Can An Italian Understand Esperanto? And Can You? LET'S TEST IT!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 ก.ค. 2024
- Is Esperanto really so easy that any Romance language speaker could just understand it?
Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /ˌɛspəˈræntoʊ/)[7][8] is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (la Lingvo Internacia). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro), which he published under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto. Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes".[9]
Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and a priori (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary, syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with some of it influenced from Germanic languages.[10] One of the language's most notable features is its extensive system of derivation, where prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate words, making it possible to communicate effectively with a smaller set of words.
Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand.[3] Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000.[4] Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate.[11][12] Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" (Esperantistoj).
Official use
In 1908, Wilhelm Molly proposed making Neutral Moresnet the world's first Esperanto‑speaking state.
Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country, but it entered the education systems of several countries, such as Hungary[13] and China.[14]
There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state; any such plans came to an end when the Treaty of Versailles awarded the disputed territory to Belgium, effective January 10, 1920. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island, near Italy in the Adriatic Sea, used Esperanto as its official language in 1968, and another micronation, the extant Republic of Molossia.
#esperanto #italian #romance
There is actually a specific way to pronounce Esperanto. Obviously, individuals may “bring their accent from home “ but there is a standard to emulate.
To add to @oronjoffe's comment, as a prior student of Spanish (years ago, when I attended high school), it has often been my guide when vocalizing Esperanto, however it is my understanding that the "standard to emulate" is, in fact, Italian. I seem to recall reading once that that was Zamenhoff's vision for EO's pronunciation.
@@jaerivusI had also thought that Italian seemed to be closest to what Esperanto emulates, annunciation wise.😊
You're quite right. It's worth saying that the speaker in the first video (with the cartoons) doesn't speak the language well and mispronounced many words (for example she nasalised the n at the end of the words, as if speaking French)
@@jaerivus I am a native Spanish speaker, and when I try speaking Esperanto quickly without adding an accent, it sounds somewhat Italian to me.
I've acquired Esperanto without learning it, just by reading and listening to it. After two years I'm a confident user and I communicate in Esperanto with people from different countries almost every day. It has culture: music, films books, radio, podcasts, plays, social nets etc.
@Aubert1926 Do you know that Hitler and Stalin killed many Esperantists just because they spoke Esperanto? They definitely didn't think that their culture didn't count. Culture, it's a human construct, not something that belongs to a piece of land. It's in our minds, mate.
@Aubert1926 On December 15 (L. L. Zamenhof's birthday), Esperanto speakers around the world celebrate Zamenhof Day, sometimes called Book Day. It's a common goal to have a book written in Esperanto published on or by that day, as Zamenhof was a strong advocate of the idea that in order to spread Esperanto around the world, its speakers need to create a large body of literature.
As Esperanto speakers are from all over the world, and families whose children speak Esperanto natively usually have parents from two vastly different countries, recipes incorporating elements from different countries are naturally born. Traditional foods are also enjoyed in settings where a native wouldn't normally mix or eat them.
One cookbook is Internacie kuiri “Cooking Internationally” by Maria Becker-Meisberger
Esperanto speakers create a makeshift café Gufujo
(whether in a rented space or someone's home), using Esperanto coins or voucher-like items as well as real money to pay for food and drink. Live music, poetry reading, or literature reading are usual activities. This custom arose in 1995 in order to contrast with the more usual custom of after-convention partying at a bar.
There are over 25,000 Esperanto books (originals and translations) as well as over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. This is despite that Esperanto has only existed for around 100 years. In comparison, the entire literature of Iceland (a country created in the 900s, and with a population of around 320,000 people) totals fewer than 50,000 books.
@Aubert1926 And you decided to spend your time laying about Esperanto culture. We have nook, music, events, important dates, knowsn people dead and alive, jokes, memes and many more. Esperantujo national food is Ananasanaso - baked duck with pinapple. Our clothes are T-shirts with Esperanto stuff printed on it. There's also the tradition of gufujo, so a place during an event where esperantist who don't dink alcohol and don't like partying can drink some tea and talk pacefully.
What are some esperanto podcasts you like?
@@iknowyouwanttofly
Usone Persone, Varsovia Vento, Babibejo, Kernpunkto
As you noticed, Esperanto was not made to be easy to understand straight away; it was made to be easy to learn with a little studying. The grammar is very simple and regular, and the vocabulary is also easy to memorize, since it has a relatively small amount of morphemes and builds up words using prefixes and suffixes.
As a romance language speaker, you have an advantage only in recognizing a lot of the morphemes, but you'd still need to learn the grammar and the agglutination system. Which is quite easy to learn, but you still need to look it up first.
For a language that is easy to pick up directly for a romance language speaker, you should try Interlingua.
The woman in the second video is a native Esperanto speaker. Her parents brought her up speaking the language is her first language. I found that to be most extraordinary.
And especially a pretty much compelling counterpoint to Raffaello's argumento of "Esperanto has no culture"
So she had no friends growing up? Honest question because people learn their first language mostly from friends and not parents. So her friends' talked with her in her 2nd language?
@@TheRedleg69 For centuris der hav bied de idea ov kreating an linguaj dat alau pople ov diferente kultures ande nativ linguajes tu komunik wid ich oder. Somtaimes dises linguajes bied kreated spontaneli, soch az de Sabir, an linguaj used bai Mediteranean merkantes in de Midel Eijes, olsou noued az lingua franka, an espresion dat mor leit komed tu min eni international ande interkultural linguaj.
Meni taimes in histori de national linguaj ov an imper hav komed tu funtion az an regional lingua franka. Somting similar bi kurenteli hapening wid Inglish, bot weldewaid. Der bi meni rationes hwai Inglish bi not de mouste siutable medi ov international komunikation: 1) Itez speling bi kaotik. 2) Itez fonetike bi difikul. 3) It bi an imperialiste linguaj. 4) Dates hu spik it az an nativ tong hav an vantaj ouver oderes.
@@TheRedleg69 Artificial linguajes kreated espresli for international komunikation bi koled auksiliar linguajes. Ov dises, de mouste sukcesful hav bied Esperanto. Ande hwen Ai sei sukcesful Ai min berli ouver an milion spikeres arotunde de welde. Ai reali laik Esperanto, bot it siem dat it bi far from achiving itez initial goul ov bing an universal lingua franka.
Dat bi hwai Ai kreated Winglish, hwich bi ovioli veri moch based on Inglish, bot olsou on Spanish, Francese, Portugese, German ande Italian, wid an fonetik ortografi, an izi fonetike ande an iven mor simple gramatike dan dat ov Inglish.
@@juandiegovalverde1982 you created your own "international" language bases on Germanic and Romance languages? Lol
Metatronic language coming when?
I spoke and read stories to my children in Esperanto. We still listen to world news in it. Honestly, I think it helped them with their language learning for school now. They know Esperanto, Japanese, English, and American Sign Language since birth. Now they are learning Russian, German, Spanish and Mandarin in school.
I have had the hardest time in the world finding *anyone* to practice ASL with 😩 More than any other language i’ve ever studied. It’s a million times easier for me to find practice partners for Esperanto or Toki Pona than ASL, which is crazy to me.
Anyway i’m glad you have your kids the gift of multilingualism from the beginning. Beginning the journey as an adult is way more of a grind!
@melonhusk562 For centuris der hav bied de idea ov kreating an linguaj dat alau pople ov diferente kultures ande nativ linguajes tu komunik wid ich oder. Somtaimes dises linguajes bied kreated spontaneli, soch az de Sabir, an linguaj used bai Mediteranean merkantes in de Midel Eijes, olsou noued az lingua franka, an espresion dat mor leit komed tu min eni international ande interkultural linguaj.
Meni taimes in histori de national linguaj ov an imper hav komed tu funtion az an regional lingua franka. Somting similar bi kurenteli hapening wid Inglish, bot weldewaid. Der bi meni rationes hwai Inglish bi not de mouste siutable medi ov international komunikation: 1) Itez speling bi kaotik. 2) Itez fonetike bi difikul. 3) It bi an imperialiste linguaj. 4) Dates hu spik it az an nativ tong hav an vantaj ouver oderes.
@melonhusk562 Artificial linguajes kreated espresli for international komunikation bi koled auksiliar linguajes. Ov dises, de mouste sukcesful hav bied Esperanto. Ande hwen Ai sei sukcesful Ai min berli ouver an milion spikeres arotunde de welde. Ai reali laik Esperanto, bot it siem dat it bi far from achiving itez initial goul ov bing an universal lingua franka.
Dat bi hwai Ai kreated Winglish, hwich bi ovioli veri moch based on Inglish, bot olsou on Spanish, Francese, Portugese, German ande Italian, wid an fonetik ortografi, an izi fonetike ande an iven mor simple gramatike dan dat ov Inglish.
