Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.politics.ec
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!uhog.mit.edu!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!pa.dec.com!decwrl!tribune.usask.ca!canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca!newsflash.concordia.ca!CC.UMontreal.CA!news.Umontreal.CA!hinsenk
From: hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: One point against Esperanto
In-Reply-To: dik@cwi.nl's message of Sun, 5 Mar 1995 03:40:43 GMT
Message-ID: <HINSENK.95Mar5203622@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
Sender: news@cc.umontreal.ca (Administration de Cnews)
Organization: Universite de Montreal
References: <D4wsoy.7y3@indirect.com> <D4y7Jv.C7M@cwi.nl>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 01:36:22 GMT
Lines: 31

In article <D4y7Jv.C7M@cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:

   About young children.  They do not work with rules.  Nor with complete
   memorization.  It is (I think) mostly by intuition.  I readily believe
   (from another thread) that whatever the native language, the child will
   acquire it about equally fast.  The conclusion from this is that there is
   no difference when you teach young children a foreign language whether
   that is Esperanto, English, Mandarin or whatever.  The advantages of
   Esperanto will only become appararent when teaching to the elder.

You seem to be mixing up native-language learning and learning foreign
languages at a young age. In both cases, there is evidence that
Esperanto is learned faster (on average, of course).

One might be surprised that this is true even for learning the
first (native) language. The reason is that in a certain phase
of learning, children generalize the most often (i.e. regular) word
formation  to irregular verbs. They have to be taught the correct
(irregular) forms by constant repition. This rather lengthy
phase of language learning is not necessary with Esperanto.
(For those who like references: I read this in one of Claude
Piron's works, but I don't remember in which.)

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
Departement de Chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
Universite de Montreal            | Fax:  +1-514-343-7586
C.P. 6128, succ. A                | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/Nederlands/
Montreal (QC) H3C 3J7             | Francais (phase experimentale)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
