Difficulty of Esperanto?

Question

How hard is it to learn Esperanto and what are the benefits that I would recieve from learning it (being that it was a man-made language).

Answer 1

Pretty easy. With a little effort, you'll be able to start communicating with it in a month (assuming ou have a life and work, etc.). Not fluently, but you'll be able to make yourself clear and understand several topics.
May I ask why you are so worried about the "man-made" issue? Let me give you an example: Norwegian bokmål and Norwegian nynorsk (both official witten forms of Norwegian, both protected by Norwegian law) are man-made languages. In the sense you are using "man-made", of course. Does that make Norwegian a less efective or beautiful or useful language? I don't think so. The Norwegian case is a very interesting one about this topic. But many not interested in that language ignore it. And they think that if a language is depicted by a man, then it is artificial and then it is absolutely crap.
About the benfits. Well.. I was too lazy to read the other answers, but I guess they already talked about contacting people who do not speak your language and who is not yet able to use English to talk with you. But I don't know if they already talked about something I found learning Esperanto. It gave me some expertice in language learning. Esperanto has certain features that english doesn't. Accussative case, for example. It is very simple in Esperanto. But.. if you try to learn Russian or German, you'll find it is much more difficult there. If you try to learn that part of those languages after learning Eseranto, you'll find it is simpler than you thought.

Answer 2

It's actually a fairly easy language to learn. The grammar always follows the rules, no exceptions to the rule like in most languages. You can master the grammer in a few weeks, if you put your mind to it, and then it's just building your vocabulary.

I read once that the primary advantage to Esperanto is that it is a "non political" language. It is not associated with any race, ethnicity, or country. It's the sort of language that has built it's own community of speakers, people from all races, nations, and walks of life. Esperanto is not just confined to textbooks either. You can read magazines, poetry, fiction, and non fiction written in Esperanto, as well as attend conventions and meetings held by speakers of the language. Learning Esperanto is a good way to meet a wider variety of friends and aquaintances.

Answer 3

The real strength of Esperanto is its regular grammar. The past, present and future tense is always the same; -is for past, -as for present and -os for future. Also -us is a conditional tense and -u is an imperitive tense. Nouns end in 'o', adjectives end in 'a' and adverbs end in 'e'. You can always identify the direct object of a sentence because it has an 'n' on the end. This means you can change the order of the sentence and still retain the meaning. There are 28 letters in the alphabet and each has its own sound, NO SILENT LETTERS. If the word is spoken correctly, you automatically know how to spell it. With the system of affixes (10 prefixes and 32 suffixes), if I tell you a root word, you can pretty much figure out the other possible variations of that word. The language is comprised of sixteen simple rules. Learn a few words to go with it and you're set to discuss simple things about yourself. A weeks instruction and you can discuss physics if you've a mind to study an hour a day. Obviously results very, but you get the idea. Once you've got those basics, it's simple a matter of absorbing vocabulary and learning a few more rules. The vocabulary is derived mostly from the romance languages, yet contrary to some suggestions, the Asian half of the world is a great source of Esperantists.
With 2 million plus speakers, it's not hard to find someone who speaks it in each major centre. So you don't have to look much farther than the internet to converse with someone in almost any country. Through Pasport Servo, you can find people that are willing to take you in while you visit their country. You may have to help with the groceries a little, but you'll see things the average torrist wouldn't, because you'll have a friend showing you around. Every year they have a multitude of international meetings (congreso they are called), with the international one in a different country every year, plus smaller local ones in most countries every year.
Want to hear it? Try some of the sites below for music, news, radio broadcasts, you name it.

The down side to Esperanto is that some people, almost to the point of paranoia, think of it as a threat to their language, which is the exact opposite of its intention. Kind of hard to get through to them that nobody is forcing them, and that there is plenty of evidence that you can go far with it.

La Internacia Lingvo is a language that works. It's easier than anything else, and leaves nobody with a sour taste in thier mouth that they have to deal with somebody else on their linguistic terms.

