I always wondered. Why do people learn languages like Lojban or Esperanto when you can learn some actual languages that actual people use? Why not learn Spanish, or Hindi, or Mandarin, or Arabic, or Russian... and learn a language nobody really speaks?
I don't mean it in a derogatory sense, I am merely personally interested; if I had the time and capacity to learn a new language, I would gather it's both more useful and more fun to learn an actual living language, with a rich culture and history.
True or not, here's a very practical line of reasoning:
* It's generally accepted that gaining reasonable fluency in one's first acquired natural language takes about four years.
* It's generally accepted that gaining reasonable fluency in each subsequent acquired natural language takes about two years.[0]
* Learning a clean "constructed" language is reasonably efficient. Fluency in Esperanto or Lojban, for example, can be attained in as little as one year.
* Thus to learn, say, Swedish, it's fastest to learn Lojban first in one year, and then Swedish is a subsequent acquired language and only takes an additional two years.
* Conclusion: It's faster to learn "(Esperanto|Lojban) Swedish" than it is to learn Swedish alone.
I don't entirely subscribe to this theory, but it's an interesting speculation.
For me, I learned some constructed languages because I wondered if they would provoke the Sapir-Whorf effect. Anecdata: They did.
[0] The rationale is that the first requires un-learning things you've always taken for granted with regards your cradle language. Learning subsequent languages doesn't require that "un-learning, and so is quicker."
The polyglots I know all agree with a moderate form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which says that the language(s) you use affect what and how you think. In fact, when I say that some linguists find it controversial they look at me as if I'm demented. They just take it for granted that it's true.
BTW, this is often confused/conflated with "linguistic relativity"[0] and I'm not going to get into where one ends and the other starts. More, it seems that the effects are different for coordinate multilinguals versus compound multilinguals.[+]
Pinker says in "The Language Instinct"[1] that careful experiments show that it's nonsense. On the other hand, more recent work suggests that the effect is real, and that speaking a different language can result in measurable differences in your modes of thought, perception of time, and even your personality.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
So I was curious, but I didn't have time to learn an entire new language. But then I heard of LogLan, and subsequently Lojban, which was originally designed specifically for the purpose of testing this idea. The reasoning goes like this:
* Design a language that has something specific that is not present in any known "natural" language.
* Learn to speak it, and preferably raise some children with it as (one of) their cradle language(s)
* Measure their thinking and see if there are differences
* Use that to design a careful experiment to test the hypothesised effects.
So I learned (some) lojban in the hope that I would see some changes in my thinking. And I did. Specifically, after the weekend I spent learning the tense (spatial and temporal) system I found myself using tenses that I don't believe I'd ever used before. Someone asked if I'd enjoyed a party, and I started my reply with:
"I would have had been having a good time,
except that ..."
So I strongly believe that studying another language affects how you perceive things, and how you think about things.
[+] It is suggested that coordinate multilinguals[8] do not experience the same effects as compound multilinguals[8], even if they are equally fluent. A friend of mine, now sadly deceased, never completed his PhD, but his work showed an extremely clear split between coordinate and compound bilinguals (English/German) wherein the compound bilinguals showed a clear change of personality as they shifted language, but the coordinate bilinguals showed no measurable change. He never published, I only have a copy of his thesis without the data, and I promised I would never release it.
Just to define some terms, for the benefit of other readers:
a) Coordinate Bilingualism: In this type, the person learns the languages in separate environments, and words of the two languages are kept separate with each word having its own specific meaning. An instance of this is seen in a Cameroonian child learning English at school. This may also be referred to as subtractive bilingualism.
b) Compound Bilingualism: Here, the person learns the two languages in the same context where they are used concurrently, so that there is a fused representation of the languages in the brain. This is the case when a child is brought up by bilingual parents, or those from two different linguistic backgrounds. This is additive in nature.
I have interest in these languages because, in general, I have high appreciation for simple solutions to complex problems. I find very interesting how they solve different challenges.
I just learn a bit about them, but do not learn to speak, at least not enough to have the simplest conversation. But I understand how you could get more hooked into it and learn it and spend many hours with your toy language.
From all the unuseful hobbies people have, I do not think learning artificial languages is one of the worse.
I study Spanish because i live in the USA and Spanish is the de facto second language (almost all of the time). But Spanish wasn't useful in Turkey, Japan, Cairo, etc. where i did use Esperanto. I wish i could learn all the languages of the world, but i'm just not that good at it. Esperanto is easy.
But, more than that... In the USA a native Spanish speaker is (too) often discriminated against. As a non-native Spanish speaker i am always on the outside of conversations in Spanish. Esperanto is meant to be everybody's second(!) language, not be a homogenizing language for the planet. Esperanto speakers are all non-natives (actually there are some natives, but they don't have special powers :) so we Esperantists meet as equals.
To riff on what somebody else wrote, if a client said i had to learn Haskell, i'd be happy to be paid to do so. My "payment" for knowing Esperanto is the community of (mostly) intelligent, (mostly) compassionate, and (mostly) generous people i've met using it.
Hey. Forgive the stunted speech, but I must practice! :)
Mi komencas lerni Esperanton ĵus antaŭ unu semajno -- tra Duolingo, ke eble vi atendas -- sed nun mi provas iri al pli realaj verkoj, plejparte tradukitaj facilaj verkoj, tiuj mi leĝis en la anglan iam en mi vivo.
Kiam mi rigardis la Esperantajn grupojn en Meetup.com por la Bay Area, mi memoras vidinta la nomon "trio" ien. Tiu estas vi, ĉu ne?
Yeah, I can say the same about Lojban community. Most Lojbanists study and use Lojban to better know how we think, how can knowledge be better represented. As for other languages a lot of Lojbanists speak several major languages each so this means that Lojban can't be replaced by another major language.
People learn Esperanto because it's useful - especially if you travel or have international interests. I have used Esperanto in Argentina, Cameroon and about fifteen European countries. We are seeing an upsurge in Esperanto at the moment because of the appearance of the Duolingo course. See:
Duolinghttp://www.liberafolio.org/9-000-homoj-eklernis-esperanton-e...
Two days after the launch of Esperanto course at the popular language learning site Duolingo, the course has already gained almost ten thousand participants. The course still is not even officially launched, but is in its test phase. The course opened in its testing phase on Thursday 28 May at eight o'clock in the evening (M.E.T.) In less than two days, the course already had 9,600 registered participants, although it has not yet been actively advertised.
My mum learned Esperanto - main motivation a kind of idealism where the world can come together with a common language without any particular culture dominating the others in the way you would tend to get if you chose say English as the common language. It also can be a social thing to meet others with a similar worldview.
I don't mean it in a derogatory sense, I am merely personally interested; if I had the time and capacity to learn a new language, I would gather it's both more useful and more fun to learn an actual living language, with a rich culture and history.