I started learning esperanto in October 2005. After three months of learning I translated the Kurso de esperanto in the slovenian language!!! Now I know that I made some mistakes while translating from esperanto but from this you can realise that learning esperanto is very easy especially if you know any other language. I'm fluent in italian and I studied latin in secondary school.

The first time I heard of esperanto was in secondary school when studying english. In the classroom we red one text about esperanto. I liked very much the idea of one language easy to learn that is no'ones property.
I'm 27 years old, I'm a teacher by profession.

I have taken classes in Spanish, Russian, and Cherokee. Because I moved around a lot growing up, I had to deal with varying degrees of teachings. I was in a Spanish 3/4 combined class in high school in Alaska, but when I moved to Oklahoma, it turned out that, for a Spanish 4 student, I was really behind, and had to cram a lot of catch-up to get up to speed.

I had to do the same thing when I went from two years in Russian in high school and I attempted to continue in college. My college had placement tests for Spanish, French, and German, but none for Russian, so they just placed me in Beginning Russian II. I found out that my pronunciation was wrong, I hadn't learned two verb cases, etc. All this because my high school teacher was formerly from East Germany and learned Russian there, and my college professors were from Moscow and the Baltic Republics. I ended up dropping the Russian.

When I took Cherokee, I had another problem. We had a teacher and a native speaker. Our teacher knew maybe a little more than we did, but because the native speaker didn't have a certificate to teach, he could only sit there and correct the teacher when she screwed up. Needless to say, in a year and a half of Cherokee, I learned very little.

In Russian and Cherokee, I had to learn a new alphabet (cyrillic) and a syllabary (Cherokee). The Cyrillic wasn't bad, but the Cherokee syllabary is a horror. Many of the symbols used closely resemble each other, differentiated by a squiggle here or there. I never could memorize it.

Spanish drove me nuts because of all the irregularities and the different cases.

I got interested in Esperanto when a guy I dated turned out to know a little. I looked into using an email correspondance course, but it didn't click with me. This time, with the help of a computer program, this site, plus watching the online Esperanto channel and listening to Esperanto music, I'm actually getting better.

Right now, correlatives are making my head hurt, but I know I'll get it down eventually. It's still much easier than other languages. I jumped for joy when I saw how easy verb construction was. No irregular verbs, yay!

Shawna

Saluton, Ben.

I'm Bill, I'm a police officer, and I've been studying Esperanto for two years. For me, the most difficult part about learning Esperanto is that there are just enough word roots similar to Spanish and Esperanto is so easy to learn, that I started throwing Esperanto roots into my Spanish conversations at work. Needless to say, I had to shelve Esperanto for a while.

As to why I started learning Esperanto: I've been interested in linguistics since college (where I got a degree in Anthropology). The problem was that, until I found Ido, there weren't any easy languages to learn. While initially reading about Ido, I discovered Esperanto and the far greater number of speakers and jumped right on the band-wagon.

To me, it seems that most Esperantists have at least one thing in common: the desire to speak to someone who speaks a different natural language. From that, I'm guessing that most Esperantists are either globally-minded and/or culturally curious. As for me, I'm both.

Whatever your reason for joining the Esperanto community, it's valid. And there are people of all ages and walks of life in the 2+ million strong community, including folks your age who are native speakers (who grew up in an Esperanto-speaking household and in the Esperanto commnunity).

Bonvolu kaj bonan ŝancon,

Bill

hello, i am 15 years old and learning esperanto for over a year now. I think the idea of an international language is great! I myself am fluent in three languages including english and i know a bit of spanish and italian.

esperanto was quite easy for me to learn but i am not yet fluent in speaking it since i am the only esperantist here.

william

Novico Dektri:Saluton. Im 15, from Ottawa, Ontario.

Why hello there, my name is Mason and I'm also 15 and living in Ottawa, Ontario. If you would be so kind as to post the website for the ottawa club I'd appreciate it. Maybe I'll see you there.

As to why I started to learn Esperanto, no reason really. I've known about it for a while and one day just before the summer started I opened up Firefox and typed in Esperanto in Google and that's pretty much it.

