As the more astute, or obsessive, of you may remember about a year ago I posted a topic about this same subject.

For those of you who did not exist at the time, did not read it, or do not remember (e.g. are not freaks) Esperanto is a language invented by a polish occultist, L.L. Zamenhoff, to be used as an international second language.

It was devised to be easy to learn and easy to use.

Well, I thought I was going to try and learn it about a year ago, but I tried for maybe three days and then gave up.

So I decided, after growing bored of (and failing at) my study of italian and japanese to give it another shot. So I bought a Teach Yourself Esperanto book and worked on it over spring break.

So I've been working on this book relatively diligently (about 2 - 3 hours a day) for 15 days. I finished the book today and I can honestly say that in just fifteen days of diligent study my comprehension of esperanto (in terms of tenses and vocabulary) is as good as my comprehension of spanish, which I've studied for three years (admittedly, though, my teachers were all quite terrible) and I consider myself to be relatively fluent in (as in, I can kind of sort of hold a kind of sort of conversation).

Actually, I've learned more tenses and probably twice as much vocabulary (due to the nature of forming words in Esperanto). Admittedly, if I were to take a week break from study it would all, probably, just disappear because I haven't had the chance to cement it in my brain. But the point still stands that it's simple and straightforward an easy to at least get it's metaphorical foot in the metaphorical door of your brain.

So basically, I think it's cool (even though some of the words are silly <.<) and if it sounds interesting to you I think you should give it a shot :D Because it's cool :D It's, seriously, only about 10-20 bucks for a good self-teaching book off of amazon.

I guess it doesn't really have that much practical use, though it is the most established international auxillary language and it's interesting. And hell, at least you could say you speak in a foreign language. You could start a secret club. You could insult people in a foreign language that sounds vaguely italian. You could have sex with other esperanto speakers (call me). The possibilities are relatively limited :D

Tl:dr

Esperanto is easy to learn and it's pretty cool and I think you should learn it and if you do I will love you forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.

'Total speakers: Native: 200 to 2000 (1996, est.); fluent: est. 100,000 to 2 million'

That's alot of sex!

Let's say the person in question had five different French teachers over the course of ten years drilling their language into him for at least three hours a week, and came away roughly able to translate "le restaurant" back to English as long as it was written down. And not by a Frenchman. Could I, cough, I mean, this person, hypothetically, get a grasp of the language in two months?

Quote from Zed

Let's say the person in question had five different French teachers over the course of ten years drilling their language into him for at least three hours a week, and came away roughly able to translate "le restaurant" back to English as long as it was written down. And not by a Frenchman. Could I, cough, I mean, this person, hypothetically, get a grasp of the language in two months?

Lol, le restaurant, isn't that the bathroom or something?

Oh. I thought it translated to restaurant, as in, place where from you get less hungry, but knowing me you could well be right.

Huh, that sounds pretty cool, I'll set myself a reminder to come back to this thread in a few months when I've finished my exams.

Quote from Zed

Oh. I thought it translated to restaurant, as in, place where from you get less hungry, but knowing me you could well be right.

And you would be right. Restaurant is a restaurant. Bathroom is salle de bains or some shit like that, I hate that ****ing language.

Quote from Überschall

And you would be right. Restaurant is a restaurant. Bathroom is salle de bains or some shit like that, I hate that ****ing language.

Agreed, I took that shit for one semester and I hated it. I mean yeah, some words do make sense every now and then. And then there are the completely histerical words like "Le Douche" (Which is a Shower)

But yeah, I may give this Language a try.

in german i realised the letter G is pronounced 'gay'

we laughed and laughed and i failed german

Quote from Chunky

in german i realised the letter G is pronounced 'gay'

we laughed and laughed and i failed german

You know, I really really don't want to burst any bubbles here and all... but pronouncing it comletely like "gay" is a stretch. It doesn't have that "ay" really, it's more like Ge, I can't find a single english word that uses the same "e" sound though.

i cant really remember it was a long time ago, and i wasn't paying much attention

Man, I don't remember anything from my German class either. Even if I did only finish it last semester.

We don't get to learn ****ing German, we have to learn Spanish so we can talk to all these illegal immigrants.
So seeing as though i don't give a shit about Spanish, i think I'll devote most of my time to learning Esperanto, this seems really interesting.

Schwa, would you're previous knoweldge of Italian have helped you in learning this so quickly? or could i have the relatively same amount of success this even though all i know is English and parts of Spanish?

Well the fact that I've made an attempt to study a few different languages may have helped me but Italian specifically? Nah. When I said it was like Italian all that actually means is that it's pronounced like Italian, with the stress on the second to last syllable. It also has the che sound that you hear in Italian and not many other romance languages.

The words come from various basis, mostly Latin, though some are distressingly and obviously English. So my knoweledge of Spanish just helped me rememeber and recognize some of the words easier. But any romance language will help you with that since they basically all have similar words with Latin roots. Knowing how to write things in spanish, like how to use the 'que' and such is good and being able to differentiate between the different tenses (which most people who haven't ever studied a language can't do) helps because you're not looking at it like 'whuh'.

@zed. I think it really just depends on whether you're interested and motivated. If it doesn't interest you, like that gay french language, you won't learn it. There's nothing intrinsically hard about learning a language, it's just memorization and practice.

What book are you using? I am extremely interested in this.

Also

Quote from Wikipedia

• 2000 hours studying German =
  
• 1500 hours studying English =
  
• 1000 hours studying Italian =
  
• 150 hours studying Esperanto.