and very difficult for everybody else, actually works surprisingly well for literary use and is easier than most natural languages. There is something about it which really suits the way the human brain works, something about it which makes it uncannily easy to read once the penny drops and you 'get it'; that is, at first the Esperanto system is like a gigantic wall which seems terribly unnatural and impossible to climb over but there comes a time when you find yourself having climbed the wall and suddenly the view from up there is very fine and there is little or no trouble understanding texts of moderate complexity. Suddenly it seems very natural; not 'naturalistic' but natural in the sense of suiting the thinking patterns of the human brain (however, it differs from many natural languages so greatly that at first it can be very difficult to learn indeed). My former intense dislike of the language has now turned into a moderate degree of liking the language; it no longer seems ugly to me but seems practical and clever in design. To be sure, it is somewhat utilitarian in appearance but nevertheless not without its charms. It just... 'makes sense' to me now. I now can... 'feel it'. That is, when reading sentences rapidly aloud, they just 'make sense' and seem to convey meaning in a natural, 'human' manner. It is unnatural in appearance but natural in its ability to be comprehended. It... 'works'.
Now, don't get me wrong. I would still be a bit worried about using Esperanto to write the operating instructions for a nuclear reactor! I think there is rather a lot of potential for misunderstanding in Esperanto since speakers can invent an unlimited number of words by combining affixes, however I now understand that this is analogous to people inventing an unlimited number of phrases by combining words and does not necessarily lead to misunderstanding among experienced users, although undoubtedly it does introduce the difficulty of not being able to find words in the dictionary. Presumably, in the fullness of time, it might be possible in the far future for the operating instructions of a nuclear reactor to be written in Esperanto without causing misunderstanding, as the language and its resources continue to mature. But for now that is beside the point.
Anyway, while I find LdP more beautiful than Esperanto, and more interesting than Esperanto, and more educational than Esperanto, and incomparably easier to write than Esperanto, I am nevertheless amazed to report that I now find Esperanto easier to read than any other auxlang. This is totally amazing to me because I have not studied Esperanto at all in the last several months.
So I find, to my surprise, for me personally at this particular point in time the following rankings to be true:
Ease of Reading
From easiest to hardest:
English [my native language]
Esperanto
Lingwa de Planeta
French
Interlingua
Interlingua is hugely easier than French to pronounce when reading aloud, but when reading silently French is now easier for me to understand. Esperanto requires less frequent dictionary use than LdP; the etymology of words in LdP is far more interesting but requires frequent dictionary use, slowing down the experience of reading compared to Esperanto. This frequent dictionary use makes LdP slower than French for me to read, but nevertheless French is definitely more difficult to read than LdP; that is, sometimes difficulty and speed do not correlate.
Aesthetic Beauty
From most beautiful to least beautiful:
French
English
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto
Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and these are just my personal preferences in terms of aesthetic beauty for reading and writing literature. Esperanto still has its own beauty but feels more utilitarian than the other languages, all of which more often favour beauty over ease of use.
I would say all five languages are beautiful but in different ways.
I am simply amazed to now find Esperanto so easy to read.
Ease of Writing
From easiest to hardest:
English [my native language]
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto
French
I can hardly write any Esperanto at all, at this stage.
Lingwa de Planeta hovers near the middle in all three lists: it is a nice compromise for reading, writing, and aesthetic beauty, and it is in my opinion far easier than Esperanto for those who speak no European language. It is currently by far my favourite auxlang for writing literature.
To write esperanto is very simple. you have 28 letters and 28 sounds. You spell like you pronounce.
ReplyDeleteMost computers(my Mac) know how to make cirkumflex- letters, or you spell with x
cx, gx, hx, jx, sx and ux
So it wasn't perhaps for no reason that the language survived for over a hundred years and is still growing. Let me tell you a secret. I stopped actively studying Esperanto immediately after completing The Esperanto Teacher and reading a few short stories and articles in the language. That was in early 2009. Since then I've only used the language in Esperanto chat rooms and that's the all there is to it. So it was surprising for me too when I tried to translate this song into Interlingua. I wasn't just doing it fast enough. Perhaps the propaganda that Interlingua is significantly difficult than Esperanto is having its affect. So I translated it into Esperanto with only a couple of grammar mistakes which were later corrected by a very kind fellow Esperanto speaker on Lernu!
ReplyDelete@Tohno Takaki: Yes, apparently it indeed wasn't for no reason that Esperanto has survived for over a hundred years and is still widely used and is now by far the most popular of all constructed international auxiliary languages. Indeed, apparently it is due to the good features contained in the design of Esperanto.
ReplyDeleteSince until recently I thought most of those good features were bad features, and until now I found Esperanto almost impossible to use despite extensive study, I am really surprised by this revelation.
For example, I now see that (generally speaking) the accusative ending -n is a good, helpful thing which clarifies the meaning of many sentences. So too, the agreement of adjectives with number (single/plural). That is, in the context of Esperanto.
So, the mystery then remains: since Esperanto really does work after all, and really is quite usable, why has it not met with even greater success?
My guess is because it has been incorrectly marketed. The reason I gave up in disgust was that I could not get quick results, but the language had been falsely marketed to me as a language with which I would get quick results. So I, presumably like many students, gave up in disgust. Esperanto just seems so utterly impenetrable and impossible at first, beyond the most simplistic of sentences, and that feeling of impossibility can last many months.
