How has the existing knowledge of a Western European language helped your Esperanto learning? Did it speed up your Esperanto learning?

How long did it take to reach your current level ? Which level you are at ? Baza, Mezo or Supra ?

When it comes to vocabulary (recognition of meaning and retention of same), any native speaker of English is advantaged as the English language has so many borrowings from other languages.

Maybe my knowledge of schoolboy French helped me in learning Esperanto grammar, but I am not sure about that.

I suspect that some (partial) remembering of Latin lessons at school could have helped. Any education that introduces the pupil to basic grammatical concepts will of course make the grammar of Esperanto seem less alien.

My native language is not a Hindoeuropean one, but from the other major branch of languages spoken in Europe.

I had English in the elementary school from the fourth grade on (I was 11 years old), Swedish and German from the seventh grade on (14 years old). The elementary school has nine grades. I continued to learn all those three languages in the gymnasium (three years). Later I've studied in a Swedish speaking university, but most of the books have been in English.

All together I've been taught English for 10 years, Swedish and German six years, not counting my university studies which have mostly been in Swedish (rest in English, Finnish and one course in Norwegian bokmål). I have had Danish and Icelandic friends, with whom I have spoken "samnordiska" (common Nordic). I also got used to listen to Indian-English.

So I have a strong knowledge of the germanic languages. But I'm also a movie addict and I have seen countless hours of movies in French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Vietnamese... (here we do not violate movies by dubbing them), so I tend to joke, that I can e.g. movie-Polish.

All children are taught basic grammatical concepts in the elementary school, and I was a good student (I got the top degree).

Putting all these together learning E-o has mostly been no-brainer to me. But I still have problems with e.g. prepositions (see a thread about "en" here in Lernu).

I've just started and I'm amazed at the number of words in the Ekzercaro taken directly from French. I think French is Dr. Z's main source. Any speaker of French hardly needs to look up a word.

I've just started and I'm amazed at the number of words in the Ekzercaro taken directly from French. I think French is Dr. Z's main source. Any speaker of French hardly needs to look up a word

Well, in the late 19th century, French was the International language so it perhaps isn't so surprising.

With regard to vocabulary, quite a lot. Almost all of the root words are familiar, which makes them easy to remember and predict. With regard to grammar, it's hard to say, because I can't see it from an outsider's perspective.

Anyone who knows English along with one or more Romance languages has a good head start in Esperanto. Without that background, it would take longer to master the basic vocabulary. But thereafter, the regularity of the grammar makes it easy to progress toward true fluency -- and that's the really great thing about Esperanto, in my opinion. No matter where we come from, beyond a certain point it's more about un-learning the entrenched patterns of our native grammar and learning to take advantage of new expressive possibilities.