#LanguageLearning for Global Empathy and Building Fairer Community As Part of Project Do Better?

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Here are my notes, from a very nice video maker in Spanish.  🙂

As Spanish is my most comfortable non-native language (it’s my ‘relaxing’ language when I have access, for instance, to Netflix), I began by finding videos of Esperanto lessons in Spanish.  There are a few, but one quickly finds out that most of the available material for learning Esperanto seems to be most complete either in English, or in French, or in Esperanto.  That left me later using French on sites like Lernu.net, for instance, that allow you to see the percentage of lessons completed in various languages.

I have heard from people who have difficulty learning English, which is not at all a logical language, to be fair, and I feel that my advantage as a native speaker is also unfair.  So it seems logical that if each person learned a simple 2nd language, that language could be the default international language, as has been proposed by many Esperantists.  It also has the advantage of boosting the confidence of many who struggle to learn a 2nd language (and I’ll have to find that study that claimed that the average human being should, in theory, be capable of learning 3 languages…).

Esperanto is a very simple language to learn, by design.  Given the interest readers have expressed over the years, I thought I might share some of my newest language learning journey here on my blog.  Once I have found others to help with Project Do Better, I will rework my notes in French and Turkish, and then the Greek as I go back to working on it (and maybe the Hebrew, if I am asked to teach Biblical Hebrew again).

Any thoughts on how your previously learned languages help hook the new material?
More soon,
and

delighted friends having lunch in cafe
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.com
        Hopefully, the empathy that studying languages builds, and a little more good example via story, will help all of us learn to be more open to the needs, feelings, and happiness of others.
…
Hoşça kalın!  Saluton!  !Nos Vemos! 

Shira

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Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing, or even writing a guest blog post here, about #ProjectDoBetter.    DoBetterCover  Phase I aims to build empathy for public goods (libraries, transit, healthcare, and education) via language study and story, among other tools.

Shira Destinie A.  Jones, MPhil

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About ShiraDestProjectDoBetter

Shira Destinie Jones is founder of #ProjectDoBetter, a long term plan proposal for community building, and a published poet, academic author, and advocate for improving our #PublicDomainInfrastructure. Her other book, Stayed on Freedom's Call, on Black-Jewish Cooperation in DC, is freely available via the Internet Archive. She has organized community events such as film discussions, multi-ethnic song events, and cooperative presentations, and is a native of Washington, DC. She promotes peaceful planning, NVC and the Holocene Calendar, and is also a writer. More information at https://shiradest.wordpress.com/

10 thoughts on “#LanguageLearning for Global Empathy and Building Fairer Community As Part of Project Do Better?”

  1. Pingback: #LanguageLearning for Global Empathy and Building Fairer Community As Part of Project Do Better? — Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better | Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

  2. I am all for it, but have to admit that I have not really got started yet (lesson 1 only). There seems so much happening right now. One should think that a retiree has ample time … 😉 🙂
    I have read some criticism of Esperanto, that it is too simple for a deeper conversation. But, as I see it, Esperanto or another lingua franca is not instead of learning more languages but in addition. One language that everybody knows so that everybody can talk to each other, maybe not have philosophical discussions in it, but able to converse about basics. I am positive that it would bring people closer.

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    1. Exactly, and frankly, it seems pretty useful for conversation to me, at least once one has reached lesson 25 on Lernu.net. Also, there are entire international conferences where papers, talks, and discussions are held entirely in Esperanto, so this seems to show that it is quite usable for deeper conversation. But I agree, Esperanto is meant to be a starter language, and an easy to learn common working language. It certainly would bring people closer.

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  3. Learning languages trains the little gray cells very much, comparable to hearing, singing or playing music. Keeping the brain active is important, especially for the elderly, as it is a good protection against Alzheimer’s disease.

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    2. I forgot to mention that there is another wonderful family show (no magic or Fairies in this one…) you should be able to find called Yabancı Damat. It’s about a Greek boy and a Turkish girl who fall in love and have to get their families to allow them to get married! It is both serious and hysterical (especially with the help of the girl’s family!), and was quite popular in Athens back in 2005. I made contact with the Turkish writer who translated the subtitles into Greek, so I imagine that it is also subtitled in English. I believe that it was airing on Kanal D, as Sihirli Annem began, on Turkish TV.
      (but it was a friend in Athens who told me about the show!)

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        1. Feel better.

          I wish I could help you, but I am also not in a great place right now, and I have only myself to rely on, despite having attempted to build some kind of network or community to be part of (I’ve also been working to build or find some sort of ‘found family’ but that is an even more difficult and fruitless task, it seems).

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          1. I will be fine, I have my husband, so it will go over. I am more sorry to hear about you. I thought that you might have a network through your religion or your jobs. I am sending you a big bear hug!

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