What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?

i feel like this is a descent question i guess.

  • randomperson@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Esperanto seems to be pretty useless to invest so much time into learning it. Wouldn’t be learning “normal” language more beneficial anyway?

    • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Depends on your goals. If you’re going somewhere with one language to spend time, or especially value a particular language, studying that language makes sense. If you want access to a global network of the sort of people who would pick up a conlang intended to be a universal second language, one speakers of can be found anywhere, Esperanto’s your pick.

      Mi lernis Esperanton ĉar mi volas havi amikojn en ĉiaj la landoj de la mondo.

      • randomperson@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I am Polish native that can easily read Ukrainian, English and also some German and I have no clue what that sentence means in Esperanto :D. I can only guess that “lernis” is probably something like “learning” and “mondo” refers to “world” (guess based purely on ‘Le Monde’ - French newspaper). Rest looks like some random Lithuanian stuff. I don’t think knowledge of Esperanto could give me any advantage when traveling across Europe. Idea is cool but to be honest English is the new lingua franca and I think that’s good because it’s easy to pick up and already widespread.

        • HopeOfTheGunblade@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          what lauguage would you recommend for people who only know english?

          You weren’t the target audience for my initial comment.

          “I learned Esperanto because I want to have friends in all the countries of the world.”

        • garrettw87@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          If you’re curious…
          “Mi” - pronoun meaning I/me
          “lernis” - learned (The root is “lern-”. The following rules apply to all verbs: “-i” is the infinitive form, “-is” is past tense, “-as” is present tense, “-os” is future tense, “-us” is conditional tense (kind of like could/would), and “-u” is imperative/command form.)
          “Esperanton” - obviously Esperanto, but the “-n” suffix denotes a direct object.
          “ĉar” - because
          “volas” - (verb, present tense) want
          “havi” - (verb, infinitive) to have
          “amikojn” - (noun, direct object, plural) - root is “amik-”, the “-o” suffix denotes a noun, “-j” makes it plural, and then the “-n” for direct object again
          “en” - in
          “ĉiaj” - all
          “la” - the (this is the only article in the language; incidentally, there is no indefinite article)
          “landoj”- countries (“-o” is noun, “-j” is plural)
          “de” - of (there are actually multiple words that can mean “of” but that’s another topic entirely)
          “mondo” - world

          The letter “ĉ” is pronounced like “ch”; Esperanto doesn’t do two-letter phonemes because one of its foundational principles is one letter = one sound.