Damn... Is my English that bad?

Joking... But my Esperanto is definitely too bad for conversation at the moment...

EL_NEBULOSO:
I wrote a letter to the lernu! team to ask them whether it is possible to start a "subforum" for German (like they have for several languages) but I got no response so far.

The team is very busy with a lot of improvements to the site (many of which are not visible to users, however, because they deal with the internal workings of it). Your request hasn't been dealt with yet but I'll make sure it isn't forgotten. And don't worry - requests for new language forums are always granted, it's just a matter of getting someone to set it up.

Erinja,

thanks for your information. Maybe my comment sounded a bit critical, but that was not my intention.

My knowledge of Esperanto is not too good, I started end of January, but I hope I will soon be able to take an active part in the subforum that's written in Esperanto, until then also being able to write in German would be very nice.

Also, I would like to discuss with other German-speaking members, what books they might suggest for learning and stuff like that...

Gerald

I first heard of Eo probably 25+ years ago (probably from a sci-fi novel) and made a brief attempt to learn it then.

Just recently, I was talking with my brother about a hobby of mine, geocaching (www.geocaching.com). I jokingly suggested to him that the next time I hid a cache, I would post the description in Esperanto to make it that much tougher to find. So now I want to learn (relearn?) at least enough Eo to write a simple puzzle description for a geeky game...

EL_NEBULOSO:Erinja,

thanks for your information. Maybe my comment sounded a bit critical, but that was not my intention.

My knowledge of Esperanto is not too good, I started end of January, but I hope I will soon be able to take an active part in the subforum that's written in Esperanto, until then also being able to write in German would be very nice.

Also, I would like to discuss with other German-speaking members, what books they might suggest for learning and stuff like that...

Gerald

I'm happy to see that the German language forum is started.

Mi estas gxoja por vidas tio la germana lingvo forumon estas ekas.

I learned Esperanto-at first- to improve my grammar in English. Now that i know what an interesting and useful language it is, i do it in support of both the "final victory" esperantists (though i myself am not one) and the catholic esperantist's movement (I'm a little on the religious side)

I started to learn esperanto for curiosity.
Until my study of esperanto, I did not know what is esperanto.

This is a great thread! I'm glad to see it has taken on such a long shelf life. I guess I'll throw in my two cents.
About 20 years ago, I was an exchange student in High School. I became very well acquainted with the "language problem" at an early age and decided that bilingualism would become one of my core values. For years, I've preached bilingualism to my friends, relatives, strangers, and anyone else I could find. I've made language learning my hobby. I've even taken a job which allows me to travel all over the world.
I was recently in London during Nov '07 when I found out about an expo they were having called "The Language Show". It was billed as an exhibit for language teachers and language lovers. Obviously, I wasn't going to miss this!
While I was there, I had a chance to meet a group of British Esperantists who started telling me about the language. I'd heard of Esperanto many times, but couldn't see the value of learning something I would never have a practical use for. I realized, however, that my values and the values of the Esperanto movement are identical and I would be a hypocrite not to learn it. That's when I came to learnu.net about a month ago.
Since I've been here, I've learned how mistaken my previous beliefs were! Esperanto is spoken everwhere!!! For example, I had to work in Lithuania last year where the language problem hit me square in the face. There was ONE person at the factory I was working in who spoke English, and he was far from fluent. I know NO Lithuanian and it is a very hard language for English speakers to learn. (Especially since I was only working there for a week) My Russian and Polish are absolutely terrible and I had a TERRIBLE time getting any work done. (These were the only two languages I had to choose from among my coworkers other than English and Lithuanian)
I come to this site and I see SO MANY Lithuanians here learning Esperanto. What's more, I CAN TALK TO THEM!!! It is so refreshing. The next time I'm in Vilnius (or anywhere else), I'll have another tool in my language arsenal to help with my job. I wish I had started Esperanto sooner!!!

I've started learning for several reasons, which I hope to address without the posting turning into a novel. My beliefs in this area are greatly characterized by the naivette they exhibit, so be warned.

My first reason is a combination of social/political/religious. I think an international auxillary language is needed and that it should be neutral in terms of a society claiming ownership of it and that Esperanto is the best current candidate. In my eyes, the adoptation of such an auxillary is just one of the many steps along the road to disolution of government and bringing about the understanding for increased cooperation between people (I am both an anarchist and a Marxist, so people tend to love me )

I also view it as a useful tool in the fight to keep languages from going extinct, which is a major problem. While learning any language takes great time and effort, the relative simplicity of Esperanto means less effort would be necessary in teaching people's with dying languages to communicate with outsiders so that if the language as a whole could not be preserved, we could at least archive many of its points.

As a transhumanist I think it is also a means of using human knowledge and understanding to bridge what the human animal is. That being the geographical concept of culture as a limiting factor into how a person believes responds and reacts to a given stimuli. The internet itself has already helped this greatly and I think Esperanto on the large scale could be a useful stage in that.

As I stated, I know I am being naive, but I think we all ought to have a few zany improbable odd dreams.

Paul

my reason is simple: in wondered if a planned language works..

now, being more than persuaded, i just got mailed in the baza radikaro!