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[FearfulJesuit]

Oh, are you on the ZBB?

[RedKing]

Nah. I'm familiar with it, but never been involved. I was on some conlang groups on LiveJournal several years back, and I think there might be some chunks of Babel text floating around out there somewhere, but I've never published most of it because I feel like it's still a rough draft, even after 15 years of inconsistent development.

[Enrique]

dhokarena56 asked

>Kiu alia parolas Esperanton, aŭ lernas ĝin?

Mi parolas Esperanton.

Yes, I do speak Esperanto. And I have spoken Esperanto in Japan, Korea, China, Austria, Denmark, USA, Canada, Mexico, and some other countries.

I have also spoken Esperanto with people from many countries, that were visiting the place where I was living at the time. The last ones, were a couple from Kazakhstan who were visiting San Francisco, California, USA.

Aqizzar said

>A professional linguist expresses my opinion of Esperanto. 
>I've only ever met Esperanto "speakers" online,
>suggesting to me that it's probably a lot easier to write
>than it is to actually say.

I have also met English "speakers" online ... suggesting nothing.

Most linguists have not done any research about Esperanto, even if thanks to Internet it is so easy to find thousands of pages in Esperanto, and thousands more about Esperanto, in more than 60 languages.

Esperanto written and spoken is the same language, because each letter has only one sound, and each sound is represented by only one letter. Once that you have learned written Esperanto, it is very easy to start speaking ... or the other way around.

Maybe if you try Skype you will have a better chance to find Esperanto speakers ... but the only way for you to know, will be to learn Esperanto first ... what is not that hard. If you try, you may start to speak Esperanto (with mistakes) after 10 or 15 hours study time. But even with mistakes, I will understand what you want say.

You can also visit a convention ... what would be ...
... easy, because there are hundreds of them every year.
... difficult, because they happen in almost every
   country, and not always near you.

I have been in a 8-day convention in Beijing with 2051 participants from 52 countries, where everybody spoke in Esperanto.

There are lots of resources to learn Esperanto on the web, for free. There are also lots of books written in Esperanto, videos, pod casts, music. It is easy to listen Esperanto in the web. You may start at this page:

http://esperantofre.com/edu/kino01a.htm

[Jackrabbit]

Still doesn't sound worth it for a language spoken by a smattering of people spread out around the world.

[Enrique]

All depends how do you count.
I could travel to Australia, and find several million English speakers who have no interest in speaking with me, and a couple of hundreds Esperanto speakers that want to speak with me, and would even offer their houses for me to stay a few days.

I prefer the Esperanto speakers. I have stayed in houses of Esperanto speakers in Korea and China and other countries. I have been invited to lunch or dinner by Esperanto speakers in many countries. I have invited Esperanto speakers from many countries around the world.

Esperanto speakers have time for me. Most other people don't. You don't have to learn Esperanto. But if you do, 20 or 30 hours study time can change your relation with people from other countries.

[Jackrabbit]

You're not going to travel to Australia and find that nobody wants to speak to you. People aren't that dickish. Then there's the problem of actually finding those couple hundered Esperanto people in a country of 20 million plus people. And don't tell me you could organize it before you arrive in the country because if you can do that, and I know you can, you can find someone who speaks English as well.

Esperanto sounds a lot like a party trick to me. A cool skill you have that few other people do, that's pretty useless outside of rather specific situations. Esperanto sounds cool! I might learn it one day. But I'd not place it as a higher priority than learning, say, Mandarin or Spanish, because it's definitely not a particularly useful skill to have in comparison.