I guess I should start by introducing myself before I go straight into my complaints.

My internet alias is Eugene, I'm 18, and I am a brand new Esperantist. I have been studying for only a few days now, and like everyone else, I've found most of the language easy to learn. Some of my hobbies include reading, surfing the web, watching television (I'm admittedly a Real Housewives junkie ), playing MineCraft, listening to music, and, in general, learning new things. Over the past few weeks, I have been wanting to learn a new language (I took quite a bit of Spanish in high school, but I'd rather try something different). It was through my search that I came across an article about constructed languages and, consequently, Esperanto. The philosophy and simplicity of the language was rather appealing to me, so I decided to give it a shot.

Which brings me to now. After a week or so of studying, I'm starting to feel discouraged. Not about how quickly I'm learning it (I don't intend to sound arrogant or whatever, but language has always been a strong point for me), but by how insignificant it is to the rest of the world. I've tried to tell some of my friends about it, and they all act like I'm stupid or weird for wanting to learn a "useless" language for fun. My dad thinks I'm wasting my time when I am reading up on Esperanto and browsing the online Esperanto bookstore. Even my brother thinks it's a little odd. Why does everyone respond to it so negatively? Sure, the philosophy off of which it is based may be a little idealized, and sure, maybe the language isn't super widespread, but I see no harm in exploring it for, if nothing else, the sake of recreation. From your experiences, what is the root cause of all of the contempt shown towards the Esperanto community?

Also, this is not quite related, but still worth mentioning while I'm in a ranting mood: Another language I have wanted to learn for a while now is Russian. Would this be a worthwhile endeavor? I know, everyone says that learning a second language OTHER THAN Spanish is a waste of time because "every country has a lot of English speakers," but I find Russian culture fascinating. I would also love to study abroad some day when I'm further along in my college studies. I just don't know about the practicality behind it. Any opinions that you all would like to put forth in regards to this?

Lastly (I promise, I'm almost done because my character count just went below 450 ), can any of you advanced speakers contact me so I have a conversation buddy when I'm a little more advanced? I'd like to apply what I have learned so far. Are there any popular Esperanto chat rooms out there?

Phew..That's it!

Thanks for reading this!
Eugene

Hello! I'm also new here at Lernu, although I've been studying Esperanto for over a year. I'm eager to meet other Esperanto enthusiasts, so I guess this is a good place for me to get my feet wet

Why does everyone respond to it so negatively?

I've casually mentioned to a few people that I speak Esperanto, and the response has been anything from indifferent to mildly surprised (at least of those people who know what Esperanto is). Nobody's been really negative about it yet. I guess people in general tend to be a little wary/critical of anything that's so far off the beaten path.

I guess my innate contrarianism attracted me to the language, as well as its pleasant sound (I always enjoy dabbling in languages). Zamenhof's idealism didn't really impact my decision to learn it, although I find the idea of a simple "lingua franca" to be highly useful. I'm planning to seriously study multiple European languages, and Esperanto is a nice "stepping stone" that helps me understand what it "feels" like to learn a language to a high level.

Another language I have wanted to learn for a while now is Russian. Would this be a worthwhile endeavor?

Russian is beautiful, but it's a bear for English speakers. (I've been speaking it from an early age though, so it's hard for me to accurately gauge its difficulty.) If you're having difficulty with Esperanto's accusative, Russian has *six* declensions, which are not used as consistently as in Esperanto ... Still, it opens the door to an extremely rich culture that more than rewards the effort. As for the practicality, Russian is still spoken in the former Soviet republics by around ~250 million people. Admittedly, for an American it's not as immediately useful as Spanish or French.

Are there any popular Esperanto chat rooms out there?

Lernu has its own chat room (if you open the "Tujmesaĝilo" tab on the right side of the screen), although I haven't used it yet. There's also one on the Freenode network under ##esperanto (accessible from here: http://webchat.freenode.net/), that I participate in from time to time.

Cheers and happy learning!

In regards to learning Russian:

Yeah, I have heard that Russian is VERY difficult to learn. I have only played around with some of it (i.e. I've learned the Cyrillic alphabet and a few phrases). When I was reading on some of the "basic grammar," I noticed that, unlike Spanish, there is not a single ending the determines whether or not a word is masculine or feminine. And then the letter(s) used to make a noun plural is based on the ending of that word. So in order to simply determine a word's gender and pluralize it, you have to memorize a lot of different things..

But I think the fact that it's so..esoteric to English speakers is part of what draws me to it. When I hear a person speaking Russian, some of the sounds that they make are so..different than what are made in any language that I hear regularly. That, along with the fact that their history is so interesting. And I think the geography of Russia is beautiful. And being an Esperantist, I tend to learn towards Marxian thought...(I jest)

I guess what I could do is become fluent (whatever that means ) in Esperanto, then have a native Russian speaker teach me! Then Esperanto would be a bridge from my native tongue to other languages, in the most literal way possible

eugenerator4:
Which brings me to now. After a week or so of studying, I'm starting to feel discouraged. Not about how quickly I'm learning it (I don't intend to sound arrogant or whatever, but language has always been a strong point for me), but by how insignificant it is to the rest of the world. I've tried to tell some of my friends about it, and they all act like I'm stupid or weird for wanting to learn a "useless" language for fun. My dad thinks I'm wasting my time when I am reading up on Esperanto and browsing the online Esperanto bookstore. Even my brother thinks it's a little odd. Why does everyone respond to it so negatively? Sure, the philosophy off of which it is based may be a little idealized, and sure, maybe the language isn't super widespread, but I see no harm in exploring it for, if nothing else, the sake of recreation. From your experiences, what is the root cause of all of the contempt shown towards the Esperanto community?

