Esperanto and French immersion

Esperanto was developed to be a neutral international language, an alternative to the dominance of one language. French immersion is a popular way for English speaking school children to learn French. I have been asked to comment on these and so here goes.

Download Esperanto

Comments

[Valina Eckley]

Steve

You bring up an interesting point about the role of the teacher which should be to teach people HOW to learn. Well, I tell everybody I meet here that I am NOT a teacher, but I am a coach. I teach them all about Lingq, and getting input, and basically a lot of what you say.

Maybe this is just because I am in Japan... but you wouldn't believe the amount of resistance I face. There are SO many people here who refuse to believe that they can learn on their own, and they want the language to be spoon fed to them (like they had in school).

It is one of my pet peeves.

Now I do 'teach' children. I always see that the mothers are really forcing it on them "say it, say it, no Japanese." And there is this growing idea in Japan where if you place your children in front of an English speaker (and are forbidden to use their own language) for an hour a week, they will magically be speaking English. And I have heard many lectures cite this research and that research saying how well it works...

As they say, In theory, practice works. In practice, theory doesn't.

I find that the "english only" approach does nothing but confuse the children. They don't learn anything! The teachers manuals nor lectures don't help much. All they say is "make it easy for the kids, but never speak Japanese in your lesson." That works for simple nouns like animal names and things like that. But for more complicated things, that doesn't work at all.

I have started using Japanese in my kids classes. I find that once the kids understand what I am saying, they get really excited and motivated. My kid's are learning so much better because of it. I have one 7 year old who now is reading stories to his 4 year old brother, and he is really motivated to learn now that he understands.

So, yeah, I agree with you, emersion is a good theory, but not good in practice.

[lyzazel]

A couple of points:
* Esperanto does have a culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_culture
* Esperanto does also have events where you can go to a bar and just speak Esperanto with everybody.
* Esperanto hasn't got a couple of dozen thousand years of evolution. So what? Evolution, especially in languages, is not necessarily improvement.
* You might consider making podcasts (i.e. mp3) instead of just video.

[Steve Kaufmann]

No, lyzazel, there is no one with Esperanto as a native language. Esperanto is an artificial language without a native literature, music, or other cultural trappings of a language.There is no Esperanto land.

If I were motivated to learn Esperanto as an intellectual exercize, or to meet people with similar interests I would seek out such events, but for now I prefer to learn languages of existing cultures and countries. Just my preference.

Please not that the video has a sound track that is podcast and can be downloaded from the post.

[inga johanson]

Esperanto is an artificial language without a native literature, music, or other cultural trappings of a language.
Why do you keep on this?
Esperanto has a history, culture, literature, music, cultural festivals and so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers
If you happen to know noone, that means they do not exist?

[Anonimulo]

Steve Kaufmann, if you have decided that Esperanto is philosophically objectionable to you because it is 'artificial', then you must be congratulated for taking a more concrete stand than the majority of people who lament linguistic elitism but don't bother to investigate alternatives such as Esperanto.

However, you are obviously very uninformed about the language's history and culture, and made several false assertions that did nothing to educate your viewers:

1. You said that in all of your travels, you have "never met someone who speaks Esperanto". This is possible, but not necessarily true. I have never been explicitly introduced to a speaker of Irish Gaelic, but I don't infer from this that there is no larger, extant culture of which I'm simply unaware. The Canadian Esperanto movement is thriving, and there are groups of speakers in every major city. http://www.esperanto.ca/

2. "Esperanto doesn't offer any of that." (cultural artifacts). What, precisely, is Esperanto lacking by way of music, literature, and theater? Esperanto has an enormous corpus of literature- everything from prose (both original and translated) to poetry, to textbooks. William Auld, a Scottish Esperantist author and poet was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature from 1999 until his death in 2006 for his magnum opus- the epic poem 'La Infana Raso'. Anyone can purchase books written in Esperanto through online catalogs hosted by the many national and international associations that support the language. Even lending libraries exist- one of the largest collections of Esperanto literature in North America can be found in Montreal. Through the same channels as one can acquire books, one can also find CDs by hundreds of bands who play partially or exclusively in Esperanto. Admittedly, there are few films in the language, but they exist nevertheless. I believe you also mentioned that you enjoy participating in Russian culture by listening to podcasts in that language- although there are many in Esperanto, of greatest interest to you would perhaps be Radio Verda (www.radioverda.com), which is run by two Esperantists from Vancouver.

