For some reason I typed in “Learn esperanto in one week” and this site came up. My primary reasons for learning it are for the community events, but I also want to see how it changes my thinking to have a natural command of another language.

Johano, I came to the same conclusion on esperanto versus lojban. Better advantage some then disadvantage everyone. It’s mostly for fun anyway.

Scott, do you know if many people read your esperanto blog? I am curious.
.-= Brad´s last blog ..Alleviate Depression =-.

     The main advantage in Esperanto is its flexibility and lack of restrictions regarding idioms. Although Romance-langage speakers may have an advantage as far as how quickly the language is obtained, there is no real advantage once the language is learnt. It’s the idioms that affect control over a language. Take French and Italian, for instance. Although they are closely related, a native French speaker will never feel as at home with Italian as a native Italian, except in the case of long total immersion—which would have the same results as being immersed in a less-closely related language, such as German.)

    Having a neutral language at the expense of just changing the vocabulary to equally unfamiliar roots does not make it any easier for the other nations. It only has a detrimental effect on the Westerners.

    In short, I feel Esperanto has enough advantages as a world language over English to counterbalance any neutrality issues. No constructed language that overcomes the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is either (1) viable in terms of speaker base or (2) easy enough for all parties involved. Lojban is neutral in being equally difficult for anyone—I prefer a nonneutral language that’s easier for everyone.

Esperanto gives an unfair bias to most of Europe — it’s still not truly international. There have been more internationally neutral languages constructed than Esperanto, but even Esperantists don’t study them….

I did attend two meetings of a local Esperanto group back years ago when I lived on the ‘left coast’ of the USA. Since moving back to the US heartland, some years I use Esperanto and some years I don’t. When I do use it, as in one of my blogs where I do post in Esperanto, it’s easier than writing in German which I formally studied for many years in college.

Of course the main reason for learning Esperanto is that when the evil alien robots conquer Earth, we’ll all have to learn Esperanto anyway and I’ll be ahead of the game.
.-= Nissa Annakindt´s last blog ..Learning Languages with Free BYKI software =-.

I’d say that there is a practical reason for learning Esperanto for someone who is currently monolingual that you hadn’t mentioned. Learning a second language makes learning a third one easier. There are obvious reasons involving learning languages that share cognates, and so forth. But more fundamentally, you learn some basic things when you learn a second language. You become more familiar with the underlying structure of language. You learn how you learn a language. If you do it right, you overcome some of your fear of making mistakes.

If there is anyone reading your blog who hasn’t understood the value of losing the inhibition against making mistakes and just getting out there and trying to communicate, I’d be surprised. But knowing it intellectually and experiencing it are not the same. This is where Esperanto can help. It was designed to be easier to learn than natural languages. I believe it is. Two of the reasons are completely phonetic spelling and a vocabulary made up of a smaller number of root words with a bunch of prefixes and suffixes and compound words.

One of the experiences that Esperantists notice when they are learning the language and then stop finding so remarkable after a while is that we make up words on the fly. Some of them can be found in dictionaries, many can’t. But we understand them just fine anyway. As an example, imagine that you are having a conversation and for whatever reason you can’t remember the Esperanto word for “pen”. (It’s “plumo” by the way.) Asking your friend if you can borrow a “skribilo” will be understood anyway. “Skribilo” is derived from “skribi” which means “to write” and the suffix “ilo” which means a tool for something. I can say with confidence that I can find a dictionary that lists “skribilo”.

Moreover, Esperanto is a fine language in which to practice your language skills because Esperantists are a notoriously talkative bunch. Although we’ve learned Esperanto for a variety of reasons, we enjoy the opportunities we have to use it.

Esperanto doesn’t have a country, but it does kind of have a culture. The international mixture of cultures create a new sub-culture. I’m still getting to know people from the Esperanto movement, but I can see that they share a lot of values. Hopefully you’ll see soon! Good luck with your Esperanto studies!! Lernu.net is a good site to start of learning and taking online courses. I’ll be likely making a video about learning Esperanto soon like I did with Italian

It really IS an easy language to learn. I don’t consider myself skilled at languages at all, and I had no trouble learning it.

They say that one has to be a bit crazy to learn Esperanto since it is, as you have put it, a no-country language – the most important part is missing: the culture. Benny, you could write about these things too.
.-= balint´s last blog ..Hatékony szótanulás =-.