[yorwba]

When you actually look at those "promising results" you'll notice that they come about by cherry-picking, not controlling for confounders (like Esperanto teachers using better teaching methods) and wishful thinking. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848019 , which I wrote some time ago when the same topic came up.

I don't doubt that Esperanto is easy to learn, but there's no evidence to suggest that learning Esperanto helps more with learning another language than spending the same time learning that language instead.

[myth2018]

I'm not aware of any controlled studies bringing evidence on this as well. But there seems to be lots of anecdotal evidence.

One may argue that people who learn Esperanto are naturally inclined to language learning anyway, but what you actually see is people who allegedly have always struggled with languages and, after giving Esperanto a try, they begin to find more effective ways of learning foreign languages in general.

It worked for me at least.

[em-bee]

i think the point is that your first foreign language is harder to learn because you are unfamiliar with the idea and the process. the time and effort it takes can be demotivating.

once you learned one language, learning others should be easier because you have overcome that first mental challenge.

introducing esperanto as that first foreign language should provide some early success that motivate the students in their language learning.

that's the theory anyways. we do need some more studies to verify that.

any second language makes it easier to learn a third one.

[mycorrhizal]

Thanks for the link and extra info! You have definitely looked at this more carefully than I have.