Mi pensis ke tio mi bezonas plu laboro kun mi Esperanto, kvankam cxu estas esperanto vere valero mia tempon?

I think that I require more work on my esperanto, Although is esperanto really worth my time?

Jes/Yes

1. Learn How to learn a new language

2. New internet friends

Ne/no

1. Spend off and on a year and a half and still want to be better.

2. Hardly anyone in to talk to face to face (at least my age in US)

3. Funny comments from cops

Should I cut my losses and start learning Spanish?

http://klanestrotalisman.blogspot.com/2010/09/is...

You need to think about your motives. Do you wish to learn Spanish to help your career? That's not wrong; people learn English for the same reason. Will learning Spanish enable you to make friends more effectively than English has so far? Possibly, if you live in a Spanish-speaking area, or speakers of Spanish are genuinely friendlier where you live.

You didn't mention the the idealism associated with the idea of an international language, the interna ideo, which is an important motive for learning Esperanto.

There's also the question of the relative difficulty of Spanish, though I imagine that in many parts of the USA it's fairly easy to find a Spanish-speaking environment and so get the advantage of 'immersion'.

Anyway, in case it helps, here is a video by the late Claude Piron.

Perhaps you could take a break from learning Esperanto. It’s not like stopping means you’re quitting for life, or does it? Perhaps your can learn to two side by side? Who knows, what are your motivations for learning Esperanto? And then access those against your Spanish motivations.

once a week chat for 2 hours on skype. not a big loss of time.

do whatever else u want

Talisman:
3. Funny comments from cops

Ok, now that one you have to explain. Do you have Esperanto bumper stickers? Do you wear Esperanto t-shirts?

Yeah, if you don't really feel like continuing with Esperanto, why force yourself? If you don't feel you're getting any benefit from it, then you should go do something else, without feelings of guilt. Life is too short to try to force yourself to enjoy something you aren't enjoying.

On the other hand, I don't know what level of effort you've put in prior to coming to these conclusions. Esperanto is easier than other languages but not free of effort. You may not be progressing as fast as you like but I can pretty much guarantee that if you put equivalent effort into Spanish, your progress will be much slower than it has been in Esperanto. If you are unhappy with your Esperanto level, there's no getting around the fact that you need to put more study time in if you want to improve that.

Regarding meeting Esperantists, I'm not sure of your age, but unless you're younger than 15 (I think you're not), you should have plenty of Esperanto speakers in the US to talk to. Esperantists of all ages are on Skype. Plus the ages tend to mix a lot. If you want to talk to someone face to face and you aren't willing to travel, then that's a problem, since Las Vegas doesn't exactly have a thriving Esperanto community. You're unfortunate that you live in the West, where distances between cities are quite long. On the other hand, there's nothing stopping you from going to another city with an Esperanto community to spend a weekend with local speakers. The US National convention alternates years between east and west, so I'm sure you could find a low-cost flight to wherever it's being held in the west in a certain year, or else make a point of attending some kind of Esperanto weekend somewhere.

Esperanto offers a lot of benefits if you're interested in international travel but if you aren't interested in travelling, and you don't take advantages of the online resources for contacting people in other countries, then I agree that Esperanto might not have much to offer you.

I don't know if this is widely known, but it is very easy to find other Esperantists on Skype for audio or video chats.

On the Skype site there is a facility to search for other Skype users and whilst it looks as though you have to know the account name, this is not in fact necessary.

You can search just entering a language (eg Esperanto) and a country.

Setting up your own Skype account, don't forget to select Esperanto for 'language' and then other Esperantists can find you.

Skype is free for phone calls between Skype users.

Talisman:Mi pensis ke tio mi bezonas plu laboro kun mi Esperanto, kvankam cxu estas esperanto vere valero mia tempon?

I think that I require more work on my esperanto, Although is esperanto really worth my time?

Jes/Yes

1. Learn How to learn a new language

2. New internet friends

Ne/no

1. Spend off and on a year and a half and still want to be better.

2. Hardly anyone in to talk to face to face (at least my age in US)

3. Funny comments from cops

Should I cut my losses and start learning Spanish?

http://klanestrotalisman.blogspot.com/2010/09/is...

Talisman forgive me for asking but is this your question or a question from the blogger you've linked to? (e.g. are you the one and the same?).

To whomever is meant to be asking (and a correction: "ĉu esperanto vere valoras mian tempon"):

1) You will always end up wanting to be better at any language. This actually happens in English too for English speakers (or any other native language and her speaker).
Normally, what happens is that the human mind assumes it "knows" an entire native language and therefore, when a human finds a subject that it doesn't know alot about and gets frustrated about (e.g. I don't know much about mathematics) the human mind gets frustrated about not understanding that subject. In actual fact though, the human mind more often than not is completely capable of learning that subject, it just doesn't understand the use of language used in that subject or used to teach it.
An example: someone might ask "what on earth's a polygon?!", but easily understand what a "multiple sided shape" is meant to be. "Polygon" merely means "many angle thing" from "polus (many)" and "gonia (corner)".

So, in any language, you will always find things you don't understand, but instead of your mind thinking it understands the entire language and that the conversational topic is just naturally confusing, your mind knows that you aren't good at a language and blames the language instead. No matter what you're learning, you will have to learn to understand new words. Luckily, the more languages and different use of words you learn, the easier any form of knowledge will be acquired, since the human brain stops complaining when it doesn't understand something and instead tries to hijack knowledge by breaking down words or context.

Indeed, all knowledge there is to be learnt is communicated to those learning it somehow, either passively by being observed, or being actively communicated by human speech or texts. So language learning is a great advantage to those seeking knowledge as it trains the human mind to be a knowledge stealing monster

Re Spanish, try learning a bit of that on the side even if you continue with Esperanto, even if just some general grammar patterns. E.g. I only know the basic form of the different spanish tenses and couldn't repeat them to you properly, but it helps in understanding Spanish texts since you can start to guess what things mean based on their general form. Esperanto will help train the mind to look for vaguer similarities than most formal study will.

Talisman:Although is esperanto really worth my time?

Yes is it worth your time. I don't know you that well, but I do know you've been passionate about Esperanto for a while now, and there's a reason for that passion, and you know that reason. Don't give up on it. This doubtful feeling you're having is just a normal human reaction to facing a difficult task, or putting in a lot of effort but feeling you are not seeing results. Happens to everybody. "Yeah, but what's the point?" is a devil of a thing to think, because it seems like there's no answer to it, and it can therefore seem like a very convincing argument as a result.

Definitely speak it as much as you can, find people on skype etc. as others have suggested. Have a look at how you've been studying over the last 18 months and think about what's worked and what hasn't, what you liked and what inspired you, and what didn't, and make changes accordingly.

Start collecting Esperanto memorabilia and texts produced in small quantities.

When the 'fina venko' comes you will have a nest egg.

It's not clear at the moment what the effect of the Net is going to be on the number of speakers, but the conditions for an explosion in numbers are there.