Esperanto, Worth Learning Or Completely Useless?

The largest discussion around the 'easy to learn language' Esperanto, is whether or not it is a complete waste of time or a massive benefit to your language learning progress.

The Pros:

1. Esperanto is made up of a large amount of vocabulary derived from european language families. This gives you two main advantages. Many words are intelligible to english speakers, even if they have never seen them before, so Esperanto can be learned very quickly with arguably less effort. This will also aid you in learning other european languages, helping you to consolidate words in two or more different languages; leading to more fluent conversations in european languages. In fact, a group of students who learnt a year of Esperanto and a year of French spoke better than those who exclusively learnt French.
2. Esperanto makes complicated grammatical elements in other languages easy to comprehend. The language has the accusative case (neniam forgesis la acusitivon) which is present in German, Finnish and slavic languages. Normally, this is quite difficult for english learners to understand as they are typically mixed in with other grammatical features, but Esperanto makes learning the accusative case much easier due to its simple grammar. The language also happens to be completely regular, decreasing the amount of exceptions needing to learnt.
3. In French, to have a decent conversation with someone it could take a couple thousand words to achieve this. Topped off with strange pronunciation, lots of slang and odd grammar, French can take a lot of time to even get started talking. However, Esperanto is ridiculously loose in many of its aspects. Words that you already know can be combined into ones you don't, 'mal' can be added to the start of the to make a word mean the opposite and has default word order. This means you can make a sentence in Esperanto in one hour that would take two to three hours in a lang like French/Spanish.

The Cons:

1. Many claim that Esperanto is too 'eurocentric' for a language that is supposed to be simple to study for everyone; and I'd agree. Esperanto's vocabulary really benefits indo-europeans, but others not so much. In my opinion it would probably be a waste of time for a Korean to learn Esperanto over English, as in their case it would take a long time to learn each.
2. There are currently about two million and growing; which in language terms is a massive amount. However, they are very sparsely placed all over the world, making it hard to talk to Esperantists in real life. This could be a massive turn off for some language learners, but services like pasporta servo (airB&B for Esperantists).
3. While the language is heavily based of indo-european languages and sounds natural enough, it can sometimes sound a bit repetitive and odd. This is because it is an intentionally artificial constructed language; stopping it from rolling off the tongue  

What Languages Are Similar To English?

When learning a language it is important to understand its relation to other languages and language families. This can help you break down and learn the original meanings of the words you are studying, helping you to decided what second or third languages to learn and helps you to understand the history and culture of the language you are learning.

English controversially, might have the most complex relations to other languages. Starting as the language from Germanic settlers, influenced by invasions by the vikings and French, taking words from Latin for scientific purposes and later taking words from all across the world during the height of the British Empire.

Eventually, leading to derived words from:

     

Classed as a West Germanic(see first picture), English still maintains many words and grammatical elements from its Dutch, German and Nordic neighbors. This makes Germanic languages (in relation order) like Flemish, Frisian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and German relatively similar to English. Other languages such Luxembourgish, Faroese and Icelandic contain little resemblance to English on the surface, but do contain a good amount of similar features.

Romance languages pay heavy influence on English due to the 1066 Norman invasions which introduced French words into the vocabulary of the wealthy and during the age of enlightenment when Latin was unofficially chosen as the language of science. While few grammatics entered the language, a very large amount of romance language vocabulary is still present in today's English.

Thus, languages like French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian contain many intelligible words to English speakers. 

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What Language Should I Learn?

The absolute most difficult aspect of of language learning is knowing what language to actually learn in the first place. I personally believe that it is impossible to just choose a language on a whim or by "the easiest one".

Motivation is the key to learning a language successfully (this is why so many people are unable to learn a foreign/dead language in school). Depending on your intention of why you are learning the language you are studying and whether you're even interested in learning that specific language will ultimately decide on your success.