@@ADS_Fenix maybe they aren't that present online, cause internet is not that welcoming for them. I'm in Brazil and always see groups of people in downtown practicing our sign language.
Try looking for a physical place where they usually go to socialize. Look for social groups.
The "real" woman that you were listening to was explaining how she is a native Esperanto speaker who uses it every day, she writes and runs podcasts in Esperanto. She said that Esperanto culture has enriched her life. She very much enjoys having so many international contacts thanks to the language. She's thankful that being bilingual with Esperanto as one of the languages has made it easier for her to learn other languages. She speaks English, French, Dutch, and also plans to learn other languages. Then she says that this is a little about me and hopes you will enjoy learning the language. Esperanto is a good language to make international connections - all around the world - with interesting people.
Esperanto has been used in schools in a testing capacity to see how it helps people with the aptitudes necessary to learn other languages such as French, etc. They had students take a year or a half a year of Esperanto and then start with French, and the other group started with French and continued without changing languages. The study found that those who started with Esperanto and then French learned as much French or more than the group who stuck with only French.
The "culture" of Esperanto does exist - sort of in terms of a community of international peace idealism - yet no ideal is imposed with the language, but rather encouraged. The culture is to be found in the people that gather in meetups and conferences - where the language is used, and also through what we as individuals create with the language. Come to think of it, that's how all cultures grow - with the help of individual contributor who speaks the culture's language - such as yourself with Italian culture. So there - my spiel on the language of Esperanto. (and translation of the native speaker)
I think that's the real power of Esperanto. If you're monolingual it can be very hard to learn a foreign language, and learning a simple language like Esperanto first might prime you to acquire other languages more easily. Especially languages that Esperanto has borrowed vocabulary from.
I'm Brazilian, came here because of the Portuguese reactions, but am already addicted to all the videos. Learning about new languages is fascinating, I love it
Eu também, desde Itália.
Eu também
Salve, tbm curti demais, mas já assistia o canal de história, armas e armaduras dele. Os de espanhol são bem divertidos tbm.
@@wellgaroa é por isso que ele sempre abre a página de escudo da Wikipedia?
@@jesseolii talvez, e também porque o verbete existe em muitas línguas, além das traduções e versões parecerem consistentes entre os idiomas.
Your objection to Esperanto's lack of culture was largely shared by J. R. R. Tolkien.
For his own constructed language, he decided the best thing to do was develop a culture for the language.
Man was built different.
Not really. Tolkien created a language first just like Esperanto...then created a story and culture to justify and explore it. So he did exactly what Zamenhof did. Had Zamenhof wrote a successful epic we wouldn't be saying that now. And the thing about Esperanto no one wants to talk about is why it failed, because the French got involved and stopped it cause they wanted to keep French the lingua franca status it had a the time. Had it continued, it wouldn't need a culture, it might have had every culture to draw from that spoke it.
@@unarealtaragionevoleEsperanto failed to catch on for a number of reasons beyond suppression by national governments and targeted persecution by both the soviets and nazis (likely because many prominent Esperanto advocates were Jewish). Esperanto failed because it was a language that no people group could understand, no existing language was mutually intelligible (so you still have to learn it) so in effect it ended up trying to replace lingua franca's (English or French) that each had MILLIONS of people already speaking then. A lingua franca becomes the dominant language because of the power projection and cultural influence of the country that uses it. French was a lingua franca because France was a massive economic, diplomatic, military and cultural power, and everyone would learn French because they wanted to interact and take part in any one of those areas. Esperanto brought not one of these to the table. France didn't need to suppress Esperanto, all it had to do was keep doing things in French, and since Esperanto couldn't open any doors that French could, it left Esperanto with no utility beyond curiosity.
@@unarealtaragionevoleNot at all comparable to J.R.R. Tolkien, who created many complex beautiful languages for his Middle Earth universe, combining his imagination with his knowledge of elements all different real world languages e.g. Quenya language of High Elves was based on features of Finnish, Latin, and Greek. Tolkien’s constructed languages were meant to be unique and beautiful, befitting his high fantasy world, where languages did reflect the intricate cultures of the races of Middle Earth. Tolkien’s languages are not deliberately made to be dumbed-down, ugly, plain, and deracinated like Zamenhof’s Esperanto conlang made with the intent of replacing beautiful real human languages-which would never have happened regardless of whether the French disliked it or not. As Metatron summed up, Esperanto is ugly and empty, and waste of time unless you are some sort of curious hobbyist.
@@restitvtororbis5330 Funny...this is the exact argument the French used when they actively did everything they could to kill the spread of usage of Esperanto when they saw how popular and influential it was coming. They said, "Don't learn this new, innovative, neutral, and popular language when you should be learning our language instead because we think it's more useful and better." And don't compare it with English, English was not as universal at this point in history. French was the world lingua franca at this time for world communication still. English wouldn't be the dominant until later.
@@InqvisitorMagnvs Waste of time. This is one thing I do not agree with Metatron on. He is basing his opinion on the number of speakers, and his clear lack of knowledge of where an how the language is actually being used. Which is sad and funny as Esperanto has more speakers than many natural languages. Does this make those natural real world languages soulless and a waste of time because they are only used by a small number therefore nothing more than an oddity being shared by a few? And if he believes that it's more important when choosing a language you should pick a language that's more useful or practical to your task at hand...then between Esperanto and Quenya there's no question which is the better choice. You are correct in that they took opposite linguistic approaches with Tolkien wanted to create unique (not complex) as he literally stole the best parts of a few languages for his languages, while Zamenhof tried to simplify the worst parts of languages in order for mass communication for his language. But let's compare their legacy. There are more speakers of Esperanto than all Tolkien languages combined. Esperanto has an official status in working governments. Esperanto is a language of the internet with communities across the world? Where is Tolkien's legacy and linguistic success? What is the difference in reception of people if one says "I am fluent in Esperanto," or "I am fluent in Quenya?" Exactly....
Have you studied the history of Tolkien and his work? Because there was a very 'romanticized' telling of his work and purposes presented here. And frankly, there was a bit of his history not being properly told. First, Tolkien created his first constructed language Elfin as nothing more than a professional and academic thought experiment. In this regard he did and failed just as Zamenhof did. He created a made up language no one liked or wanted to bother with. Elfin by the way was a direct knock off of Finnish by Tolkien's own admission, and the reason he said Elfin failed. He said, you cannot simply re-construct an already existing language because people will just say 'learn that language.' He knew what he had to do, he had to make it unique. This is why he created an imaginary group of speakers (the elves). Then he started small by telling stories to his kids, that was the birth of his story telling, the creation of his cultures and languages, and finally the books. And sadly, as I do admire his work....his books are where his ideas and beliefs remain and nothing more.
So if are going to model our attempts and at constructing a useful language for actual real world usage...who should we be looking for a model. An author' who couldn't make his beliefs work past is books? Or a person who beliefs actually succeeded in creating a new language actively being used by the world for its ability to streamline linguistic complexity allowing for mass communication centuries after it's creation? If it's alive, then it has a soul....and Esperanto is very much alive.
Was looking forward to this one! Esperanto is the first "foreign" language I learned to fluency. It's no secret that the language has its quirks and shortcomings, which become even more glaringly obvious once you gain some proficiency in it. But I can't deny the fact that because I speak it, I've met amazing people from all over the world (many of whom don't speak English well, or at all), shared some really cool exchanges about culture, music, memes etc. and gained a much stronger understanding of grammar & parts of speech due to its design, which has made studying natural languages significantly less difficult for me. Je via sano, Metatron!
I started learning Esperanto in 2004. I had already studied and learned at least 5 "useful" foreign languages by that point. I couldn't decide which language to take on next, and that "indecision" led me to Esperanto. My verdict. It's a good starter foreign language, like a good starter musical instrument would be a recorder. There are a lot of interesting affixes in Esperanto, including the "reversing" mal-: bona/good -> malbona/bad, the feminizing -in-: viro/man -> virino/woman. Someone starting out with Esperanto will acquire the tools and the experience needed to study other foreign languages, especially Romance languages as most of Esperanto's vocabulary draw from those as well as from Latin itself.
At one point she talked about being asked what her "denaska lingvo" is. In English you'd say "native language", but the Esperanto version is more literally "from-birth language".The "-in" feminine suffix will be familiar to German and Dutch speakers, and yes, "kaj" for "and" is Greek. Sometimes Esperanto pronunciation fakes me out on German and English cognates. At first, I thought "birdo" (bird) was money you'd use to buy beer.
My very favorite Esperanto phrase, though, is "latinidaj lingvoj", Romance languages, literally languages that are children of Latin. "-id" is used for offspring; "hundido", puppy, "katido", kitten, etc.
