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I speak Esperanto (at least used to, I grew up with it), but I have come to learn the practicality of a language is in it's usage, and so English wins out (I'm

I speak Esperanto (at least used to, I grew up with it), but I have come to learn the practicality of a language is in it's usage, and so English wins out (I'm from Germany, so English is not my first language either). English is also an interesting language, as it's a funny mix of other languages in it's history and shaped out fairly leanable (limited number of weird inflections, usage of an alphabet, etc.). Furthermore English stopped to be strongly correlated to a single country during the colonization era and England's diminishing influence thereafter. This makes it well suited to be an accepted international language. Anyway, what I wanted to say is that in most cases the objective of these artificial languages used to be to create an independent and easy to learn language for human communication, but in reality a language that fulfills this purpose grew out of an existing language and at the same time it uproots is origins and becomes this collectively shaped something. History is full of irony indeed. :)

throwaway7645 10y ago
I'm learning Esperanto and it is extremely easy to learn as everything is regular (that I've seen so far)and no trilling "r's"...etc. English has so many gotchas and exceptions. English has become a lingua franca only because of economics. French used to be for the same reason. Esperanto would be far more natural though and even ease communications at the UN. Everyone has just one language to translate to.
- skriticos2 10y ago
  I heard this opinion before.. but I also speak Hungarian from birth and a tiny bit Japanese (out of hobby). English is rather simple. Not as simple as Esperanto mind you, but simple enough (comparatively) that it beats most alternatives that don't try to bootstrap something new. Also, Hungarian has a lot of rolling "r's", so I wouldn't complain about English in this respect ever.. really. Esperanto has it's perks though, so I do encourage you to learn it. It makes learning other languages that much easier and the community is nice and global, though somewhat eccentric. ;)
- k__ 10y ago
  Esperanto is still a western centric language.
Fnoord 10y ago
English, like many other European languages such as German, has many loanwords from French, Latin, Greek, and probably even more. It makes sense Esperanto, an evolution on [in this case the commonly used world-languages English & Spanish] contains loanwords from those languages, perhaps even on top of French/Latin/Greek/...
- skriticos2 10y ago
  >> English, like many other European languages such as German, has many loanwords from French, Latin, Greek, and probably even more. That's what I hinted at with "it's a funny mix of other languages". >> It makes sense Esperanto, an evolution on [in this case the commonly used world-languages English & Spanish] contains loanwords from those languages, perhaps even on top of French/Latin/Greek/... Latin and Slavic with some Germanic in between. Zamenhof (Esperanto was his brainchild) came form Poland and spent his life on this idealistic project of his. Also Spanish, French, part of German and by analog of the previous combined English are to a great part derived from Latin, so kinda the same roots here.

throwaway7645 10y ago

I'm learning Esperanto and it is extremely easy to learn as everything is regular (that I've seen so far)and no trilling "r's"...etc. English has so many gotchas and exceptions. English has become a lingua franca only because of economics. French used to be for the same reason. Esperanto would be far more natural though and even ease communications at the UN. Everyone has just one language to translate to.

skriticos2 10y ago
I heard this opinion before.. but I also speak Hungarian from birth and a tiny bit Japanese (out of hobby). English is rather simple. Not as simple as Esperanto mind you, but simple enough (comparatively) that it beats most alternatives that don't try to bootstrap something new. Also, Hungarian has a lot of rolling "r's", so I wouldn't complain about English in this respect ever.. really. Esperanto has it's perks though, so I do encourage you to learn it. It makes learning other languages that much easier and the community is nice and global, though somewhat eccentric. ;)
k__ 10y ago
Esperanto is still a western centric language.

Fnoord 10y ago

English, like many other European languages such as German, has many loanwords from French, Latin, Greek, and probably even more. It makes sense Esperanto, an evolution on [in this case the commonly used world-languages English & Spanish] contains loanwords from those languages, perhaps even on top of French/Latin/Greek/...

skriticos2 10y ago
>> English, like many other European languages such as German, has many loanwords from French, Latin, Greek, and probably even more. That's what I hinted at with "it's a funny mix of other languages". >> It makes sense Esperanto, an evolution on [in this case the commonly used world-languages English & Spanish] contains loanwords from those languages, perhaps even on top of French/Latin/Greek/... Latin and Slavic with some Germanic in between. Zamenhof (Esperanto was his brainchild) came form Poland and spent his life on this idealistic project of his. Also Spanish, French, part of German and by analog of the previous combined English are to a great part derived from Latin, so kinda the same roots here.