Esperanto is just another Indoeuropean language and not at all international by design.

I can't dispute this from a lexical perspective. However, something weird happens with word-formation (heavily agglutinative) and the variety of syntactical constructs, that doesn't look Indo-European (or at least exclusively Indo-European).

You could do a lot worse, anyway, as far as vocabulary is concerned. The Indo-European language group is quite geographically pervasive (with a very considerable presence on all inhabited continents). Other language groups have adopted many Indo-European words as well.

I wonder whether an a priori lexicon á la Volapük would have been any better - while it doesn't give any group any advantages, it *does* make it equally difficult for everyone. Esperanto lexicon is (fairly) difficult for some, but a lot easier for others. If the goal of an auxlang is to be as easy as possible for as many people as possible, then Esperanto's a posteriori approach is on average going to be a lot easier than Volapük's (or similar languages).

Jxenja_A:
- Why did you learn / are learning Esperanto (i.e., what motivated you to learn the language)

At the time, I was studying French and making slow progress. I sometimes wondered if it were possible for a 40 year old monolingual, without benefit of becoming immersed in foreign language environment, to learn a new language well enough to be able to write in it, speak it, and think in it. I believe that I browsed some at the How to Learn Any Language forums and came across Esperanto there. I had heard of Esperanto before that, but had never really seen anyone describe it. When I read that along with being easy to learn, it might also help with further language acquisition, I decided to begin learning it and came here to Lernu.

The base of that motivation is curiosity. I may never actually get to set foot in countries where I could be in another language's environment. But when I thought about the ideas of language and how we use it to communicate and structure our thoughts, I very much wondered, "What is it like to think in a language other than English?"

I am now capable of thinking in Esperanto some, although I do it best while reading Esperanto literature or listening to Esperanto podcasts. It's still a bit difficult for me to break out of thinking in English. But I continue to make progress and feel that Esperanto has given me a glimpse into thinking differently some.

- Why do you participate in Lernu.net (i.e., what does the participation in the community of Lernu.net give you personally)

I'm not the most avid participant, but I come here to sometimes ask a question or two and read what others think and say. I read the Vidpunktoj forum some to see other people using Esperanto, if sometimes well, if sometimes badly, but again to see viewpoints beyond what I've known here in the United States. I believe there is value in that, to understand that there is a variety of viewpoints out there. I may not always agree with those viewpoints, but I don't think that's a problem. I'm glad that Esperanto has given me this tool to interact.

I also continue to come here to continue to learn. I do now have a regular email correspondent and we write each other almost exclusively in Esperanto. It's been quite a pleasure to see how much we've communicated with each other.

Not all human beings will have such a curiosity, but I do wish some that those with this sort of curiosity about learning and the world around them would come to learn Esperanto.

johmue:To me it's more that there are several communities under the umbrella of Esperanto. In German I use the term "Szene" for that. It means a group, that is somehow loosely connected but does not share ideas and ideals and values like a real community would do.

Very interesting! Johmue, do you think "Szene" would be something similar to what Jaldrich mentioned (see below)? How would you translate Szene in English or Esperanto? The Wikipedia article is only in German: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szene_(Volkskunde)

jaldrich:I think there is a Lernu community, but not in the sense of having a unifying vision or sense of strong relationships with an "in group" and "out group". It's a community in the way downtown is a community - a place to go where you know people will be; some you might know, others you might not. You can lurk, or argue, or pitch an idea, or tell a joke...it's one of the few Esperanto language sites with a large enough "community" to pretty much guarantee there will be something interesting and new each day, and if that's not enough there's a Tujmesaĝilo for immediate communication.

I also share some feelings Sudanglo mentioned:

sudanglo:...in some cases a satisfaction may arise just from the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club of free-thinkers, which explains why at Esperanto events one can encounter a certain proportion of 'eternaj komencantoj' (eternal beginners).

This was also my impression as I traveled to Japan a year ago: there are many excellent Esperanto speakers in Japan, but there are also many that are more supporters of the Idea, and they are not necessarily speakers of Esperanto. Many of them are also active in other movements, such as workers unions movement, and to many of them Esperanto is a part of that spectrum. They are also very diligent members of E organizations and support their E organizations financially.

Alkanadi:

The Esperanto movement is definitely a community. They even have a label for defectors, which is Kabo if I remember correctly.

The verb "kabei" comes from Kazimierz Bein, whose nickname was "Kabe":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz_Bein

Found on the net:

In German, the word 'Szene', which translates literally to 'scene' and has an identical meaning in the context of a movie or a play, has a second use in referring to a group of people that form a community around a common interest with a high identification factor, in particular music genres.

