I'm a Scotsman, I'm sure you'd probably not understand much of my spoken English at all!

Fluent English of the kind you mentioned is very common in India. It's fluent, but people outside South Asia would struggle with understanding it. Indo-English also has lots of loanwords from local languages e.g. Crore, and grammatical influence.

(Mind you I've heard the same about Esperanto speakers, some don't understand each other well because of accents).

I'm not sure the US is the best place to look for Esperanto speakers. It may have a substantial population, but I'm sure per head of population, its neighbours Mexico, Cuba and Canada all have more speakers, for various reasons (a Romance language for one).

Hungary seems to be something of an Esperanto centre.

bartlett22183:We were able to have something of a polite, small talk, semi-conversation, but did we both "speak English"?

As long there are no political efforts to make English phonetic*, as long ESL 'language blending' doesn't motivates to change native English, as long that will not change.

*at least one proof of concept exists.

bartlett22183:If I can read most of a (relatively simple) text needing only a small amount of dictionary lookup but can write it only with a lot of lookup and have never even had the opportunity to try to converse in it, do I really "speak" Esperanto?

For sure, no. In my opinion often English command (same to Esperanto) is measured according someones reading and writing skills, not its spoken use. Maybe technical solutions will have power to change this. Recently, on street, during waiting to get allowed to cross the street, I saw women speaking to her children via in-built camera of her cellphone. I also have seen counter part baby. Okay, it was baby language talk, like '... tut tut, jes, how do you feel ...' etc. Regarding cellphone technologies (i.e. LTE) seem to allow that now. Maybe that opens possibilities to use any language spoken all day no matter what language is defined to be official language number one to use onsite.

Nephihaha:(Mind you I've heard the same about Esperanto speakers, some don't understand each other well because of accents).

As long someones native language doesn't contain 'mumbleing' (i.e. Danish and European Spanish accent partly), accent isn't problem of spoken Esperanto (and Interlingua, too.)

Nephihaha:Hungary seems to be something of an Esperanto centre.

Sorry, thats even less than myth only.

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There are a number of very famous people who've dabbled in Esperanto.

I was surprised to learn recently that a number of leaders of the Easter Rising in Ireland knew Esperanto, for example, such as James Connolly and Sheehy-Skeffington.

Another famous Irishman, James Joyce knew Esperanto. And fellow writers Lev Tolstoy and Tolkien also knew it.

Men as diverse as Einstein, William Shatner and Stephen Fry have all learnt it.

But famous women? Can'++t think of any.

In the opposite direction, William Auld is one of the greatest writers in Esperanto, but is little known in his home town.

ĉevino:I wonder who, between Esperanto movado and Us government, is the biggest lier...

The US government?

I don't think La Movado is as malicious or duplicitous. But NO ONE knows the real figures.

The idea that Esperanto would prevent war is as nonsensical as the idea that the US government wants peace.

Nephihaha:

ĉevino:I wonder who, between Esperanto movado and Us government, is the biggest lier...

The US government?

I don't think La Movado is as malicious or duplicitous. But NO ONE knows the real figures.

The idea that Esperanto would prevent war is as nonsensical as the idea that the US government wants peace.

I don't know...after all, Stalin said "Esperanto is the language of spies."

bartlett22183:Again, it becomes a matter of what we mean to "speak" (or even know) a language. For instance, I am an educated native speaker of General American dialect of English. Some years ago a nice, middle-aged gentlemen and I took shelter together from a torrential downpour here in an American city. He said he was from India, although his particular country of origin is not relevant. His command of English vocabulary and syntax was actually quite good, but his pronunciation was such that I could barely understand him only with difficulty. We were able to have something of a polite, small talk, semi-conversation, but did we both "speak English"? Well, enough that we could get along for minor matters.

It may be something similar with Esperanto (or any other constructed auxiliary language). If I can read most of a (relatively simple) text needing only a small amount of dictionary lookup but can write it only with a lot of lookup and have never even had the opportunity to try to converse in it, do I really "speak" Esperanto?

It sounds like you are in a similar position to me maybe 1-2 years ago. I had done plenty of reading, writing with a lot of look ups, and had never listened to or spoken Esperanto. I just kept putting off making that next step. When I did get around to it (round tuit), I ended up finding an esperanto university lecture video on astronomy that I was surprisingly able to understand about 90% of. Of course a lot of vocabulary was highly international, being a scientific lecture, but the pronunciation and speed was perfectly comfortable. I can hardly say the same of some foreign professors I had in school.

I also find that once I have spent a few minutes immersed I can much more easily read/write and listen without problems. Other people who have attended even short (on the order of days) Esperanto events claim that such a short period of total immersion greatly increased their ability to write and speak (and think) in Esperanto.

As for the total number of what I would call speakers, I'm guessing somewhere in the low hundreds of thousands.

Well, Stalin was looking for another group to pick on. And he didn't like Jews much either... which is relevant given Zamenhof'"s background.

Nephihaha:Well, Stalin was looking for another group to pick on. And he didn't like Jews much either... which is relevant given Zamenhof'"s background.

Of that I have no doubt, sir. There's a couple quotes about Esperanto from Hitler and his minions that are much more sinister. I just like this one because I can tell people that I speak the language of spies.

From what I know Stalin killed most of the true communist leaders, and one would suspect that he at least agreed with them on some points.