Maverynthia:
Eh, watch out for the #esperanto chat on Freenode.

2012-12-10 00:06:07 #esperanto: Cannot join channel (+i) - you must be invited
You probably mean ##esperanto .

Maverynthia:There was/is someone in there that, well, wasn't all that helpful and actually made me so upset I actually quit Esperanto the first time. (The person didn't correct me and I had no clue what was wrong with what I said and well.. it went downhill from there. ;-; )

That chat isn't always well moderated so you should not be too surprised if you see trolls or unfriendly people there - just don't generalize from such people and don't take things too personally.

darkweasel:

Maverynthia:
Eh, watch out for the #esperanto chat on Freenode.

2012-12-10 00:06:07 #esperanto: Cannot join channel (+i) - you must be invited
You probably mean ##esperanto .

Maverynthia:There was/is someone in there that, well, wasn't all that helpful and actually made me so upset I actually quit Esperanto the first time. (The person didn't correct me and I had no clue what was wrong with what I said and well.. it went downhill from there. ;-; )

That chat isn't always well moderated so you should not be too surprised if you see trolls or unfriendly people there - just don't generalize from such people and don't take things too personally.

## or #, whichever it was, also the person was an op or a founder had the little @s and ~s next to the name so it wasn't some random troll person. I've stayed away ever since if that's what the mod behavior is. :/ I'm just thinking new users should be helped more that criticized in the beginning. Being the person that I am, it makes me want to run the other way rather than stick around.

Maverynthia:## or #, whichever it was, also the person was an op or a founder had the little @s and ~s next to the name so it wasn't some random troll person.

That's strange, since most of the time the bot ChanServ is the only user with such a symbol.

darkweasel:2012-12-10 00:06:07 #esperanto: Cannot join channel (+i) - you must be invited

That's odd, when joining #esperanto you should just get automatically redirected to ##esperanto. What IRC client are you using?

@ Maverynthia - I encourage you to return to the channel on Freenode at some point. There are a few people with operator privileges (including myself) so I'm not sure who it was that upset you, but having hung out there for 3 or 4 years I can say the atmosphere in the channel is generally rather peaceful and tolerant of beginners. We're also trying to be a bit more vigilant in keeping the trolls out these days.

Chatting on IRC can be a good way to learn. Just by observing more experienced speakers you'll pick up useful vocabulary, and by jumping into the chat when you have the confidence you'll develop the knack of coming up with Esperanto phrases on-the-spot. Just getting your brain accustomed to a relatively quick flow of sentence parsing/construction can be really useful in going on to attain oral fluency.

tommjames:

darkweasel:2012-12-10 00:06:07 #esperanto: Cannot join channel (+i) - you must be invited

That's odd, when joining #esperanto you should just get automatically redirected to ##esperanto. What IRC client are you using?

KVIrc 4.2.0 on OS X 10.8.2.

edit: it doesn't seem to happen if I connect directly and not through a bouncer

tommjames:@ Maverynthia - I encourage you to return to the channel on Freenode at some point. There are a few people with operator privileges (including myself) so I'm not sure who it was that upset you, but having hung out there for 3 or 4 years I can say the atmosphere in the channel is generally rather peaceful and tolerant of beginners. We're also trying to be a bit more vigilant in keeping the trolls out these days.

Chatting on IRC can be a good way to learn. Just by observing more experienced speakers you'll pick up useful vocabulary, and by jumping into the chat when you have the confidence you'll develop the knack of coming up with Esperanto phrases on-the-spot. Just getting your brain accustomed to a relatively quick flow of sentence parsing/construction can be really useful in going on to attain oral fluency.

Only 3 or 4 years.. I think it happened before that. That person might have left. I'll give it another shot then when I pick up some more words. I'm still trying to get my head around "having years" for an age. Though I SWEAR I've seen "How old are you" expressed somewhere else as basically "what age are you" (Ĉu kio estas vian aĝon.) rather than "how many years do you have" (Kiom vi havas da jaroj.) BUT that's another topic.

You could just say "kiom vi aĝas?"

By the way your "Ĉu kio estas vian aĝon" has a couple of errors. Firstly, you wouldn't use "ĉu" here, because this isn't a question to which you would expect a yes/no response. Also the accusative should not be used after "estas", since that verb never takes a direct object. The word-for-word translation of "what is your age" would be "kio estas via aĝo". But nobody really uses that form in Esperanto, so you should avoid it.

Does anyone mind helping me practice via Skype?

Rugxdoma:

mopbucket: I'm a little concerned about criticism when posting in the Esperanto forums. ... I'm mainly wondering how does one get over the initial embarrassment and connect with others?

You could try to let your first Esperanto contribution to the forum go through Google Translate first. Do you get understandable English out of it? If not, change the English a bit and feed it into the translator to get Esperanto. Often you find that your original Esperanto was better, and then your self-confidence increases.

where is the TUJMESAĜILO?

DavonPeoples20:where is the TUJMESAĜILO?

On the right-hand side of your screen (if it's minimized, click on the tab with the blue triangle/arrow to open it), you should see first an ad with a testimonial asking you to support lernu, and then the dictionary window, then "my corner" with your user info, then the Tujmesaĝilo. Click on the blue circle with the white triangle to open the Tujmesaĝilo window.