Vespero or vespro means "that period of the day when the sun sets" in Italian. There is also vespers in English and other versions of the word in other Romance languages. It's a sophisticated word but it's absolutely Italic.
The chart was wrong; that's what confused Metatron. "Bonan vesperon" indeed means "Good evening". "Good afternoon" (or good day) is "Bonan tagon."
Vesperum comes from Vesper - Venus, which appears in the afternoon. In Portuguese somerhing that is related to the afternoon is called Vespertino.
Excess it wasn’t “vesperum”; he misheard “vesperon”.
Anyway, cool, i didn’t know that word in Portuguese yet :o
We have the same word in Spanish. For example jobs and courses are anounced as Turno Matutino and Turno Vespertino, depending the hours.
@@jdnw85 😱😱 Khéeeee?! xD Jaja he hablado español por como una década y nunca sabía eso, wau!
We have the same word in Italian: "vespertino" to refer to something in the late afternoon (which would be "vespro", not really used anymore), around sunset. But I reckon it's not a common word, sort of archaic or literary or related to the "hours" of Catholic prayers.
I've been a long-time Metatron subscriber and am glad there are more language videos, but this one is unfair. Nobody said you can understand Esperanto without training. The grammar is unique, and the vocabulary is an arbitrary mixture of Romance and Germanic and others. You don't dismiss Portuguese or Japanese because you don't understand them immediately. Esperanto has a culture, just not a national culture. The main reason to learn it now is if you enjoy it.
Saluton, Metatron! First time seeing you talking about Esperanto and, unfortunately there are a lot of misconceptions and prejudices about this language. I respect the choice of learn it or not, but let’s face that not everyone is on the same circumstance. Me, I’m a native Spanish Speaker and English was my first foreign language to learn. In other words, according to your last opinion, it will be enough for me to know the world with these languages.
The thing is, actually, I felt myself completely isolated from the rest of the world because I only knew two languages. It sounds maybe weird to you, but knowing there are thousands of languages out there, I’ve got that feeling of isolation or a biased worldview. My approach to Esperanto was as any language. I wouldn’t recommend to criticize how simple or hard it is without looking first its rules. Trust me, if you at least give it your 15min only to read the rules of Esperanto, your understanding of the clips will be exponentially better.
Esperanto has a charm, the community of speakers are very worthy to meet, and it actually can be helpful to learn other languages. Yes, Esperanto on itself may be not useful against a modern lingua franca, but it really can help you to understand many grammatical topics that, otherwise, may be harder to understand in other languages. Anyway, I’m not saying you need to learn it if you don’t want, but certainly I suggest to be more reasonable with your arguments and opinions, especially if you haven’t researched about the language. And yes, Asian and Slavic people certainty do learn Esperanto and they understand and use it very well.
If you want to hear another clip, this time with subtitles, I recommend you to check one of my own:
th-cam.com/video/gf1Cg1vCpQQ/w-d-xo.html
Dankon, Metatron and see you later.
Good evening,thanks for your video on esperanto.I would like to say that since i have learned esperanto,in the 80s, it has been my favorite language and i even keep a diary in this language.I am brazilian and use esperanto every day. I heard it took two hours for Tolstoy to be able to read in and understand it .Einstein was another supporter and many other distinguished people. By the way,it already has its own culture. Please,dont get me wrong,my point is to give you a bit more information about it.I am your fan.
I love your dedication!
i just now realised that you change the colours of the lights behind you according to the flags related to the languages you're testing.
it's incredible that i hadn't figured this out earlier. really nice touch
the girl from hungary speaks esperanto as first language makes a potcast in Esperento and teaches Esperanto; the word dank (thank) she used often comes from German my first language
I seriously hope that her parents also did teach her how to speak Hungarian. Otherwise her esperanto would count as child abuse.
@@tovarishcheleonora8542 It would be impossible for her to live life without picking up a language outside of Esperanto. A lot of people don't have to deliberately teach their children how to speak. The children pick it up from their family, TV, school, and whatever else.
@@chickenstrangler3826 I mean, the parents could easily make an environment for a place where she only could hear the fake language, and only could learn/meat with other languages as an adult. It's a different question if it's legal or if it's counts as child abuse or not.
But not impossible at all. And believe me, there are people who makes fake languages and lot of them already did play with the thought of an environment like that, but for their own creatons.
I am slavic and it sure feels unintuitive.
Still cool to find myself understand some places, ofc.
Ty for a commentary, Raf. Love you!
Us Slavs have our own universal Interslavic language which is intelligible to most Slavic language speakers. Not sure whether grammar and words are direct grabs form existing Slavic languages or made-up forms based on common elements but most speakers can understand 90% of it. Of course, you need to learn it to be able to speak it.
@@maricallo6143 id like to hear your take which is it, cause i m not sure
@@maricallo6143What's it called?
@@vincentstef5708 medžuslovjansky/меджусловјанскы
@@maricallo6143 If you know Interslavic (for Slavic languages), there's a Romance language counterpart called "Romance Neolatino", or just "Neolatin".
I don't think it's fair at all to say there's no culture in esperanto. Ithas original works, there's a vision and a community behind it
So, what's easier about learning Esperanto is that almost everything is completely regular. You learn the 16 rules of the grammar and you know the whole grammar. It takes about an hour... but you still have to learn the vocabulary and that takes just a long as any other language. (There are also some customary word order choices that are not specified in the grammar and you'll sound funny if you get them wrong.)
There is a culture among Esperantists and there are native speakers. This usually occurs when a couple meets at an Esperanto conference and the start out with no other language in common. Their children are likely to be native speakers.
There is not a problem with pronunciation between natives of different languages. The pronunciation is also regular and well defined. Everyone is aiming at the same target, although we don't all get it right all the time.
I do think at this point in time, English is so well accepted as the de facto international language, that Esperanto cannot succeed, but this was not true in the late 70s when I started learning it.
You wrote: "... you still have to learn the vocabulary and that takes just a long as any other language". Vocabulary learning has been greatly reduced as many thousands of words are formed from a relatively small number of vocabulary roots and suffixes. In his first book Zamenhof included a list with 900 roots that could expand very easely to more than thousands of words. Sinjoro (sir), sinjorino (lady) and also ĉevalo (stallion), ĉevalino (mare), etc. / sana (healthy), malsana (sick) ) and also hela (bright), malhela (dark), etc. / devi (to be obliged), devo (duty) and also manĝi (to eat), manĝo (food) / arbo (tree), arbaro (forest) and also vorto (word), vortaro (dictionary) / etc. etc. etc.
unravellingmag.com/articles/creating-new-words-in-esperanto/
Esperanto has a very specific rule about pronunciation. It's completely regular. There are no room to regional changes, if you speak it corectly. Every syllable can be read with only one pronunciation, por example: "kampo"... as a Brazilian I would say "câmpu", completely against the rule, with the "closed A", like the "U" in "BUT" and with the "O" sounding like "U", because it's on the end of the word. In this case, the correct pronunciation would be like Spanish or Italian (with an opened A) and with the "O" really sounding like "O", even in the end of a word. Other rule is that the stress is always in the second from the last syllable, except, of course, in one-syllable words.
Esperanto was not made to be easy to understand if you're not familiar with the language, it was made to be easy to learn... with a much more easy grammar end basic rules to make new words.
But I'm agree with you... it's very "eurocentric", based mostly in a few European languages, so, not "universal". And yes, it does not have a real "cultural base". Although, in a few contries there are a "good" number of people who speak it, like here in Brazil. But still very few comparing to the entire population.
That’s not true, though. Firstly, “c” is pronounced the same way as “ts”, so it is not in fact completely predictable. Secondly, we just pronounce things differently - an English speaker’s “r” is different from a German speaker’s which is different from a Spanish speaker’s which may even be unrecognisable to a Mandarin speaker. Esperanto’s phonology is far too complex and occasionally even irregular, so it is really quite unsuited for a “lingvo internacia”.
@@Parso77 I never said the sounds in esperanto are predictable. I said it has clear rules. A "C" always sounds like "ts". It can sound weird, but it's a clear rule.
I also never said it was an easy language, I said that it was made to be easy to learn But I agree with you. It is still really complex (specially dependind on the speaker first language).
I also never said it was suited for a international language.
Seu inglês escrito se vê incrível! Mas ha *uma* coisa pequena.. “I’m agree” is a common mistake for speakers of Romance languages. “Agree” is actually a verb, so it’d be “I agree”. Maybe it was as just a typo since everything else looked great, but it’s a tip in case it wasn’t. 👍 Anyway, i agree with your comment.
@@ADS_Fenix Thanks.
You are very knowledgeable and I’m impressed with your in-depth knowledge of language.
