Has anyone here ever tried learning Esperanto to help in their language studies?

[burbuja0512]

I really don't want to come here and say anything bad, but overall, I think Esperanto is a total waste of time. I speak Spanish with 100% fluency and Brazilian Portuguese at about 50%. I know a handful of enthusiastic polyglots, including a guy who literally speaks 11 languages - and they all agree with me about Esperanto.

Here's why: If you want to learn a language to help you with Latin-based languages, just learn a language that is relevant and it WILL help you. For example, with my Spanish and Portuguese (plus my very basic French studies,) I was able to learn enough Italian to get by on a business trip. It only took me a few weeks with audio tapes in my car and I was ready to go! Maybe Esperanto would have helped but even so, would it be useful on a day to day basis? I'd rather take my Spanish and Portguese knowledge and use it to speak another language.

I also had no problem with the Catalan language on a trip to Barcelona. (Catalan btw is NOT a dialect of Spanish, it comes from latin) Didn't need to speak it- the client and partners all spoke Spanish, but I was able to understand everything that was supposed to be a 'secret' during negotiations. (Another business trip, sorry, that's the only way I can afford to travel)

And can Esperanto help with other non-latin based languages such as Slavic, Dutch, Afrikaans, or other Indo-European languages? Of course, but why bother with a made up language? Just learn the language in question.

And since we're all about saving time, I'll give my unsolicited opinion - be careful about which languages you learn. Some countries speak better English than imagined. For example, in Scandinavia, they use English as the lingua franca to communicate. German is extremely useful if you're in engineering or chemistry, but other than that, I have been to Germany more times than I can count and have yet to "need" German. They're just damn good at English. Same goes for many countries where they speak Slavic languages, though it definitely depends, and definitely don't learn Afrikaans since it's seen in SA as the language of apartheid. I've been to 60 countries and the only place where I truly can't get by is in China... and I don't think Esperanto would help me with that!


Anyway... sorry for the ramble. I have spent more hours than I can possibly count learning foreign languages, including living outside the US for 6 years, so I have passionately debated the Esperanto question on many ocassions. I would just really hate to see anyone learning Esperanto hoping that it helps them more than just learning a real language. But, on the bright side, the Esperanto community is very tight knit and it could be the doorway to a ton of fun with what basically amounts to a worldwide language club. They do have a lot of activities. So if you're doing it for fun, have a great time. If you expect it to help you more than learning a real language would, I would wholeheartedly challenge that assumption.