>I couldn't encourage someone to study esperanto, because other
>languages would prove much more useful. Someday I'll get around to
>trying to learn Japanese.

Useful for what?

I enjoy studying languages, and Esperanto is an excellent primer for learning how languages are constructed, and its vocabulary draws strongly in IE languages. And it's incredibly easy to achieve fluency in the language; many linguists, even ones who aren't specifically Esperantists, have made the assertion that learning Esperanto and then going onto learning another natural language is more efficient than going directly to a second language. My personal interpretation of this has to do with one of the key things in attaining fluency in a language: learning to think in that language, instead of formulating thoughts and translating. Because Esperanto's grammar and vocabulary are so easily internalized, it's much easier to achieve the level of actually thinking in the language, and not stumbling over vocabulary and grammar. Once you've done that in one language, it gets exponentially easier to do in a second one. And by learning an alternate grammar, you learn just how language is actually constructed, which makes learning more languages easier because you're bringing preexisting knowledge with you, and don't have to learn all about things like noun declension or the subjunctive tense while you're also assimilating the specific peculiarities of the language in question.

And when you're talking about a language as supremely difficult to learn as English or Japanese, then you need all the help you can get.

(Did you know English has no less than twenty-three different ways to conjugate a verb, and that most of them are used fairly commonly? And that most of those conjugations have no analogue whatsoever in most languages?)

-- Sean --

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