3. Although you never brought the issue up, I presume that you believe Esperanto to be entirely regulated by an Academy and to be, effectively, 'dead' or 'unchanging'. While there is an Esperanto Academy, its influence is minimal. The language is constantly evolving and incorporates loanwords as naturally as any other. Moreover, Esperanto has transcended its former role as a purely constructed language, and is now the first language of some 2000 native speakers. This means that more people speak Esperanto natively than most Aboriginal languages.

You seem to equate culture with ethnicity/nationality (that is, having an ethnic group or physical terrain that one can point to as the origin of a language). I cannot agree with that.

You are a fantastic language learner, and I greatly admire your abilities. Thank-you for these excellent video blogs.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I am sure that the Esperantists are very keen on their hobby. I am a little allergic to it, not only for the reasons I have already given, but also because it has some of the flavour of an ideology or cause. I am allergic to causes.

But I do not like fishing, collecting stamps, doing sudoku, playing cards and many other activities that millions of people love. I like learning languages of countries, nations, and cultures that exist, can be found on a map, can be visited, and which have literature, radio shows,TV shows, movies that are easily found without having to join some dedicated movement.

That is not to take away from the privilege of others to feel differently about Esperanto, and to promote it as they see fit.

Two questions.

As I understand it Esperanto is based on European languages. There is little input from Chinese, Hindi, Turkish, Indonesian, Arabic, Japanese, Swahili and other important language families from elsewhere in the world. Is Esperanto not just a European language, rather than a world language.

Latin is at the base of a lot of the vocabulary in Europe and was a lingua franca. Why not use Latin or Interlingua? Since many languages are excluded from what went into Esperanto, why not just stay with the latin base?

[Steve Kaufmann]

By the way, I hope the many Esperanto enthusiasts will be ready to get involved at LingQ when we open up more languages, which should include Esperanto. We will need content with audio and text, and tutors, not to mention learners.

[lyzazel]

Oh, I didn't notice the podcast thing. It would perhaps be good for you to make it more explicit then if you get more comments like mine. If not, oh well, probably just my bad.

Just a short answer (I am pretty sure Anonimulo will elaborate as he has in his original response):

1. Most Esperanto meetings haven't got much to do with the ideology and are just places to have fun. There are, also, some meetings where Esperanto is used but they are not from Esperanto (i.e. a few organizations have adopted it as their running language).
2. You can in theory pretty much feel the same in "Esperanto meetings" as if you were in an "Esperanto land".
3. The European hypothesis, I'd say, is correct.
4. Latin is too difficult in its grammar and word construction.
5. From my personal experience, Esperanto really helps you as a language and it encourages you to take up language learning more than anything. That's just my experience, though.

[Anonimulo]

Iyzazel, I would love to comment further on the structure of Esperanto, but I am not a linguist and am singularly unqualified to compare Esperanto with the gamut of competing constructed languages that have been proposed over the years without achieving comparable success. There are, if I am not mistaken, a great deal of studies that extensively explore the character of Esperanto available online, and the general verdict is that it is lexically Romance/Germanic, with an intensively agglutinative structure. The World Esperanto Association's website explains in its FAQ section that...

"Esperanto is both spoken and written. Its lexicon derives primarily from Western European languages, while its syntax and morphology show strong Slavic influences. Esperanto morphemes are invariant and almost indefinitely recombinable into different words, so the language also has much in common with isolating languages like Chinese, while its internal word structure has affinity with agglutinative languages like Turkish, Swahili and Japanese."

I can only attest to the fact that I know many Chinese and Japanese Esperantists who speak very well and who experienced difficulty primarily when memorizing the most basic roots used in Esperanto. However, having moved past the most elementary stages of learning, speakers of Asian languages (among others)seem to be equally competent as Europeans in using Esperanto's extensive set of prefixes and suffixes in order to create words for more complex concepts. Whether Esperanto is the optimal choice for an international language is beyond me. Perhaps, even considering the great disparity between the different language families, a more neutral language could be designed. However, I suspect that a hodgepodge of every human language would merely be equally difficult for everyone, as opposed to extremely but unequally simple for all people, as Esperanto is.

At any rate, I commented not because I wish to debate the merits of Esperanto as a solution to the world language problem, but because I wanted to address the factual inaccuracies in Steve's blog (that Esperanto has no native speakers or culture).

Steve, this article by Claude Piron, a former UN interpeter, translator might also interest you:

Langue occidentale, l'espéranto? (http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenfrancais/langueoccidentale.htm)

[pointyr]

Should a language be consciously constructed, or should it evolve from and among other existing natural languages?

[Chris Sarda]

Well I also don't have interest in Esperanto, and when I heard Steve comment on Esperanto it sounded wrong to me too. If I were to learn a constructed language I'd probably go for a different one. But it is true that people have adopted Esperanto as almost a native language. Steve is uninterested in Esperanto for the same reasons I am but some of his observations about it were a bit stereotypical.

