[skosch]

When I looked into Esperanto a few years ago, I lost interest relatively quickly as I figured that this Euro-mashup of a language probably won't ever make it very far into areas where it would be most useful to me (i.e. outside of the Western world). Is this true, in your experience? Do you know of any Indian/African/Chinese Esperantists? Has Esperanto been a worthwhile investment of your time, and would you recommend studying it over "real" languages, on the merit of its community alone?

[nkoren]

I'd say it's been a worthwhile investment -- but not really on the merit of the community. That's probably my own fault: the community seems cool and I probably ought to be less of a hermit. There are certainly plenty of Chinese Esperantists; the China Radio International (the PRC's equivalent of Radio America, roughly) even has an Esperanto service that's pretty interesting to listen to[1].

What's really made it a worthwhile investment is that it's given me a better understanding of language itself. All languages have idiosyncrasies, including Esperanto -- but Esperanto's idiosyncrasies are unusually consistent, making it really easy to map things onto. So I often find it easier to comprehend some weird construct in (say) Hindi or Japanese by mapping it onto straightforward Esperanto, rather than trying to map it onto an English construct that's probably even weirder.

Plus it's just such an easy win. I can order off a menu and find my way around town in a fair handful of languages, but haven't really gotten much further than that. But I can easily read just about anything in Esperanto, with 1/10th the effort that I've put into any other language. Which is just kinda gratifying to be able to do.

1: http://esperanto.cri.cn/

[skosch]

Thank you, that's interesting, glad I asked! I'll have to take another look then.

[squiggleblaz]

Esperanto has speakers in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. No doubt others besides but these are the ones I've met either in my own country or in theirs.

You can see some chinese uptake here: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto is very european in its appearance (both grammar and vocab). This seems to have helped it to gain a userbase, which allows others to adopt it who don't share its background. The regularity of the language helps people even if they have to learn a lot of weird roots and struggle to get the very latinate relative clause system (a lot of English speakers struggle with that too though, because agreement is moribund).

Esperanto havas parolantojn en Cxini, Japanio, Koreio, Indonezio kaj Tajlando. Nedube ankauw aliaj sed cxi tiuj estas tiuj de kiuj mi renkontis esperantistojn, aw en mia lando aw en ilia.

Jene vi povas vidi ion de la cxina uzigxo: http://esperanto.china.org.cn/

Esperanto estas tre ewropa law sia formo (kaj gramatike kaj vorte). Sxajne tio helpis gxin obteni fruajn uzantojn, kiuj instigas ekuzi gxin aliajn kiu ne kunhavas gxian historion. La reguleco de la lingvo helpas homojn ecx se ili devas lerni multajn strangajn radikojn kaj penas kompreni la tre latinan relativan fraz-sistemon (multaj angla-parolantoj devas peni per tiu ankaw, cxar konsento estas mortonta).