Just sent this off to Time Magazine in response to their article on "The Bilingual Brain"... Starting with Esperanto as the default first added language on the road to bilingualism (and, one hopes, multilingualism) makes a great deal of sense, as I schematically propose in my brief essay "Why Esperanto?" This is true even when it is assumed (as many in the US do with respect to Spanish) that some other particular language is the main goal, because starting with Esperanto speeds the acquisition of subsequent languages. I have little doubt that this is true of any second language, be it Japanese or Latin or Cakchiquel: learning it will make it easier to learn another. But the advantage of Esperanto is that one or two years of Esperanto preceding, say, four or five years of Spanish (or Japanese, or Latin, or Cakchiquel) will be enough to give the student a usable command (in the bilingual sense) of Esperanto, which will serve her well in later life in many contexts where Japanese, Latin, Cakchiquel, or even Spanish will be of relatively little use, while the student will be more fluent after a bit less time working in the next language than if she had not had that preliminary bit of Esperanto. scn.org/~lilandbr/eomath.html
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 16:02:22 +0000