My problem with Esperanto...

No posts for a long time. This reflects exactly what happened to my Esperanto learning progress: it stalled. I don't really know how to 'get back on track', but due to not using it, I start losing it, and that makes it even harder to read anything, so I don't, and my Esperanto competence slides further down the slippery slope.

How I can combine learning Esperanto with a busy day, I don't know. I don't think it's a problem with Esperanto as such, as I had the same experience with other things I attempted to learn, be it brushing up my Latin or learning basic Economics. There's a limited amount of time and energy available, and anything non-essential falls by the wayside first.

Any idea how to solve this dilemma?

Esperanto on YouTube

I had a look at 'Esperanto' on YouTube, and there are indeed some video clips of people talking in Esperanto. Some are obviously staged, and sound unnatural, but there are others as well, and it really brings home the difference between learning a language from text and learning it from conversations.

In order to learn it properly, I guess I have to investigate that in the future.

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Mi rigardi 'Esperanto' en 'YouTube', kaj mi trovis kelkajn filmojn de personoj konversacias en e-o. Kelkaj estas sursceniga kaj sonas malkrude, sed tie estas aliaj. Ili klarigas la distingo de lerni lingvon skribe kaj parole.

Lerni e-o dece, mi devas esplori tian estonte.

Parallel Learning

I'm mainly doing the FEC, the correspondence course; here I get the basics, and also am in touch with an actual human being, so I can try out writing a few sentences and get feedback on those. A bit more of a personal touch than a simple self-study course. And I did try a few self-study courses in my time, not just with Esperanto. Getting through them is hard.

So while I'm waiting for the corrections of my exercises (which are turned around extremely fast!), and in idle time during the day (eg my lunch break) I'm having a look at what other learning resources there are, and there are a few Esperanto-related ones. Today I was curious if there was an Esperanto group on Facebook, and there are in fact several. In one of their postings I found a reference to Unilang, which has an Esperanto course for beginners. This is quite good, but has a few typos, and there are some answers which seem not quite right in English.

The best thing is that it's fun to practice different sentences, learn a different set of words, and repeat the basic grammar described from different angles. And, unlike the FEC, it's not as out-dated: I haven't yet come across sentences where a teacher beats a pupil, a bad girl smokes (only men smoke, good girls don't) and mother washes the children. And who drives to Paris with lemonade under their seats?!?

Progress: just finished lesson 7 today, which is a test. I wanted to do it without reference to the teaching materials, and it was quite easy. Translating vocabulary from Esperanto into English is not much of a problem if you've had some exposure to European languages--the other way round is much more tricky!

Halfway?

I am now halfway through the 10 lesson correspondence course, and I feel much more secure. Due to the speed I've been going through it (especially at the weekend) I need to go over the vocabulary again. Just about manage to get most of the pronouns right by now–practice makes more or less perfect.

The correlatives (45 combinations of 5 pre- and 9 suffixes) are very useful, but require some effort to be mastered. Part of the problem is probably that they don't map straightforwardly onto anything similar in English.

While searching our library catalogue for Esperanto-related material I came across a book by someone familar, Chris Gledhill, whom I know from his time at Aston. He wrote a corpus-based description of Esperanto, including a detailed linguistic account of the language itself. Interesting!

I can now write longer sentences without making too many mistakes, but complex structures still elude me.

Mi estas kapabla skribi pli longajn malerarajn frazojn, sed kompleksaj strukturoj estas tro malfacila nun ankoraux.

That sentence is probably full of mistakes, but at least it's a bit more complex than just La suno brilas hodiaux!