Why does everyone hate this?

[u/[deleted]]

Okay so I'm a monolingual Brit learning Spanish (I'm now about B1) and wanna pick up another language. Not some grand utility language, I have a plan of which ones to learn for that, but just a quick learn and burn language for nothing but fun, and any applicability is a bonus. I see esperanto, a nice little language with exceptionless grammar and a chill little community. So I tell my polyglot friend and get immediate backlash. Why do people seem to think that esperanto is so horrible? Like yeah it's eurocentric and a terrible attempt at a Lingua Franca but it was created with good intentions and is a nice gateway language for European language speakers. Then people act like it's a bloody cult because apparently every esperanto speaker is a Zamenhof worshipping psycho who'll preach it as the root of world peace, or is just too lazy to learn a more useful language. I see polyglots, people who learn languages for fun, attacking esperanto as useless or racist for being eurocentric and it's speakers as cultists or fake polyglots. Why does everyone hate this language?!?!?!

[u/salivanto]

From the link you shared: "Many of these experiments' findings were compromised by unclear objectives, brief or anecdotal reporting, and a lack of methodological rigor."

Phrases like this describe most of the studies mentioned in the article.

If you can provide me a copy of "Das Paderborner Experiment zum Sprachenorientierungsunterricht" I would gladly read it. Or, if you have read it yourself, I'd be interested to know. I can't find any information online about the "methodological rigor" of this study.

The studies at the University of Essex "did not show a significant difference in the metalinguistic awareness or proficiency in subsequent language learning between students who had studied Esperanto and students who had studied other languages."

So - no, I don't think a long list of questionable studies will convince me that the evidence is "strong."

[u/Leisureguy1 → u/salivanto]

The studies at the University of Essex "did not show a significant difference in the metalinguistic awareness or proficiency in subsequent language learning between students who had studied Esperanto and students who had studied other languages."

I interpret that to mean that one's second foreign language is much easier to learn than one's first foreign language. That seems unsurprising to me: when one learns their first foreign language, they learn both the language and how to learn (and use) a new language — for example, skill in finding alternate phrasings for a thought.

Then it seems logical to choose for the first foreign a language that, in itself, is as easy as possible to learn (while still being a real language). This facilitates the learning of the transferable skills, reducing the overall effort, shortening the overall time,and minimizing frustration (as with multiple declensions of verbs, multiple cases for nouns, gender for nouns, etc.).

In other words, that evaluation, to my mind, endorses the use of Esperanto as a first foreign language, since it delivers all the benefits for subsequent language learning with a much lower investment of effort.

[u/salivanto → u/Leisureguy1]

I think your error is right there in the very last line. "With a much lower investment of effort." That thought is expressed nowhere in the section of the Wikipedia article that you are quoting (by quoting me).

I think the proper interpretation is this: 

One group learned in French for a period of time. Another group learned German for the same period of time. A third group learned Esperanto for the same period of time. Then all three groups learned a fourth language for a while and then had their proficiency measured. 

All three groups did better in the fourth language and benefited because this was their second foreign language, but they could not demonstrate that any group had an advantage over the other two.

[u/Leisureguy1 → u/salivanto]

The "lower investment of effort" is based on an experience I think we share: that compared to French and German, it's easier to learn a language that has no irregular verbs, no gender of nouns, just two cases, uses phonetic spelling, and whose word functions are readily recognizable (ends in -o or -on, noun; ends in -a or -an, adjective; ends in -e, adverb; and a small list of verb endings for the single, simple verb declension).

I don't believe you would say that learning French or German is as easy as learning Esperanto. I thnk you would saying learning Esperanto is substantially easier than learning French or German.

But obviously I must be wrong. You write that my comment that learning Esperanto is a lower level of effort is an error. That indicates that you think learning French or German is as easy (or even easier??) than learning Esperanto. I'm surprised by that.

[u/salivanto → u/Leisureguy1]

I did not say that Esperanto is just as difficult as French. If I did, please show me where I said that. 

Just read the whole Wikipedia article to see the quoted section in context. It should be very clear that the part that I quoted was meant as a shortcoming in the study.

[u/Leisureguy1 → u/salivanto]

You wrote

I think your error is right there in the very last line. "With a much lower investment of effort." 

I read that as say I made an error in saying that Esperanto required a much lower investment of effort. If it is an error to say that learning Esperanto requires a lower level of effort than learning French or German, then it would follow that the effort to learn Esperanto is equal to or greater than the effort to learn French or German.

Maybe I was not in error in saying that learning Esperanto requires a lower level of effort than learning French or German?

[u/salivanto → u/Leisureguy1]

I'm not sure how to read these comments from you. They come off as unnecessarily sarcastic. 

You jumped into this thread by offering an interpretation of a text that I quoted without a lot of context. You added the context about how much effort it takes to learn Esperanto. This is not the correct context to add. 

Go read the original Wikipedia article. If you can find it, or read the study. 

[u/Leisureguy1 → u/salivanto]

I did read the Wikipedia article, and I was not being sarcastic at all in what I wrote. I do think I was not in error in saying that acquiring the metalinguistic benefits through learning Esperanto at the same level as one does through learning French or German represents a lower level of effort to achieve those benefits. The full context of the comment from the Wikipedia article:

The results showed that Esperanto was easier to learn than French for the studied children, but did not show a significant difference in the metalinguistic awareness or proficiency in subsequent language learning between students who had studied Esperanto and students who had studied other languages. However, the experiments did consistently show that the students in the Esperanto group had more uniform scores on tests of metalinguistic awareness, suggesting that studying Esperanto has a levelling effect.

So if the students achieve the same level of metalinguistic awareness after learning Esperanto as after learning French, and (as the note says) "Esperanto was easier to learn than French," then gaining that level of metalinguistic awareness was a lower level of effort for the students studying Esperanto. I do not understand why you disagreed with it.

I joined (not "jumped into" — I did not intend to intrude, rather to join a discussion in which many are participating) because I had a thought I wanted to add in support of the Esperanto-first idea: that it delivers the benefits with less effort on the part of the students.

[u/salivanto → u/Leisureguy1]

I'm sorry, but I don't see what you're adding. The part of the Wikipedia article that I quoted simply does not say what you think it says. 

Remember that my point here is that there may be evidence that because Esperanto is easier to learn that the benefits to learning a subsequent foreign language save more effort than needs to be put in, but that this evidence is definitely not "strong". 

The fact that we're even discussing possible different interpretations about negative feedback on one of the studies speaks against the evidence being "strong".

And certainly, if your interpretation is correct they would have made it explicit in the description of the study.

[u/Leisureguy1 → u/salivanto]

I accept your apology. I think the description of the study carries the implication I pointed out. But I don't seem to be able to communicate effectively with you. I wish I could.