Learning Esperanto in Six Weeks - Day Thirteen
It's day 13 of the Learn Esperanto in Six Weeks Challenge.
Early in the competition I decided to check out some of my fellow language learners. Since you needed a Twitter account to sign up for the challenge, and since the six week challenge's website links to everyone Twitter feeds, I looked at the tweets from some of the other people learning Esperanto.
One tweet in particular got me thinking. At the beginning of the challenge, @Gary_McCluskey tweeted: "Starting learning Esperanto, not sure if this is a waste of time or not."
Is learning Esperanto a waste of time?
After a couple of days of learning Esperanto, my initial answer to that question, for me at least, was yes.
I've read and heard over and over again that learning Esperanto as a second language will help tons in a third language.
But I already know four languages at this point. Is Esperanto going to help me on my fifth?
Not only that, I have been studying German on Duolingo since September 2013. I was going to have to put my German studying on hold for six weeks. (I actually tried to study both for the first couple of days, but it became too much.)
And so, at first, I thought I was wasting my time. But I continued anyway.
But gradually I changed my mind.
As I mentioned, I've been trying to learn German for over half a year. What a frustrating language. Every time I feel like I'm getting a grasp on German grammar, I hit a brick wall again.
And my vocabulary wasn't growing as quickly as I'd like, either.
But I'm learning Esperanto much more quickly. Granted, Esperanto is supposed to be the easiest language to learn. But I think there are two other factors.
With Esperanto I have a reason to learn quickly.
I'm trying to learn as much as I can in six weeks. I signed up for a contest. The contest ends on June 11th.
There is only one other time when I tried to learn a language as quickly as I am now. When I was 19 and about to spend two years in Italy, I learned enough Italian to get by on day one in Italy, and it only took me six weeks.
I have no pressing reasons to learn German. I was studying everyday, but I have no immediate plans to visit Germany. No goals.
With Esperanto I'm trying lots of methods to learn. I started two different courses on lernu. I've used a few different phone apps. I;m reading articles on Wikipedia in Esperanto. I'm listening to an audio book during my drive to work. I've found some animated children's stories on YouTube in Esperanto with subtitles. (More on that in a future post.)
And I'll probably continue looking for ways to study and practice Esperanto.
With German, probably about 95% of my studying time was with Duolingo. Now, don't get me wrong. I love Duolingo. Duolingo kept me motivated to study German for over 180 days straight before lost my streak 10 days ago.
I visited a few other sites that explain German grammar better than Duolingo does. In April I started watching some YouTube videos in German. But still, almost all my time studying German was with Duolingo.
Duolingo is great, but it has it's downsides. Probably the biggest, in my opinion, is that after the first 10 lessons or so, it stops explaining grammar and hopes you figure it out as you go.
What I'm going to do differently:
As a result of this contest, when I go back to studying German next month, I'm going to do a few things differently.
I'm going to find a reason to study. I don't know what that reason is, but I have almost a month to figure it out.
I'm going to give myself a deadline to reach a certain point in German by a certain day. Again, I have a month to figure out that deadline and that benchmark.
I'm going to study using many resources, instead of just mainly Duolingo. I'll still use Duolingo, it just won't be the only source of German practice for me.
Esperanto might not be the most useful language for me to learn right now. But trying to learn it in 6 weeks will change how I study languages in the future.
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