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> Have you ever met a single person in your life who was fluent or at least good conversational in Esperanto but could not speak English? Yes, definitely. When
by Mediterraneo10 7y ago
> Have you ever met a single person in your life who was fluent or at least good conversational in Esperanto but could not speak English?
Yes, definitely. When I was active in the Esperanto movement in the 1990s and early millennium, a huge amount of the Eastern Europeans who attended congresses or hosted foreigners through the movement's hospitality-exchange system had little or no English skills. They had learned Russian, German, or French in school, not English. This was also the case for some Esperantists from francophone nations of Africa; some of those countries were historically so fixated on French as the international language that English teaching in schools took off only recently.
Nowadays the younger generations of Esperantists are likely to speak English, but to judge from photos, the crowd attending the main annual Esperanto congress is generally pretty geriatric, so that older generation without English is still commonly met.
- patrec 7y agoHow about outside Esperanto events?
- gordonguthrie 7y agoEsperantujo is Esperanto events
- gordonguthrie 7y agoI should also point out that there are half a dozen different Esperanto speakers commenting in Espera to on this thread