Esperanto -- Should it be considered a real language? (11)

6 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-04-05 01:29 ID:oX6P4+PM

>>5
> also i would put forth that while esperanto does in fact convey meaning it has to date never been used to convey anything worth being communicated.
You got me there. (Although a lot of good books have been translated, I don't think that counts.)

There is one thing about Esperanto which interests me more than most other aspects, which is its effect on learning other languages afterwards:
Several studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds and improves learning the second language, to a greater extent than other languages which have been investigated. This appears to be because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one's first, while the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study,[15] a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years. Similar results were found when the course of study was reduced to two years, of which six months was spent learning Esperanto.
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