Ĝis la revido = Until the reseeing
aŭ (or) pronounced 'ow' as in 'cow'
Ĝis = bye

Answer 4

From what I have read and studied of Esparanto, it would not be difficult to master. I'm working on Romanian now and I must say Esperanto handles pronouns a couple of orders of magnitude more simply than Romanian. But I've got to go with Taivo's point - I learn Esperanto and then I .....? What comes next? How can I use it? So, to Taivo: majQa'

Answer 5

Aren't all languages "man-made"? =)

As you probably already have noticed, Esperanto is now enjoying a renassaince, thanks in part to the Internet and to the trend toward globalized societies. Its time has finally come.

It's no longer the hobby of a few enthusiasts with a passion for languages, Esperanto has proven to be a valuable tool in many fields, including science and technology.

As a professional translator, I use Esperanto as a bridge between unusual language pairs.

I am also the (paid) coordinator of an Esperanto Kids Club in California. Kids love its logical structure!

As you can see, my small time investment to learn it last year is paying handsome dividends. Plus, I have friends around the world who are as welcome in my home as I am in theirs!

Amike Via,
Mar Kardenas
www.grupoamikema.org

Answer 6

In addition to my native U.S. English, I've learned Esperanto, Spanish, and German. I've also studied Polish and Mandarin, but only to the point that I know a few phrases in each. Esperanto is the easiest to learn of all of these languages, and I've found it to be of the most use. I studied Esperanto out of a book with audio material, and Spanish and German from audio courses with written exercises. In 3-4 months I was able to write intelligibly conversational letters in Esperanto. After over a year of study in each of the other two languages, I still have not reached that level of fluency. In about 18 months of studying Esperanto I could hold conversations with other Esperantists, written and orally, about any subject which interested me.

Some people will tell you that there is no place to use Esperanto, but I use it daily via the Internet. Those same people would also say that you can't travel with it, but there are several Esperanto Guest Services, the largest of which is "La Pasporta Servo" (The Passport Service) where you can go and visit other Esperantists in their homes (In most cases completely free, the service doesn't allow the members to charge for room, but doesn't require them to provide you with food).

I love to read, and through Esperanto I've been able to read stories from other cultures that have never been translated into English.

It's impossible to learn all the languages where I would like to travel, but no matter where you travel, Esperanto can help you out of jams, and give you an instant group of friends all over the world. Get the UEA (world Esperanto organization) year book and the Pasporta Servo book, and you have a list of Esperantists all over the world with their contact information you can call for help if you get into a jam, or maybe just need translation help, or directions.

Even if you never used Esperanto, learning it first would make it easier to learn other languages. This has been documented in several linguistic studies.

I learned Esperanto, not intending to use it, just as an experiment to see if after the age of 40 I could learn a foreign language, but then I found the international community of Esperantists, the library of translated and original works. The extensive collection of Esperanto music, and fell in love with the culture.

I hope you enjoy Esperanto as much as I have.

Gxis!

Answer 7

From the little bit that I know of esperanto, it's a very easy language to learn (straightforward rules, etc.). The downside to learning it, is that not many people worldwide use is!

Answer 8

The difficulty of learning Esperanto is that you will have wasted your time. Esperanto is like Klingon. The only place you can use it is at Esperanto conventions. No country recognizes Esperanto as an official language, no town has signs written in Esperanto, no human population uses Esperanto to converse on a daily basis. Don't waste your time with Esperanto. If you really want to learn a useless language, learn Klingon. It was invented by an American linguist, not a European one :p

Answer 9

Zamenhoff did not placed problems into the language, he used to be honestly seeking to simplify the language. The drawback used to be, he used to be creating a simplified *European* language, and retained a few of the bulky grammatical principles determined in the ones languages, adding contract. I wager he desired to maintain phrase order bendy, however that does not look like a lot of a advantage whilst you need to determine the entire agreements.

Answer 10

It's used only in the United Nations but it was
Replaced with six other languages:
English,Spanish,French,Russian,Chinese,
And Arabic....and it's easy to learn if you're
familiar with the Latin Alphabets.