In English, I've come across "drug scene", or "clubbing scene", which seems to match the German usage, but more often it seems to be "community", which appears to have a slightly larger scope, though. While a "community" can have many purposes, and particularly may well be of a professional nature (as in "programmer community"), a "Szene" would almost always be related to leisure activities, with a slight bias towards nightlife.

There's a specific word, quite often used in Esperanto, which perhaps may be translated as the Esperanto scene and that is Esperantujo (literally, Esperanto land).

sudanglo:Found on the net:

In German, the word 'Szene', which translates literally to 'scene' and has an identical meaning in the context of a movie or a play, has a second use in referring to a group of people that form a community around a common interest with a high identification factor, in particular music genres.

In English, I've come across "drug scene", or "clubbing scene", which seems to match the German usage, but more often it seems to be "community", which appears to have a slightly larger scope, though. While a "community" can have many purposes, and particularly may well be of a professional nature (as in "programmer community"), a "Szene" would almost always be related to leisure activities, with a slight bias towards nightlife.

This use of the word scene is used in English (at least American English) for music scenes. Typically a local group of bands/musicians that are interested in playing the same genre (usually some sort of alternative) of music. Examples: In the 1980s Washington D.C. was know for its Hardcore Punk scene.

Nothing special or innovative about it (Esperanto)

Oh really, Nornen! You don't find Esperanto's systematicity special? You don't find its history special? Not enough linguistic surprises in it for you? That's a bit blasé. And not the experience of others.

In any case, the designation Indo-European is somewhat inappropriate, and well as being disputed. Many of the features of Esperanto are there for purely logical reasons consistent with its raison d'être.

sudanglo:
In any case, the designation Indo-European is somewhat inappropriate, and well as being disputed. Many of the features of Esperanto are there for purely logical reasons consistent with its raison d'être.

I wholly agree here. There is a difference between choosing features of a language group to emulate for logical reasons and choosing those features just because they are European. Are the features of other languages any easier to learn than those of Esperanto? Are they more logically consistent, or more extensible than Esperanto? Esperanto's concatenative abilities would certainly be hard to come by in some language types. This European heritage also allows for easier assimilation of modern words, and don't forget about scientific terms.

I don't know enough about other language types to answer most of those questions definitively, but I believe they are important to consider before saying how unequal Esperanto is. I definitely think it is possible that some language concepts/methods are objectively superior to others when you are looking to optimize certain traits. That's not to say one language is "better" than another in a general sense, though. This is similar to computer programming languages; there are many different languages with various paradigms and styles, each being more suited to a particular task than the others. But to say that one language is better than all others in general is nonsense.

@sudanglo: Cool down. I was just giving my opinion and my very personal experience. We are a bit irascible today, are we not?

sudanglo:And not the experience of others.

Obviously. This is my experience. I cannot possibly have the experiences of others. Or others have mine...

Jxenja_A:- Why did you learn / are learning Esperanto (i.e., what motivated you to learn the language)

I happened to come across it by way of an internet rabbit-trail (more details here and here, in other English-forum threads; scroll down to find my posts). To make a long story short, I thought the idea of a constructed international language was crazy! But when I read that Esperanto has no irregular verbs, I felt a surge of excitement, as though I'd found something that I had always been searching for, and I just knew that I had to learn this language. I'm sort of OCPD, or something; I strongly dislike unnecessary irregularities. So I started learning it, and the more I learned it, the more I liked it!

It also satisfied another long-held desire; some years back, I was reading a book, and it mentioned the accusative case, I think in reference to Latin. I looked the term up in a dictionary, but found the resulting definition profoundly unenlightening, and had ever since wondered, what exactly is an accusative case? So when I read that Esperanto has an accusative case, and learned what it is used for, I was like, "Oh, that's what it is!" and was very glad to finally know .

And, although this had little bearing on my initial reasons for learning Esperanto, I do enjoy being able to communicate with people all over the world, oftne more easily than if we had to use a different language.

Jxenja_A:- Why do you participate in Lernu.net (i.e., what does the participation in the community of Lernu.net give you personally)[/b]

Well, I joined to begin with because the website on which I first read about Esperanto had advertisements for lernu.net all over the place, and I was curious about the language, so I came here, as it was advertised as a site for learning it. And I stayed, as it was the only Esperanto-learning site that I knew about, and it seemed to be quite well-equipped and sufficient for the purpose. Since then, I have found other sites, but in terms of diversity of material, none of them hold a candle to lernu.net. And now I am involved in the forum, and frequent the chat widget fairly regularly, and have gotten somewhat of a feeling of comraderie, as I see the same people frequently, and get to know them more. Most of them I refer to as acquaintances, but there are some whom I regard as friends in a somewhat deeper sense, and I think I would like to meet in person someday.

Lernu.net gives me not only these social connections, but also a place to ask questions about Esperanto, to practice using it in conversation, real-time or on the forum, and to share some of my own work; mostly song translations and silly little poems.