DOCUMENTRE/$1.11 - ED 236'924 FL 014 079 AUTHOR Sherwood, Bruce Arne TITLE The EducationalVi4flue ofEsperanto Study:udy: An American View. Esperanto potuments, Number 31A. INSTITUTION Universal Esperanto Association, RotterdaM (Netherlands). PUB DATE 83 . *) NOTE 16p. , B'innenweg AVAILABLE FROM,Universal Esperanto Association, Nieuwe il 176, 3015 BJ Rotterdam, Netherlands (Hfl. 3.00). PUB TYPE Viewpoints (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Cultural Awareness; *Educational Benefits; Language Role; Second Language Instruction IDENTIFIERS *Esperanto / ABSTRACT The linguistic, communicative, and cultural value of teaching Esperanto is discussed. A major linguistic advantage is that Esperanto study provides au -ideal introduction to the study of. language. The Eutopean'root stock provides an important resource for building vocabulary in English and in other European languages. C Esperanto has a 'valuable and unusual literature, comprising both ' translations from national languages and original Work. This provides a valuable tool to promote cultural 'awareness. There are increasing numbers of North American schools and colleges which offer Esperanto. In addition, a 4irly wide selection of materials suitable for school' and college. Esperanto courses are available. (RW) , -r ****************************************************************** 0 * Reproductions supplied,by EDRS'are the best that can be made * / * from the original document. ********************************************************************** - 1 "PERMISSION. TO REPRODUCETHiS ' MATpRIAL HAS BEEN GRANTEDBY Esperanto Documents, number 31 A (1983) Uji1V tOin TO THrEDUCATIONALRESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OF ESPERANTO STUDY; U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION AN AMERICAN VIEW EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER 4ERIC) This document has beenreproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. 11 Minor changes have been made..to improve Bruce Arne Sherwood reproduction quality. Points of view or opinionsstated in this docu- ment do not necessarily represept official NIE position or policy. There is increasing awareness in educational, business; andgov- .ernmental circles that Americans are seriously handieappedby a lack of knowledge of foreign languages. In the 'last, few years 'there has been a great deal of discussion of the problem, sparked in part.by the activities of a President's Commission on Foreign Lanages and In ternational Studies' during the Carter Administratiorg Many people agree .that it is important to restore and revitaliie langtiage study in our schools. However, there' is considerable confusion as to just' which 'languages should be taught. In particular; shouldour young people now be encouraged, to study Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Swahili, and Arabic? Should such study be in addition to or as a sub- stitute for the- traditional study of Spanish, French, German and Latin? While French in Canada and Spanish in the United States have special importance, it isn't clear which other languages to em- phasize. How do we choose? By what criteria? This essay will analyze a novel option which offers unique linguis- tic, communicative, and cultural advantages in providing both depth and breadth in the language program and in heightening the interna- tionality of the curriculum: the teaching of Esperanto. The nature, 'status; and cultural aspects of Esperanto have been well described in two recent bOoks (Eichholz & Eichholz 1982; Forster 1982). 1 will Eiperento Documents deltribe the work, orgabiZation,culture and history of the movement for adoption of tlie Intertibnal Lap- guage Esperanto as a secondlanguage for ihternitio e. They are published insperanto, English and French: The series replaces those documents ofthe Centre for. Research Probldm which dealt with the and Documentation on the Language . Esperanto movement. - Reproduction and translation of this document isperMitted provided that the source is cited. Subscriptions (covering the next ten documents in theEnglish series) are available for WI. 27,50 (postageincluded) from the pub- lisher, UniVersal EsperantoAspociation, Nieuwe Binnenweg 175, 301511.1Rotterdam,Neiherlands. Single issues cost Hfl. 3.00 each.. Special prices are available for bulk orders. Number of copies of one doCument 'Price per copy (Hfl.) 3 99 2.00 160 199 1.75 200 299 1.50 -300 399 1.25 ,400 500 1.00 To these prices approximately 20% should be_added for postage and packing. , di; cuss how these aspects ot' the language make Esperanto an excep- tionally appealing subject for a one-year coursein our schools and colleges. Linguistic advitntages EsperantO study provides an idetil introduction to the study of