>>10
Disagree that Esperanto failed. Sure it's not the huge thing that Zamenhof dreamed of but there's a pretty large and great community out there, and I've had decent success in various European countries picking stuff up and pidgining about with my okayish Esperanto knowledge.

I've kind of forgotten a lot of it so I want to get back into writing songs or whatever in Esperanto. I discovered Toki Pona while looking up minimalist language ideas for my own implementation and fell in love so I've been doing a bit of that.

Some day I'd like to get back into German, and learn something like Finnish. For now, in a couple of weeks I'm starting Mandarin Chinese lessons.

I dislike constructed languages for two reasons.
1. They're spoken by weird nerds.
2. I know it's a meme but they are soulless. I don't like the homogenization of world culture through the internet and language should be natural. It bothers me in a weird way like simplified Chinese.

I studied Latin for quite a few months, but stopped due to other priorities. I want to get back to it soon.
Ancient Greek and Korean also picked my interest recently, but I'll take one step at a time.

>>24
This. It is such a waste of time, too. Instead of learning a language with which you can dive into a culture, read classics or even just communicate with its native speakers, people learn shitty, made-up languages.
The weird nerds are still the worst part, though.

>>25
I think Esperantists tend to be people who are interested in learning natural languages also. Speaking for myself as the first person who brought it up (>>8), I've also studied a few classical languages, and >>23-san seems to have broad interests.
It's true that there's to some extent an opportunity cost in spending time studying one language over another, or over doing some other sort of cultivating one's garden. But, from a practical standpoint, language studies compound on each other as your brain becomes more plastic, so it's not wasted time. From a more impassioned standpoint, I wonder if, as another person who studies dead languages, you might have gotten similar skepticism in the past about whether you're using your time wisely. What those languages mean to me is that the thoughts and feelings of people from across time and space, that Catullus' "od'et amo" or Sappho's "deduke men a selanna," reach me, in the form that they found to express them in those sleepless nights thousands of years ago, without intermediary. If someone thought the effort to obtain that wasn't something they were interested in or willing to commit to I would respect that, but if they thought it was worthless I would pity them.
To try to convey what I've seen in Esperanto so far, meeting someone who speaks Esperanto from another culture is very exciting, much more than someone from another culture who speaks English. Part of that is just being in the honeymoon phase of language learning, I'm sure. The more durable parts though are Esperantism, the idea that there's value in having this shared thing connecting that isn't either of our patrimonies, and, yes, that we're both weird nerds so we have that in common from the start.

>>26
I think people should learn whatever language they're interested in, be it Esperanto or Sanskrit. What baffles me is that, even though most constructed languages have their main point of interest being simply the fact that they're artificially constructed, Esperanto is still an attempt to create a lingua franca. That in itself sounds like an attempt to exchange culture for commercial facility (or "world peace").
I believe anyone who has seen Guarani being endangered by either Spanish or Portuguese, or Hawaii's struggles to preserve their own language, would feel slightly troubled over an artificial language. Preserving their language is a means to preserve their culture, and those artificial languages preserve no culture at all. Creating a language, in the eyes of the endangered one, is fabricating more threats.
And I don't mean that it is absolutely a waste of time, but that it is, in comparison to learning any other language, a waste of time akin to that of learning Klingon. But again, a man should do whatever he's interested in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Update from OP:
I've become a lot better at Spanish to the point where I could probably be dropped off in Mexico or Argentina and do just fine, albeit with some trouble.
I've also been working on learning Mandarin Chinese for months and can read a decent amount but can barely understand it when spoken. Still working on that. Got a Taiwanese penpal so he's helping me improve my grammar and writing.
Things are generally good.

>>28

I've also been working on learning Mandarin Chinese for months and can read a decent amount but can barely understand it when spoken.

That's probably not your fault, a whole lot of Chinese people speak a weird ass regional dialect, so your Mandarin is akin to speaking Queen's English while they answer like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsUvcjk8J5c

I don't find languages interesting enough by themselves to pick up something esoteric on my own. For universal reasons that apply to any language I'd say: learning anything, unlocking new cultures and their works (aesthetic qualities of a language are not translatable) is fun.

I'm currently learning German: for broadening my job market in future (though I'm not sure about importance of this vs specific industry skills. Does studying German for a year gives better return than studying specific eg. IT skill for the same amount of time? Just a thought); I find it easy to learn; I have friends natively speaking German so I have someone to speak to for practice, for feedback and to edit my writings.

Possible languages I might learn in future (in that order of interest) are:
- Latin - again, some friends are already learning it + I find it appealing and interesting, also its importance in Catholicism and European culture increases its appeal.
- Japanese - I occasionally stumble on something completely Japanese and need to rely on translators or I need to prepare search phrases for merchandise, art etc., also general exposure to Japanese media.
- Russian - I have some small exposure to it. I might just learn alphabet and very basics like 1000 common words to get general idea of it and be done. Another possible reason would be better navigation on some piracy related communities.

>>15
If this is still relevant (unlikely) I left some email address for contact. However, I'm sure you found some learning material already or found some help from other native speaker, there's definitely presence of them on the net in random places (or you dropped the idea).

>>18
I think that natural method is the most fun one. I haven't seen modern book for other languages like Lingua Latina per se Illustrata (https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia/dp/1585104205) that would teach you language without relying on translations. That is very likely because modern languages have are in print so you can just try to find material aimed at kids and go from there. As a side note, imo, if you can form thoughts in a given language then you should stick to that. Translating is a related skill that requires practice on its own and at some level of proficiency people drop translating almost completely.

>>21
About Anki. It's true, it's trash for learning and great for memorizing. I found some use in shared decks for German by disabling new cards and only enabling those that I encountered while learning or reading something else. Also, morphman seems interesting.

Kein Französisch?

>>29
Ahahaha well that's a possibility

>>31
salut !

yo aprendo español, quiero hablar este lengua.
porfavor señores, algunas tips?

>>34
¿"Aprendo español" debía ser "estoy aprendiendo español"? (even in English, "I study spanish" sounds a bit weirder than "I'm studying spanish").
Pero sólo aprendí un poco en la escuela secundaria...

>>29
Do you mean dialects in the sense of Mandarin dialects?

>>36
I think that's what he means

>>34
Why are you learning it, for school, or for something else? It's important to have a reason for learning something or you'll invariably forget to do it and stop progressing. If you don't have a reason, find one, the best in my opinion is for travel.
Estoy aprendiendo español porque quiero visitar a mis amigos de internet que viven en america del sur. Por supuesto, no puedo vivir o visitar paises que no hablan inglés si no hablo sus idiomas, lol. Algo como esto debía ser tu razón para aprender.
I think things like visiting people who live in countries that don't speak your language are the biggest reasons for learning another language and sticking with it.