I wrote a whole response to on here a few days ago, but lost it and couldn't be bothered
to re-type it.

Radio~!:Darkmaster: If you want to practise your Esperanto, Junularo Esperantista Brita are having their next meeting in Newcastle over the weekend of March 5th/6th. We're particularly keen for younger people and beginners to come along. I realise it's a fair distance from you, but there is a caravan of people travelling up together from London if you're interested

Thanks for the offer, but i have no money, nor any income right now, so i won't be able to make it. Hopefully the next one though.

danielcg:I speak three languages, which I learnt in this order: Spanish, English and Esperanto. Being trilingual is usually seen as something worth of praise, but here in Lernu it falls miserably below the average.

Yeah, i know the feeling, speaking only 1 (And approaching a second) language feels almost shameful in comparison to some here.

Genjix:Standardization is the thief of creativity and creativity robs standardization.

I couldn't agree more with this statement, i spent most of my school life bored out of my skull because i either; A) didn't care about the topic (English literature- i don't mind reading it, but i don't want to study and analyse it, it takes all the fun away) or B) knew it and the class was moving too slow for me (Mostly science and Maths, which i spent most of the time teaching myself something completely unrelated or helping my friends. Which the teachers then moaned at me for- discouraging me from learning anything at all at school).

I've learnt so much more since i left school than when i was there, including languages (French at school was wasted on me, i could never see any logic in the language construction- a problem i apparently had with English too when i was young.

Hello everyone, first ever post here!

English is my native language and I speak fluent Dutch, having lived the last 9 years in the Netherlands.

At the various schools I attended, I was taught a little French (0% retained) and German (almost failed the exams). I have some comprehension of German now, purely because of speaking Dutch.

I made a stab at learning Spanish in 2009, and will definitely pick this up again, but neglected to continue this last year (too busy with other stuff).

I have been fascinated by the idea of (or rather, behind) Esperanto ever since hearing about it as a child. Yesterday I started learning.

Cool, 0b5cur1ty! Good luck and I hope Esperanto gives you as much enjoyment as it has me

0b5cur1ty:Hello everyone, first ever post here!

English is my native language and I speak fluent Dutch, having lived the last 9 years in the Netherlands.

At the various schools I attended, I was taught a little French (0% retained) and German (almost failed the exams). I have some comprehension of German now, purely because of speaking Dutch.

I made a stab at learning Spanish in 2009, and will definitely pick this up again, but neglected to continue this last year (too busy with other stuff).

I have been fascinated by the idea of (or rather, behind) Esperanto ever since hearing about it as a child. Yesterday I started learning.

DuckFiasco:Cool, 0b5cur1ty! Good luck and I hope Esperanto gives you as much enjoyment as it has me

Thanks!

I am a native speaker of both Standard American English and Black English Vernacular. I grew up in a very diverse area (the New York City metropolis) with people from all over the world. The largest “foreign” groups were from the Caribbean, and they spoke Spanish, French, Kreyol, and different varieties of English patois. So from a very young age I was exposed to Spanish, and can comprehend enough to have basic conversations and watch telenovelas; but never having studied it in school, I know next to nothing about its real grammar and cannot reproduce it very well outside of simple present-tense sentences.

As part of a program I was involved in as a child, I was able to study a language of my choosing beginning in 4th grade. I chose Italian (I don’t remember why), so I have a very rudimentary understanding of that language. Sometime around 5th grade I started to teach myself French, but didn’t get too serious until high school. Today I would consider French to be my second language, and I am conversationally (although not natively) fluent, although I don’t practice much anymore and am beginning to lose it a bit.

At 14 I started studying Esperanto through a correspondence course, and did pretty well. After a year my family moved and for some reason I didn’t continue. It wasn’t until a few months ago that I started to pick it up again after almost two decades. I hope to become fluent.

While in high school I also studied German, which I continued (along with French) in college. I had an opportunity to study some Greek for a term in school as well, but only very basic touristy stuff. Aside from these, I have dabbled in most European languages and can say a little bit in many of them, spent some time studying Sanksrit (but not Latin? *shrug*) most of which I don’t remember aside from some Hindu chants, and took a glance at a few other non-European languages. I also loved studying other scripts, but never did much in that area (although I can still get by with Cyrillic and Greek).

Which of these do I actually “speak”? I dunno, it depends. I would arrange them like this, in order of descending fluency:

English, French, German, Spanish, Esperanto, other languages I’ve studied.

I love studying languages, because each one expands my worldview and helps me to understand life in a way that was inaccessible to me before. It also makes me feel more connected to my fellow human beings across the globe. It helps to have a natural inclination for language and music.

Just American English and Esperanto.

I had 3 years of Spanish in high school but I was never able to hold a conversation in Spanish. I wouldn't even have been able to write a personal letter without a textbook and a dictionary.

On the other hand, I learned Esperanto well enough to chat and e-mail with new friends in about six months. After 1 year, I passed the Level-C written exam and was able to participate in spoken conversations in Esperanto.

I used a memorization program for learning vocabulary, and I spent about 15 to 30 minutes five times a week learning the language.

erinja:

orthohawk: I'd love to learn some Yiddish, if only to tick off my roommate who is a bit of an anti-Semite and considers it to be merely "trash German" (his words).

I knew someone in college who expressed this opinion to me. I suppose by this reasoning, English is nothing but "trash Dutch".

How quick certain people can be to disparage minority languages. It's a shame.

It's fitting that in Yiddish we were given the saying "אַ שפּראַך איז אַ דיאַלעקט מיט אַן אַרמיי און פֿלאָט" (a ŝpraĥ iz a dialekt mit an armej un flot) - A language is a dialect with an army and navy.

Again, ran across this while looking for another post of mine:
Anyway, I don't think with my (now former) roommate it has anything to do with Yiddish's being a minority language. He's one of those "hochdeutsch ueber alles" types, who also has no concept of dialect's being just as much a "valid" form of a language as the standard (linguistically speaking anyway). I've been having the mostest fun lately posting on his facebook page in Pennsylvania Dutch (a Palatinate origin dialect of German with lots of english lexical borrowing that has evolved in the US). I've threatened to post in Letzebuergesh but haven't found a good textbook yet.

I can speak fluently Polish (natively) and Esperanto. Other languages I can use to some minor extent: (in order of capabilities) English, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Chinese.

orthohawk:I've threatened to post in Letzebuergesh but haven't found a good textbook yet.

There are many German dialect versions of this Wikipedia page.

But for the thread, English (natively), German (C1), French (B1), and Polish (A1). And Esperanto ranks in there somewhere, but I'm not entirely sure where. I've dabbled in Lojban and Latin as well, but they're less than A1. And of course anyone with a mastery of German and English can understand a lot of Old English without much difficulty.

Spanish, English, basics of German and now I did just start learning Esperanto