Learn Esperanto
This section offers a few routes to adding Esperanto to the languages you speak. If English is your only language, then be warned! How you were taught it at school and whether you enjoyed it or not will be major factors affecting your approach to another one! A challenging thought, and a statement of the obvious. But ask yourself whether you are really aware of how these factors may effect your own case.
One further comment. Learning a language mostly consists of learning words, called vocabulary. It also consists of learning how the new language works, what patterns it uses, called grammar. ‘Grammar’ is often the part people fear most, but note that in many ways it is the less important part. There is a third important aspect to learning a language, practice. This is where most people stumble. Having a second person, whether at home or remotely, will greatly increase the chances of fun and success. You may have no-one to start with, but you can pick someone up later on. For now, setting regular times, regular patterns can be the key to getting fully launched. Plan in terms of weeks and months, not days.
If you met a second language at school, say French or Spanish, you may be trapped into thinking Esperanto is a similar type of language. Indeed it has been presented in just that way from its early days! Nowadays Esperanto users are more aware of the true nature of their language and so more ready to confront the fact that Esperanto is not another ‘European’ language. In its vocabulary it certainly is. This will help you learn it. But in its grammar it is not. It may be presented in that way, but in reality it has more in common with how non-European languages like Chinese work. Its creator may not have been fully aware of that. He just wanted to design a language that worked logically and systematically. Esperanto’s structures set out to engage your creativity, your need to explore and experiment in a way English, French, etc cannot.
Esperanto is often over-sold as ‘being easy to learn’. Just because it is systematic, regular etc, and your own language habits are probably not. But Esperanto’s systems have to be learnt and practised, just like what is required in learning to play a piano or guitar. So Esperanto cannot be acquired without time and effort. Then it will pay dividends.