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Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, if you're a native English speaker learning a second language, you'll probably get just as much out of learning Esperanto as you would German or French or Indonesian.

At the end of the day, it's a hobby.

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As someone who has studied both Esperanto and Indonesian, I'd say they are roughly comparable (although Esperanto is easier). But Indonesian is pretty easy as far as natural languages go. People wonder why anyone would bother as Indonesia isn't really a major country (and most of their population actually speaks things like Javanese rather than standard Indonesian) and would say learning Mandarin would be more useful. Which objectively it is, but I've also studied that, for a considerably more amount of time than I've studied Esperanto or Indonesian, and with less success.

Those languages have extensive literatures which you could read in the original. Esperanto doesn't.

It is unfair to say that Esperanto doesn’t have original literature. There is extensive poetry, music, fiction, and even movies which are written in Esperanto. For example, one of my favorite authors Þorbergur Þórðarson (a legend in Iceland) wrote some of his work in Esperanto (which I’ve actually never read).

I know it does, but is it comparable to what you get access to if you learn French or German or Indonesian?

Not at all. But there are culturally rich languages with even fewer speakers then Esperanto, and people still learn them. Consider for example people learning ancient Norse, so they can read the Icelandic sagas in the original, or Ancient Greek, or even Klingon or Tolkian elvish so they can understand a fictional Klingon opera or Elven poem.

When you learn Esperanto you get access to a specific literature not available in Indonesian or German. That might be worth it for some people.

I'm learning Spanish because I enjoy travelling to Spanish-speaking countries and do so often. Learning a language is such a massive, multi-year undertaking that I can't imagine doing it only as a hobby!

That's exactly the problem many people have with learning languages, they think it's a huge undertaking and cannot be taken lightly. So they don't even try. Imagine if sports - running, basketball, soccer etc - were thought to be the same, that one cannot do them for fun as a hobby. Absurd! We'd have lot less monolinguals when we'd stop taking language learning so seriously.

I speak 4 languages, have passive understanding of another 3-4 and rudimentary basics of 3-5 more. Never worked hard for any of them, it has always been for fun as hobby. My spouse says I'm gifted with languages but it's not true, I'm just playing around until something sticks. I just don't have that mental block.

The fact that its a constructed language is a big part of the appeal. It's fun to speak something that's logically structured and easy to learn. It doesn't have anywhere near the level of content of other languages, but it's still enjoyable.

Well to be fair Indonesian is a constructed language (dialect) as well. But I get you.

Post poterea a scriber e dicer in Interlingua, tanto io ama scriber sententias aleatorimente

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