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What are Esperantists like? | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Gray Parrot Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5600 days ago 41 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Portuguese | Message 1 of 39 29 August 2009 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never studied Esperanto, but I've become interested about the language after reading some of the comments on
this forum. Can anyone who already speaks Esperanto, tell me what kind of people they have met who also speak the language. For example are they mainly a certain age, or particular nationality, or do they mainly come from certain income levels? Are there about equal numbers of males and females? Edited by Fasulye on 12 April 2010 at 9:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6443 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 39 29 August 2009 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've seen a pretty nice mixture of ages, nationalities, and incomes. I've seen everything from kids who can't even be 6 years old yet, to people who must have been retired for quite a while. Nationalities have always been extremely mixed, except at very tiny local events, which can vary from one nationality per person to everyone being local. There's been a preponderance of Europeans at the events I've gone to, but I'm new and have only been to events in Europe - and there have been people from Brazil, Africa, North America, Australia, Asia, etc too, just not many. In terms of income levels, there's a wider range than I've encountered at any other sort of meeting. At one end, there are students, squatters, and the permanently-unemployed-by-choice, but there are also quite a lot of computer professionals, etc, and some people who are even better off, though they generally don't exactly run around yelling about it.
Overall, probably, but not within all countries. I've heard the German movement is about 50/50, the Americans are 90% male, the Russians are 90% female, and so forth. It's been pretty 50/50 in the regions I've visited. Edited by Volte on 29 August 2009 at 8:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5851 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 39 29 August 2009 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Germany and the Netherlands there as many male as there are female Esperantists. In both countries more older people than younger ones.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 39 29 August 2009 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I planned to study Esperanto once, but it seemed everyone I talked to online had a very strong political agenda,
which they could not drop even when I said I wasn't interested in politics. That turned me off on the language. Now this was online, so can I assume things are different in real life? Are the majority of Esperanto speakers you meet in person more laid back? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6443 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 5 of 39 29 August 2009 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can think of very few people I've met like that, online or off, and none have been Esperanto speakers. I think you just hit a patch of bad luck there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 6 of 39 30 August 2009 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's good to hear. Maybe I'll give it a shot. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6372 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 7 of 39 09 September 2009 at 6:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Reading Esperanto blogs, they don't seem that different from English blogs. Some talk about themselves, some about their religion, some about their politics, some about science, and most about various subjects. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lancemanion Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 150 posts - 166 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Thai Studies: French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 39 13 September 2009 at 6:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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I believe you.
The first time I was considering learning it, I asked a forum friend about it, and he offered to give me everything I needed to learn the language, and would throw in tons of stuff from other languages if I promised to learn esperanto first. When I eventually decided to do French first, he got very upset, and started telling my what a horrible language French was. Then he went on about how esperanto was the new global language, and it was necessary to recruit as many new speakers as possible, and would solve various political problems, etc. That turned me off for a while. Next time, I asked some very benign questions about the language online, and without me even getting involved after that point, people were dropping in and professing that esperanto needs to replace English as the language of diplomacy (which I thought was French), because English is so oppressive and unfair to other languages, etc, etc. An of course there were strong counter-attacks by esperanto haters. Since then, I've noticed many esperanto threads go out of control like this, so I know my thread wasn't that unusual. I don't see this happening to any other language in forums. But I will assume this is just kids arguing on the internet, and doesn't reflect esperantists true dispositions. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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