Can An Italian Understand Esperanto? And Can You? LET'S TEST IT!

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

[Оксана-хые]

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.

[oronjoffe]

There is actually a specific way to pronounce Esperanto. Obviously, individuals may “bring their accent from home “ but there is a standard to emulate.

[francegamble]

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.

[Hun_Uinaq]

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.

[crnel]

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)

[jesseolii]

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

[ricardillapujagut]

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.

[bhutchin]

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.

[martelkapo]

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!

[zaqwsx]

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.

[Cavouku]

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.

[steevemartial]

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

[Ed_edino]

Vesperum comes from Vesper - Venus, which appears in the afternoon. In Portuguese somerhing that is related to the afternoon is called Vespertino.

[vodostar]

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.

[Samu_]

It is not true that Esperanto has no culture, in fact it is very profound, there are films, radio, news, podcasts, poetry, literature in Esperanto, both original works and translations of works in other languages. Esperanto is also increasingly spoken around the world. However, Esperanto, precisely because of its nature as an international language, belongs to everyone and not to a single people, it is not native to a specific land, culture is created by people. It's normal that you don't immediately understand Esperanto, it's a language and you have to learn it but it's still much easier to learn than any other language and this is where it has its success, in fact you can learn it without spending money or making great effort to difference from other languages. then there is also the question of the history of imperialism and colonialism, Esperanto does not have this stigma and was also born as a means to achieve the so-called linguistic democracy, there is no one language that is imposed on the other and the colonized do not there is a language of a people that for historical reasons prevails over another and endangers the others, this does not mean that English or the languages of the former colonizing countries should not be learned, on the contrary, they must, but it would be nice if alongside these languages for international communications, a neutral language should be used which belongs to everyone but I understand that everyone can have very divergent opinions regarding this specific topic. finally, Esperanto can be a very useful tool for learning other languages and can be very useful when you are among strangers and you don't want to be understood while talking on the phone :) but yeah you will cannot use it fot this last reason if it will be widespoken in the world like english :/ hahah oh and there is a specific and standard way to speak and pronunce esperanto

[VocesetManusMundi]

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:

Dankon, Metatron and see you later.

[PC_Simo]

Also; Esperanto is not easy for a native Mandarin-speaker, who’s not familiar with European languages. Nor is it easy for a native Arabic-speaker, in a small fishing village, either. Not very international, at all. The grammar comes from Slavic languages (already a trainwreck for, say, Anglophones), and the vocabulary comes from Romance languages (kind of, like backwards-Romanian).

*EDIT:* 7:49 Exactly 🎯! I *_LITERALLY JUST_* wrote the main bulk of my comment, before Raf said that, in the video.

[JamesJones-ztyx]

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.

[robertchappell]

You are very knowledgeable and I’m impressed with your in-depth knowledge of language.

[kriskanapo]

I started learning Esperanto a few years ago, as someone who could speak only English and aswell as enjoying it, I found that it helped improve my English.