Another popular internet polyglot Prof Arguelles put it the best:

It makes me sad that you can never discuss it without it blowing up and it becoming an explosive issue. It’s one of those things that’s hard to keep civil discourse course about. I admire the fact that in an age when languages are dying out – this is something that is only one hundred years old – hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are interested in it.....From my own personal perspective though, just because I like languages and their complexity – it’s a language that only has sixteen rules – it’s not terribly interesting. It’s almost too transparent for me. I can’t get very excited about it but I’ve studied it and I respect it.

[Colby]

I can certainly understand the culture argument, and I think it's one that many people who have decent experience with language learning could make. Most people who truly get into a language do so in order to connect with the culture. The "culture" that esperanto has because there are many translated books and some bands who write songs in it is much different, in my opinion, than the nearly infinitely profound culture that accompanies any natural language.

However, by focusing purely on culture, I think there might be some huge potential benefits overlooked. We know that motivation is the key factor in language learning, and in this post Steve mentions the necessity of "learning to learn". When we look at the state of language instruction in school, we see the first completely missing, and the second not happening. I think that both can be helped by something like Esperanto. I think it's much easier to approach and get motivated about something with a well defined, fixed scope (limited, regular grammar, fairly limited set of root words), than a big nebulous cloud such as any natural language. Then, while methodically attacking the defined subject, the student is able to demystify language learning and acquire a set of skills that can be applied to any subsequent language.

To be clear, I'm talking about the majority of students who are forced to take language classes, not the minority who are actually motivated and could accomplish this with any language. For this majority, I think a semester or year with esperanto could really be beneficial in sparking further language learning ambitions.

[Kevin Geoghegan]

Good post about two fatally flawed ideas, Steve. It's interesting to note how much more feedback there is on Esperanto than there is on French immersion!

I had a bash at learning Esperanto in the early 70s. Anybody remember Teach Yourself Esperanto? Well, luckily I came to my senses and gave it up as a waste of time. As far as the main aim of the language goes - being the lingua franca - it is a complete failure of course. Even if you take the most optimistic estimate of the number of speakers, two million, that takes it to around 160 to 170th most spoken language in the world - hardly a raving success. You'd easily do better learning any of the languages on the top of the list - Mandarin, Arabic, English, Spanish, Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian or even Japanese. Toss a coin. In fact, if you don't already speak English then I dare to suggest the choice is easy.

The other reason I don't like Esperanto is that it isn't even a well designed language. Far be it for me to argue with the likes of Prof Arguelles, but I find it is far more complex than it needs to be. For instance, why are there plurals? Why are there cases, agreement with adjectives, subjunctives etc? It's also parochial, very European. The last thing Europe needs is (yet) another language. It also sounds ugly - there are way too many consonants and weird combinations. And what were they thinking about with the alphabet? What's with all the diacritics? What's wrong with the good, old, plain Roman alphabet? Too boring? Oh, and I almost forgot, the vocabulary is sexist too.

As for schools teaching Esperanto, if you can't motivate children to learn French or Spanish, what chance have you got with a nonentity like Esperanto? I bet there are more people learn Latin than Esperanto and that's a 'dead' language!

I didn't paint too negative a picture, did I? ;-)

[Betty Chatterjee]

In order to learn any subject you have to be motivated.

Four years ago I was motivated to learn Esperanto and so far I have never regretted it.

Although there is no such place as Esperantoland it is easy to arrange meetings with Esperanto speakers in other countries; we are in general hospitable people who welcome each other in our own homes as well as attending congresses all over the place. When we are not doing that we keep in touch by post and nowadays by mail and Skype etc.

With regard to whether or not we have a culture: I should like to suggest that you consult the 'Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto', edited by Geoffrey Sutton and published by Mondial, New York. Afterwards you might concede that Esperanto has a rich literary culture in spite of the fact the language has only been in existence since 1887.

You say that there are no native speakers of Esperanto. I know at least four just in my own social network and I know of many others.

In conclusion I should like to assure you that I have nothing against learning other languages. As you so rightly say when you learn another language you get insight into another culture.

[Kaarlo Voionmaa]

My first language is Finnish, and as queer as it may sound I think that Finnish, a non-Indo-European language, in many respects resembles Esperanto. For instance, it is as easy to derive new words in Esperanto as it is in my first language; there are cases in both languages which I also find very natural; both languages have a similar syllable structure, which means that for me Esperanto is much easier to pronounce than English, for example. The English spelling system is a disaster compared with the Finnish and Esperanto ortography; Inglish iz ö veri dificölt längvidzh tu löön.

