Esperanto to help learn?

[honkanen]

I've recently been looking more into the Esperanto language. It has been mentioned several times that if you spend roughly 6 months to learn Esperanto and then start learning another language (ie. Finnish), your Finnish language learning will be a lot easier. I've read that if someone takes 6 months of Esperanto lessons + 6 months of Finnish lessons, this person would have a higher command of Finnish than someone who just took 1 year of Finnish with no Esperanto.

Anyone else heard of this before? Has anyone else studied Esperanto to help with learning Finnish or another language? I'm eager to study Finnish but if it will help me to learn Esperanto first, I'm game.

Thanks!

[kalmisto]

>> I've read that if someone takes 6 months of Esperanto lessons + 6 months of Finnish lessons, this person would have a higher command of Finnish than someone who just took 1 year of Finnish with no Esperanto. <<

That can not be true. Learning Esperanto first would not make it easier for you to learn Finnish because Esperanto and Finnish are totally different languages.

If there was some truth in what you wrote about Esperanto and Finnish it would mean that native speakers of Spanish and Italian would find Finnish relatively easy to learn but they don´t.

[Pursuivant]

Maybe its got to do with "deprogramming your head", as Esperanto is a totally made up language then the next language is the same and you won't be looking for anything familiar.

[tuulen]

I have never studied Esperanto but I remember many years ago when it was faddishly popular, along with some idle speculation that it could become a global language, but it never amounted to anything other than a fad, and then it slowly disappeared.

However, the rumors you have heard about Esperanto are not altogether wrong. From my own experience it seems that learning languages generally becomes easier with the more languages one studies. It seems the brain learns how to organize a language, and that process of organization improves with each language studied.

Then again, those who study languages often label the language they are learning as being their "target" language, such that they focus on that language to the exclusion of all other languages.

So, a study of Esperanto or any other language might actually help your eventual study of Finnish, but then it might be better to make Finnish your exclusive target language, and concentrate on that.

[Pursuivant]

I kind of like this one http://www.interlingua.com/

[kalmisto]

I kind of like this one http://www.interlingua.com/

Ever heard of Mänti, Uusisuom or Lapsi ? :
http://eng.anarchopedia.org/Daniel_Tammet

On Daniel Tammet´s language skills :

"He can speak languages including English, French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Lithuanian, Romanian, Estonian, Icelandic, Welsh and Esperanto. He particularly likes Estonian, because it is rich in vowels. Tammet is creating a new language called Mänti. Mänti has many features related to Finnish and Estonian, both of which are Finno-ugric languages. Some sources credit Tammet as creating the Uusisuom and Lapsi languages as well."

[Pursuivant]

Hes that autist savant that was featured in Kuukausiliite, eh?

[kalmisto]

Hes that autist savant that was featured in Kuukausiliite, eh?

Most likely the same person. I did not see that issue of Kuukausiliite. This is Daniel Tammet :
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id= ... photovideo

Here is lesson three of Daniel Tammet´s online Uusisuom course :
http://archives.conlang.info/zhau/bhuth ... rjein.html

Uusisuom failed of course.

[honkanen]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

Kalmisto, I'm sorry but I don't quite understand your argument of "If there was some truth in what you wrote about Esperanto and Finnish it would mean that native speakers of Spanish and Italian would find Finnish relatively easy to learn but they don´t.". From what I was trying to get across and from what I have heard is that Esperanto is great for a monolingual guy such as myself with no second-language knowledge in that it can deprogram your brain and introduce you to the learning of a second language. And if I can learn this Esperanto language in just a few months before moving onto Finnish, would it be worth even these few months of time? Am I making sense at all? haha If not, this explains it more clearly.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Education

I'll definitely take a look at Tammet, thanks!