6:08 somebody more knowledgeable is welcome to correct me but as much as I understand it the goal wasn't to make Esperanto something that would be easily understandable by non-Esperanto speakers, but instead something with roots and common grammatical patterns that would be easily recognized and adopted by people already speaking the languages from which the roots and grammar patterns were adopted which ultimately softens the learning curve and makes the language itself easier to acquire and be understood by those learning it.
Basically true. One argument I've heard is that an international language should rightly take words from all over the globe. However, that would not make the language more easily learned. How many people would know that "ngombe" means cow in Swahili if that were used in an auxiliary language? Since a large part of the world speaks English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, or has learned one of them as a second language, an auxiliary language based on Latin is more logical. "Cow" (genderless) in Esperanto is "bovo", a Latin derived word and cognate to English "bovine." There are still Germanic, Slavic, and other language families represented in Esperanto, however. "Knabo", meaning boy, is from German. The questioning particle "ĉu" (choo) is straight out of Polish. Edzo and edzino (husband and wife) come from Yiddish. Etc.
The problem is that Esperanto is heavily based on Romance languages, so those are the people for whom it's easy to learn. But if you already speak a Romance language, you would be better off learning Spanish. It's true that Spanish is more difficult to learn, but far, far more people speak it. Why would anyone learn this?
@@isaacbruner65 Esperanto will definitely be easier for people who speak Romance languages, especially Italian and French speakers or regional languages close to them. However, Esperanto is also much easier for people learn to speak than Spanish, especially if you are *not* a native speaker of a Romance language. Of course, I'll never convince you of this unless you actively *try* to learn the language for a while and see what I'm actually talking about. Try for six months, then get back to me.
I sympathize with the person who created Esperanto. He lived in Poland when it was part of the Russian Empire. My mother's family were Polish speaker also living in the Russian Empire. My grandparents regularly used at least 3 languages: Polish, Lithuanian and Russian before they moved to the US. I think in the end Esperanto was a failure but it was at least a noble failure.
It still has a thriving community with many millions of speakers well over a century later; i wouldn’t call that a failure 🤷♂️ It’s by far the most successful conlang in history.
@@ADS_Fenix Who are these "many millions of speakers"? There's only 2 million at the highest estimates. And that's as a second/third language
@@MW_Asura For centuris der hav bied de idea ov kreating an linguaj dat alau pople ov diferente kultures ande nativ linguajes tu komunik wid ich oder. Somtaimes dises linguajes bied kreated spontaneli, soch az de Sabir, an linguaj used bai Mediteranean merkantes in de Midel Eijes, olsou noued az lingua franka, an espresion dat mor leit komed tu min eni international ande interkultural linguaj.
Meni taimes in histori de national linguaj ov an imper hav komed tu funtion az an regional lingua franka. Somting similar bi kurenteli hapening wid Inglish, bot weldewaid. Der bi meni rationes hwai Inglish bi not de mouste siutable medi ov international komunikation: 1) Itez speling bi kaotik. 2) Itez fonetike bi difikul. 3) It bi an imperialiste linguaj. 4) Dates hu spik it az an nativ tong hav an vantaj ouver oderes.
@@MW_Asura Artificial linguajes kreated espresli for international komunikation bi koled auksiliar linguajes. Ov dises, de mouste sukcesful hav bied Esperanto. Ande hwen Ai sei sukcesful Ai min berli ouver an milion spikeres arotunde de welde. Ai reali laik Esperanto, bot it siem dat it bi far from achiving itez initial goul ov bing an universal lingua franka.
Dat bi hwai Ai kreated Winglish, hwich bi ovioli veri moch based on Inglish, bot olsou on Spanish, Francese, Portugese, German ande Italian, wid an fonetik ortografi, an izi fonetike ande an iven mor simple gramatike dan dat ov Inglish.
@@juandiegovalverde1982 the way you write intrigue me, and how I understand it all... ósome, Thenk yu
The point of being easy is not that it would be easy for any one European language to recognize words, it's its extremely regular and simple grammar the whole point.
So it wouldn't be much harder for Asian languages, maybe it would be even easier because there is no risk of false friends.
Esperanto has been pretty popular in japan and China, for example.
I think you should review Interlingua! It’s focused on mutual intelligibility between Romance languages, and from what I’ve seen, someone speaking Spanish or Italian can understand maybe nearly 80-90 of what is being said
My thoughts exactly :D
It would be too easy. Metatron would grasp 95-100% of it.
While it is a common mistake, I must say that Interlingua is *NOT* an auxiliary language focused on mutual intelligibility between Romance languages. More specifically, Interlingua was designed as a general, international auxilary language for speakers of European languages in general (including English, German, and Russian). The strongest evidence of this, besides the fact that the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) never specifically described Interlingua as being only for speakers of Romance languages, is the fact is that English is a primary control language along with the Romance languages. As a result, while the vocabulary is highly influenced by Romance languages and Classical Latin, the grammar is most definitely *NOT* Romance due to the influence of English. Furthermore, in order to achieve the project's goal of internationality, Interlingua's grammar developed a "minimum grammar", meaning, if one grammatical trait was absent in even just one of the primary control languages (Spanish/Portuguese, French, Italian, and English), it was left out. Because of this, Interlingua lacks many key Romance traits that makes it so that, in spite of its vocabulary, it cannot be in good conscious called a "Pan-Romance" project. For example, Interlingua lacks different verb conjugations, noun & adjective agreement, differentiation between imperfect past and preterite past, the subjunctive mood, and the present progressive tense.
If you want a Pan-Romance language focused *only* on uniting Romance languages, similar to how Interslavic only focused on Slavic languages, the official counterpart is a project called "Romance Neolatino", or just Neolatin. I mention all this because I've seen people online get angry about Interlingua, saying that it's "awkward" or even "soulless" because people keep repeating a false objective that was never the intention of Interlingua's creators.
Interlingua has a lot of Romance influence but also some Greek anf non-Romance words. I think that Lingua Franca Nova (also called Elefen/LFN) sounds even more like a Romance language.
Metatron please do Interlingua. Esperanto is not designed to be immediately understandable so it's not surprising that it isn't. Interlingua is and I think it would be a perfect candidate for this series.
I have learned Esperanto and I find it interesting from a broad sociolinguistic perspective, but I also agree that it isn’t as “easy” as is often claimed. It may be worth doing a video on how you define “easy” in language learning because I think the mistake some very keen Esperantists make is that what makes a language “easy” is purely the regularity of its grammatical structure. On the contrary, what makes a language “easy” is the learner’s motivation, the ease of exposure (is it easy to find on Netflix or can you buy books in it?), the commonality of its vocabulary (Indonesian is “structurally easier” than Spanish, but if you already speak Italian or even English then clearly Spanish is “easier” than Indonesian), and also the phonology (this is a big failing of Esperanto, which simply has too many separate sounds, which in fact seem to be based on Slavic more than anything). Sed mi sxatas tiujn videojn kaj volus vidi pli!
Esperanto is several times easier to learn than constructed languages. However, it *is* a language, and still must be learned. It must be able to convey complex ideas, sustain poetry and literature, while simultaneously allowing people of widely different cultures to communicate fluently and comprehensibly. That's no small task.
As far as auxiliaty languages go, I think Interslav might be the most interesting one out there from a utility perspective. I don't speak any slavic languages myself and I don't think you do either, but it seems people from al slavic languages can understand a lot more of interslav that they can understand each other.
I think zonal auxiliary languages such as Interslavic (for Slavic languages) and Romance Neolatino/Neolatin (for Romance languages) are excellent tools of communication within their respective language subgroups! While we're on the topic of zonal auxiliary languages, there are also some other ones. For Germanic languages, I've seen Folksprak (and its derivatives Sprak, Frenkisch, and Middelsprake), Folkisk, Samthüdisk, and Ærsk/Erish, but generally, people don't seem to have as much interest in Pan-Germanic zonal auxiliary languages as much as Interslavic and Neolatin. I've also seen Tugwá (for Tupi-Guarani languages of South America) and Samboka (for Uralic languages). It's all very interesting!
It was nice to see Esperanto as part of this series. I think the idea of Esperanto is nice and I can imagine it being useful in some international auxiliary circumstances. Prior to Latin being the main language I chose to study, I considered some constructed languages, and the one I looked into most was Lojban. I definitely respect the Esperanto community and think it would be cool to see them grow. I definitely think Esperanto would make a better global auxiliary language than English as it is currently trending that way. Its definitely most focused on Europe/Mediterranean and based on the main Indo-European branches like Italic, Germanic, maybe some Slavic. But in my opinion Latin is already much better established as an international language than Esperanto and is also a natural language which just seems less "hollow" as Rafael described it. But Esperanto definitely has value in my opinion.