Now, back 45 - 55 ago I learnt Latin, English, Swedish, Russian and Greek at school apart from Finnish and Estonian. After this fairly heavy language education I found studying Esperanto unnecessary; I just adopted it without attending any class. Nowadays I speak, read and write Esperanto without hindrances. It is an extremely easy language to learn, and it is also a very expressive and flexible language.

When speaking Esperanto, I feel very un-chauvinist, whereas every other language brings with it some kind of nationalism. Although language of natural sciences, pop culture etc., English is still a symbol of the Anglo-American cultural imperialism. Being a speaker of a fairly small language Finnish and Swedish, I find these language political aspects very important. I do not want to have an English Only Europe. That Esperanto has shown to be a living and well functioning language is essential but even more important is that it is a politically neutral language, a good choice for a European or even a global lingua franca.

[Peter Weide]

Steve seems to be well educated. Yet, he should keep to subjekts he really knows something about.
Maybe, he shoul study, what e.g. Umberto Eco has to say abpout that language.
I am one of the many Esperanto-native speakers and know, that Esperanto has everything, any other language has. Just that it is ten times easier to learn.

[Julien]

I have nothing against Esperanto but what troubles me is how the Esperantists almost immediately react against anyone who doesn't agree with them, even in a very moderate and articulate way like Steve did in this podcast.
They act as if Esperanto was more a dogma than a simple language.

[Chris Sarda]

Is it a paradox to completely agree with both of the posts that are above mine, written by peter and julien?

[Steve Kaufmann]

Maybe I should do another video on Esperanto. It seems to have attracted a lot of interest. I fully respect the fact that some people are interested in Esperanto. I understand the motivation to have neutral language. I can imagine that when Esperanto enthusiasts get together they have a good time.

However, I am not motivate to learn Esperanto. I just finished reading La Sombra del Viento in Spanish, I am reading again from Anna Karenina because there is lots I did not get the first time. I took advantage of the fact that I am in Toronto to find a Portuguese book store, and bought A Viagem do Elefante by Saramago. Three languages, three books, different countries, different times in history, people speaking languages. Even here in Toronto I can see many languages on the streets, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese and many more. Where is Esperanto in all of this? To me, according to my definition of culture, Esperanto has no culture and no people who speak it as a native language. It has low resonance for me. It is not a world that I want to explore. Without motivation I cannot learn a language.

But to those who are motivated, great! Help us offer Esperanto at LingQ when we are ready.

But please respect my right not to be interested, and to have my own opinion about what represents the culture of a language.

[pointyr]

Steve, this seems to be in opposition to what the finnish guy wrote about his being a native Esperantist and about the existance of the very few, but other native Esperantists:
"To me, according to my definition of culture, Esperanto has no culture and no people who speak it as a native language. It has low resonance for me. "

Compare that to a tree in a forest. If a tree falls in a forest but nobody is in the forest to hear and see it fall, then does the tree not exist, or has it not really fallen?

Other than that, the number of native Esperanto speakers is seemingly too small to be a real culture and just that itself may remove motivation in a great many people from studying it.

[Betty Chatterjee]

Steve, why is it that you persist in saying that Esperanto no native speakers, when a number of commentators including Peter Weide and myself have told you they do exist?

If esperantists seem over sensitive it is often because critics of the language criticise without taking the trouble of finding out the facts.

[Karl-Gustaf Gustafsson]

My first langugae i Swedish so English is just an auxiliary language to me. I hesitate to use English in writing, as spelling and pronounciation are not congruent. When I write in Esperanto I am sure of the spelling if I do prononce the word corectly. In Esperanto prononciation and pelling are congruent. Further more: The gramatical rules are possible to learn rather rapidly, if "you know how to leran". So Using English, is to me a great disadvantage compared with Esperanto.

Yes, imposing langugaes on any one is wrong. They did impose English on me, when I should have been allowed to study Finish, Norvegian or Danish. I do use Esperanto since 1965 and from the end of the 90:-th almost every day in writing and the last years oraly due to Skype. I do realy feel the "immersion" of that langugae.

I fully understand that you do not get that feeling about Esperanto as you are not motivated to learn or use it. On the other hand there is an international culture wich is nusing Esperanto as a common demnominator. Just scan the Internet and you will find that I am not exagurating. :-)

Most people I know do not want to spend year after year to learn langugages they do not have any use of. When I realised the existence of Esperanto I got a tool that alloves me to get in contact with as many people I like both in writing and oraly due to the possibilites the Internet offers.