There is an entire article by Claude Piron on this topic: Psychological Reactions to Esperanto

eugenerator4:they all act like I'm stupid or weird for wanting to learn a "useless" language for fun

My dad thinks I'm wasting my time when I am reading up on Esperanto and browsing the online Esperanto bookstore.

In my experience people who say learning Esperanto, or for that matter any language, is a "waste of time" usually have a very limited conception of what it means for something to be worth doing. With languages, if it's something that isn't immediately and ostensibly practicable and useful with huge numbers of speakers, they just don't want to know. Some sort of mental block auto-switch-off mode seems to activate and nothing you can say will change their mind.

I also find that, at least as far as Esperanto goes, they often have a greatly overestimated idea of the amount of time and effort necessary. "Why spend all that effort on something you can't even use!" is something I've heard on several occasions. And again, when you try to bring them into line with reality, it just falls on deaf ears. Sad really.

As to why so many people react this way, I really don't know, and I just don't understand it. Obviously ignorance is a major part of it, and of course in the English speaking world you have the widespread "English is everywhere so why learn anything else" attitude. Contempt for the whole idea of artificial languages per se may also be something to do with it.

Anyway.

eugenerator4:Are there any popular Esperanto chat rooms out there?

The most populous one I'm aware of is ##esperanto at irc.freenode.net, as mentioned by Tempodivalse. Other chatrooms have come and gone but the IRC channel is the only one that's stayed relatively active for the last 4 or 5 years or so.

Tell your dad that studying Esperanto will improve your understanding of grammatical concepts and help you to write clearer English.

As regards the rest of the world it is just a question of numbers. Once Esperanto goes mainstream, and the Internet is helping that process, negative attitudes will quickly disappear, being confined to a few perverse academics.

I know what you mean. I once had the desire to learn Icelandic -- until I got a good look at the grammar. I also took a year of Latin and a semester of Russian once upon a time. If you like learning cases, you'll love Russian. It has more of them than Latin and that is saying something.

People are funny. They tend to think that their interests and hobbies are normal and OK, but those of their friends and acquaintances are odd/useless/a waste of time, etc. To compound the problem, you are young and more susceptible to peer-pressure than if you were older. If you want to learn Esperanto, then have at it. We're all different, with different likes and dislikes. In this country, probably 99 people out of a 100 will know little or nothing about it anyway.

Some people like physical activity and some don't. The next time someone asks you why you'd waste your time with something like Esperanto, ask them what their hobbies are. If you are really lucky, you'll find someone who likes skydiving. Then you can look at them with disbelief and ask them why any sane person would be nutty enough to jump out of a perfectly functioning airplane.

I see that you are from Missouri. I visited Branson last September and am planning to go again this coming September. Some of us have a reunion there every year and we sit around and drink coffee (or other things), tell lies and see an occasional show. It's a beautiful area.

Vi devas kompreni ke ni ne estas amaso da mensoguloj. Sed ni ja emas entuziasme distordi la veron. = You must realize that we are not a bunch of liars. But we do tend to enthusiastically distort the truth.

sudanglo:Tell your dad that studying Esperanto will improve your understanding of grammatical concepts and help you to write clearer English.

I can wholeheartedly corroborate this fact. I've discovered that Esperanto taught me stuff like "past adverbial participle", "subjunctive" and "predicative case" much more clearly than I would have ever learnt in an English grammar book. As a result, I tend to think of sentences in a more logical way in English (i.e.: "Okay, so this is the indirect object, and the predicate nominative goes here" etc.). This sort of reasoning is essential for anyone trying to master the grammar of a foreign language.

Thanks for the encouragement guys!

As regards the rest of the world it is just a question of numbers. Once Esperanto goes mainstream, and the Internet is helping that process, negative attitudes will quickly disappear, being confined to a few perverse academics.

This caught my attention more than anything else. So, is it likely that Esperanto will "catch on" in the near future?

In my opinion, it just makes so much more sense to create a language that is easily learned by everyone for international communication. Obviously, English has tons and tons of "speakers" (I always get a little skeptical when I read things that talk about the sheer number of English speakers...Are they only including people who reach a certain level of proficiency in the "speakers" category or anyone who can say "Hello"/"How are you?"/"Good Bye"? If it's the latter, then I guess I am technically a Russian speaker ), but it's not a terribly easy language to learn... Why wouldn't international organizations just speak a neutral, easy language instead of having translators/making everyone learn English? I feel like it would be more efficient, given the fact that becoming a proficient Esperantist only takes a few weeks of intensive study.

The world doesn't make one bit of sense sometimes

"So, what do you like to do for fun?"
"Oh, I play tennis"
"Good deal! That's a great pastime. OK, how about you?"
"Uh, I'm into video games. I'll play my favorites for days on end."
"Yeah, I like those, too. And you? What do you like to do for fun?"
"I'm learning guitar. It's hard, but kind of rewarding."
"Excellent! And, finally, how about you?"
"I'm learning Esperanto."
(All in unison) "WHAT? Why are you wasting your time with THAT?"