That is annoying, how come it didn't work?

I'm new. My name is Ben, I'm 17 and from the UK.

I like the idea of Esperanto, and an international language. I want to become fluent so I can travel and meet new people in my gap year. Also, I love learning languages, and hopefully, beacuse Esperanto is supposedly so easy, it'll be my first language fluently under my belt, and it'll help me with other languages.

I have a few questions:

What sorts of people speak Esperanto? Are they mainly old fuddy-duddy linguists, or people who've learned J.R.R Tolkien's languages (Not that there's anything wrong with this)? Are there many young people involved in the movement?

Also, how long did it take you to learn Esperanto? How long would it take a young person of average intelligence to become fluent, by doing half an hour of Esperanto study per day?

Many thanks,

Ben.

Hey!

I wouldn't say those people learning Esperanto/ Ido/ Interlingua are the same people learning Sindarin/ Quenya. They both serve different tastes. It depends what you want to learn the language for. Do you want to be able to read Elven poetry or travel the world. Who is to say which is better? I am doing both but I must say I am having much more luck learning E-o. I have been learning with a number of sources for a month now and I would say I am fluid, better than in German which I have been studying on and off for about 3 years. However, I find Esperanto easier because I already speak French to a proficient level. I don't speak Scots or Dutch so German is like leraning a langauge sort of from scratch. However, if you really want to learn a language from scratch and I mean the scraticiest of scraticness, try Sami/ Finnish/ Estonian/ Hungarian. I'm studying Estonian and it is beautiful but much much much harder than learn E-o. E-o is cake compared to it.

What I like about E-o is that it is simple but beautiful, and you can find people to practise it with on an even enough playing field free from nationalistic influence.

I am a twenty year old university student from Ireland interested in languages and ligustics, though I don't study that at college. I speak English as my mother tongue (unfortunately), Irish Gaelic and French from school as my second and third. I am improving my self taught German, and recently started learning Esperanto, Estonian, and Swedish. I also want to start learning Scots Gaelic, Spanish, Italian, and Welsh.

Even if Esperanto was made a language for world political and social communication I wouldn't stop learning other languages, as I think it's an amazing to learn a new language. Someday I want to make up my own language(s) and build a story around it, just like Tolkien did Of course I have no intention to be as popular as him, but then again who knows, he never thought people would write his material either

 

Hi Ben, I agree with Boy-o/Stefano both in the time taken to learn it and in my depravity of any other language other than English. (Ĉar mi estas usonano ankaux. "As I'm a US citizen too.")

My first chance to learn *any* other language was when I went to high school (I think it's called secondary school in non-US countries) ... 9th grade. That's when I applied myself to Spanish as it was the best choice for me at the time & it is phonetically spelled. Then when the internet became popular, I looked up Esperanto & was fascinated with it. I've been playing with it for a few years, but just like Steven/Stefano/Boy-o, I have not set myself down with a strict schedule or plan to learn Eo, but my brother and I have helped spur each other's interest. The neat thing with Eo is that there exists many good resources to learn it, as I have also looked into Ido, which interests me too. But the popularity of the two are *very* different. I want to learn both, but realized I must concentrate on one and not spread myself too thin as, like Caeireann, I am learning other languages too. I currently can communicate with enough fluency to text chat in 3 languages, Esperanto being my worst. But I've put in like 1/5th the amount of time learning Esperanto as I have learning Spanish, and my Esperanto is probably about 1/2 as good as my Spanish.

One book I bought and was reading about Eo, explained that there was a classroom test for Esperanto in a California Middle school. They had 2 groups of students. One learned 4 years of French, and no other language. The other took Esperanto for one year, then after that 3 years of French, so it was still the same total of 4 years studying a foreign language, but just divided into 1 Eo & 3 of French. The class that learned Esperanto could fluently speak Esperanto after the first year of class! Then after 3 years of French, they could speak better French than the other group who took 4 years of French. One reason is likely because of the enthusiasm that Eo gave them in being able to speak a new language. Plus there are many vocabulary helps which French and Eo have in common ("flava" = [en] "yellow", which is similar to French. [French] "parolar" = [eo] "paroli" = [en] "to speak".) But nevertheless, in this case study, a group of people successfully spoke fluent Esperanto after one school year (8.5 months) of classroom study. My middle school classes were just under 1 hour a class each day, I think 50 minutes. And comparing my current level of Esperanto with how much time or lack of time I spent studying it, I think that is very realistic of my level and time spent learning it too.<br />
<br />
But I also have an advantage of being half fluent is Spanish too. And Esperanto is *so* amazingly easier, and I thought Spanish was easy when I was learning it. And it is compared to English.<br />
<br />
About, who speaks Esperanto, what demographic profile or age range or hobbies &amp; interests that Esperantists and wanna-be's are or have, I don't know. I haven't asked. I do know I see a very wide variety of different people who make up the Esperanto community.<br />
<br />
Happy learning!<br />
<br />
-Shawn &lt;&gt;&lt; (USA, Kansas)[/eo]