And, mind you, Esperanto acctualy did boost my interest in studying both the Swedish and English grammar.

Have a nice day

[Peter Weide]

I'm not over sensitive, when people talk about Esperanto.
I'm over sensitive, when people behave, as if there had been no Enlightenment.(Which often happens, when they discuss Esperanto.)
It is told, that Galilei asked his fellow scientists to come home to him, so that they could SEE with their own eyes, that he was right. The anser was: "No thank you, we don't need that, we know, you are wrong."
Steve may have his difiniton of culture. I have a difinition of "opinion": One can only have an opinion after having studied the item. One has to know facts, has to know arguments for pros and cons. Everything without that is not an opinion, it is just prejudice.
I am aware of the fact, that many people do not feel, that they need a language, that can be the common international language of the world.
So, Steve is very welcome not to learn Esperanto, he has of course the right to decide, what he wants to learn or not to learn.
But before he appears on the scene with statements, he should do his homework: He should inform himself so well, that he avoids presenting false facts. He should be open minded enough to accept, when people show, where he is wrong.
And here is something to think about: Why is it, that nearly every linguist, who really learned about Esperanto, comes to the conclusion, that Esperanto is the answer, if you want an international language - even if he himself dosn't become an Esperanto-speaker?

[Friedemann]

Peter,

you really need to take a chill pill. I was very neutral about Esperanto before reading this thread, but I cannot say that you and your attitude have stirred my appetite to learn it. We have a lot of opinions about things we are no experts in and we are entitled to. And it is true of course that Esperanto culture has almost zero visibility in the world today. Steve was very diplomatic when he explained his lack of motivation for learning Esperanto. What is your problem with that?

Friedemann

[Betty Chatterjee]

Friedeman. I agree that Steve presented his criticism of Esperanto very diplomatically and he is naturally entitled to his decision not to learn the language; that is not the point though. The problem is that his criticism is not based on established facts.

[Kaarlo Voionma]

For thousands of various reasons, we need a universal means of communication, and English has, unfortunately, become such a vehicle. Here, I am writing in that language in order to reach more readers than I ever could if I used my dear but small languages Finnish, Estonian and even Swedish (the lingua franca of Norden, the Nordic countries).

In these days, we have had a chance to listen to English(es) spoken by Russian and other Eurovision Song contest actors, and insofar as I am concerned, I hardly understand what they say let alone what they sing about in English. In this particular context as in many similar international contexts, English is twisted into an incomprehensible gibberish where mutual understanding is eagerly pretended but less often achieved.

English is symbolically and on the surface the number one language in the world, but factually, it is a very poor copy of an adequately functioning universal means of communication. For a very large part of humankind English is a symbol of modernity, while in use it is as much Greek as Greek was to monks in the middle ages (They had a turn of phrase: "Graeca sunt, non leguntur" - It's Greek, you can't read it).

[Julien]

Friedmann, I feel exactly the same as you. I am neutral too on Esperanto as a language amongst others but the attitude of the Esperantists is anything but motivating. Whatever constructive criticism you may write on any forum, you can be sure that a consistent bunch of infuriated Esperantists will flame you while at the same time pretending not being oversensitive. It seems like all the people who don't share their passion for their "faith" are treated as hopeless idiots.
The main point of Steve was that it is almost impossible to meet a native speaker of Esperanto wherever you live. Well, with no more than a few thousands of native speakers worldwide, what are the odds to meet on of them in the real life?

[Anonimulo]

Faith is not the reason for which Esperantists are "flaming" Steve's video. The modern Esperanto movement may be seen as having two sides:

The first, emphasizes Esperanto's utility as a potential tool for international communication. This subject does not particularly perturb speakers of the language, who debate among themselves already about the advantages and disadvantages of Esperanto's structure without external prompting.

The second, however, is its culture, which offers an extensive tradition of original literature, music, theater and, increasingly, a presence on the internet. There are Esperantists who meet one another through the language, not being able to communicate proficiently in English, whose children become the elusive native speakers. Esperanto speaking families are less rare than one might suppose. I know at least three in Canada, and one from the United States. When Steve denies the existence of these families- with whom I've spoken, had supper with, it does not surprise me that some Esperantists will feel affronted (especially the native speaker who posted above).

I believe the most aggravating aspect of Steve's later posts was the fact that his questions were largely rhetorical. He asked, " Even here in Toronto I can see many languages on the streets, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese and many more. Where is Esperanto in all of this?". I know the answer. I know the Esperantists in Toronto. I could tell Steve where to meet them. In fact, there is a significant Esperanto related event about to occur in Toronto, so over the coming long week-end, there will be even more speakers in the city than usual. However, Steve has made abundantly clear that he is not interested, and I respect his wish not to know.