Years ago, my friends and I grabbed a book on Esperanto from the University library out of curiosity. It was interesting to see how the language was constructed and how he selected vocabulary from different European languages. The forms are all regular but it wasn't so easy to learn that one could pick it up in a trivially short period of time. One still had to learn the grammar rules and plenty of vocab. But it was just an intellectual exercise. There wasn't any reason to actually learn it. So we quickly lost interest and returned the book.
If you’re expecting to be able to learn an entire language with zero effort, it’s simply impossible. But Esperanto is definitely far easier to learn than natural written/spoken languages, i promise.
@@ADS_Fenix Stupid young me kind of expected that one could learn Esperanto with minimal effort because it was "designed to be easy". I know better now. But I agree with Metatron that it's more interesting to learn an organic language.
@@keithkannenberg7414 Interest is ultimately in the perception of an individual. Personally, i’m more like Tolkien, interested in linguistics across the board. I’ve studied many natural languages as well as conlangs, and have done some conlanging myself. I find it no less interesting, and even more fun than learning natural languages. But if you want to learn something very quickly a d easily which is *also* a natural language that also has many practical benefits for anyone, i recommend going for a sign language. I’ve found them far easier to learn even than Esperanto.
Metatron: Esperanto has no culture.
Native Esperanto Speaker: I enjoy Esperanto culture so much!
Metatron: I didn't understand her. Also, Esperanto has no culture.
I wish i could’ve done this video with you and been one of your sources for audio. Because since most people really neglect pronunciation when learning foreign languages, especially conlangs, you’re right that Esperanto tends to be pronounced with strong native accents. I think this woman is probably Portuguese, because much of what she said sounded very Spanish (like the Spanish LL/Y sound, as well as the retracted S), but the way she was pronouncing words ending in -N with a nasal vowel is very distinctively Portuguese. Maybe the speaker has studied both Spanish and Portuguese and was mixing those accents.
I’ve studied many languages, and among the ones i speak best are Spanish, Esperanto, & Portuguese. Pronunciation (and sound mimicry in general) has always been where i most excel. I’m confident that my Esperanto pronunciation is more “ideal” - closer to Zamenhof’s vision - than the vast majority of Esperanto-speakers you’d hear (especially native English-speakers, who tend to sound terrible). So that’s why i wish i could’ve been a part of this!
Anyway, so far in the vid you seem to be missing the point in a way that many do - Esperanto is much easier to *learn* , not simply understand without having ever studied it, which is practically impossible without being a near copy of your own language, altho Interlingua probably gets much closer to that (while being harder to learn). Esperanto’s objective was to be easy & quick to *learn* and *produce* , which if you studied it t all, you’d see that it *is* . It’s completely regular with no exceptions, has very simple grammatical features, and its agglutinative nature makes it so that less is more - i can communicate much more with far fewer words in Esperanto. My conversations after a few months were similar to my Spanish convos after a few years. Even 200 words is plenty enuff for really solid general conversation in Esperanto.
As for English having achieved the goal instead, i strongly disagree with that but this comment is already getting long as it is.
Anyway i love your channels; Metatron is one of my absolute favorites. You’re cool and i wish we were friends xD So don’t misread my tone.
You can kind of draw the comparison that Esperanto is easy to *learn* in the sense that it's highly regular, but Interlingua is easy to *understand* at first sight due to it being based on an amalgamation of European languages (Spanish/Portuguese, French, Italian, English, and German and Russian, to a lesser extent). I think an underrated benefit of Esperanto is that despite it not being natively spoken by many people, meeting another Esperanto speaker brings a feeling of comradery, because in all likelihood, you learned Esperanto out of interest or because you wanted to make friends. Furthermore, due to not having many native speakers and its high amount of regularity, there's less fear of making mistakes compared to other languages. I do wonder where zonal auxiliary languages like Interslavic (for Slavic languages) and Romance Neolatino/Neolatin (for Romance languages) lie when it comes to intelligibility, ease of learning, and ease of making new connections. For example, I would think Interslavic would arguably be more personal to a speaker of a Slavic language, even if it's not their native Slavic language, compared to just speaking English.
@@arrunzo Yeah and even when it comes to native speakers, they usually learned it from a parent that *wasn’t* a native speaker, and thus picked up the parent’s imperfections and native language accent. Even if the parent was a native speaker, if you go back that line, at some point its origin is a foreign language learner. And nobody grows up in a community where Esperanto is the de facto language. So while someone can be raised speaking it, “native speaker” really doesn’t have the same connotation in Esperanto as in natural languages. It’s not equivalent. They typically have a “foreign” accent and mistakes based on their country’s language nevertheless. So that equal ground thing applies even to “natives”.
If you're doing conlangs, try Interlingua
Mad love for your thumbnails
"Vesperon" makes me think of the evening prayers monks do, they're called "vespere". The term was used also in Umberto Eco's "The name of the rose".
Yeah, we call it Vespers in English too. I was kind of surprised he didn't pick up on it.
You don't know where vesperon comes from? Vespers: the sixth of the canonical hours that is said or sung in the late afternoon. From Latin, plural of vespera.
Or is Vespers as a Church service not a thing in Italy (or Sicily)?
He probably didn't make the connection at the time, but he certainly knows that term well as Italian and Sicilian since "vespri" are the evening prayers and "I vespri siciliani" (the Sicilian vespers) was one of the most recounted and remembered medieval Sicilian revolts. The evening/sunset connection with the term vesperon is automatic for an Italian even if he does not know Latin.
Please do Sardinian (nuorese) variant.
I would be more fascinated to learn behind how the language was created, in terms of how certain words and grammatical structures were chosen from various languages, and why those specifically were chosen.
He isn’t forgetting about Galician right?
Tri was pronounced exactly like in some Slavic languages and Domestic, Domus or was it something like that does remind of Dom, Domovina which is home and homeland but yes you are correct it does not have alot of Slavic words but rather it sounds like Romanian plus bunch of other Romance and some Germanic languages
So, I hear Vesperum (my context is an Anglophone learning Spanish) and I think of Vespers, like the liturgical service that begins in the evening.
I'm looking away at the screen like rn like you do in language videos, but im still on the numbers 😂
I suggest trying Interlingua (IAL). I was surprised of how simple it is to understand
I am quite certain he will understand 100% of interlingua. Such a hideous language though. No soul. It got stripped away of all it’s conjugations and declensions and it’s just so stripped down. Very bare language good for buying bread or asking directions but horrible for wanting to seduce a girl with it.
@@philomelodia He might actually have some trouble understanding interlingua at first, specifically the verbs, if I said "tu mangia pomo" it would sound like I forgot something.
Esperanto is not reduced to the max, and much more difficult than Tokipona. Esperanto is the most simple language which is as expressive and capable as were the languages the inventor knew well when he made it, that was: Russian, German, and French. He mixed in some words and features from also Polish, English, Jewish, Hebrew, Litovan, Latin, and Greek. There are only 16 basic grammatical rules to learn, there are no declensions or irregular verbs. The learning part mainly consists of learning the vocabulary. Compared to English, you're saving 95% of the effort on the grammar side, and about 50 to 70% vocab-wise, as there are many derivational suffixes.
I actually like listening to that.
Sono italiano and also an esperantist
2:29 you are right there in a sense. It definitely sounded portuguese/spanish. Definitely _too much_ actually. what you say is partly true, there is not probably _one only fixed_ way to speak esperanto (which is something like what also happens in Italy. the way someone from Sondrio speaks is _Very different_ from how someone from Oristano would speak, possibly even worse than what happens in esperanto if you speak _correctly._ But I'm only a few minutes into this video and you can clearly hear that these guys aren't very skilled esperantists since they've made _many errors:_ the worst until now is the pronunciation of _Adiaŭ_ which is correctly pronounced with the stress on the I, not the A (the u with the little hat is there exactly to show that). Another thing is the pronounciation of the final -n letters, very important but they are almost skipping them. the truth is that there _is_ a correct way of speaking esperanto, even though is pretty flexible anyway
6:05 "maybe they should have made it easier" this is actually the difference between interlingua and esperanto. You had your (rightful) prejudice in the introduction of the video by saying that esperanto is linguistically biased towards romance languages, and you probably thought that hearing esperanto as a romance speaker would have been easy. But that's the goal of Interlingua. Esperanto has a few basis, one of which is romance lang., but the way it's developed doesn't necessarily help specifically romance speaker, in the sense that Esperanto is not necessarily easy to _understand_ (like interlingua) but to _learn._
7:42 "not to mention that's useless in asia and in russia", there's actually a very very old tradition of esperantism in Russia (Zamenhof was inthe influence sphere of Russia and knew Russian. A few esperanto book publisher I know are russian) and in China as well which also has (but the things are changing now due to political reasons) long esperanto tradition(www.chinaesperantoligo.com.cn/) and there also is (was?) an official government news page in esperanto and an esperanto official radio in china. without even talking about the decade long lasted publication (El popola Ĉinio - from people's China) which the government published since 1950 to 2000.
interestingly, what the girl said in the second video is that she is native esperanto speaker, in fact both of her parents are esperantist and talked to her in esperanto, which is a language which she uses every day she reads and listen to music and also try to write and it's not just a hobby. _alla faccia della lingua senza una cultura dietro_
2:06 I'm really wondering how you, a linguist, could you not recognize the many cognate words with "vespero" :D (tbf vespero technically means evening, not afternoon, which is posttagmezo)
This I had much the same experience as with Italian and Portuguese. If it is printed, I can keep up with the gist of it, but just hearing it, I caught about as much as you did.
