My son learned Yoruba at 6 but never took one class. He wanted to play! That was his motivation. If I made him take a class, he would have gotten nowhere. Within 1 week, he was helping ME with certain words.

Interesting.

Ironically, that link made me more interested in Esperanto. No, I wouldn't want to be an active member of the Esperanto movement and lead a life solely in Esperanto, but it seems like a good idea to learn it and get in to Esperanto culture a little.

Why? Because of the expectation to speak in Esperanto.

When you are learning most other languages, say French for example. If you speak a fair bit of French, and go to Montreal or someplace, even native speakers will speak to you in English when they find out you aren't a native speaker of French. (This is an extreme example I know.)

But not only the Québécois are like this. The other day at university I met this Japanese girl, and I spoke to her a little in Japanese and all. But I could notice she was trying to push the conversation to English as much as she could. I don't blame her, of course she wants to practise her English.

But that's the thing. When learning almost any other language, often times you will find native speakers etc who prefer to speak to you in English to practise their English/your language. (Especially if they come to your country.) Esperanto would be different, because everyone you speak to will be eager to speak to you in Esperanto. It would definitely be easier and more fun to learn.

Though I wouldn't want to get stuck in Esperanto, oh no. It would be a nice language to start with before going into other European languages though.

Esperanto is fun! I've never truly had as much fun learning a language. There are plenty of books, magazines (for all lifestyles), music (rap and heavy metal, even Kentucky Blue Grass!). It's amazing to see 2 Americans speaking Esperanto (from the same town) when they can speak English!

By native speakers of Esperanto, do you mean fully fluent or Esperanto is their FIRST language?

Because if you mean truly native speakers who can claim Esperanto as their first language, I know of only two people.

I prefer English over Esperanto. I can't yet tell what, but something doesn't feel right about Esperanto, and it ain't anything usually mentioned. Something deeper than just the language itself.

An artificial feel? A boring phonology and lack of 'accent'?

I think more along these lines:

Esperanto is suppose to be an international auxiliary language, but linguistic diversity is part of humanity. I think it would be more natural to propose a global polyglotery campaign and teach people several languages during their lifetime (teaching them other things as well, even if they don't want to, the state of ignorance the world is in today I think doesn't give people the right to chose whether they want to learn or remain ignorant, especially in the developed countries).

>Esperanto is suppose to be an international auxiliary language,

Yes it is, because there is no reason to use it to address people from your own nation.

> but linguistic diversity is part of humanity.

From when is that so? Certainly not from millions of years, because we would have developed the skills to be multilingual from birth.
The diversity of the languages is due to the lack of communication between tribes, the lack of a writing system, and generally the lack of education.
The situation is now different in our today's world, a small village.

> I think it would be more natural to propose a global polyglotery campaign and teach people several languages during their lifetime (teaching them other things as well, even if they don't want to,

Please, do not learn Esperanto if you don't want to. Don't let anybody force it on you.

> the state of ignorance the world is in today I think doesn't give people the right to chose whether they want to learn or remain ignorant, especially in the developed countries).

Right, and everybody should learn Java or C++ or at least Jscript, Php and Mysql. The problem with people who want to spend their time on languages, is that they are incapable of learning and using computer languages. It seems that this requires other brain capacities.
I'd rather be monolingual than computer illiterate.

If your plan is accepted, I hope it will leave me some time to learn the various chess openings.
It strikes me that so many people who boast themselves of speaking several languages refuse to learn Esperanto, in spite of the nice principles they advocate.
I think they are afraid to be faced with their incapacity of speaking the easiest language on earth..

I hope it is not your case.

Anyway, the fastest way to multilingualism is obviously through Esperanto, as Esperantists are more multilingual than any other population.

Remuŝ

I don't follow. Are you claiming that we don't have these skills?


Again, I don't follow. I was a linguistics major, and before I even finished college, the founder of a software business tried to recruit me as a programmer. He said that in his experience, the people who made the best programmers were linguists, musicians, and mathematicians. What's your basis for making the exact opposite claim?


This claim, on the other hand, is self-contradictory. If it really is the "easiest language on earth", then how could anyone who has learned any other language lack the capacity to speak it? It's not a question of "capacity" but of interest.


Now what's the basis for this claim? Do we actually have statistics on the mean number of languages spoken by the average Esperantist? Most of the Esperantists I've known personally turned to the language because they failed to make headway with other, more commonly-spoken languages. Doesn't sound to me like a population that self-selects for linguistic aptitude.