On the whole, I think discussion here has been quite civil. None of the Esperanto speakers were rude. They presented the facts, and calmly attempted to refute the false claims in the video. This is not an issue of 'faith'- these are people reacting in defense of culture as real as that of any language. For some of the people who posted, it is even an issue of defending his identity as a native speaker.

Can't we all just get along? :)

[Steve Kaufmann]

From my google research it seems that there are just a few tens of thousand fluent speakers of Esperanto which is not that tempting for me. That would explain why I have never met one.

I would be more interested in Interlingua which has more speakers, and which is easily understood by 600 million or more speakers of romance languages. To me it is the modern Latin, and can tie into that rich cultural heritage.

I gather that the definition of native speaker of Esperanto that seems accepted by the movement is the occasional child here and there brought up in Esperanto and another language. I personally question whether is really a native speaker in the normal sense.

I also think the culture of Esperanto is deliberately "culture neutral" which is part of the definition of the language. That is fine, but does not resonate with me. I do not say that the movement is not fulfilling for those involved, but it does not appeal to me.

[arithmetic_is_also_Language]

Steve
I would carry your feeling further than you do. Since neither Esperanto nor Interlingua are truly natural languages, I see no practical reason to learn either of them. In fact, I'd rather learn Latin, since it was a real natural language which helped to lead to other real, natural languages. Latin was part of a culture on some particular land. Too bad we have no native speakers of the original Latin to teach it to us.

[Dale]

Steve,

I was actually very pleased to see you had done a podcast on Esperanto. I was extremely interested because you were focusing on the issue of culture. As an Esperantist who comments online when I see Esperanto mentioned, I expected a lot of the replies that you've gotten. I was pleased to see that some of them were informative to the point where I learned a few things I hadn't already known.

From the point of view of how you characterize the culture associated with a language, I can understand why Esperanto doesn't interest you. I think you are incorrect in your conclusion that it doesn't have a culture, for two related reasons that the other people who have commented here haven't really explained.

The first reason is one that Kaarlo Voionmaa touched on when he wrote, "When speaking Esperanto, I feel very un-chauvinist, whereas every other language brings with it some kind of nationalism." I'm not sure that there is a succinct way to state it that doesn't sound biased either for or against Esperanto. In a nutshell, that statement captures both some of what you love about learning another language and one of the reasons that Esperantists have chosen to learn Esperanto. You have made it very clear that you love to participate in other cultures. By learning their language, you can join in at a level that few foreigners ever enjoy.

The other side of that is absolutely fundamental to Esperanto culture, the idea of a linguistic neutral ground. Dr. Zamenhof referred to it as the internal idea (interna ideo) of Esperanto. Other people have referred to it as a linguistic handshake because Esperantists do not find themselves in the inferior position of a foreigner trying to function among native speakers. I think that a more informed assessment of Esperanto culture is not that it doesn't have one, but that it is not the sort of culture you are seeking to immerse yourself in.

This leads into my second reason, which is one that I have only come to understand recently, after years of using the language. It is fundamental in the way that I view culture. As time has gone on, I have progressed from being a student of Esperanto, to using it, to being an increasingly more active participant in the culture. Some of that is the result of learning the language more fully, talking more often, etc. Some of it is the increasing number of resources available online, giving a geographically dispersed culture more opportunities to interact. But the idea that struck me was that I was involved in the creation of culture in a second language. That opportunity is open to any creative Esperantist interested in taking it up. I don't think I had any conscious desire to be a producer of culture in another language when I first started learning Esperanto. I certainly don't remember that being one of my motives. At the time, I knew I had an interest in languages and was looking for one that offered the opportunity to become fluent without having a lot of time and money for foreign travel.

I bought your book The Way of the Linguist a year or so ago. I was interested in ideas that might help me to increase my fluency. I had stalled out in my learning. I could read Esperanto fairly well, and corresponded in it with various friends. My spoken fluency was not up to the standard I wanted to achieve. Your focus on the motivation of the learner was exactly what I was looking for. It is one thing to state, as you did in this podcast that learner motivation is the single greatest factor in language learning success. In your book, you emphasize that as a student it is important to determine what your goals are. You gave examples. And you emphasized that your own motives now are about participation in other cultures.

The ideas in your book helped me to determine my focus. I am participating in a culture that is young, little over a century old. It was created. Part of the pleasure of participating in it is that I am an active participant. I am as empowered to coin new words, make new jokes, sing new songs, write and speak as any other Esperantist. I am not a participant in a foreign culture. I am a participant in a second culture.

