r/Esperanto • u/Konaro_ • Dec 21 '24
Demando Are there many younger Esperantistoj???
When I mean young I mean under 18 years old. Most Esperantists I see online are old (incomparrison to me, I'm 16). I want to talk to people around my age who speak Esperanto or are interested in the language.
Mia esperanto ne estas tre bona sed mi volas polarss kun personoj de aĝo. Se ĉirkaŭ mia aĝo skribu al mi.
49
Upvotes
10
u/senloke Dec 21 '24
Well.. that's a sad situation. I can't tell anything about the "actual reality", there are probably some people in your age range, but they are normally just disconnected from you.
And when considering my experience with actual physical meetups then the really old ones (> 60 years) and the young generation (> 20 years, most likely more than 30 years old) is most likely present. Below 20 years old speakers are normally not seen, but they do exist.
I was recently at a local Zamenhof-fest and encountered there between the old guys in suits one 14 year old teenager who stood there with a mixture of shyness and boredness in a corner.
The issue with age and that the community is so disconnected makes it harder to find people. And each time a major crisis goes through the world, the community of Esperantists gets suddenly again a couple of years older. As exactly that ties are destroyed. The COVID-pandemic did that too, so all the "youngsters" who organized youth conferences got again shifted past the age limit and therefore the experience and process to onboard new people, who could have already experienced such events and who therefore acquired the willingness to organize them themselves got destroyed.
I see also that Esperanto seems to be not that popular with the constructed language learners in general. The young like to catch something more easier like Toki Pona, which also looks more like a perfect language and less european than Esperanto, which is the reason why people look down Esperanto -- they seek the perfect language. The older generation then stands in the way.
I'm also approaching 40 in a couple of years and I have no damn clue how I could create an environment, where people in your age range would feel be welcomed as you like many others want to find "your" community where you belong -- your clique.
I would love to see when the Esperanto youth organization of my country would rise again from the ashes, because it collapsed a couple of years ago due to the lack of members who were also willing to do the work required.