I now refuse to listen to anybody who tries to tell me that I can learn Auxlang X or Auxlang Y in weeks or months. I now believe that mastering any auxlang takes about five years; by that yardstick, Esperanto looks at this stage like it will work fine for me. Had Esperanto been originally marketed to me as a five-year language, I might never have given it up in the first place. Incidentally, I similarly expect that in five years I could fluently master LdP.
They are two very good languages.
When I was taught English in school (from 5th class) I found out that English was easy in the start and became more difficult year after year.
ReplyDeleteWhile German (from 9th class) was very hard in the beginning but became more easy year after year.
Esperanto was easy from the beginning and showed a logic system to understand the two other languages. I can't understand why teachers don't use Esperanto as a first language to give a help to learn other languages.
I have met young pupils who say: Grammar is not very funny and I understand not why we have to pass this.
But when I teach esperanto to them: Well Grammar is really fun and now I finally understand what it is all about.
You need esperanto as a tool to learn other languages.
Robert, congratulations!!
ReplyDeleteI see that you posted this on Dec 16, 2011. One day AFTER Zamenhof Day! (Dec 15).
May be you needed to go through that day one more time to get some insight into Esperanto! LOL! :-)
But it's really amazing (and amusing) that this happened to you!
Keep it on!
Pauxleto Brener
http://bit.ly/taCbf9
Skribi Esperanton estas facilege. Nur lasu, ke viaj pensoj fluu al la manfingroj.
ReplyDelete[Ha, mia eraro estis tiom stulta. Mi restu for de komputiloj ĝis mia manio de kafeino tute malaperos.]
So you are basically saying that studying Interlingua allowed you to learn French and Esperanto much easier. That's to be expected.
ReplyDeleteNice. I thought so. The intaux goals generally flawed, a "democratic language comprehensible for everyone" and such, a successful intauxlan should have a superior word formation capability and simplistic base vocabulary I thought. That is not Esperanto, but Esperanto is more systematical and elaborate in this respect, while foremost Interlingua is a pathetic catastroph in this respect.
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone, for the kind and helpful words.
ReplyDelete@Raven: Yes, I guess that's kind of what I am saying. Learning Interlingua apparently assisted me somehow to learn French and Esperanto. (Actually it was not just Interlingua alone but the act of studying a few different auxlangs which seemed to produce the benefit.) I guess you are correct in that this is to be expected, however at least a couple of things took me by surprise: (1) that pretty much as soon as this benefit had been realised, French became easier for me to read than Interlingua itself and hence I gave up on Interlingua; (2) that I could suddenly begin reading an introductory Esperanto novella with ease (with the help of a good dictionary) despite not having studied Esperanto for months.
Actually I think the unexpected Esperanto benefit came mainly from two things: (a) Esperanto uses a lot of Latin word roots which, believe it or not, studying Interlingua for so long helped me to recognise; (b) my mind had adjusted to a much more precise use of grammatical constructs from learning the grammar of several auxlangs, so the fastidious grammatical system in Esperanto made more sense to me at last; (c) just as an athlete trains to improve physical performance, the study of languages seems to improve one's mental performance, and accordingly the system of affixes began to make sense to me whereas before it has just confused me.
@Rursus: Yes, now that I am able to make sense of the affixes used in Esperanto, which previously I had found hopelessly confusing for some unknown reason, I certainly find Esperanto has a huge advantage over Interlingua in that its vocabulary is much easier to use and remember. So too are its idioms, although learning them also takes a long time. The systematic and elaborate system of Esperanto does indeed work better for auxlang use with limited study time (although may seem impenetrable at first, as it did to me). However, to be fair to Interlingua we must also acknowledge that Interlingua was never meant to be a competitor to Esperanto, rather it was a registration of the common features of several natural languages (including common features which are very difficult). Anyway, it is nice to have been pleasantly surprised by Esperanto.
I still like Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) very much, however, and see its design paradigm as truly worthy of being considered to be of roughly equal merit to the very different approach taken by Esperanto. I personally see LdP as better suited for global use and Esperanto as better suited for use by those who already speak a European language. However, I acknowledge that those who do not speak a European language can and do learn Esperanto effectively. Incidentally, I believe that if a new global auxlang were to arise from inventors in Asia, it would probably resemble LdP to some extent. Although, perhaps Esperanto may have an advantage over LdP in that Esperanto grammar is more complicated and more demanding. See below...
@Inga Johanson: I agree. Your point about some languages being easy to learn at first but later becoming more and more difficult, and vice versa, is I think a very good point. I think the explanation is that languages with relatively little grammar (so to speak) such as English or Indonesian might seem wonderfully easy at first but actually require the memorisation of thousands of complex idiomatic expressions and phrases to be used fluently, things which the simple grammars cannot provide guidance on. Whereas languages with more difficult grammars, like German, provide a framework that once learned provides somewhat more guidance and requires somewhat less memorisation of whole phrases. Amongst auxlangs, I think Esperanto fits into the latter category: its grammar is way harder than, say, the simplistic grammar of Lingua Franca Nova (LFN), but in the long term I think this helps rather than hinders its use. (LdP sits roughly halfway between LFN and Esperanto in terms of the difficulty of its grammar.) I agree that teaching Esperanto in schools could be beneficial, but only if unrealistic expectations are not set; in my opinion it should be portrayed as a language that takes about five years to learn.
ReplyDelete