| > Esperanto is a hobby language for upper-middle class people in developed countries. I wonder what gave you such an impression of Esperanto. My personal experience of Esperanto is quite different. I started to casually self-learn Esperanto about one year ago as my second foreign language apart from English. After about half a year, I was confident enough to join online Esperanto communities and it gave me a surprisingly much more diverse experience than any community I had encountered on the Internet. For example, in an online chat group, active users mainly come from US, South America, and Russia. As an person from East Asia, there is little chance for me to get in touch with the latter two groups otherwise. And there are often new users from South America who speak only Spanish and Esperanto. I myself do not identify as a upper-middle class person, and I don't know enough to assess other Esperanto speakers' class status. The impression of Esperanto speakers being upper-middle class may come from the fact people learn Esperanto as a hobby. But people not in the upper-middle class can have other hobbies, why is Esperanto different? It doesn't come with the many benefits that people may expect from learning a "practical" language, but it takes significantly less effort. I'd say it's about as hard as learning a new instrument. So it is not that exclusive to only upper-middle class people. After one year of casual learning, I am now able to contribute to the Common Voice project in Esperanto (175 recordings and 123 validations) and I actually use it as a source of learning material. |