I study Spanish because i live in the USA and Spanish is the de facto second language (almost all of the time). But Spanish wasn't useful in Turkey, Japan, Cairo, etc. where i did use Esperanto. I wish i could learn all the languages of the world, but i'm just not that good at it. Esperanto is easy.
But, more than that... In the USA a native Spanish speaker is (too) often discriminated against. As a non-native Spanish speaker i am always on the outside of conversations in Spanish. Esperanto is meant to be everybody's second(!) language, not be a homogenizing language for the planet. Esperanto speakers are all non-natives (actually there are some natives, but they don't have special powers :) so we Esperantists meet as equals.
To riff on what somebody else wrote, if a client said i had to learn Haskell, i'd be happy to be paid to do so. My "payment" for knowing Esperanto is the community of (mostly) intelligent, (mostly) compassionate, and (mostly) generous people i've met using it.
Hey. Forgive the stunted speech, but I must practice! :)
Mi komencas lerni Esperanton ĵus antaŭ unu semajno -- tra Duolingo, ke eble vi atendas -- sed nun mi provas iri al pli realaj verkoj, plejparte tradukitaj facilaj verkoj, tiuj mi leĝis en la anglan iam en mi vivo.
Kiam mi rigardis la Esperantajn grupojn en Meetup.com por la Bay Area, mi memoras vidinta la nomon "trio" ien. Tiu estas vi, ĉu ne?
Yeah, I can say the same about Lojban community. Most Lojbanists study and use Lojban to better know how we think, how can knowledge be better represented. As for other languages a lot of Lojbanists speak several major languages each so this means that Lojban can't be replaced by another major language.
I study Spanish because i live in the USA and Spanish is the de facto second language (almost all of the time). But Spanish wasn't useful in Turkey, Japan, Cairo, etc. where i did use Esperanto. I wish i could learn all the languages of the world, but i'm just not that good at it. Esperanto is easy.
But, more than that... In the USA a native Spanish speaker is (too) often discriminated against. As a non-native Spanish speaker i am always on the outside of conversations in Spanish. Esperanto is meant to be everybody's second(!) language, not be a homogenizing language for the planet. Esperanto speakers are all non-natives (actually there are some natives, but they don't have special powers :) so we Esperantists meet as equals.
To riff on what somebody else wrote, if a client said i had to learn Haskell, i'd be happy to be paid to do so. My "payment" for knowing Esperanto is the community of (mostly) intelligent, (mostly) compassionate, and (mostly) generous people i've met using it.
YMMV
trio