Hi Ben --

Kat here - howdy!  I just wanted to jump in with some links to other resource sites:

 Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) -- http://www.esperanto-usa.org
   this site has a catalog, plus information about local clubs (your fluency will increase by leaps and bounds if you actually get to talk with someone)

 US Esperanto Youth Association (USEJ) -- http://www.esperanto.org/usej/

 Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo (TEJO) -- http://www.tejo.org/indexjs.php
   same idea as USEJ, but it's a world-wide organization

Also, Esperanto.net's English page has some organizational lists, so you can check out other youth-based organizations (if you are so inclined). 

Ĝuu!

 -- Katjo

Yeah, I think a good deal of Esperantists in North America may be those who would have just as much fun speaking elven or klingon... but I for one have no (well, very little in comparison) interest in those endeavors; I am learning Esperanto because I want to help promote international communication and sharing.

I for one am 18. I just began studying last month (June 2006) and can already read real documents with little trouble, understand most podcasts I listen to and have fairly good command of using it to word my thoughts written and spoken (although I only speak with other novices). I have a slight advantage having a cumulative seven years of study in french and german.

But yeah. one more slice of the demographic pie...

For what it's worth, I'll say that I am currently 15 years old and started learning Esperanto not too long ago. I haven't gotten far. Not because the language is hard, but just because I haven't been motivated. But this post isn't going to be about my motivational problems.

I like the idea of an international language, and I guess you could say that is why I began to study Esperanto.

I am very interested in different languages and aspire to be a polyglot. What do I study? Certainly not Quenya or Klingon, but I do study Arabic, and, soon, German. I know enough about linguistics to impress a layperson, but am by no means an expert.

I also conlang myself.

Saluton!

I'm from Denmark and I speak both English and French. I used to hate my French lessons in high school due to all the irregular verbs and everything.

In short, I think I began learning Esperanto because of my innate love to mathmatics The fact that Esperanto is based on logics and is very simple and precise simply left me fascinated.

I didn't learn Esperanto because of any fanatic idea of spreading the language globally or world peace. I simply thought it would be fun to learn some of it. After a couple of months, I realized that it became possible to speak to people all over the world which IMO is fun.

I'm 19 years old by the way and I'm going away for a week to Bosnia (IJK 2006) to meet other people at my age. Not to discuss any new Crusadelike ideas, but simply to have fun... and maybe drink some beer?

I'd like to add my actual reason for learning Esperanto. A couple of years ago, a couple of friends and I thought it would be fun to be able to speak together without anyone else's understanding. A very childish idea, I'm quite aware of that. Nevertheless, it made us all begin to take courses using Kurso de Esperanto.

I guess my reasons for learning Esperanto are somewhat different from everyone else's, however I'm having a lot of fun with it which is the point, right?

I'm all over the board. Part of the reason I'm learning Esperanto is that I've studied German and Japanese and I wanted to learn another language. Japanese was really frustrating to me, because after 4 semesters of college study I couldn't even read a newspaper or converse about anything more detailed than what a tourist would need to know how to say. I had a friend who is an Esperantist, and he was always telling me about Esperanto so I thought I'd give it a try. I really want to teach it to my wife and daughter (she's 3), so that we can speak it when we need some privacy. (In fact, maybe not to my daughter just yet... haha)

On the other hand, I'm a nerd and I have friends who are fluent (or as fluent as you can be) in Klingon and Quenya. I'm a computer programmer by trade and am studying Linguistics at my University. But those weren't my main reasons for learning Esperanto. (After all, if I wanted to learn a crazy language just to learn it, I would have gone for Klingon or Quenya.) I wanted a language that I could use to talk to real people about real things. I wanted a language with a literary and musical tradition that I could enjoy. Esperanto offers these things where other conlangs don't.