Something very weird has happened.
Due to time limitations, recently I gave up reading and writing
Interlingua in order to concentrate on reading and writing
Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) and to continue my long-term commitment to learning to read French.
I had finally discovered that I could read French much more easily than I could read Interlingua, assuming in each case that I had a good dictionary and grammar available to which to refer. I would not have predicted that a natural language would prove to be easier to read than an
auxlang, once an intermediate level of proficiency had been acquired in both, so this was quite a surprising finding. I suppose the best way to interpret this is that perhaps the study of Interlingua acted to accelerate my progress in French; once it had done so, it no longer seemed necessary to continue with Interlingua.
All this followed my earlier conclusion that, contrary to the sales pitch, it probably takes about five years to master any auxlang. So I was finally in a frame of mind in which I was willing to study for years, not mere months, to learn auxlangs. In this state of mind, then, having given up Interlingua, but still being interested in the passive use of an auxlang for reading only, it seemed reasonable to take another look at
Esperanto. Regular readers of this blog will know Esperanto is a language which I have been bitterly disappointed by and which in general I have strongly disliked; however, that was mostly when I expected results in mere months instead of years.
As a
writer, I am
enthusiastically doing a literary translation
in LdP and intend to keep doing so. As a
reader, however, there is not yet any opportunity to read news and current affairs and opinions from all around the world in that language. Interlingua to some extent offered me that benefit but my Romance language of choice for such reading is now French rather than Interlingua. So I decided to try some reading in Esperanto, with a good dictionary and grammar to refer to, but without any further study. Having had bad experiences with Esperanto in the past, I did not want to waste any more of my time formally studying it. Either I
could read it or
not.
To my great surprise, something really weird happened in the past few days.
I returned to Claude Piron's introductory novella,
Gerda Malaperis!, which had previously been almost totally impenetrable to me despite extensive Esperanto study and repeated attempts. With great difficulty many months ago I had managed to get a few pages into the novella after studying several Esperanto textbooks over several months and basically getting nowhere. Giving up in disgust, I turned to other auxlangs and even gave up on all auxlangs for a time. Over the last few months I have studied mainly Interlingua and to a lesser extent LdP; I have done no Esperanto study.
Now, just as Interlingua seems to have helped me to learn French, it seems Interlingua and LdP and French must have helped me to learn Esperanto, because
without having done any Esperanto study for several months, suddenly out of nowhere I find that I can now easily read Piron's novella! In a few days I have read the first 26 pages of
Gerda Malaperis! without having any English translation available yet having no difficultly.
Now that is very, very weird and totally unexpected.
I now see that Esperanto, although
quite difficult for speakers of European languages and
very difficult for everybody else, actually works
surprisingly well for literary use and is easier than most natural languages. There is something about it which really suits the way the human brain works, something about it which makes it uncannily easy to read once the penny drops and you 'get it'; that is, at first the Esperanto system is like a gigantic wall which seems terribly unnatural and impossible to climb over but there comes a time when you find yourself having climbed the wall and suddenly the view from up there is very fine and there is little or no trouble understanding texts of moderate complexity. Suddenly it seems very natural; not 'naturalistic' but natural in the sense of suiting the thinking patterns of the human brain (however, it differs from many natural languages so greatly that at first it can be very difficult to learn indeed). My former intense dislike of the language has now turned into a moderate degree of liking the language; it no longer seems ugly to me but seems practical and clever in design. To be sure, it is somewhat utilitarian in appearance but nevertheless not without its charms. It just... 'makes sense' to me now. I now can... 'feel it'. That is, when reading sentences rapidly aloud, they just 'make sense' and seem to convey meaning in a natural, 'human' manner. It is unnatural in appearance but natural in its ability to be comprehended. It... 'works'.
Now, don't get me wrong. I would still be a bit worried about using Esperanto to write the operating instructions for a nuclear reactor! I think there is rather a lot of potential for misunderstanding in Esperanto since speakers can invent an unlimited number of words by combining affixes, however I now understand that this is analogous to people inventing an unlimited number of phrases by combining words and does not necessarily lead to misunderstanding among experienced users, although undoubtedly it does introduce the difficulty of not being able to find words in the dictionary. Presumably, in the fullness of time, it might be possible in the far future for the operating instructions of a nuclear reactor to be written in Esperanto without causing misunderstanding, as the language and its resources continue to mature. But for now that is beside the point.
Anyway, while I find LdP more beautiful than Esperanto, and more interesting than Esperanto, and more educational than Esperanto, and incomparably easier to write than Esperanto, I am nevertheless amazed to report that I now find Esperanto easier to read than any other auxlang. This is totally amazing to me because I have not studied Esperanto at all in the last several months.
So I find, to my surprise,
for me personally at this particular point in time the following rankings to be true:
Ease of Reading
From easiest to hardest:
English [my native language]
Esperanto
Lingwa de Planeta
French
Interlingua
Interlingua is hugely easier than French to
pronounce when reading aloud, but when reading silently French is now easier for me to understand. Esperanto requires less frequent dictionary use than LdP; the etymology of words in LdP is far more interesting but requires frequent dictionary use, slowing down the experience of reading compared to Esperanto. This frequent dictionary use makes LdP slower than French for me to read, but nevertheless French is definitely more difficult to read than LdP; that is, sometimes difficulty and speed do not correlate.
Aesthetic Beauty
From most beautiful to least beautiful:
French
English
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto
Of course
beauty is in the eye of the beholder and these are just my personal preferences in terms of aesthetic beauty for reading and writing literature. Esperanto still has its own beauty but feels more utilitarian than the other languages, all of which more often favour beauty over ease of use.
I would say all five languages are beautiful but in different ways.
I am simply amazed to now find Esperanto so easy to read.
Ease of Writing
From easiest to hardest:
English [my native language]
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto
French
I can hardly write any Esperanto at all, at this stage.
Lingwa de Planeta hovers near the middle in all three lists: it is a nice compromise for reading, writing, and aesthetic beauty, and it is in my opinion far easier than Esperanto for those who speak no European language. It is currently by far my favourite auxlang for writing literature.
