This is a very broad question for me to ask.

But I'd like to get to know all of you a bit better.

To that effect, I would like to know how you came to Esperanto, or how Esperanto came to you? How did you make the discovery? Was it through a positive or a negative experience?

Express yourselves, I am looking forward to reading from you all

there is a german rap group (freundeskreis) which made a album and a song called esperanto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4YlUjW_CWk
after hearing that I liked to knew more about Esperanto...
(they are singing about the language esperanto, but the meaning is different. they basically criticize the music industry and how they destroy music culture. the language is more a synomym for equality, communicating over different nations etc. (just like music) but the song is great anyway)

rano:there is a german rap group (freundeskreis) which made a album and a song called esperanto http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4YlUjW_CWk
after hearing that I liked to knew more about Esperanto...
(they are singing about the language esperanto, but the meaning is different. they basically criticize the music industry and how they destroy music culture. the language is more a synomym for equality, communicating over different nations etc. (just like music) but the song is great anyway)

I wish I understood German But luckily, I understand the French chorus I love the vybe of the song, it's awesome

I came to Esperanto out of discouragement and despair. In my city, Montreal (Canada), there are a lot of different ethnic communities: Latinos (like me), Arabs, Chinese, Romanians, Greeks, Italians, etc. And, though, we all live together, we live separated by prejudice and ignorance of one another.

When I was growing up, I was always open to people who were different from me, but my parents and my family were always more closed-minded. They were afraid that, if I opened myself too much to other cultures, that I would forget about mine. In the city, although the younger immigrants, like me, get along well together, the locals (French-Canadians) and the older immigrants have never gotten along, and there's always been this atmosphere of mutual resentment.

And when I was growing up, I could never understand why, if someone so young and inexperienced as me could see that we are all human, no matter what the color of our skin is, or what God we worship or what language we speak, why the older people could not see the same thing as me: that our blood is all the same color.

Last year, I got married to a wonderful Armenian young woman. Our different cultures were never a problem between us. But between our families, it was different. Organizing the wedding was a literal hell, because each family wanted to input more things from their culture. It was ridiculous.

I think that my life naturally led me to Esperanto. I always wished that there would be a way for people of different backgrounds to communicate and unite on an equal footing, without judging and criticizing each other based on their ethnicity or religion. And I have always loved languages, so one day I was at the library and I saw this old book entitled in French "L'Esperanto Sans Peine" and, without thinking, I grabbed it and read it. I was hooked!! And later on, I went on the Internet and I found this beautiful community of Esperanto speakers of all ages and countries, sharing things together. So Esperanto became like a refuge, a sanctuary from the ridiculous hatred that I see in my environment every day.

This is my story.

Saluton, Uvi. I came across a copy of Teach Yourself Esperanto in a charity shop, and it became a hobby. Maybe one day, if you help Esperanto to flourish, Canada will have its first Universala Kongreso in Montreal!

I have always enjoyed travel and languages. I couldn't say where I first heard about Esperanto, but I knew it existed for quite some time before I ever learned anything more about it.
The thing that pushed me to learn more about the language was the novel The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. In it, Santiago (the main character) learns Esperanto as part of his journey. It is an almost trivial part of the book, but it was enough to make me want to learn more about the language. So, here I am

I've always been interested in learning languages. I don't know when I first heard about Esperanto, but I didn't really think about it and was not especially interested.
And someday in February 2007, I don't remember how, I came across an essay written by Claude Piron, “Confession d'un fou”. The title means “Confession of a madman”, and the author talks about his experience with Esperanto as though it was a mental illness. (Sorry, as far as I know, it hasn't been translated to English or Esperanto.)

This got me interested and I read more about Esperanto, and I thought “If it's true, it must be awesome.” I liked the idea of an easy (although I spent a lot of time learning languages at school, I don't really speak them fluently), neutral language — and using it to travel and meet people from a lot of countries, so I decided to learn it.

And when I went to my first Esperanto convention in Hungary, in July 2008, I had almost no problem to understand others and express myself, and I spent a very good week. So I think Piron was mostly right.

Uvi:To that effect, I would like to know how you came to Esperanto, or how Esperanto came to you? How did you make the discovery? Was it through a positive or a negative experience?

I first came across Esperanto when my Star Trek geekdom lead me to William Shatner's performance in the 1965 film Incubus.

At least for me, I've wanted to learn a second language for a long time, mostly for the experience of learning a new langauge. Its probably very pragmatic to learn Spanish here in the US, but where's the fun in that?

I picked up on Esperanto for 3 reasons: 1) no cultural baggage, 2) greater mind share than other similarly purposed constructed languages, and 3) its a stepping stone to learning other languages too.

I've just started learning Esperanto during my lunch hour at work. The whole experience has been enlightening

My reason would be slightly more mundane than most others I guess. I don't really care about communicating with bunches of people since considering my nature and human nature... well it doesn't work. I came to Esperanto, however, to learn a language mostly. I've been _really_ interested in Spanish, German, and Russian for quite some time now. But I never seem to stick it out. Esperanto is my stepping stone. Plus, I'm hoping to learn more about languages via learning Esperanto and other languages since I'm going to create my own private language for use in my notebooks and I _might_ create a dialect for use between me and my friends.

Saluton Uvi. I like languages. I was studying Russian, when I felt that I'd like a break from all those irregular verbs and inflections. Assuming that a constructed language would be the least irregular, I took up Esperanto. (I still enjoy Russian too.)

I really just got bored of learning one language then wanted to learn a bit of another. As a result my language exposure has pretty much gone English -> Italian (school) -> Indonesian (school) -> French (school) -> German (school) -> Indonesian AGAIN (school) -> Russian -> Swedish -> Hungarian -> Esperanto -> Japanese -> Chinese -> Korean -> Japanese etc. You can probably imagine that I've come across a lot of languages over a long time!

Now though I only tend to care about Japanese, Swedish, Irish and to a lesser extent Esperanto (only because I know it better in relation to some of the others), and the only languages I am constantly exposed to daily would be English and Japanese.