Vesperon = Vespro."Vespri siciliani" is the first thing coming to my mind :D
Esperanto is a good language to learn how to learn a language. Its regularity might cause some confusion when trying to learn a natural language afterwards, but more so the habits and experience you get from learning an easier language like esperanto will help you to know what practices work for you and what doesnt. but that still doesnt negate the main argument against it
Try interlingua, it's a mixture of all romance languages but very simplified, if you speak a romance language you gona be able to understand more than 50%, its very interesting!
Interlingua wasn't made to be easy to learn, it was made to be easy to understand without learning. He would understand it more than Spanish for sure
El español es la interlingua.
@@ivanovichdelfin8797 no, interlingua is interlingua, Spanish is Spanish.
@@Omouja Digo que el español ya es de por sí una interlingua.
Interlingua isn't a mixture of Romance languages, but rather the creators' idea of a general European auxiliary language. While Interlingua's vocabulary is heavily based on Romance languages, Classical Latin, and Greek, all based on an idea of a "common European heritage", Interlingua was also based on, to a lesser extent, German and Russian, and even English had a *major* influence on Interlingua's development (primarily its grammar). Interlingua is decidedly not focused on Romance languages because it lacks many key traits, such as different verb conjugations, noun & adjective agreement, differentiation between imperfect past and preterite past, the subjunctive mood, and the present progressive tense. Again, it was *never* intended exclusively for use between speakers of Romance languages, but it's a common misconception because of the superficial appearance of its vocabulary.
If you've ever heard of how Interslavic exists to unify Slavic languages into one common standard, the Romance counterpart exclusively focused on uniting Romance languages is called "Romance Neolatino", or just Neolatin. Neolatin doesn't try to be "international", but rather focuses only on scientifically uniting all the traits of major and minor Romance languages. As a result, key Romance traits are present, such as all the verb conjugations and tenses present in real Romance languages.
I understand that you believe Esperanto is an empty language because it lacks a distinct culture. However, I would like to shed some light on the purpose of creating Esperanto and why it is not defined by a single culture.
Esperanto, as created by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof in the late 19th century, was intended to be a neutral and inclusive language that could serve as a bridge between different cultures and foster international communication and understanding. Its primary aim was to overcome the language barriers that often hinder effective communication and deepen mutual understanding among people from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
While Esperanto doesn't have a specific cultural identity of its own, it acts as a platform for cultural exchange and promotes cultural diversity by providing a common ground for people of various nationalities to communicate on an equal footing. It encourages cultural exchange and appreciation across borders, as people who speak Esperanto often have the opportunity to learn about different cultures and languages directly from native speakers.
Esperanto speakers come from all corners of the world, bringing their own cultural backgrounds, traditions, and experiences to the language. In this way, Esperanto becomes a vibrant and diverse tapestry, representing the myriad of cultures and perspectives of its speakers.
Furthermore, Esperanto has given rise to a global community of enthusiasts who actively participate in various cultural activities, such as literature, music, art, and even traditional celebrations, within the framework of the language. These cultural creations within the Esperanto community make it evident that Esperanto is not an empty language devoid of culture, but instead a catalyst for cultural exchange and creativity.
In summary, the purpose of creating Esperanto was to foster international communication and understanding, breaking down barriers between languages and cultures. Instead of being an empty language lacking culture, Esperanto serves as a tool for promoting cultural diversity, enabling people from different backgrounds to share their unique perspectives and experiences. It is through this vibrant exchange that Esperanto continues to thrive.
I hope this explanation helps you understand that Esperanto's lack of a specific culture is not a shortcoming, but rather a strength that promotes appreciation and understanding of diverse cultures.
It is difficult to make a language easy to understand with no training when its goal is to be simple to speakers of a large amount of languages. Unlike Esperanto, Interslavic does a very good job with this task, simply because the languages are much less diverse.
Interlinguaa! I understand it… brazilian speaker. But I understood almost nothing in esperanto…
Pote tu parlar Interlingua?
Salve, amico! Me pòtes comprèndere? Quanto comprèndes? Estao parlando lo Romance Neolatino (aut símplicemente "neolatino"), una lengua panromànica que une las características communes de lenguas romànicas (et solo lenguas romànicas) en un solo stàndarde. Èst la contraparte officiale ad lo intereslavo, que èst una lengua auxiliare zonale por lenguas eslavas. Lo neolatino ha totas las conjugationes esperatas de una lengua romànica, donque estao securo que ja comprèndes bastante bène cueste tèxto. Vale la pena mentionare que lo interlingua, malgrado havere un vocabulàrio con bases en lo latino clàssico et lenguas romànicas, èst una lengua auxiliare europèa generale, tanto por parlantes de anglese (lo principale contributore derètro de la grammàtica simplificata), alemanno, et russo, quanto parlantes de lenguas romànicas. Ad differèntia de lo Interlingua, lo neolatino està solo por facilitare la communicatione entre parlantes de lenguas romànicas et necausa plus.
Did some Esperanto lessons on duolingo and understood 95% of the texts in the video, so at least for me it's really easy to learn. I sort of agree with the no-culture part, but given enough speakers this will naturally form and probably already did form a subculture. Maybe a controversial take, but wasn't that the case for standard languages (like putonghua or high-german) too at a time when dialects/regional languages were more widespread?
Speaking of constructed languages, how about a video on Interlingua? I'd be surprised if you understood less than 95%
Italian itself is a conlang.
Esperanto is almost 140 years old. There already is a culture that includes internal concepts, poetry, songs, etc. It's just that the culture does not define and become an essential component of the language in the way English or French does.
Esperanto sounds cool! Knowing some Spanish and Russian I can understand some things.
Have you done Asturian yet?
It might be my next language project as I live in Asturias and the language becomes official next year!
Very nice!!! If you haven't done one already, can you do one on Interlingua?
That's an awesome shirt you've got there!
While I think the common critique about Esperanto being not useful in daily life is true. I think a lot of the appeal of Esperanto as a language is the community it has. It’s also an alternative to English but feels like an exclusive yet inclusive club for all to enjoy and form new connections around the world. At least for me. It’s also cool to be able to speak a conlang.
Estas tri vespertoj sur branĉo. Du el ili, kiel kutime, pendas kaptitaj suben, dum la tria staras sur la branĉo, kun la kapo turnita supren. Unu el la du vespertoj, pendumante malsupren, diras al la alia, rigardante la trian vesperton: 'Sed kion okazis al li? Kial li staras sur la branĉo tiel?!' La alia respondas, 'Mi ne scias!! Li pendis malsupre antaŭ unu minuto, poste li svenis!!'
I was rooting for this video to be released
damn i'm from Portugal, i'm just able to understand a word here and there, i would say it's way harder for me to understand than italian and french, even understood romanian better. (which makes sense i guess) I was actually expecting to understand a bit more.
even the numbers, they sound similar but different enough that i bet if i heard them randomly in a sentence i would miss them lol
from all these videos since the Portugal one this was the hardest to understand
Hey, the way she was replacing final Ns with nasal vowels sounded undeniably Portuguese to me, but her consonants sounded Spanish to me. I’m much more familiar with Brazilian Portuguese than Portuguese Portuguese. Where do you think the speaker sounded like she was from?
However, Esperanto is not just meant to be learned by Romance language speakers, but by Germanic, Slavic, Semitic, and people from all other language families in the world. There are roots from Germanic, Slavic and other families, but once learned are easily utilized within the exceptionally simple grammar.
What a surprize. People always feel like they can diss and talk down on Esperanto like they don't do about any other language. Here, I'll leave a few comments and corrections:
It's a real, living language, which has its own history and culture, and a community of people who love it.
Treating it as some crazy failed project only shows your ignorance on the matter.
Esperanto speakers having different accents is as natural and harmless as Spanish or English speakers having different accents. They're people form all over the world, influenced by very different languages. The pronunciation is standard, and the small variations don't hinder communication.
