[Esperanto] and other International Auxiliary Languages

Cojones

I've been learning Esperanto for around a month and thought I'd find out what D&D thought of everyone's favourite Constructed International Auxiliary Language.

Esperanto is a constructed(that is to say, it was invented rather than developing naturally) language that came about in 1887, when L.L. Zamenhof noted that various cultural groups(Yiddish, German, Polish and Belarusian) in Bialystok often came into conflict. Zamenhof attributed these conflicts to mutual misunderstanding due to an absence of any common language between the ethnic groups. He invented Esperanto(Literally: one who hopes) so that the various ethnic groups might be able to communicate meaningfully in a neutral language. He believed that if the world was to speak Esperanto, then everyone would get on more harmoniously.

Obviously, Esperanto has not been successful in its biggest goal(for it to be spoken globally as an auxiliary language), but is spoken by roughly two million people, and this number has grown considerably since the invention of the internet. Esperanto has the 26th most articles on Wikipedia(with roughly the same number of articles as Arabic(230 million speakers), and significantly more than languages such as Hindi(250 million speakers), Hebrew(around 9 million speakers) and Cantonese(over 20 million speakers) and plenty of software(especially open-source software) is available in Esperanto.

So why learn it?

Outside of the fact that you're contributing to what most would consider to be a good cause, I've found learning Esperanto to be a very enjoyable experience. Given that the language is extremely regular, I've found that I've not really stumbled at all yet. It all just makes sense, and I find myself picking stuff up far, far more quickly than I did when I was learning French at HS. The Esperanto community is exceptionally welcoming(to the point where they offer free accomodation for travelling Esperantists) and there's a ton of support available by volunteers at sites like www.lernu.net

But doesn't everyone speak English anyway?
Well, to some extent. English is an incredibly widely spoken language, with something like a billion(it's hard to say) global speakers, most of whom live in economically well-developed countries. The dominance of English over other languages need not be entirely positive, though, and it has been speculated that the globalisation of English might be causing the loss of other languages. Moreover, English as a natural language is rather messy, and can take more than ten times as long as Esperanto to learn(note: I can't read this article, but wiki cites it).

Opinions? Thoughts? Are there any Esperantists here?