Esperanto to help learn?

[honkanen]

Thanks for the link, filecore. It's an interesting article about proving how misspelled words are still misspelled words even though they come up in Google. I was just trying to get across that since Google turns up 66.5Mil results from the word Esperanto, that is a good indicator that Esperanto has at least in some way or another been mentioned on that many sites and probably has many articles and websites written in that language as well. I wonder how you are able to get 15.2mil hits for Klingon when for the past couple days each time I type "Klingon" it comes back with 4.08mil hits. Now am I typing it incorrectly? lol

Wow! I never even heard of Navajo before. Looks pretty tough. Icelandic would be awesome to learn but I imagine I'll have more than enough of a challenge with Finnish.

From how I see it, learning Esperanto before my first foreign language is like when I'm weight lifting, I start out by 1 warm-up set which in turn makes the full sets with maximum weight easier to handle. Seriously, I'm quite surprised that no one on this thread has agreed that learning Esperanto before Finnish (or any other language) would be beneficial. I'm constantly finding quotes like this from many literature and linguistic websites. "Studies have shown that people who learn Esperanto for one year and (for example) Japanese for one year end up speaking Japanese better than people who learn Japanese for two years." or "whether your target language is something common like French, difficult like Chinese, or obscure like Yiddish, studies have shown that learning Esperanto first may help you in your study without being a waste of your time".

Being that Esperanto does seem more interesting the more I look into it and the fact that it has tens of thousands of books, including movies, tv shows, radio broadcasts, podcasts, hundreds of periodicals published regularly and the idea that it might help with my first foreign natural language... I think I'll spend at least 3 months and see how it goes.

[filecore]

I wonder how you are able to get 15.2mil hits for Klingon when for the past couple days each time I type "Klingon" it comes back with 4.08mil hits. Now am I typing it incorrectly?

I suppose it's just one more reason of why Google search results don't "prove" anything: http://www.filecore.net/mince/klingon.jpg

And here's my exact URL from that search: http://www.google.fi/search?q=Klingon&i ... =firefox-a

Wow! I never even heard of Navajo before. Looks pretty tough. Icelandic would be awesome to learn but I imagine I'll have more than enough of a challenge with Finnish.

It was made famous a few years back in the Nic Cage WW2 film "Windtalkers"; the USA used native speakers talking to each other in Navajo on the radios, so that secret communications would be almost impossible for the enemy to decipher, since there were very few Navajo speakers around to start with and it was a difficult language to learn.

[honkanen]

Strange. When I click on your exact URL from your search, it comes up with the 4mil hit count as I told you about previously. If you'd like to continue with this Google discussion, perhaps it's better offline. Feel free to PM me.

I've gotta go see about watching that film now.

[mardy]

I don't think that learning esperanto would help any more than learning another language -- it's not any closer to Finnish than Swedish.

If you were to learn a romance language I would definitely recommend interlingua, as a starter.
Ma le distantia inter interlingua e le finnese es plus grande que le distantia inter le Terra e le Luna.

[filecore]

Curiously, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers

[tuulen]

...From how I see it, learning Esperanto before my first foreign language is like when I'm weight lifting, I start out by 1 warm-up set which in turn makes the full sets with maximum weight easier to handle. Seriously, I'm quite surprised that no one on this thread has agreed that learning Esperanto before Finnish (or any other language) would be beneficial. I'm constantly finding quotes like this from many literature and linguistic websites. "Studies have shown that people who learn Esperanto for one year and (for example) Japanese for one year end up speaking Japanese better than people who learn Japanese for two years." or "whether your target language is something common like French, difficult like Chinese, or obscure like Yiddish, studies have shown that learning Esperanto first may help you in your study without being a waste of your time".

Being that Esperanto does seem more interesting the more I look into it and the fact that it has tens of thousands of books, including movies, tv shows, radio broadcasts, podcasts, hundreds of periodicals published regularly and the idea that it might help with my first foreign natural language... I think I'll spend at least 3 months and see how it goes.

Let me suggest that you go to a website populated by Esperanto speakers and then ask them how Esperanto could assist your ability to learn Finnish. However, this website is populated by both native Finnish speakers and those who are learning Finnish, not Esperanto.

Finnish is not my second language, and I can assure you that Finnish is not an easy language to learn, for a number of reasons.

Matrix juggling might be easier to learn.

