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Hey, what's up guys welcome to Fingtam languages. Today
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We're gonna talk about something that I get questioned about all the time
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Now before we get started, I know I'm gonna get a ton of hate for making this video
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So if you think I'm being ridiculous for learning Esperanto
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Feel free to leave me some hate down in the comment section below. You will not change my mind
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Esperanto is a constructed language that was developed in the 1800s
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And this video is gonna be three reasons why I'm learning Esperanto and why I think you should too. My first reason for learning Esperanto
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Is that it will help you learn future languages. I'm gonna start this one off with a blanket statement
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Esperanto is so much easier
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Than any other language except for maybe Toki Pona The grammar rules in Esperanto are just very easy to follow and there are no
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irregularities
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Researchers have been studying this for many years and the results are clear one study found that if you study
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Esperanto for only 20 hours
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(Which if you're a nerd like me you can do that in a week.) If you learn Esperanto for only 20 hours
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You'll learn as much language as if you were learning Spanish French Italian or German for 100 hours
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Meaning you would be learning five times as much Esperanto per hour
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Than if you were learning these other languages. Another study showed that among high school
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students who wanted to learn French over a period of four years
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Some students who learned Esperanto for one year and then learned French for the next three years learned French to a higher level
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Than those who had been learning French for the whole four years
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There's an easy comparison here between learning languages and learning music. If you've never learned a language before and you want to learn Mandarin Chinese
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That's kind of like picking up a tuba for the first time.
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There's a reason elementary schools start students off with learning the recorder before they start to learn how to play the tuba
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It's because it's easier and it teaches you the basic principles for learning how to play music. In this example
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Esperanto is like the recorder. Learning Esperanto is a low stakes low stress
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Fun easy way of learning all the skills that you need to develop in order to learn how to learn languages
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That's why a lot of polyglots recommend learning Esperanto for a short period of time to help you with your other languages
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Even if you have no interest in continuing to master Esperanto. Of course, if you're a nerd like me
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Then you're gonna have so much fun learning Esperanto that you won't want to stop
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Just like how if you're a music nerd like me
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You're gonna want to keep playing the recorder even after you graduate from third grade, which brings me really nicely into my next point
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I'm learning Esperanto
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Because it's fun. Dang it
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If you've never learned Esperanto
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You have no idea how motivating it is to study a language for a week or less and already be able to hold basic
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Conversations with people. I started learning Esperanto the day it came out on duolingo and within that week
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I was already finding people online to chat with in Esperanto and hold full-fledged conversations
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Even if my Esperanto wasn't really great. That same week, Chuck Smith released videos on his YouTube channel of people who had been learning Esperanto
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For 3 days and they were able to hold entire
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conversations in
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Esperanto interview style on his YouTube channel, if you're a language nerd like me, this is fun
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It doesn't matter if you're never gonna take a vacation to Esperanto-land
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It doesn't matter if you can't get an esperanto minor at college.
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You learn it because it's enjoyable. When I was in high school
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I used to spend hours a day playing
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Halo and nobody thought that was weird, so no
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I'm not gonna apologize to you for doing something I find enjoyable in my free time
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If you don't think learning Esperanto is fun. Don't do it
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But then you're gonna miss out on the opportunity to see what it's like to learn a language at blazingly fast
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speeds. Now, as much as I find studying Esperanto to be fun
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The really enjoyable thing about Esperanto is my third reason for learning the language and that is the Esperanto community
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Whenever I tell people I'm learning Esperanto
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One of the first objections I get from them is "But you'll never meet somebody who speaks it". This is false
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I've met a ton of people who speak Esperanto through a variety of means the year is 2018 and we have this big
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Beautiful place for meeting other people called the internet. There are dozens of apps and websites out there
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Dedicated to helping you find other people that you can message and chat with online
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I'm twitter friends with a bunch of other people that speak esperanto on twitter. There's also a thriving esperanto community here on youtube
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I personally have a separate channel separate from this one where I speak only
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Esperanto and people are on there commenting all the time
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I've made a lot of Esperanto speaking friends just through them commenting on my YouTube channel
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If you're not into online penpals, then physical Esperanto meetings are a real thing
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There's worldwide congresses local meetups most big cities have Esperanto societies where local
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Esperantists meet up once a week or once a month
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There's a yearly meetup in North Carolina where people come from around the world to learn
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Esperanto together when I was in Montreal this summer for a length fest. I ran into a ton of other Esperanto speakers there
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There's also a free service called the passport the servo which is essentially couchsurfing for Esperanto speakers
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I've used this service twice once in Canada and once in Ireland to get a free place to stay and
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Practice my Esperanto with somebody all these reasons add up to why we say Esperanto has its own culture
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There's also tons of music in Esperanto literature some originally written in Esperanto and others
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Translated into Esperanto like La Hobito by JRR tolkien
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There's also Esperanto TV shows in Esperanto movies one of which stars William Shatner before he was in Star Trek
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Esperanto culture is vibrant and active and the Esperanto community has been growing larger and larger every day
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Especially over the last few years since the development of Esperanto duolingo
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It's an exciting time to be an Esperanto speaker
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And all I can say is if you haven't considered
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Trying it before learning Esperanto can give you a lot of reward for a lot less effort than your other languages
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So thanks for watching the video and we'll see you guys next time