Today is Esperanto Day – here’s why I learned it

Why a company with Apple's resources can't be bothered to implement proper autocorrect for a bit market with 80+ million native speakers is a mystery to me.

Lets say somebody wants to say "how I eat" in spanish. The correct way to do it would be "cómo como". "cómo" means how, and "como" means "I eat". I wouldn't make sense to say "como cómo", so therefore, autocorrect should, in theory, feel free to correct all instances of "como como". Only until it becomes an international household brand name will this ever be a problem- for this one phrase at least.

Don't fool yourself, though.

Accents are there for a reason.

Orthography influences pronunciation. In time people will start pronouncing those words as the orthography suggests rather than deducing it from the context.

Even if only because the context won't be discernible. But, generally, because of the principle of the lesser effort: it's always easier to just read what is there than thinking which pronunciation applies.

Eventually, the words will become homophonous (edit: assuming there are other words which differ only in the accents) - you'll effectively loose the words or they'll change, probably for worse.

The language will become more ambiguous and more dependent on the context knowledge - which will be hard to get if you don't know the language well to begin with.

In other words, you've just made the language "harder" to learn.

So, in effect, it's not a simplification at all.

From what I remember from high school Spanish, there is a default syllable that has an “invisible accent” on its vowel in a Spanish word without accents and the purpose of an accent is to change the syllable that gets emphasized.

If you grab a native Japanaese dictionary that has accent indicators, like 新明解国語辞典, there really are surprisingly few true homophones in a typical vocabulary.

Esperanto was created in 1880, it’s older than world war 1, it’s older than English as the international language, and it’s older than Europe having much exposure to Asian languages

Ido was created around a quarter of a century after Esperanto. The name Ido means "offspring" in Esperanto and was so named by its creators because it was a development of Esperanto. The creation of Ido led to a schism between those who believed that Esperanto should be left as it was and those who believed that it had what they perceived as inherent flaws which made it not quite good enough to be the world's international auxiliary language. Those who opposed change maintained that it was endless tinkering that had led, in their opinion, to the decline of Volapük a once popular constructed language that had predated Esperanto's publication by a few years. They would also surely have pointed out that Dr Zamenhof's reform proposals of 1894 had been rejected by popular vote.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Esperanto_a...

Instead of a single person effort, you could try a group of experts/scientists. That would be Interlingua then.

Esperanto speakers are highly organised. There is a Jarlibro (Yearbook) published annually giving access to a network of local representatives. These people, scattered all over the world and act as 'consuls', providing help and information, and passing on the visitor from another country to his/her contacts. Esperanto does have an Academy, but it is the people who decide in practice.

> They have zero trouble communicating.

Note that I said that it's easier to understand a language which the speaker isn't comfortable in.

This is why Harjoitus tekee mestarin, a popular workbook series for foreign learners of Finnish, provides hundreds of pages of exercises to help students memorize the different noun declensions and verb conjugations, and it is not an easy task. Then, after you have learned the complicated written language, learning the actual spoken Finnish used in everyday life involves learning even more such exceptions. (Finland has diglossia not too different from, say, what reigned in Greece until the 1970s).

If there were a single way to write each sound, then the spelling in itself wouldn't really matter, as we would only learn the spelling of each sound once and be done with it; we'd always recognize it.

Indonesian English is only used by a few people (mostly urban youngsters), but from what I know Manglish is common because some Malaysians refuse/don't see the point in learning Malay, which is sad...

The great thing about Esperanto is that the speakers are very enthusiastic to speak it with other people, so you'll get better than average hospitality. You're also right about the weirdos, so you need to be very careful when selecting a host.

I really like the idea of Amikumu, where you chat with people in Esperanto before meeting in person. Meeting more Esperantists is great because you can discuss experiences using Esperanto abroad.