Thus, in my opinion language learners fall within two categories: careers/diplomats and hobbyists.
Assuming you have a choice in language for the benefit or necessity of your career, then you should select a lang that isn't the "hotest" or "trendy" at the moment. At the time of publishing mandarin chinese, german and french (english goes without saying) seem to be the most requested by businesses. However, I think that you should do your own research and find languages that are still needed in business, but instead learn less common ones. This is because chances are there will be a lot of people in business who already speak those languages; by learning slightly less common languages you'll be able to stand out.

For those who are learning a language as a hobby, it may seem that any language will do however this absolutely is not the case. Most people select a language will probably choose an 'easy' romance language (spanish,french or italien) because they appear simple to learn, close to english and have a large amount of speakers. While these are respectable reasons for choosing one of these languages, I think a massive amount of work should go into the final choice.

First of all all languages are of equal difficulty however, the time it takes to master a language differs from lang to lang. Some even say that spoken chinese is as easy to master as french. So, when considering languages, you should not on the 'strangeness' and difficulty of the language; as it will take you years to learn anyways.

Finally, as language learning is a life long commitment, I cannot stress the importance of motivation.
Staying motivated in the short run isn't too difficult as the desire to learn the language will be enough.
Of course as you continue it becomes much more difficult to stay motivated, this is where culture, more specifically cultural differences comes into play. Culture is language and language is culture; they are the same thing. While difficult to explain, culture can eventually end up driving your learning exclusively when all of your other sources have dispersed; never underestimate it. When choosing a language with a culture similar to your own, it can be more boing to learn in a few years than a more estranged language would be.

No matter what you choose, it is not the wrong language. Learn what you want.

Are You Prepared To Learn A Language?

Perhaps you've had the impulse to learn a language or have been pondering the idea for some time and have decided to to pursue your curiosity. In this article I wish to convey to you some foresight on your new adventure as a language learner. I feel this to be important as many people begin to learn a language clueless to what they are actually doing. Without the proper beforehand knowledge on how to go about learning a language, the vast majority of people are inclined become frustrated and give up.

So, what exactly am I committing to? A question which few ask before diving headfirst into a vocabulary book. The answer is: life. Some people are illused into believing that they just have to spend half an hour a week for a couple months et bientôt, ils sont les masters de la langue! Others may buckle down in studies for eight hours a day for six months and emerge from their great den/man cave and instantly become [insert nationality here], only to be completely unintelligible. These methods of course are at least better than giving up, however these are not exactly the demands of being multilingual. From my own experience it is simply impossible to stop using a language for more than two and a half months without massive drops in fluent communication. This means if you decide to learn a language you must continue to use it even after "you learn it"; this is a life long endeavour.

Great! If you managed to continue reading then you are ready to take the long term commitment, but of course it isn't exclusive to the long haul. While I will go deeper into consecrating time for learning in future posts, I will sum up the most important point. You may need to shorten time blocks to fit in studying however, avoid large amounts of time, instead your schedule should allow for short frequent studying before and after activities ideally.

Often over looked is ranges of learning methods; studying from books, listening to scripts, computer programs, media and face to face. All of these fashions are best used in combination, the problem is how easy for a learner to get in to a trap of using some and not all of the methods. Focusing on your preferred study methods can cause frustration if another skill* is called into action.

Lastly and finfine a surprising way to loose your confidence is peer pressure and it must be delt with.
Language learning peer pressure comes in two forms; questioning and mocking. Questioning is when someone cannot understand why you have chosen a particular language; this can be crushing if it comes from a native speaker. The second "mocking" peer pressure is when if the learner takes corrections badly and believes that they aren't progressing, being offensive to natives or unable to speak perfectly

Before you begin learning your second language you must take a cold hard look at the above points above. It is easy to think you will not be affected by the these points however, these are still experienced by even the most experienced in the field.

*Reading/Speaking/Listening/Writing

Launch!

Hello, saluton, bonjour/bonsoir, hallo, hej, tervetoloa and whatever else meaningless greeting we are intending on spitting through our lips. This is the premiere post on this entanglement of HTML files about the gibberish that "those obnoxious tourists who are too lazy to learn any english" are yelling at the stupid ol' monument down the road.