Esperanto

From Wiki

Esperanto is the first (and so far only) language besides English in which I have become competent. It is much easier (or more accurately, less difficult) than national languages.

I have done various Esperanto translations.

1 Why Esperanto is nicer
2 Learning
3 Hostility toward Esperanto
4 Myths about Esperanto
5 Organizations

Why Esperanto is nicer

For me, the things that make it easier to learn and a pleasure to use include:

A simple consistent approach to building compound words out of roots, so that the core vocabulary you must memorize is smaller, and so that you can easily construct words for complex concepts on the fly.
A strong phonetic mapping between spelling and sound, unlike most languages (especially English). If you see a word written, you know how to say it.
Elegant simple grammar without lots of crazy rules and endings and exceptions.
No irregular nouns, verbs, etc to memorize. Even the verb "to be" is regular.
Relatively simple sounds (the 5 vowels found in many languages like Spanish; not a lot of subtle confusingly similar sounds like ś and sz in Polish), although there is a European bias so that, e.g., L vs R is a problem for some Asian speakers. Some English speakers have trouble saying the rolled R. Etc.
A mnemonic table of correlatives (those annoying words like "who, which, why", etc that are always a pain to memorize in most languages.

Learning

http://lernu.net is a great site to start learning Esperanto.
http://www.cursodeesperanto.com.br has a downloadable program for Windows and Linux
http://www.pacujo.net/esperanto/course/ is a course I've not explored but heard recommended

Hostility toward Esperanto

Since Esperanto has peacenik idealistic roots and is an "artificial" language, a lot of people have irrational hostility toward it. Claude Piron wrote some interesting essays exploring that:

Historically, Esperantists were persecuted under various dictators, e.g. Hitler and Stalin. It seems dictators don't like their citizens being able to communicate directly with people from other countries.

In 2009 there was a suggestion at change.org to introduce Esperanto as a language option in US schools.[1] This led to many comments on the Internet by extreme conservatives in the US very hostile to Esperanto, apparently based in some conspiracy delusion that Obama wants to force people to learn Esperanto (as if Obama actually feels some obligation to implement every proposal at change.org, sheesh). Many people were also fired up by a convincing but satirical blog post about it at thatsrightnate.com.[2] In reality, Obama has never said anything about Esperanto to my knowledge and probably cares about Esperanto about as much as most people, which is to say it's hardly even on his radar.

Anti-Esperanto comments by US conservatives also seem frequently tied in with conspiracy theories about conservative nemesis George Soros. (Soros and his father used Esperanto decades ago to emigrate to the west, but Soros has not been actively involved with Esperanto in any way for decades as far as I can tell.)

Anti-Esperanto comments by US conservatives also seem frequently tied in with the "English-only" sentiment prevalent among many US citizens and the utter misconception that Esperanto is intended to replace English and other national languages. It isn't. Esperanto speakers are often far more informed about language issues and interested in preserving national languages and respecting minority language rights than the average person, who would not mind if their language (English in this case) replaced all the other national languages of the world. Esperanto is simply an easier to learn auxiliary language which can be used by people who don't speak the same national language. (Or by people who simply enjoy Esperanto for whatever reason.)

Myths about Esperanto

There are many ignorant myths and annoying misconceptions about Esperanto. Here are some facts to debunk some myths.

Yes, it is a "real language" by any sane criteria, unless you intentionally define "real language" in some narrow way to exclude Esperanto. Esperanto has a culture and history, it has speakers (including from-birth speakers), it has literature, slang, you can talk about any subject, it grows and evolves, etc. It simply works like any other language.
Esperanto is not tied to some specific religion, political party, nationality, etc. Esperanto speakers have a wide variety of religious, political, etc beliefs and nationalities.
No one knows how many people speak Esperanto. I estimate a few hundred thousand.
There are roughly 1000 people who know it from birth (usually because their parents met via Esperanto and use it as a primary language at home).
The language was officially released in 1887 by a Jewish oculist (Dr. Ludovico Zamenhof, born in Białystok in what is now Poland) and is spoken by at least a few people in practically every country now.
There is a lot of literature (original and translated) in Esperanto.
There is music (recorded and live bands) in Esperanto.
A few films exist in Esperanto. Many more have Esperanto subtitles available.
The language grows and evolves and has its own culture and history.
There are "naughty words", "curse words", etc in Esperanto.
It is perfectly possible to talk about emotions, write poetry, etc.
People can and do fall in love and talk about deep emotional stuff in Esperanto.
It is perfectly possible to use it as an everyday home language.
Yes, the core vocabulary is rather Eurocentric, but it is still far easier for non-Europeans to learn than English or other national languages.
No, there are not more Klingon or Elvish speakers than Esperantists. Sheesh.