I neither expect nor want to change your mind about your personal lack of interest in learning Esperanto. My hope is that you and some of my fellow Esperantists may see that we have a huge amount of common ground. Many of the Esperantists I know don't speak it as their second language. For them, it is a third or fourth language. I think many Esperantists share your love of languages with a slightly different emphasis.

As for Interlingua, I'm not aware of any evidence that it has more speakers than Esperanto.

[Chris Sarda]

If you know two Romance languages you know Interlingua. You'd be able to read the most difficult literature with hardly any problem. If you know just Spanish you could probably get by in Interlingua as far as reading and listening.

[Jeff Lindqvist]

Just a comment on interlingua - regarding the texts I have seen (their own website and so on), I have found them just as transparent as Norwegian/Danish. I'm a native Swede, with a few years of Spanish and basic French. This is not the case with Esperanto - although I have dabbled in it in the 6WC ("six week challenge") on the Language Learning forum two years ago.

[Art]

Steve,
I like what Noam Chomsky said about Esperanto and the whole idea of universal language and why those are fallacies of the past.

To quote him:

"The interest of linguists, as linguists, in universal language was based on an illusion, which linguists had but no longer have. That was the illusion that Esperanto is a language, and it isn’t. Yeah, Esperanto has a couple of hints that people who know language can use based on their own linguistic knowledge to make a language out of it, but nobody can tell you what the rules of Esperanto are. If they could tell you that, they could tell you what the rules of Spanish are, and that turns out to be an extremely hard problem, a hard problem of the sciences, to find out what’s really in the head of a Spanish speaker that enables them to speak and understand and think the way they do. That’s a problem at the edge of science. I mean, a Spanish speaker knows it intuitively, but that doesn’t help. I mean, a desert ant knows how to navigate, but that doesn’t help the insect scientist. You got to figure out what the ant is doing, and it’s now understood that that’s an extremely hard problem. You go back a generation or two, it was considered a trivial problem because of lack of understanding of the nature of language. To take a kind of analogue, if you go back to pre-Galilean times, there’s no problem about why if I let this go, it’s going to fall to the ground. It’s going to its natural place. What else is there to say? Well, it turned out that there was a lot to say. To be puzzled by simple questions is a very hard step, and it’s the first step in science, really. And the same is true about the ature of Esperanto, or Spanish, on which it’s based, and so on. We don’t know the answers to the questions of what the principles of Esperanto do because if we did, we would know the answer to how language works, and that’s much harder than knowing how a desert ant navigates, which is hard enough. So, now it is understood that Esperanto is not a language. It’s just parasitic on other languages. Then comes a question, which is not a linguistic question, but a question of practical utility. Is it more efficient to teach people a system which is parasitic on actual languages, and somewhat simplifies, eliminating some of the details of actual historical languages; or is just more efficient to have then a whole lot of languages."

[Chris Sarda]

Noam Chomsky as always turns out to be irrelevant but really really intelligent sounding.

[Dale]

The interesting thing about Chomsky's commentary is that it is probably a valid statement about our limitations in creating an artificial language. At the same time, it doesn't really apply to Esperanto at all.

That Chomsky failed to actually evaluate Esperanto is obvious, since he claimed that it is based on Spanish. Because Zamenhof was trying to construct a vocabulary that would enjoy a wide initial recognition, he chose root words that were shared among multiple languages. The ones that he was working from were Indo-European. As a result, the vocabulary strongly resembles several Romance languages. Even so, there are quite a few words that were obviously drawn from the Germanic languages.

The grammar is very different from Spanish in a number of interesting ways. One that would be obvious to anyone who had studied both Spanish and Esperanto for even a brief period is that there is no gender agreement between nouns and their adjective modifiers in Esperanto. The 'a' and 'o' endings on words in Esperanto indicate the part of speech. But there are far deeper differences than that.

I think Chomsky was right in the sense that the level of knowledge about language is not sufficient to create one purely as an intellectual project. To become a language requires that it be used. The additional rules that we can't fully describe must be discovered or created through successful use as a medium of communication. The original project as published in 1887 was not a complete language. It became one through use.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I have never understand why Chomsky is considered such a reference point. I think the brain is good a recognizing patterns and creating rules for what it experiences, but have never understood the idea that there is an universal grammar. The more different languages I learn, the more different languages seem to me.

Chomsky never learned to speak any language but English I gather (although I could be wrong). I have never taken him very seriously.