An hour of learning Esperanto could be worth many hours of learning another language. It won't only be much more productive (between 3 and 10 times more productive in learning the language, according to some studies, and depending what language you compare it with), it can also later make the hours learning other languages more productive (specially if you learn it as your first "foreign" language).
But hey, if it's not your thing, I totally respect that. A lot more in fact, than giving baseless opinions on it.
can an italien understand northen portuguese? Mostly from the Oporto region @Metatron's Academy can also portuguese people understand latin?
"We already have English". When Esperanto was created "they already had French". In a hundred years, English may have been suplanted by some other language.
In the case "Bona veperon", in spanish we have "tarde" for both afternoon and late, but if something is late we use "tardío" and if is related to the afternoon we use "vespertino".
The chart was wrong. "Bonan tagon" is "Good day" or "Good afternoon". "Bonan vesperon" is "Good evening".
Es la primera vez que escucho "vespertino".
Vespero: from Latin vesper ("evening"), from from Proto-Indo-European *wekʷsperos.
I don't where it comes from but in portuguese we have a word called: "vespertino", which means something during the afternoon, like an afternoon class (aula vespertina). I don't know the origin but must be from Latin, I suppose.
My language has "vespere" which means evening which is similar enough, but I don't know where the word came from.
"Vespers" was the evening Catholic prayer in the medieval prayer schedule.
Guessing that has the same origin.
Vesper is a Latin word isn't it? Evening star, which the Catholic Church co-opted for the name of its evening services. I think that's the deal but I could be totally wrong.
It's called Esperanto because when Zamenhof wrote it, he didn't want to take credit for it, so he used the name "Dr. Esperanto."
@@xneapolisx Huh, I probably should have figured that out earlier, thx man.
Interesting as always. As others have already commented, there is another artificial language called Interlingua (and its many successors) which is even more Latin biased, but it was probably launched too late, after world war II, when English, with its very mixed vocabulary, was already firmly established as a worldwide lingua franca. You also mention 2 other anguages. Mandarin and Spanish. both of which have more NATIVE speakers than English, but fewer second-language speakers. A minor problem in both English and Spanish is that there are 2 big variants: European and American, with slightly different characteristics, and many regional varieties as you are discovering. Mandarin of course is another world. 普通话当然是另一个世界了。;-)
yea the whole thing is that any mandarin speaker actually worth talking to knows english better than you know mandarin.
same with german, unless you're researching east germany specifically, any west german, austrian and east german 30 and younger learned english is school.
spanish comes with it's own issues like how the different forms are not always mutually intelligible.
@@windhelmguard5295 There is also an interesting parallel between Mandarin and Italian, and I think German. I know Chinese families both in Italy and in Spain and they come from the city of Wenzhou, where the local language is a particularly difficult dialect of the Wu language (Shanghai). My Italo-Chinese friends all speak Mandarin. The parents know some Wu, but don't speak it. The Chinese family in Spain is one generation behind, as the parents still speak Wu while the children speak Mandarin, Catalan, Spanish and English. Similarly, where Italians formerly used their regional languages, now most younger people use Standard Italian, with a regional accent (see Metatron's comments on Neapolitan). Re Germany, I have read that formerly there was no linguistic border between the Netherlands and Germany, but today there is because the people on both sides now speak Standard Dutch and Standard German and no longer the local dialects which formed a "Low German continuum". Is that true?
@@user-vr1mp2ef7d I'm not really that well versed in Dutch history or north-western Germany for that matter.
That shirt is actually legendary! A Shadron/Metashad/Metabrooks shirt, if you will.
If you never actually try the food, you don't know how it tastes. Esperanto's value is not to replace any natural language, but as a simple to learn auxiliary language. You were saying that there are no native speakers, while literally listening to a native speaker using the language. As others have pointed out, Esperanto is almost 140 years old and there is most definitely a culture. By vowing never to learn it, you'll never learn its beauty. Unlike English, French, Spanish or other European languages, Esperanto does not carry the baggage of colonialism and the biases they carry with them. How many Italians actually speak English to fluency? 12% or probably less? How many years did those fluent speakers spend to really understand not only the vocabulary and grammar, but the nuances not taught in schools? Now imagine non-Europeans trying to learn English or Italian. It becomes even harder and fluent speakers even rarer. For a truly global auxiliary language it needs to be both neutral and simple. Esperanto fits those requirements.
Intersting video, appreciate your observation!
It was actually created by an eye doctor in Poland to facilitate communication in his area which had Jews, Russians, Germans and Poles. He wrote about it under the name "Doctoro Esperanto" which means "Doctor He Who Hopes". This was before the United States took its position on the world stage so English was not a world scale language. A culture of sorts grew up around it. It was the culture of world peace and understanding. In the 1954-59 timefram there was interest. The current culture is sort of Sci-fi/Atompunk now promoted by Harry Harrisson in his works. I think it should be taught in middle school to give Americans a gateway language to the major European language groups, not to mention that boys of that age like secret codes and languages or even sci-fi languages. It is covered on Wikipedia and Langfocus. My interest if from sci-fi
Vesperon sounds simmilar to the spanish vespertino, which means belonging to the afternoon, which I think comes from latin verpertinum
A question: What, to you, makes a language artificial or genuine in terms of how any given language develops? A thought: Perhaps the culture of Esperanto is the human desire to communicate across cultures, languages, geography, politics, and any other barriers to promote understanding and peace. My experience: I am a native American with some retained learning in French, Mandarin, Indonesian, and Hebrew and have dabbled in about ten other languages. Two weeks ago, I started to learn Esperanto on Duolingo. If you speak a European language and are slightly familiar with various others, Esperanto makes sense and is easy to learn. For example, "welcome" is bonvenon: bon = good/well, venon is like the French venir = to come; A beginner is called komencanto, and I hear the English "commence." If you were to have read a script instead of listening to someone speak Esperanto, you likely would have recognized and understood far more, but I know that wasn’t the point of your video. As for me, I’m smitten, both by the language and the hopeful idea behind it.
You get the pronunciation right, when other Esperanto speakers think you are from Polland. The esperantoland is called Esperantujo and it is spread out as a diaspora :-)
Not trying to sway your opinion - it's fine for everyone to make their choice, but I just figured I'd give my personal perspective.
If it were spoken a little more slowly, I think you'd get a lot more.
Sometimes it just comes down to the particular words/sentences that are spoken, too; since you know English & Italian, you'd be able to understand some entire sentences w/out training.
But, yes, while the language is super easy to learn (the average person could learn it at a basic level in a week or two [although, when one really gets good w/ it, it is actually a very expressive language]), one does still have to learn the rules, & commit some stuff to memory; it can't be used effectively w/out any study.
There are a handful of natural languages I've come across that are not too much harder than Esperanto, but, generally speaking, almost any natural language takes way longer to learn than Esperanto (even for someone who excels at language learning).
I love learning natural languages, too, but Esperanto has a lot more of a culture than many would realize (a culture has grown around the language), even though it was artificially created, & isn't owned by any ethnic group, & I'm glad I learned it, as it opened up opportunities to speak w/ people from all over the world (most countries have an Esperanto organization [& there are a good number of Esperantists from Asian countries, especially Korea & China, etc.]), & to engage in various international organizations that were run exclusively in Esperanto, &c.
Plus, there is a wealth of original literature (from authors all around the globe), & good music, in Esperanto.
I personally think it's worth the week or 2 (give or take a little, depending on the person), to learn it, alongside whatever other languages one happens to've studied, as there are some people in other countries who won't learn any European language (because of a historical issue, or because they don't have the time &/or resources, or because they're put off by the irregularities, &c.), & Esperanto can be a handy & inexpensive tool (in terms of both time & money) to bridge communication gaps w/ some of these people.
If you wanna go down that route of constructed languages I'd try "Interlingua". I learned French in school for a few years (about a hundred years ago ;-) )and I have no training in other Romance languages but I can understand about 75 % of what is being said. It's fascinating.
Agreed. That would be an interesting one for him to try. The vocabulary is much more closely based on various European languages than Esperanto's is.
The word for afternoon comes from the ecclesiastical hours "vespers"
Very interesting. And what is your opinion on „interlingua“? Specialy as a lingua franca between speakers of Spanish, Portugues, Italian, Romanian, etc.?
"Vespero" comes from the latin "vesper" - or evening - In English, there's a religious tradition of evening prayers and songs called "vespers".
