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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Artificial languages Re: Esperanto (was: Refusing to ....)
Message-ID: <donhCwtrDp.38M@netcom.com>
Followup-To: poster
Keywords: Esperanto blemish flaw Waringhien
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <35e76o$3ep@news.cs.brandeis.edu> <donhCwGoMJ.33D@netcom.com> <CwIGs6.BFo@world.std.com> <35r63i$g9p@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu>
Distribution: inet
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 05:32:13 GMT
X-Original-Newsgroups: sci.lang,soc.culture.esperanto
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bhelm@cs.uoregon.edu (B. Robert Helm) skribis en lastatempa afisxo <35r63i$g9p@majestix.cs.uoregon.edu>:

>On the topic of Esperanto's "fundamental blemishes", Rick Harrison
>alluded to an earlier discussion on soc.culture.esperanto of the
>language's shortcomings as an international language.  In particular,
>it was criticized there as quite difficult to learn for native
>speakers of Chinese in Singapore.  More to the point, it was claimed
>that such students learn much less easily than do speakers of
>languages closely related to Esperanto's sources.  One could argue
>that such assymetry compromises Esperanto's claim of cultural
>neutrality, although it obviously does not compromise its political
>neutrality.
>
While I did not have time to follow Rick's suggestion to look up s.l's 
earlier discussion on this matter (and don't even know where those 
archives would be!), I am familiar with Barry Crown's opinions on this 
subject from other on- and off-line discussions. Set against Barry's 
experiences, I would mention those of my best friend, Qian Minqi, who 
taught Esperanto to overflow classes at Huadong (East China Normal) 
University in Shanghai for ten years, usually for a period of one 
year each class. I had occasion to meet four of her students who had 
migrated to Beijing when I was in that city in 1986; none of them seemed 
to speak Esperanto any more poorly than the average Euro-American 
student (one was working in the Esperanto section at Radio Beijing; the 
others had non-language-related jobs). Minqi, of course, has the usual 
comments about Esperanto's _vocabulary_ being easier for Europeans to 
learn than Chinese, but she and her students seemed to have had no 
trouble with any of the language's other features. (Minqi's Esperanto 
is generally better than her English -- I can say that, since she's not 
on the net to see! -- despite nine years of study of the latter, 
some twenty years of teaching it, and -- to date -- a total of about 
six years of residence in the United States. Her formal study of 
Esperanto, into which she was involuntarily drafted, lasted one 
semester and was terminated by the cultural revolution.)

It might be interesting to find out what Barry's teaching system was. 
It may not be easy for an Englishman to attempt to teach Esperanto to 
a group of native Cantonese-speakers. Also, it has been my experience 
that full-time teachers generally (though not always) do a better job 
of teaching than amateurs do, good intentions notwithstanding. This 
latter point may have had something to do with the difference between 
the two sets of experiences...

>In addition, in his _Lingvaj Eseoj_ (to which Don referred earlier, I
>think), Gaston Waringhien discusses some specific features of

_Lingvo kaj vivo_ is the book's title. I think that "Lingvaj Eseoj" may 
be a subtitle.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/donh/donh.html 