lan- guage'. The benefits ofstarting with Esperanto can be seen from a .major study, of Esperanto teaching inAmerican high schools and col- ' leges, carried out at ColumbiaTeachers College under the direction of the noted educator and psychologist EdwardTkorndike (Lan= guage Learning 1933). This researchproject concluded that one year of college Esperanto was equivalent to four years9f college French or German in terms of masterylevel. Because of its special properties (regularity, invariant roots, phonetic writing), a student can.quickly reach a level of mastery whichpermits oral and written creativity, very, little blocked by the arbitrary kinds of constraintscommon to na- - -tional languages. This rapid achievement is in contrast tothe long. period of study, of national languages requiredbefore much can be done with the new language, and this provides notonly early gratifi- cation and stimulation, but early consideration ofsuch advanced to- pics as style and usage standards. The relative isolation of mostAmericans from direct experienceS '-with foreign languages means that childrenand their parents often have no real conception of whata languageis. It makes-sense to duce the notion of language in an easilymanageable context, one which illustrates the important aspects common to manylanguages, uncluttered by the specific arbitrary features ofindividual national languages. For example, the notion of case israther foreign to the English speaker. The case structures ofGerman or Russian have so many irregularities and complexpatterns that the concept itself-isnot ' wellillustrated(for example, different clagses of Russian nounshave different forms of the accusative, andsometimes the accusative has the same form as the norniqative).Esperanto on the other hand has just two cases (nominative avid accusative),and the distinction is sim- ply,that the accusative always adds"-n". The form of the case mark- ing could not be simpler, thus making the conceptstand out. There are many examples ofthis kind, ii 'which Esperanto can beviewed as a kind of modeLideallysuitedto clear expositions of linguistic con- cepts. Anotlier aspect likely toprovide important benefits for later c. study of English and of foreign languages is the expitness ofpalls of speech and syntax resulting from the grammatical endings which murk Esperanto nouns, adjectives, adverbs andverb forms. One might -worry,fiat Esperanto study is 'vrbo easy" and therefore not a worthy subject for bright students. On the contrary, learning any language well, even Esperanto, 'requires hard work. The differ- ence rattly- is in how far one can go for the same amount of hard "work. The\elarity with which Esperanto displays the structure of Ian- guage may be compared with the clarity of using Arabic rather than Roman numbers for studying arithmetic, or the simplicity and phonetic associations of the Roman alphabet, as compared with Chinese ideographs in learning to read. Also, depth of study can come from early involvement with the interesting body of Esperanto literature. iThe European root-stock provides an important resource for building vocabulary in English and in other European ,languages: German and French teachers at my daughter's high school remarked with pleasure on her report cards' that she often recognized and ana- lyzed new words and structure's thanks to her knowledge of Esper- anto. The non-European aspects of Esperanto, particularly its word- forming by combining of invariant roots, might be of assistance in preparing for the study of sortie non-European languages, although I know of no research on this point. Statistical measurements based on standard "language universals" show that in wOrd-formation Esper- anto is most similar to agglutinative languages such as Turkish,03ro- zovie 1976). Some experiments have indicated that one year of Esperantii study followed by three years of the study of a national language yieldS a better mastery of the national language than fotir years of that Ian-, guage alone. The Columbia,study mentioned above contains some data on this point. A Britith study (Halloran 1952) demonstrate's this j9Vrench in the case of tess talented students. Recent measure,- -inetits in Europe have bee tisummarized by Sonnabend (1979). These- experiments should be repeated in North American settingsbut these outcomes are not surprising given the understanding of the na- ture'of languages gained thfough the study of Esperanto. It used to be that Latin pla'yed the role of providing pupils with sound linguistic education, and 'recently there has been some revival of interest in the use of Latinfor tkiis purpose. Leaving asidefor a mo- nt the obvious differencesin cultural content, it seems clearthat ranto is a far better choice for the task of introducing the notion