In my hearing and phonology, Esperanto has a lot of Slavic, Albanian, Baltic sound, you have to study it otherwise you distort the word, Esperanto is not intelligible with other languages, even if the person doesn't speak it but has studied what an Esperantist says so as not to distort his speech. What I don't like about Esperanto is the accents on vowels and consonants, lots of accentuation and declension rules, this confuses and taints speech as there are too many rules to memorize and learn. Esperanto sometimes resembles Latin but is more like Russian and Slavic languages. Zamenhof had Russian as his mother's mother tongue and Polish on his father's side. Now other things I like about Esperanto are phonology, grammar and logical linguistics without exceptions without privileging, euphony in everything, and a language that values logic in speaking and how to speak and communicate. Esperanto also proved an irrefutable fact, a language based on logical principles and better than a natural language subject to human whims and selfishness and nonsense from naturalist academies that do not add anything good to citizens who speak natural languages, the thought and logical language and better than an obscure and illogical language a thousand times better. This door was opened by Esperanto, making new planned semi-tural languages born, and the cool thing is that it became the basis of many semi-natural and logical languages. And its symbolism is very cute and beautiful, reminding us of linguistic treasures that we must find.
I have heard some people who love esperanto saying this language is similar to english. But Many of us we did not understand anything from esperanto. It is totally different from english and to most languages in world
Esperanto is definitely not English. I'm a native English speaker. I spent two years at university studying French without any English involved. I gained a very basic reading level, but still have trouble with all but the most basic verbal communication. I then spent 3 full months, six days a week studying Swahili in Kenya as part of my US Peace Corps training. I gained a very basic level there also. However, Esperanto grammar is so simple, and there are actually many word cognates with both English and French that I learned very quickly. I now feel I have a fairly high level of comprehension in Esperanto and can talk to people in countries all over the world.
Now, to be fair, you have to study esperanto to understand it. It is easy in the sense that it has simple grammar and word formation rules. If you want an artificial language that you'll definitely going to understand, you should try Interlingua.
I am sure that a native speaker of Slovak, Serbian or another slavic language will have a lot of problems to understand Interlingua, which is not only very romance based but also a conlang with many, many exceptions.
You're right, it's much easier for a Romance language speaker like him, that's why I wrote that.
That being said, there's plenty of erudite vocabulary in Slavic and Germanic languages for example that come from Latin. So if you have a good grasp of that kind of vocabulary in a Slavic or Germanic language, you'll understand, with some effort, much more Interlingua than any other completely unrelated language.
In Spanish we say Vespertino, to say late in the afternoon, before night. Vesper seems to be the origin
That Esperanto feels empty for you is due to the fact that you don't speak it and don't participate in the community. It's like me saying the uzbek language feels empty, or, sailing feels empty, etc.
I'd say a lot of experiences I made I would never had had without it, especially on an international scale. And I say this as somebody having lived in several countries and having English used much more often than Esperanto.
Esperanto has a beautiful history and reason to exist. While "useless," it makes learning other languages easier to learn and also, there IS a culture to it! I think that it's worth learning it for its own sake. Plus for spite. Nazis hated it.
I've learned French, Swahili, Welsh, and Persian to varying degrees, but am fluent in none of them. However, I'm pretty comfortable with Esperanto to the point where I can converse with people from Brazil, Vietnam, Japan, Hungary, etc. I wouldn't call that useless.
Which romance language is most easily understood by other romance native speakers?
Español. Nos entienden un 90-100% los hablantes de portugués y un 70-85% los hablantes de italiano.
The woman reading the text carries a very strong Spanish accent, but I can't pinpoint her native version of Spanish. I'd guess it's Castilian, just because it's the widely spoken in Spain, if I'm not wrong.
Agreed, however the Esperanto was perfectly understandable to a fluent Esperanto speaker. Spanish and Italian speakers have an edge because their pronunciation will tend to be initially closer to the model for correct Esperanto pronunciation than say an American English speaker.
It's interesting how you say that Esperanto feels empty for you. I didn't expect that answer from anybody. I suppose it's the same feeling that someone can feel when listens to people trying to speak foreign languages in vain. Honestly, Esperanto is a nice tool for learning other languages (specially if they're European) and it's vocabulary has a close relation with the natural ones.
Listening to the "native" speaker, I got the strange impression of listening to somebody trying to speak Spanish, getting the grammar wrong and inserting random Germanic words. Strangely, it was pretty understandable listening to it carefully
Thank you. I was curious about this one. I know it's foreign to even Romance speakers with different grammar and vocab, but I was curious if you could hear words or phrases. And you did very well actually. You did pick out words showing that the Romance base is there also. And you did a lot better than I did....Dr. Esperanto didn't think about us Greeks when he created it. ;o)
The word "kaj" (and) is from ancient Greek "καί"
@@user-elqana yeah...but that doesn't really help or impact the language. the grammar has it's own thing which we can't really compare and when we look at the vocabulary break down Greek words only make up 2% of experanto
you said he was not gonna do it lol
it is pronounced "ke" in modern Greek @@user-elqana
@@Deibi078 I know...I think he got tired of me/us asking him. ;o)
I actually wonder whether Romanian would work better because Zamenhoff, being Polish, kind of invented a Romance language influenced by Slavic, which is what Romanian is to some extent.
I have little to no experience with Romance languages and I understood a lot more of all the Spanish and Italian dialects than I did Esperanto.
Maybe vesperon is more like evening than lunchtime noon? Just guessing because evening prayers are called Vespers.
In Italian, the word for the catholic evening song is... "vespri". So, I am a little bit suprised that Metatron didn't understand that word.
I mean it isn't meant to be a simpler romance lamguage that any romance language speaker can understand without training
It is meant to mix various european languages with enough flexibility in the grammar to also make it easy for people who don't speak a european language
What about Interlingua, that whould be very interesting, since it's like esperanto, but exclusively focused on the romance intelligibility.
Interlingua was never designed to be focused on Romance intelligibility though. Interlingua was designed as a general auxiliary language for speakers of European languages in general, including speakers of English, Russian, and German. Yes, the vocabulary is highly based on Classical Latin and Romance languages, but the grammar was highly simplified thanks to the influence of English and due to Interlingua's principle of "minimum grammar", where if even one source language lacked a grammatical trait, it was left out in Interlingua. This lead to Interlingua lacking grammatical characteristics present in most Romance languages, such as different verb conjugations, noun & adjective agreement, differentiation between imperfect past and preterite past, the subjunctive mood, and the present progressive tense.
If you're interested in a language that focuses *only* on uniting the common characteristics between Romance languages, I recommend checking out "Romance Neolatino", or just "Neolatin". It's the official Romance language counterpart to Interslavic.
In Portuguese, we have 'vespertino' for the afternoon
There's a Germanic equivalent, Middelsprake, I think mainly created by Ingmar Roedinkholder in the late 90s - early Noughties. Interesting as a curiosity, but likewise, I'd rather improve my German, Danish and Dutch. And English I guess, though I'm probably past help on that one.
Also, Roedinkholder never intended it to be a practical lingua franca (?folk tongue?); it was an exercise in linguistics for his own amusement.
True, but I believe that "Middelsprake" or "Folkspraak" for the Germanic languages or "Interslavic" for Slavic languages still make a bit more sense for their respective groups as conlangs, than Esperanto does as a world conlang though.
It's worth noting Middelsprake, along with Sprak and Frenkisch, are all derivatives of Folksprak. I've also seen other Pan-Germanic efforts, like Folkisk, Samthüdisk, and Ærsk/Erish. Unfortunately, the communities of these projects seem inactive and the development of these projects have remained stagnant. I don't people are as interested in the concept of a Pan-Germanic language as I've seen Romance speakers interested in Romance Neolatino (Neolatin) or Slavic speakers interested in Interslavic. Probably because German and English to varying degrees serves the needs of the Germanic speaking peoples of Europe.
@@NorthSea_1981 It's important to expand upon what you said, because like you said, Esperanto is a "world conlang", or in other words, an international auxiliary language intended for a wide audience. Zonal auxiliary languages, like Interslavic for speakers of Slavic languages and Romance Neolatino (Neolatin) are designed only to unite the common traits between their respective language subgroups, and have no goals of internationality beyond their claims compared to projects such as Interlingua and Esperanto. Personally, I think zonal auxiliary languages are an excellent solution, firstly, because it avoids the political conflict of imposing a single language (like Russian for speakers of Slavic languages), and secondly because these languages most closely resembles the native languages of the targets, and is therefore, easier to both understand and speak.
Kara homaro: lernu Esperanton...❤
Thank you! To the friend who did the translation to Interlingua IALA and Esperanto😀. that is a more valid test👍 only "desegni" is the right word, and not "dizajni". I did study several "created" languages among them a bit of Esperanto, Interlingua IALA, Ido and Interlingua also known as Latino Sine Flexione, Esperanto is the elephant among mice in size and importance. Probably the easiest to learn is Latino Sine Flexione, only today Latino has no users. Cheers🖖