I am marginally into the language (I lurk about on Esperanto subreddits, have done the Duolingo course, and visit Lernu.net periodically), but I wouldn't call myself fluent or anything. However, I might try to use it if I go somewhere with generally weak English skills, like Japan or parts of each Europe.

those wierdos and eccentrics showing up is a sign of the openness and tolerance that is lived in the esperanto community. so yes, esperanto is bound to attract those people.

eccentrics by necessity favor communities where openness and tolerance for their lifestyle is practiced. so they will gravitate to communities where they are welcome.

to the chinese for example, all western foreigners look like wierdos and eccentrics. the sideeffect is that weird and eccentric westerners in china are treated with the same respect as everyone else because the chinese for the most part can't tell the difference, unlike at home where they don't fit in.

but those eccentrics are part of the early adopters in the innovation adoption lifecycle. they have less opportunities to find acceptance elsewhere. esperanto presents an opportunity for them.

the challenge of the esperanto community is to break out of the early adopter phase and find a way to let the language appeal to the majority.

One may argue that people who learn Esperanto are naturally inclined to language learning anyway, but what you actually see is people who allegedly have always struggled with languages and, after giving Esperanto a try, they begin to find more effective ways of learning foreign languages in general.

It worked for me at least.

once you learned one language, learning others should be easier because you have overcome that first mental challenge.

introducing esperanto as that first foreign language should provide some early success that motivate the students in their language learning.

that's the theory anyways. we do need some more studies to verify that.

any second language makes it easier to learn a third one.

I have absolutely nothing against traditional Classics though I’m not sure how good a fit they are with typical US public high schools today. However I’m pretty skeptical that a few years of Latin—as opposed to Spanish, German, or French (which I also took) or something else entirely—is a uniquely good use of time.

but also, dutch is similar enough to english that learning spanish will not help you much at all, other than that third language effect which can be had with any other language too.

This is particularly noticeable in Europe. Due to the European Union's thinning/erasure of borders, there is an order of magnitude more inter-European travel and mobility than 10 years ago. And the most widely understood language between these travelers is English. In Barcelona, vendors would speak to Dutch and Chinese tourists in English. Even in Paris, famous for its disdain of English, the language is fairly widely spoken, not so much to accommodate the British, but visitors from the rest of Europe and the world.

Folks quickly figured out that instead of learning multiple European languages (and even then, only be able to communicate with other Europeans and people from former European colonies), they could instead learn English and be able to communicate with not only Europeans but people from Asia, the Middle East, etc.

English is used even among people of the same ethnicity. I was with a friend at a restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown, and noticed that my Cantonese-speaking friend had a hard time conveying her order to the Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese waiter, so they both switched to English. The communication was successful.

The nationalistic policies around WW1 and after put a stop to it.

I think it's a tremendous shame... it would be so nice to communicate with everyone in a simple language.

Note that such a language would not actually need to be actively spoken in normal live much. It just needs to be simple enough to be learn in a short amount of time and to have international backing so it is taught in schools.

it is easier to learn, even for non-europeans.

it is nationally (edit: i used the wrong term 'politically' before) and culturally neutral.

english wasn't always the most used language for international communication. until a century ago, that was french.

english replaced french because of the success of british colonialism.

there is no reason why some day esperanto could not take its place.

that would be like saying, phones are not practical because not everyone has one. or maybe facebook or google+ are not practical because not everyone is on them.

but that is a limitation that has nothing to do with any inherent quality of esperanto, only with it's lack of popularity which is something that can be changed without needing to change esperanto itself.

The criticism I usually hear is something in the lines of Esperanto has been defeated in the international language championship and now refuses to shut the mouth up and go back home.

BTW is that true that you won't understand if we pronounce a word accenting a wrong letter?

It is worth mentioning, however, that I've already forgotten almost everything I've learnt of Spanish

Well that's the whole point -- you didn't really "learn it", then. You just learned the rough outlines of it.

For me, being able to use quantitative metrics like vocabulary is really helpful. Additionally, I like to think of vocabulary as "ingredients in my linguistic refrigerator". The more I have, the more recipes I can concoct allowing me to express myself better in conversation.