[Hoss]

Chomsky does in fact speak languages other than English (modern Hebrew being one prominent example; see his dispute with Dershowitz). But regardless of the major gaffe in his quote above (Esperanto has nothing to do with Spanish) he's indisputably a brilliant man and has done much to advance modern linguistic theory.

To be fair to Chomsky, the quote is actually an offhand comment made during a 2003 interview with linguist Mark Aronoff, and the context is Esperanto as it was naively thought of over 120 years ago—namely, as a set of sixteen simple rules.

Chomsky points out that such a brief sketch is not really a language, and that speakers will flesh out this sketch using an innate linguistic competence that no one yet formally understands. In this sense he is absolutely correct: the simplistic 16 rules of Esperanto as originally recorded in 1887 were but a mere sketch of a language, and what is spoken today is far more than a simple sketch. This fact is immediately obvious to any reader pondering all 696 pages of Bertil Wennergren's modern Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (ISBN 0939785072).

Linguists have long understood that Esperanto as used in the real world—and not just as a set of rules on a page—is indeed a natural language in the Chomskian sense, subject to the same processes of change and evolution that apply to all natural languages. It is spoken by a large and thriving global community (some of whom are second- or third-generation native speakers) and used daily for everything from child-rearing to religious worship, from technical manuals to erotica. It also has an enormous and growing literature, both translated and original. For example, see Geoffrey Sutton's recent Concise Encylopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, ISBN 1595690905.

A general overview of the language for English speakers, covering the history, linguistics, literature, and modern use of the language, can be found in Esperanto: Language, Literature and Community by Pierre Janton (State University of New York Press) ISBN 0791412547. A more detailed linguistic analysis by Dr. John Wells of University College, London can be found in Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto, ISBN 9290170212.

Esperanto is dear to many people. Like other natural languages, it is a vehicle for the shared culture of its speakers. It is a native language for thousands of people, and a cultural gateway for hundreds of thousands more around the world. It has its own history, its own myths, its own heroes and martyrs. Just like speakers of other natural languages, Esperantists don't take kindly to attacks on their language and culture by critics who seem too lazy to do their homework.

No offense meant, Steve, but you really do need to do some research and shed the outdated assumptions. If you'd approach Esperanto with the same open mind you seem have for other languages, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at the wealth of cultures, literatures, and travel opportunities it makes available to you.

[Steve Kaufmann]

I have no interest in Esperanto for the reasons already given.

Chomsky is not a fluent speaker of any language other than English, from my research.

[Peter Launonen]

I completely understand the points that Steve makes with regards to the lack of culture and native speakers with Esperanto. I'm not denying that books and music in Esperanto are in fact in existence, it's just that they are not commonplace in any particular region or town or country (as far as I know). Also, in a given country there are generations and generations of native speakers that have experienced and been part of the development of that country's culture and the writing of its history. Therefore, grandparents, uncles, aunties, parents, teachers, coaches and many other influental figures imprint much of this culture (and langauge) onto children growing up. And this is pretty much all done through dialogue.

With regards to being categorised as native speakers, I can tell you that growing up with your parents speaking a given language to you does not necessarily make you a native speaker. I certainly haven't found this to be the case, having grown up in Australia after moving from Finland at a young age. Becoming a native speaker of a language, in my opinion, includes growing up somewhere where that language is spoken, for example, at work and in schools (classroom + playground), at shops and restaurants, at social events, on radio and television and, of course, at home. Children having grown up in Canada (non-French) with parents speaking Esperanto to them would, to me, still be considered to be native English speakers (unless the family was very isolated and had little interaction with society!)

Also, I feel there can definitely be a distinction between 'first language' and 'native language'. As is the case for me, I have been speaking Finnish since I was very little but I am much, much more fluent in English. Esperanto, however, is an interesting idea and the language is relatively new and not limited by the 'baggage' of history and tradition. It can perhaps more flexibly grow and change compared to other languages, just as younger countries often possess this characteristic compared to older countries with thousands of years of tradition. I could see myself learning it one day.

[Thomas]

Just a little point:
Esperanto does have hundreds of native speakers. Georges Soros is for instance one of them. Very few studies though, but I can give you the references of two of them:

1. Benjamin K. Bergen, “Nativization processes in L1 Esperanto,” Journal of Child Language, no. 28 (2001): 575-595, http://www2.hawaii.edu/~bergen/papers/NEJCL.pdf.

2. Jouko Lindstedt, “Native Esperanto as a Test Case for Natural Language,” http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1FK60.1.5.LINDSTEDT.pdf.

By the way, if you wanna hear a little child speaking esperanto as a native:
1. Bebo parolas en Esperanto, 2008, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ErKbLL5WQ.

Ĝis!