Wednesday 26 November 2008

It's all about the exchange of ideas

I have only been learning Esperanto for a few days, but as I search the Internet for information there seems to be a perpetual debate about the usefulness of artificial/constructed languages as opposed to natural languages. The attitudes of people toward Esperanto range from fanatical devotion to outright antipathy.

There are two main criteria that I think are crucial to any language, natural or otherwise, that is intended to be used for general communication between human beings.

1. Does the language allow a person to freely express their ideas?

2. Is it easy for people to become proficient enough in the language to facilitate the exchange of those ideas?

Being new to Esperanto, I am not qualified to give an answer from personal experience to either of the questions above. However, as a native English speaker, I am finding that the construction of the language is allowing me to learn at a much faster rate than I have experienced with natural languages. Whether I will achieve fluency in speech and writing remains to be seen, but at least the complexity of grammar has not proved to be a barrier to me thus far.

3 comments:

Bill Chapman said...

Estas klare, ke vi faras progreson. Mi rekomendas al vi aboni interrnacian revuon.

Iom frue mi deziras al vi feliĉan kristnaskon kaj prosperan novjaron.

celldee said...

Dankon Bill! Mi sekvos vian rekomendon, ankaǔ feliĉan kristnaskon kaj prosperan novjaron al vi.

Harry said...

Interesa blogo Bill

mi esperas, ke vi povas allogi ne esperantistojn!

Feliĉan kristnaskon al vi!

Harry