[nsilvestri]

Anecdata, but I've met a whole two other Esperanto speakers (that I know of) in the wild since I began learning it a couple years ago! It's not prominent with the general population, but I do think there are certain types of people whom are more inclined to learn it.

[HarryHirsch]

There was this Physics instructor whose scripts were in Esperanto - the guy was well liked by the students, however he was an Esperantist

[sshine]

Anecdata: In recent times, to a high degree: programmers. I attended one music festival with a high presence of volunteers from the Esperanto community, and among these people, ~20% were programmers.

The grammar is mostly regular. It seems like the thing a stubborn introvert likes: You can hardly use it anywhere, but it has nice properties. And unlike Lojban, Esperanto is something you can learn to fluency fast on your own on the internet.

[bbzealot]

Fun fact, George Soros (the banker much targeted by conspiracy theorists) is a native Esperanto speaker, as he was raised to speak the language but his father, who was a well known Esperanto speaker

[JetAlone]

I didn't know that. Fascinating to hear there actually is a native speaker of it. I was aware from reading the wikipedia article that Esperanto was championed by the Ba'hai and Oomoto religious groups, among others. I had also forgotten that Theosophy promoted it as well. Plenty of different Christian groups tried using it too, even Jack Chick, famous for his maligning of D&D.

[sshine]

I've heard there is around 1000 native speakers in the world.

I've met one such.

His parents met at a conference, and only had Esperanto in common.

I've been at music festivals where I met people who did not speak English, so Esperanto was our best common language.