In general I find that the speakers from Asia have to try harder to be understood because of the reduced shared vocabulary and different phonetics. It seems much easier for a speaker of Spanish or Italian.
But it is true that the current purpose of Esperanto is more ideal than practical. I study Esperanto because I really like its internal ideals. I study English because I want to eat.
Yeah, but neither does Esperanto; it's kind of unlikely that a language designed by a human without a strict, mechanical methodology to assure neutrality would, and even then it would need to be isolated from the normal forces that affect natural languages for it to retain that neutrality.
English is probably, in some senses, more neutral than Esperanto; for one thing, English probably has a far greater share of speakers (even first-language speakers) that aren't middle-class-and-above natives of developed countries in Europe or dominated by populations of European descent.
English is currently the international language, even at the esperanto congress. But it makes me appreciate having english as a native language, because I have to watch two non-native speakers struggle (like a polish guy ordering coffee from a korean barista).
Esperanto isn't "neutral". It's entirely a european language which copied tons from latin/german/russian.
The next question I suppose is: is esperanto culture worth being a part of?
It took me 3 months to learn esperanto (with duolingo), but there are a lot of benefits. Generally people are friendly and inviting, partly due to it's non-mainstream nature (consider behavior during the early days of the internet vs youtube comments now)
* It's a foreign language, and there are studies which link language acquisition with mental health (though I'm not sure how solid they are)
* It's an excuse to travel to cities worldwide where you might not go by yourself otherwise. I've found that solo travel at esperanto conferences is great.
I haven't met many esperantists who don't speak English at all or even at a pretty decent level.
It seems for most the new goal is to participate in esperanto culture, which is definitely its own thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumism
1. S. Korea - 242
2. Japan - 186
3. China - 114
4. France - 85
5. Germany - 36
There's a pretty long tail of 61 countries this year. (they published stats in the kongresa libro - congress book)
I find that most esperantists are europeans. The euorpean congresses tend to also be the biggest.
Culturally, there seems to be an age gap. The older generation (of which there are a lot of, I'd say the majority for sure are over 50) tends to be more into people who buy into the vision of world peace and inter-cultural communication. The younger crowd tends to be a mixture of world-travelers, language nerds, programmers, kids of esperantists, and people looking for a subculture to latch on to.
Not sure if it's growing, attendance seems to vary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Esperanto_Congress#/medi...
That's because esperanto is pretty much latin + german + russian. That's the roots of the esperanto.
Esperanto was a silly attempt to "unify" europe via a single language.
The article was rather silly. But I guess it was written by esperanto fanatic who wants to spread esperanto. It'll never happen - lest of all in asia, but the best of luck to him.