Hey, what's up guys welcome to Fingtam languages. Today
We're gonna talk about something that I get questioned about all the time
Now before we get started, I know I'm gonna get a ton of hate for making this video
So if you think I'm being ridiculous for learning Esperanto
Feel free to leave me some hate down in the comment section below. You will not change my mind
Esperanto is a constructed language that was developed in the 1800s
And this video is gonna be three reasons why I'm learning Esperanto and why I think you should too. My first reason for learning Esperanto
Is that it will help you learn future languages. I'm gonna start this one off with a blanket statement
Esperanto is so much easier
Than any other language except for maybe Toki Pona The grammar rules in Esperanto are just very easy to follow and there are no
irregularities
Researchers have been studying this for many years and the results are clear one study found that if you study
Esperanto for only 20 hours
(Which if you're a nerd like me you can do that in a week.) If you learn Esperanto for only 20 hours
You'll learn as much language as if you were learning Spanish French Italian or German for 100 hours
Meaning you would be learning five times as much Esperanto per hour
Than if you were learning these other languages. Another study showed that among high school
students who wanted to learn French over a period of four years
Some students who learned Esperanto for one year and then learned French for the next three years learned French to a higher level
Than those who had been learning French for the whole four years
There's an easy comparison here between learning languages and learning music. If you've never learned a language before and you want to learn Mandarin Chinese
That's kind of like picking up a tuba for the first time.
There's a reason elementary schools start students off with learning the recorder before they start to learn how to play the tuba
It's because it's easier and it teaches you the basic principles for learning how to play music. In this example
Esperanto is like the recorder. Learning Esperanto is a low stakes low stress
Fun easy way of learning all the skills that you need to develop in order to learn how to learn languages
That's why a lot of polyglots recommend learning Esperanto for a short period of time to help you with your other languages
Even if you have no interest in continuing to master Esperanto. Of course, if you're a nerd like me
Then you're gonna have so much fun learning Esperanto that you won't want to stop
Just like how if you're a music nerd like me
You're gonna want to keep playing the recorder even after you graduate from third grade, which brings me really nicely into my next point
I'm learning Esperanto
Because it's fun. Dang it
If you've never learned Esperanto
You have no idea how motivating it is to study a language for a week or less and already be able to hold basic
Conversations with people. I started learning Esperanto the day it came out on duolingo and within that week
I was already finding people online to chat with in Esperanto and hold full-fledged conversations
Even if my Esperanto wasn't really great. That same week, Chuck Smith released videos on his YouTube channel of people who had been learning Esperanto
For 3 days and they were able to hold entire
conversations in
Esperanto interview style on his YouTube channel, if you're a language nerd like me, this is fun
It doesn't matter if you're never gonna take a vacation to Esperanto-land
It doesn't matter if you can't get an esperanto minor at college.
You learn it because it's enjoyable. When I was in high school
I used to spend hours a day playing
Halo and nobody thought that was weird, so no
I'm not gonna apologize to you for doing something I find enjoyable in my free time
If you don't think learning Esperanto is fun. Don't do it
But then you're gonna miss out on the opportunity to see what it's like to learn a language at blazingly fast
speeds. Now, as much as I find studying Esperanto to be fun
The really enjoyable thing about Esperanto is my third reason for learning the language and that is the Esperanto community
Whenever I tell people I'm learning Esperanto
One of the first objections I get from them is "But you'll never meet somebody who speaks it". This is false
I've met a ton of people who speak Esperanto through a variety of means the year is 2018 and we have this big
Beautiful place for meeting other people called the internet. There are dozens of apps and websites out there
Dedicated to helping you find other people that you can message and chat with online
I'm twitter friends with a bunch of other people that speak esperanto on twitter. There's also a thriving esperanto community here on youtube
I personally have a separate channel separate from this one where I speak only
Esperanto and people are on there commenting all the time
I've made a lot of Esperanto speaking friends just through them commenting on my YouTube channel
If you're not into online penpals, then physical Esperanto meetings are a real thing
There's worldwide congresses local meetups most big cities have Esperanto societies where local
Esperantists meet up once a week or once a month
There's a yearly meetup in North Carolina where people come from around the world to learn
Esperanto together when I was in Montreal this summer for a length fest. I ran into a ton of other Esperanto speakers there
There's also a free service called the passport the servo which is essentially couchsurfing for Esperanto speakers
I've used this service twice once in Canada and once in Ireland to get a free place to stay and
Practice my Esperanto with somebody all these reasons add up to why we say Esperanto has its own culture
There's also tons of music in Esperanto literature some originally written in Esperanto and others
Translated into Esperanto like La Hobito by JRR tolkien
There's also Esperanto TV shows in Esperanto movies one of which stars William Shatner before he was in Star Trek
Esperanto culture is vibrant and active and the Esperanto community has been growing larger and larger every day
Especially over the last few years since the development of Esperanto duolingo
It's an exciting time to be an Esperanto speaker
And all I can say is if you haven't considered
Trying it before learning Esperanto can give you a lot of reward for a lot less effort than your other languages
So thanks for watching the video and we'll see you guys next time