[kalmisto]

>> Kalmisto, I'm sorry but I don't quite understand your argument of "If there was some truth in what you wrote about Esperanto and Finnish it would mean that native speakers of Spanish and Italian would find Finnish relatively easy to learn but they don´t.". From what I was trying to get across and from what I have heard is that Esperanto is great for a monolingual guy such as myself with no second-language knowledge in that it can deprogram your brain and introduce you to the learning of a second language. <<

Even if Esperanto could deprogram your brain and introduce you to the learning of a second language this speculation would absolutely not be true :
"I've read that if someone takes 6 months of Esperanto lessons + 6 months of Finnish lessons, this person would have a higher command of Finnish than someone who just took 1 year of Finnish with no Esperanto."

Esperanto is very similar to Italian and Spanish when it comes to vocabulary. If Finnish was relatively easy for speakers of Esperanto to learn it should be relatively easy for speakers of Spanish and Italian also but it isn´t.

[Pursuivant]

Esperanto? Close to something?

[filecore]

Esperanto was a bogus language invented by Western Europeans for other Western Europeans because a "universal" language would naturally be based on Latin and direct descendants. However, it has pretty much nothing (grammar, vocabulary, syntax, semantics) in common with Finnish. I can see how a 6 month/6 month approach would give better Finnish skills to those already naturally good at learning languages, but even there I'm sceptical. To be honest, I think you're wasting your time with Esperanto - especially, unlike Finnish, it has no real-world application.

[Rob A.]

Thanks for the quick replies guys.

Kalmisto, I'm sorry but I don't quite understand your argument of "If there was some truth in what you wrote about Esperanto and Finnish it would mean that native speakers of Spanish and Italian would find Finnish relatively easy to learn but they don´t.". From what I was trying to get across and from what I have heard is that Esperanto is great for a monolingual guy such as myself with no second-language knowledge in that it can deprogram your brain and introduce you to the learning of a second language. And if I can learn this Esperanto language in just a few months before moving onto Finnish, would it be worth even these few months of time? Am I making sense at all? haha If not, this explains it more clearly.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Education

I'll definitely take a look at Tammet, thanks!

Interesting thread...good discussion....I think it boils down to this....

If you are motivated enough to learn Esperanto, then you'll likely be the type who is interested in languages and you will likely be motivated enough to learn Finnish at a quicker rate. But if you're already motivated to learn Finnish, then learning Esperanto probably won't make much difference.

Though I suppose the word "motivation" has to be defined.... there are probably plenty of people who could benefit from learning some particular language, but really don't want to have to expend the effort... You know they would rather watch football...or go to the pub...

....far easy just to say: ..."Most of Finns I deal with already speak enough English....so why bother...."....

I've never been particlarly interested in any of the so-called artifical languages, though I would think for Romance language speakers, and English speakers...[because so much of the vocabulary is Latin and French based] ...learning Esperanto and Interlingua would be a "piece of cake".....and I guess it is fair to say these languages are decidely "Indo-Eurocentric"....maybe more precisely ...."Romanocentric"...

[filecore]

If you are motivated enough to learn Esperanto

To be honest, if you want to learn a made-up language, learn Klingon. It'll probably be closer to Finnish in any case, and most likely has more real-world possibilities for use than either Finnish or Esperanto.

[tuulen]

...And if I can learn this Esperanto language in just a few months before moving onto Finnish, would it be worth even these few months of time? Am I making sense at all?...

I suggest that you get started with Finnish, get seriously focused on Finnish, and stay that way. The reason is that Esperanto is a made-up language, but Finnish is so vastly different than the English language you already speak that for you Finnish might as well be a made-up language, too. Moreover, if you spend time and effort to learn Esperanto before learning Finnish then you would be making a transition from one made-up language to another made-up language, and that could only add to the challenges you will face in your study of Finnish.

Consider that the United States Department of State, the department where all the diplomats hang out, ranks the world's languages in their order of difficulty for native English speakers, and it turns out that Finnish is among the most difficult of all of the languages on planet Earth.

In other words, you are in for a serious challenge, but it might help to keep in mind an old joke, that Finnish is not difficult but just different.

I wish you success with your study of Finnish.