[honkanen]

Yes, a page or two of posts ago I got the feeling that I should be discussing this on an esperanto forum which I have done. I've also discussed this on other more general linguistics forums too. Probably about 90% of the answers I have received have been to learn Esperanto first. This is why I am surprised at the answers on this forum. Thanks for the tip though.

[filecore]

Probably about 90% of the answers I have received have been to learn Esperanto first. This is why I am surprised at the answers on this forum.

You haven't taken in a single thing anyone's said have you? How many of those Esperanto speakers have learned (or tried to learn) Finnish? I'm betting none. If you were learning Spanish, or Portugese, or Italian, or French, or any of the other Latin-based languages, then perhaps. This is a whole different matter. But you're apparently not interested in our opinions - please come back in six months and let us know how you got on.

[tuulen]

Yes, a page or two of posts ago I got the feeling that I should be discussing this on an esperanto forum which I have done. I've also discussed this on other more general linguistics forums too. Probably about 90% of the answers I have received have been to learn Esperanto first. This is why I am surprised at the answers on this forum. Thanks for the tip though.

Of the 90% of the answers you received, did any of those answers come from Finnish speakers?

I mentioned matrix juggling, matrix in the mathematical sense. I am trained as a mechanical engineer, including years of mathematics, and so I can assure you that matrix juggling is not an easy concept. Moreover, for some reason you seem to not be receptive to the idea that Finnish really does pose a real challenge to learn. OK, maybe the thing for you to do is to spend some time learning Esperanto first, and then go on to Finnish, and that way you will have at least broadened your abilities, good! However, when you eventually do get to Finnish you might discover that you have otherwise wasted your time in learning Esperanto.

I really do wish you well with your study of Finnish, and I am not attempting to waste your time.

[honkanen]

Thanks, I'll take a look at matrix juggling. As for your comment "for some reason you seem to not be receptive to the idea that Finnish really does pose a real challenge to learn", I honestly don't know where you've gotten that idea from. My reason for learning Esperanto is so it may help me in some way with Finnish since I do know Finnish is a very challenging language. I've mentioned in at least one of my other posts word for word that I do know Finnish will be very challenging to me. I've spent a year recently at the local university studying Finnish, although it was only for upwards of 2hr classes once or twice a week. I found Finnish much more challenging then when I was studying Chinese for a year in Taiwan.

[filecore]

My reason for learning Esperanto is so it may help me in some way with Finnish [...] I've spent a year recently at the local university studying Finnish

Am I the only one seeing a problem with this?

[tuulen]

Thanks, I'll take a look at matrix juggling. As for your comment "for some reason you seem to not be receptive to the idea that Finnish really does pose a real challenge to learn", I honestly don't know where you've gotten that idea from. My reason for learning Esperanto is so it may help me in some way with Finnish since I do know Finnish is a very challenging language. I've mentioned in at least one of my other posts word for word that I do know Finnish will be very challenging to me. I've spent a year recently at the local university studying Finnish, although it was only for upwards of 2hr classes once or twice a week. I found Finnish much more challenging then when I was studying Chinese for a year in Taiwan.

Then you already have studied Finnish, so you are not the monolingual person you claimed to be. That contradiction changes your status. For one thing, Finns do not accept dishonesty, and neither do I.

From here on, it matters little as to whatever you might have to say.

Goodbye.

[honkanen]

I was thinking monolingual = person who only speaks one language. Since I am not proficient enough to speak a second language, I wouldn't dare consider myself bilingual at all.

[filecore]

I was about to disagree that he was dishonest about it, because in his original post he didn't mention anything like that, but then I skimmed back and saw these:

it seems that studying Esperanto before studying any other second language speeds and improves learning because learning subsequent foreign languages seems to be easier than learning one's first foreign language. If I can use a grammatically simple auxiliary language to lesson the first foreign language learning hurdle, it seems like taking a few months of learning Esperanto to give me that first foreign language leap onto Finnish would be more beneficial than taking years to learn French, Spanish, German, Russian, etc.. before leaping onto Finnish. another quote from some other website "one's first foreign language is the most difficult to learn. After that, adding an additional foreign language is easier. Since Esperanto is a very easy language to learn, it sets up the student for success in the target language".

From how I see it, learning Esperanto before my first foreign language is like when I'm weight lifting

Now you say you've studied a year of Finnish, and also Chinese? You may argue that you're not multilingual, but this certainly isn't your "first foreign language" - it isn't even your first time approaching Finnish! A year is a long time to start learning.

[tuulen]

...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...

Where do you stand?

Learning the Finnish language implies learning about Finns.

Honesty is a fundamental tenet.