learn Esperanto before Finnish?

[worldnomad]

Hey Guys,

I have studied Finnish for 1 year & Chinese for 1 year but never got far and it has been years since then. I have forgotten pretty much all the beginner knowledge I learned. Is it true that one has a much better chance at picking up a foreign natural language after studying Esperanto? Perhaps I should spend at least a few months learning Esperanto before I give Finnish another shot? Do any of you have experience such as learning Esperanto and then going on to learn your first foreign language?

Thanks!

[Narbleh]

I think the idea behind learning Esperanto first is to figure out how you personally learn a foreign language and to introduce ideas about language you may not be familiar with, such as verbs, adjectives, transitivity, and also to let you discover techniques for studying grammar/vocabulary. However, since this isn't your first foreign language, I'm not sure much benefit would really be had, unless you did it for the sake of Esperanto and not in the hopes that it would somehow make Finnish easier.

Finnish is going to be hard at first for most people, simply because it has so many things that are unfamiliar to speakers of Indo-European languages... many word cases, vowel harmony, consonant gradation, and of course the entirely separate word stock, which leaves very few cognates to help you memorize words.

So unfortunately, the bottom line I think is Finnish is going to be a challenge, Esperanto or not, but if you buckle down and just keep going, you'll make progress

[Hallas]

Wow, I never wanted to learn Finnish before, but now I really don't want to. Good luck with that.

[ILuvEire]

The good thing is that whether you choose Esperanto or Finnish, you'll have tons of other learners and proficient speakers to help you!

[Hallas]

The good thing is that whether you choose Esperanto or Finnish, you'll have tons of other learners and proficient speakers to help you!

Haha as long as he(she?) stays within the confines of this site. Obscure languages for the win.

[ILuvEire]

The good thing is that whether you choose Esperanto or Finnish, you'll have tons of other learners and proficient speakers to help you!

Haha as long as he(she?) stays within the confines of this site. Obscure languages for the win.

Heh, that's kinda funny. It never occurred to me that one might have more trouble finding natives and other learners outside Unilang I need to get out more.

[Hallas]

Heh, that's kinda funny. It never occurred to me that one might have more trouble finding natives and other learners outside Unilang I need to get out more.

Haha I honestly thought you were being sarcastic

[worldnomad]

Thanks for the responses so far. I also wrote on another forum and received a reply of:

"While there's nothing inherently wrong in learning Esperanto, thinking that it would help you in your Finnish skills is a bit like... recommending someone who wishes to learn German to study Swedish, or supposing that if you wish to be a good cellist you'd profit from practicing on the piano for a few years first. Neither of these 'alternatives' is in itself harmful, but that does not mean they would not be utterly silly suggestions if what you actually wish to learn is German, or endeavour to play the Elgar Cello concerto one day.

If the OP is desperately aching to learn Finnish via some other language, learning Estonian would be at least somehow helpful. But this kind of plans would also be best archived somewhere between the categories "silly" and "somewhat insane", if the actual goal is to learn Finnish"

I'm not too sure what to think about that reply. It's true that I'm trying to learn Finnish by learning Esperanto to help ease me into the right state of mind... but I thought this is one of the reasons for learning Esperanto.. to help you with your first foreign language. From what i've read anyway..

[Hallas]

I'm not too sure what to think about that reply. It's true that I'm trying to learn Finnish by learning Esperanto to help ease me into the right state of mind... but I thought this is one of the reasons for learning Esperanto.. to help you with your first foreign language. From what i've read anyway..

It won't directly help you, but I think it's safe to assume it would indirectly help you (at least a little bit). I'd assume that learning any foreign language could only improve your knowledge of how languages work, which would in turn help you learn other foreign languages quicker (if only a bit quicker).

[Formiko]

Esperanto grande helpos, ke oni lernas aliajn lingvojn, kvazaŭ la bekfluto helpas, ke infanojn lernas muzikajn konceptojn.

Esperanto will greatly help you learn other languages, like the recorder helps children learn musical concepts.

[Narbleh]

I'm of the opinion that Esperanto is so different from Finnish that its use will be limited to figuring out how one best learns a language as opposed to having any transferable linguistic value. I'd personally just start learning Finnish. You'd make more headway with a year of Finnish than six of Eo before six of Finnish.

[davidwelsh]

I think that if you find language learning inherently difficult, and are struggling to get to grips with how to make progress in you chosen language(s), then learning Esperanto could well be helpful. It will help you to understand the process of language learning, and increase your confidence in your own ability to learn a language to fluency - which I think is a key factor.

[Formiko]

I think that if you find language learning inherently difficult, and are struggling to get to grips with how to make progress in you chosen language(s), then learning Esperanto could well be helpful. It will help you to understand the process of language learning, and increase your confidence in your own ability to learn a language to fluency - which I think is a key factor.

Jes, mi konsentas. Almenaŭ oni povas lerni lingvistikajn konceptojn

[eskandar]

I agree with Narbleh - if your goal is to learn Finnish, studying Esperanto will be almost a complete waste of time, which would be better spent just studying Finnish.

[davidwelsh]

I agree with Narbleh - if your goal is to learn Finnish, studying Esperanto will be almost a complete waste of time, which would be better spent just studying Finnish.

There are actually quite a few academic studies which have suggested the opposite. In these studies, two groups are aiming to learn the same language (say French) within a certain period of time, maybe 2 or 4 years. One group of learners studies Esperanto for the first 25% of the time, and then switches to studying French. The control group studies French the whole time.

The results have invariably been that the Esperanto group ends up learning the target language better than the group who focussed on it the whole time. Learning Esperanto had least effect on the best students, and the greatest on the students who struggled most with language learning.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, there's a fair bit of evidence that studying Esperanto first could actually save you time in the medium and long term.

[Æren]

I also think that learning Esperanto, when you aim Finnish, is very inappropriate and would be more like waste of time, because the languages are quite not similar. You'd better try to learn Quenya, if you want to have some idea of the structure of the language. I was learning a bit Sindarin before starting the Irish and I can say it helped me, at least to get use with the mutations of the consonants. For now, though, I have put both languages on hold.

[eskandar]

There are actually quite a few academic studies which have suggested the opposite. In these studies, two groups are aiming to learn the same language (say French) within a certain period of time, maybe 2 or 4 years. One group of learners studies Esperanto for the first 25% of the time, and then switches to studying French. The control group studies French the whole time.

The results have invariably been that the Esperanto group ends up learning the target language better than the group who focussed on it the whole time. Learning Esperanto had least effect on the best students, and the greatest on the students who struggled most with language learning.

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, there's a fair bit of evidence that studying Esperanto first could actually save you time in the medium and long term.

That's an entirely different situation, since Esperanto is heavily influenced by the Romance languages (such as French) in all aspects, whereas it has very little in common with Finnish. By example, just because learning German might help you learn Swedish...doesn't mean learning German will help you at all with learning Chinese.

[Narbleh]

I think the point is that if you've never seriously learned a foreign language, Esperanto can be useful in helping you discover which techniques and methods work best for you, e.g. flashcards, grammar drills, translating, etc. However, the original poster has already learned some foreign languages, even if only a short while, so the usefulness of Eo in this instance is reduced.