Esperanto's underlying desire for language simplification is still worth keeping in mind. Perhaps a standardized, simplified, "minimum viable English" could be

Esperanto's underlying desire for language simplification is still worth keeping in mind. Perhaps a standardized, simplified, "minimum viable English" could be identified and declared to be socially acceptable "because we say so." Non-native speakers might find such an MVE to be easier to learn and more comfortable to use. The easy part would be to develop a set of tweaks to the more-arcane grammatical- and spelling rules of English, using crowd-sourced suggestions. For example --- and as a language purist it pains me deeply to say this: + Allow they and their (and even there) to be used as singular generic pronouns; so, for example, Any student can learn to speak English if they put there mind to it. + Allow there to be used as a possessive (vice their). + Allow consistent apostrophes for possessives; so, for example, The spread of English is hindered by some of it's fussy rules (which in currently-standard usage is incorrect). This might be a useful project for someone working in linguistics: Collect and organize real-world examples of how people actually use English in non-standard ways, then propose a subset of those examples as MVE. The hard part would be convincing the world that it's just as socially acceptable to speak and write MVE as it is to speak and write "standard" English.