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Deficiencies

Philip David Morgan's picture

Over the last few weeks, I've found myself trying to identify those areas of Esperanto studies where I am in need of focused study. Call it a deficiency review, if you will.

While I have no doubt any komencanto has his or her own stumbling blocks, mine seem especially big.

They are:

  • Transitive vs. intransitive verbs,
  • The effective use of root words and affixes, and
  • Developing a speaking and writing style that doesn't come across as "studied" or "ancient."

My goal for the coming year is to tackle each of the above.

My one handicap, apart from my ADHD, is that this Long Island (New York) samideano is also flying solo. And having a community in and around the Stony Brook area, home to a major university, would be nice.

I can get some of the work done with Lernu!, but online learning can only take me so far.

Any useful strategies for a solo samilingvano?

My two cents

I like to strive for a classical style, and generally prefer to refer to Zamenhof as a model. To that end, I recommend "Zamenhofa Ekzemplaro" by Nomura. It lists words alphabetically, and shows examples of how Zamenhof used them in writing. That makes it fairly easy to answer transitive/intransitive questions, etc.

David

  • By DavidSimpson at 2007-11-03 23:49
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Opposing suggestions

I'm with you on the transitive/intransitive verbs, and don't really have much in the way of suggestions to offer there.

I thought I had a suggestion with regard to effective use of roots, but it may be in conflict with sounding less ancient. My suggestion is to focus on the fundamentaj vortoj, and on the writing of people who tried to use them. There were several decades there, where whole schools of writers tried to stick with the fundamento. You won't find better models for the effective use of the root words and affixes.

Of course, if you do that, you'll end up sounding like someone who learned Esperanto a century ago. Personally, I think that's okay.

--
Philip BREWER

  • By pbrewer at 2007-11-02 13:23
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Transitive and intransitive verbs . . .

... are really tricky. I decided that I couldn't really memorize which are naturally transitive and which are intransitive, any more than I could handle a list of which German words are feminine, because there's little rhyme or reason to it. In the end, I began to study "fari" and "fariĝi" as entirley different words and ignoring that they're made up of root + affixes. Same with "morti" and "mortigi," "komenci" and "komenciĝi", kaj tiel plu. When reading, "ig" and "iĝi" are helpful. When speaking, it's too much rule and logical. Read and speak, and "ig" and "iĝi" will come naturally.

  • By Tim Westover at 2007-10-30 02:12
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Hard parts of Esperanto

I agree with Tim--trying to learn any of these difficult parts of the language as "grammatical abstracts" isn't going to help you with conversation or fluent writing.

The same problem occurs with the "table of correlatives." People can spend a long time trying to understand and master that table, but the the fact is unless they've learned each correlative as a unique word with unique meaning, AND HAVE PRACTICED USING IT IN CONTEXT, there's always going to be hesitation . . . "Damn, should I say "Kio" or "Kiu" in this sentence?"

Part of the problem, of course, lies in our teaching methods and materials. We don't usually warn people early on about the ig/igh problem, for instance, so people don't know that they even need to distinguish some of these word pairs. By the time they figure it out, they've developed bad language habits. I still struggle with some verbs because I never realized early on that some verbs are transitive and others intransitive.

One learning strategy is to develop and practice meaningful model sentences employing words that pose difficulties for you. For example: "Mi vekighas chiumatene je la 5:30-a." That's a true statement, it relates to my normal life, and if I can get that struture and its sound in my thinking apparatus I'm likely to be able to use "veki" and "vekighi" accurately.

Lee

  • By Lee Miller at 2007-11-03 04:02
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Hardly qualified to answer, but...

I won't let that stop me.

I am not good enough to have a style. However, the two advanced exercises that I have found most helpful are to work through "Pasxoj al plena posedo" by William Auld and to try to do the exercised from "Traduku!" by William Auld.

"Pasxoj" is great at teaching the use of adverbs, participles, and prespositions. It really emphasizes precision and concision.

"Traduku!" is excellent because it doesn't just give you translations, but rather shows you the complexity of the task. Auld discusses tradeoffs and compromises in trying to find the right word to capture both the meaning and the tone of the original work.

An aside, anyone who thinks computers will soon provide good automatic translation should try an exercise from "Traduku!". It is hard for me to imagine a deeper intellectual task, except perhaps actual mathematics.

-- Robert L. Read
read &t robertlread point net
Austin, TX, USA

  • By Robert L. Read at 2007-10-29 23:21
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