The idea of Esperanto immediately appealed to me. One thing was the logic of it: a language designed to be a second language for everyone — the “bridge” language idea: that people can universally communicate by learning just one language in addition to their own. And then the codicil: that such a common second language should be easy to learn (no gendered nouns, no irregular verbs, easy acquisition of vocabulary with the help of a kit of snap-together affixes. “If you want a horse to jump a fence, make the fence as low as possible” — that is, eliminate all possible impediments to the action you want to encourage.

The “universal second language” may be displaced by AI real-time interpreters, but Esperanto remains interesting (to me) as a language, and now with the internet, Esperanto has more support — for example, I am now taking a B1 course (via Teams, Microsoft’s version of Zoom) from Jagiellonian University: 7 months, one 1.5-hour class per week. Previously, I took three A2 (more or less) courses from Kusaro.net: 3 months, one 1-hour class per week. And I practice speaking via Ekparolu! (free 30-minute one-to-one sessions with advanced speakers who have some training in helping novices).

My reason for learning Esperanto is not the universal-language thing, which clearly has not happened, however much sense it makes. Instead, I have two other reasons.

First, I’ve always wondered what it’s like to be fluent in another language. I wanted to experience that and also observe what happens (in me) as I gain the ability. Since fluency is the goal, it made sense to me to pick the language in which fluency is most easily achieved — thus, Esperanto.

I read that becoming fluent in Esperanto takes about a year, and at 7 months in, that seems about right. I am just completing three Zoom classes via London Esperanto (conducted entirely in Esperanto), and I just started a 7-month course from Jagiellonian University in Krakow: one 1.5-hour class per week, at B1 level.

This is not my first effort, but this one is being successful. What undermined my earlier tries was an unrealistic expectation: that I could achieve some level of fluency in 3-4 months. When I was not fluent after 4 months, I felt I had failed and fell away. But this time, I came across a comment that it takes around a year of steady study and practice to achieve fluency, and that greatly increased my patience. Now, 7 months in, I have been taking classes conducted solely in Esperanto, keep my daily journal in Esperanto, listen to a variety of Esperanto podcasts, and correspond in Esperanto (with some correspondents who do not know English). I have a blog post where I’ve been collecting my discoveries and listing the resources I’ve found.

My second reason for learning Esperanto actually relies on the fact that it is not a universal language. It seems to me that Esperanto acts as a filter: the people nowadays interested in learning Esperanto are generally those who want to meet people from other cultures, value person-to-person cross-cultural relationships, and tend to be friendly and curious. In a sense, Esperanto becomes the focus of a hobbyist group with a shared interest, and that interest is communicating with people from other cultures — and of course Esperanto greatly helps in that communication.

There are other reasons to learn Esperanto, of course, and an important one has already been mentioned: learning Esperanto as a first foreign language makes it easier to learn other foreign languages. One experiment in Finland, in a school where three years of German was standard, had an experimental group spend one year learning Esperanto, followed by two years learning German (while they continued to use Esperanto in some other course, just as the language of instruction). At the end of three years, the Esperanto group spoke German more fluently and confidently than the group who had studied only German for three years.

I’m currently learning it. I like the concept, and no other conlang/auxlang has become as widely spoken or treated as seriously as Esperanto. There are actually children who are native speakers, as in Esperanto is their first language, no other conlang can claim that.

However, as many users here have pointed out, it has problems. It’s very Euro-centric. So while it is easy for romance language speakers to pick up, if you are from a different language family, it’s no picnic.

There is also the issue of relevance. Esperanto has a fairly active online community, you can pretty easily find Discord servers and forums with several hundred to 1000+ active speakers from all over the world.

If you are lucky, there are local clubs and groups that meet up in person and speak Esperanto to each other.

Esperanto has also been shown, at least in children, to aid in learning a second language. Learning Esperanto helps you get used to the process of learning a language in general, and basically gives it to you in easy mode.

But if your goal to learn a second language is utility, then Esperanto almost certainly isn’t a good choice. For instance, I live in the US, and not in a region that has a high Hispanic population. That being said, I still encounter 3-5 people a month who are Spanish speakers. So even for me, learning to speak conversational Spanish would be much more useful as a second language than Esperanto.

That’s actually my long term plan, to start with Esperanto because I really struggle with learning languages, even Spanish has been too tough for me. But Esperanto has made it easier so far, and it’s fun.

Ultimately, Esperanto would have been a far better world language than English, which annoyingly has become the de-facto world language, and I say that as a native English speaker.

I don’t see anything like Esperanto arising anytime soon, if ever. If you think it’s cool, learn it, you’ll at least learn how to learn a foreign language better and you’ll maybe find some new friends online, can’t complain about that.

If Klingons spoke Esperanto, it would be a thing

I have made several runs at Esperanto because I like the idea of the language (a common, easily learned second language for all) and because I like the implementation (the table words, the system of affixes, the simplicity (no irregular verbs, no gendered nouns, power of using a single root to make an entire family of words, etc.). Latterly I realized that Esperanto also acts as a social filter: almost always, those who learn it are people who are interested in other cultures, have a warm and welcoming attitude, and enjoy getting to know people — not a bad group to enter. Plus there’s the benefit of Pasporta Servo (basically, free B&B as a guest in Esperantists’ homes to visit and see the sights). It’s a very international community, scattered across the world (though Europe likely has the most members). I also like its use as a first foreign language: people can learn the skill of learning a foreign language via a language that doesn’t offer irrelevant impediments (e.g., irregular verbs).

After multiple runs, I have found my footing and am enjoying it this time. Two things that made a difference. First, I was misled by my expectation of reaching fluency quickly (with talk of 3 months, etc.). That led to losing heart when, after 4 months, I was nowhere near fluent. Then I saw a YouTube video from a fluent speaker, and he indicated that a basic level of fluency takes about a year of consistent study and practice. Well, okay. I was expecting too much, thus my disappointment. I’m perfectly willing to go a year, and now I know to expect that. (I’m now 4 months in and having labored conversation, but now it’s not depressing since I now see it as a necessary but temporary stage on the road to fluency.)

Second, I have focused on building vocabulary. I use Anki in a particular way, but the key discovery has been that the more words I learn, the easier it becomes to learn a new word. I don’t really understand why, but it’s quite clear that it happens. Of course, I still encounter some words that resist learning a little, but Anki takes care of that. I’m surprised at how many words just stay with simply because I made a card for them.

Another good thing about Esperanto are all the free learning resources, including 1-1 Zoom conversations with experienced and fluent speakers trained to help newbies. (Best non-free intro: Complete Esperanto, by Tim Owen and Judith Meyer: the book includes access to an online library of MP3 files to train listening and (by repeating phrases) speaking.

My opinion is this: who can I speak Esperanto with?

…

Exactly.

The problem with Esperanto is that languages don’t work like that: they’re not created out of thin air. They exist because people speak them and they come into existance from other languages that get distorted beyond recognition by the people who misuse them.

No living language is known to have been conjured into existence, with perhaps the possible exception of a few rare language isolates like Basque that might have been invented from scratch a long time ago, since nobody knows where they come from exactly.