lunes, 16 de marzo de 2015

The main advantges of learning Esperanto

The 'internacional language' has resurrected since Internet last century was created and doesn't look close to end its spread. Its study has demonstrated easilly helped on the purchase of linguistic competences and, moreover, by improving selfconfidence in students who considered learning foreing languagues would be very hard -in cases, like the UK or the USA where there's no tradition of bilinguism.

Let's talk about what it could give us.

1) Firt at all, its structure is very rational and sytematical. It shows how the grammar is actually something quite usefull and not non-sense, and how seeing foreing languages' structures as ratinal and different perspectives of looking at the world. Russian, Chinese, French, Italian... will mantain their appearence, but they will look easier when done the Esperanto study.

2) The esperantist will incounciusly carry out an improvement of his vocabulay of the european lenguagues. Many of the words of the Esperanto come from the German, French and other tongues from the Old Continent. When the student start taking a look over the French structures, will see something quite familiar, specially several words that are practically the same.

3) Its time of study is significally smaller than the other languages'ones. This is because its universal structure, in which any grammar rule has no exception, always, in all cases. Its vocabulary and its contruction -the way we build verbs from substantives and opposite, is regular and rational too. Let's imagine a 5-years-old child starting speaking English, and writting 'doed' as the participle of 'do', thinking the rule of 'adding -ed' to form the past forms. The rule is not regular in English, but nor in Spanish and in many cultures. That's an important issue in Esperanto, the regularity, and it supplies an ideal of harmony and simpleness inthinkable before the existence of this unnatural language.

4) The last advantge I wanted to report would may be the most important: the esperanto can change the international relations worlwide by providing a neutral tool of comutication with no local origin, not like English at the present, equating all the countries in the comunitations and promoting the mutual knowledge in a society where English is becoming the only way to comunicate outside the frontiers.

viernes, 6 de febrero de 2015

The Spanish Monolinguism

There's a tradition between spaniards of speaking no foreign languages for considereing them too difficult to be studied. Even at school it sounds normal that kids asume they will never get a decent English level, maybe because they consider themself as incapables of that, or maybe because there was never good teachers capables of such Herculean task, or for not having an acceptable state support. That culture of monolinguism is ready to end up- Internet has helped the youngest generations to practise their skills by watching their favorites series of the USA and by listening to their own music, even with tools for reading their lyrics and comprenhend their meaning.

Although, the average adult still posses dificulties to have just a begginer level of English, translating few words like 'today', 'Gimme that, please' or 'I don't like that because-'. And it is well seen that behaviur, for during decades the English knowledge has been though innessary and unpopular. Even so, that traditon has ocurred not only with that language- it happenned the same with the French. It was used as school language after the Civil War while Franco's ditadure, and its learning perdured til the modern Spain, when democracy was showing up slowly. But after its imposition during many years there was a francophone tradition, neither at the moment. 

Things are changing nowadays, but the country of Cervantes is still suffering a big deficit of bilingual education. It does not exist exist in other countries like the north of Europe, where the most students speak fluency English since children. So nor happened in Portugal or Italy, demography simillar to us. There the level of English is more significant than here. However, may the problem not be the lack of English in our country- spaniards don't actually speak well English, but they act having incounciusly many United States' costumes imported by its supremacy in the internation markets and Hollywood, but the incapacity or the unwilling for speaking out not in their maternal tongue.

If it is difficult to remove ascient ghosts on how hard other tongues are spaniards popularly use to say, it is practically impossible consider teaching other languages like French, Italian, Russian or Chinese, all of them languagues succesfully demanded in modern times. And for that the spaniards will maintain their deficit, because when they begin looking like their neighbors linguistically they will have started the dash of a second and third foreing languages -in decades it will be normal childen knowing Chinese,  and we will never catch those educational levels.

It's surprising how a country as Spain, strongly decentralized and poliglot at least by its Constitution has such problems. Let´s remember that the catalan, the vasque and the 'galego' are compulsory in their states, but even so, they are not spoken outside there, so the hypothetical good benefits a plurilingual legal system could carry to Spain seems not to be like they expected. It could have been like a modern Swizerland or Canada, but instead of that it turned into something extrange. People of Andalusia or Madrid do not speak catalan, and Valencia's people neither speak vasque. For that it is said currently that such system, not federal nor centralized, is dead. But goverment's pools express that spaniards want to change the politics not renuncing to the 'independent communities' they have now. How are they going to start learning English or another modern languages if they ignore their own national tongues, for sure their best treasures?

The point is, however, that maybe Spain is not mistaken at all. Maybe it is so wrong for all the modern countries to renunce to their national tongues in order to achive bilingual children, whom in most cases suffered great deficits of their natural tongues' skills. Spaniards, intentionally or not, have developed a culture of self proud on their language, the second most speaken worlwide, and they leader, too, a silent oposition to the slow death of multilinguism everywhere. Althought, it seems obviously that that took place with no intention, and the moral perspective of an intended ignorance on English could not shape. Even so, we have to rethink our own critics and stop assuming we are worse than the UK 's or USA's people- maybe they are the ones who even ignored more  beyond their frontiers than us. Maybe we should be critical with ourself as they shoud.

miércoles, 4 de febrero de 2015

The first one

Welcome here!

This is the first article I'll try to release periodly. When I say periodly I mean at least one per month, I hope. This is not the first experiment I make with myself in order to obligue me to write in other languages- I already have two blogs else in spanish and portuguese and if a I get more crazy at the future you'll probably read me in the freaks' and cools moderns' languague called esperanto. And let me say you that it rocks and you all, or just me if nobody joined this shit,  will love it.

I will try to write about Spain, Brazil, Portugal or anything I could thing interesting at least for me, but also I may write about politics, economy, litterature or whatever.

Anyway, enjoy this blog and be pacient with my English; mind that my natural tongue is not that Shakesperare's one.

See you.

PD: Obviously if you find any mistake or any expression out of its context, please correct me so I could increase my English!