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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Esperanto as a stepping stone?
Message-ID: <D25o5G.D7E@spss.com>
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References: <HCANNON.118.2F0F0796@macalstr.edu> <elnaD22xoI.Hwz@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 1995 20:41:40 GMT
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In article <elnaD22xoI.Hwz@netcom.com>,
Esperanto League N America <elna@netcom.com> wrote:
>Consider a Chinese person who wishes to learn a European language, say 
>French or English. She is introduced to the concept of an alphabet, a
>collection of several dozen symbols which allegedly reflect the 
>pronunciation of the words which make up the language. This is of course
>quite novel, because Chinese ideograms give no clue to the sound of the 
>word; the sound of each symbol must be memorized individually. 

A large percentage (about 60%, according to John DeFrancis) of Chinese
characters *do* contain phonetic clues to their pronunciation.

Also, pinyin is often used in China to help teach writing, so the concept
of alphabetic writing may not be entirely novel to a Chinese speaker.

>If the same Chinese student were to preface her study of French or English
>with a basic course in Esperanto, she would gain a simple, regular framework
>of the structure of European (dare I say Indo-European?) languages which
>would function well as a skeleton on which to hang the flesh and fat of any
>national language from that family. 
>
>This clarity of necessity bears fruit.
>And the bonus is that the student learns a third language in the process!

Many of the same advantages would be achieved by studying Spanish first,
and the extra language learned would be of much greater utility in the world.

>Any student of language can recall the frustration inherent in the process
>of memorising the classes of verbs, the different conjugations within those
>classes, the exceptions.... And so on for all the irregularities. 

If avoiding irregularities is the goal, why not learn Quechua, which has
a completely regular verb, no inflected adjectives, and a simpler and more 
regular pronoun system than Esperanto's? 