By the way, which school do you go to Novico Dektri? I go to Glebe Collegiate Institute (GCI).

Novico Dektri:
I think that with a 1/2 hour of study every day, you cn acheive reasonable fluency in maybe five or six months. I'm trying the "intensive study" method so I believe that at the rate I'm progressing I might be able to function okay at a Universala Kongreso in another two or three months. And "average intelligence"? I don't think it matters much. Didn't Zamenhoff design la Internacia Lingvo to be learned by rural farmers and such with little to no time on their hands as well as everyone else? I think half an hour study and being of average intelligence would be more than sufficient.

I'm always somewhat wary of pronouncements of how long it should take someone of average intelligence to learn. I don't the facility with languages and intelligence are necessarily very closely linked. I have met extremely smart people who have had a horrible time studying languages and never had much success with it, and people who were not necessarily that bright in any other aspects of their life, who were pretty good with languages. Sort of like how someone can be awesome at math and science but horrible at writing, or vice versa. Who's to say if this person is of "average" intelligence, whatever that means anyway?

This is why I hate it when beginners ask me (not that anyone here is asking me, btw) how long it should take someone of average intelligence to learn the language, studying X hours a day. I never know what to tell them, not only because I don't know how good they personally are with languages, but also because there are so many other factors in play - when they "study", exactly what are they doing? Memorizing vocab, reading, writing, speaking, some combination of the above? There are lots of ways to "study" a language that will get you nowhere fast. Have they studied other languages before and if so, which ones? And so forth.

Anyway. I just want to let you guys know that just because you're perhaps not progressing as fast as you wanted doesn't mean you're stupid and doesn't mean you're bad at languages, there are other factors. Not to mention that one person's "I'm doing great, I'm moving so fast!" might be (objectively) less progress than someone else's "I'm so frustrated, I'm not moving nearly as fast as I wanted", depending on what kind of expectations each person had of the language, how fast they wanted to move, etc.

By the way, to actually reply with someone on topic for this thread - I originally learned Esperanto because I wanted to speak something other than English fluently, and I heard Esperanto was easy. And I was 14 years old and I had a friend who spoke 2 languages other than English fluently (due to her parents, who were from foreign countries with two different languages) and I was jealous that she spoke three languages and I spoke only one. And I told myself that a goal of mine was to "beat" her at languages, and I had to start somewhere.

And building on the "secret language" thread, it wasn't the reason why I learned Esperanto, not at all. But it does give a certain satisfaction when I'm with Esperanto speakers, and I can speak with them loudly, in public places, about personal things that I definitely wouldn't speak about in public if I were speaking the local language, or even a language that very many people speak ("Hey you know that bad case of athete's foot I had? Well my entire toe oozed green fluid then it turned blue and fell off! So are you still having that problem with that anal rash you were telling me about?" and so forth)

It gets to the point where in some cases you almost regret it when you're at Esperanto events and you can no longer gossip/complain about the people/things/events around you in Esperanto, because they will understand you - no more complaining about how long and boring presentations are, within earshot of the organizers.

I first learned about Esperanto when I was looking for a translation to the lyrics of the Final Fantasy XI intro song. I so thought it was Spanish or Italian and was angered that they kept saying it was "Esperanto" since I had never heard of the country of Esperant. Lest to say a few Google searches later I became interested in Esperanto ^_^

I also noticed the King of All Cosmos uses Esperanto in the game "We ♡　Katamari". You have to roll up some cranes or somthing..

Shawna:This time, with the help of a computer program, this site, plus watching the online Esperanto channel and listening to Esperanto music, I'm actually getting better.

Shawna

There's an online Esperanto channel? Where is it at? I've been looking for a while...

waxle:

Maverynthia:There's an online Esperanto channel? Where is it at? I've been looking for a while...

Internacia Televido!

It's great.

It's a TV station? I never was able to get anything to play from it... :/ How does it work?

I'm studying with a grammar published in 1988, Esperanto by David Richardson. There is no "x" letter in the grammar, but I noticed that the letter "x" is used a lot in the new words that Lernu is emailing me.
Kio okazas, miaj amindaj linvoistoj?