<p>Who here speaks Esperanto, which is known as the international language. I disagree because English still is. Its popular in Europe and Asia, I just heard about it. And I was wondering if anyone here speaks it. Its very, very easy and simple to learn. Its like a combo of Spanish, French, English, Italian and Russian. I don't speak it, but it looks like fun and its simplicity is winning me over. Its sounds and looks to much like a Romance language to be calling itself the neutral language though.</p>
<p>It’s the neutral language of the major 19th century powers of Europe, not really of the world.</p>
<p>The organization calls it the neutral language of the world, but I agree with you. Its more Euro based.</p>
<p>Not even all of Europe. Several European language groups (ie, Celtic, Greek) are left out.</p>
<p>My friend tried to learn Esperanto. It’s very simple, but in my opinion doesn’t sound particularly beautiful. It is mostly based on Romance languages, but has aspects based on them that make it easier to learn. I think all nouns end in the same letter, as do all adjectives.</p>
<p>As my professor once said, the reason Esperanto, as easy to learn as it is, is not the language of the world is that it has not heritage. If you look back at the languages of exchange - Latin in the Middle Ages, Italian during the late Renaissance, French during the Early Modern Period, English since the early 20th Century, they all had a cultural influence that Esperanto will never have, or at least won’t have for awhile.</p>
<p>The idea is that Esperanto has no heritage, and is therefore neutral. Say an American and a Chinese man met for a business deal, and English, being the lingua franca, was used, it would give the American an advantage because it is his natural language and he needs to exert no effort in thinking of how to say anything, so he can focus on the what. Esperanto was meant to be everyone’s second language so people who meet on a fair field. I taught myself it for a while in the fall and plan on picking up again after my AP tests are done, and I think it is well worth the relatively short amount of time, as learning it greatly helped me with learning Spanish more easily as well as giving me new insight into English</p>
<p>I am in the process of speaking it. If anyone is interested, there are a lot of free websites to learn it from.</p>
<p>colororange do you know of any ones where you can interact with people, a sort of chatroom format maybe? I’m able to read from books I’ve taught myself with but I have trouble writing because I have no one to interact with (I could never really speak it aloud, and especially so now after taking nearly a half year break). I feel like that is the hardest part about learning for me</p>