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Why do you say that? Esperanto has actually been relatively successful in Asia (as the article details). Yes, its grammar and lexicon are unrelated to any east

Why do you say that? Esperanto has actually been relatively successful in Asia (as the article details). Yes, its grammar and lexicon are unrelated to any east Asian languages, but it is nonetheless easy to learn, to the point that it is sometimes used pedagogically as a "first European language" in Chinese universities.

emodendroket 9y ago
In the sense that it is way easier for native speakers of Europeans to learn than for native speakers of languages such as Asian languages I don't think it actually succeeds in the goal of decolonizing, if you will, the lingua franca.
- SerLava 9y ago
  Well, Chinese is a very cool language but it's awful for keyboard input and the like. Ideally we'd use a language with an alphabet that also isn't tonal.
  - FRex 9y ago
    What's wrong with Chinese input using a decent IME actually?
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      It's much slower than a skilled alphabetical typist can do. In Japanese, and I assume also in Chinese, there is a faster system used by people who do jobs that require fast typing, but it's very complicated and most people do not learn it.
      - FRex 9y ago
        What is that Japanese system?
        emodendroket 9y ago
        Sorry, it's been a while since I read about it and I'm having trouble finding the info again. I imagine it's similar to the stroke-based Chinese entry systems because each character would then have an unambiguous key sequence, obviating the need to keep checking the screen and selecting words from the menu. e: Actually I found some info here: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E7%9B%B4%E6%8E%A5%E5%85%A5%E5%8A%9B https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E7%9B%B4%E6... It looks like some systems are T-Code, TUT-code, etc.
        yorwba 9y ago
        For Chinese there's the Wubi method [1], which assigns each radical component of a character to a key, by typing the right combination of keys for some of the components, individual strokes and disambiguation keys, any Chinese character can be almost uniquely identified (some typographic variants have identical representations). I'm currently trying to learn it, because I hate scrolling through long lists of homophones to find some rarer character; but I have not yet achieved the level where I can just freely type out anything without looking up its key sequence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method
    - restalis 9y ago
      I wish I could say that people are lazy and Chinese is fine if only one can employ the right tools for it, but the thing is, the Chinese writing, through its inherent nature, imposes a heavy cognitive load on its users. In this regard it is comparable to English, which does the same thing through its vocabulary. Many are criticizing the inflections in a given inflected language but that is actually a trick to lessen/optimize the language's vocabulary. The language and writing are communication infrastructure. The less we're paying for using those and the less they are getting in your way - the better.
  - colanderman 9y ago
    Surely an explicitly tonal alphabet is preferable to a language with implicit tone (e.g. English). I can only imagine that learning English's implicit tone curves pose a challenge to speakers of Asian languages. (Esperanto is intended to be perfectly understandable without tonal inflection, through the use of particles such as "ĉu" and "ja", though in practice Westerners universally tonally inflect their speech because they don't know otherwise.)
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      What? Who has a tonal alphabet? Why would annotating tone in a non tonal language be helpful?
- neltnerb 9y ago
  To be fair, a huge fraction already learn solid basic English as the local lingua franca due to differing dialects or international trade. I don't know though, what features from Asian languages do you think are objectively simpler to learn than those in Esperanto? I don't know Esperanto, but I am pretty sure that not all Asian languages are particularly tonal. So I doubt that would come naturally to them either. Particles? Those are pretty fantastic, but does Esperanto already have them? Maybe a lack of gendered conjugations? Or just no conjugations at all and instead a separate word modifier or particle for different contexts? Certainly the syllabary of Japanese is wonderful, I think it's better than English. Every consonant except 'n' has a vowel after, every vowel sounds the same regardless of context. Removing the distinction between 'r' and 'l' or 'm' and 'n' seems wise though. But maybe they already did that too?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    There is no such thing as "objectively easy." Languages are easy or difficult in the degree to which they share common features and vocabulary with a language you already know. If you speak Spanish as a native language then English is much easier to learn than Japanese, but if you speak Korean as a native language the opposite is true. You might well answer that, in that case, being truly neutral seems more or less impossible. Maybe so, and maybe you do need to just pick something. But then we get away from the idea of removing political dominance from the equation.
    - Chris_Jay 9y ago
      I disagree with your opening argument. Python is objectively easier to learn than c, no matter which one has learned first. In my own experience, I learned Esperanto at about 10X the rate at which I learned French (though this was also due to teacher quality). Esperanto has no irregular verbs, unambiguous pronunciations, and only a quarter of the usual vocabulary to learn because nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs all share identical roots. Being a native English speaker I did know similar roots more often, but no more so than I did for French. The only place where I would agree Europeans have a significant advantage is that Esperanto has a European style letter script rather than an Asian character-based one. A fair point, and unfortunately no one has come up with something halfway between a letter and a character script. The best apolitical solution to that may be to make two alphabets for the next iteration of Esperanto.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  This is wrong, but it certainly gets repeated a lot; Esperanto is still the easiest secondary language for Asian speakers to learn.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Easier than neighboring languages sharing thousands of words with common roots? I think I would need to see some sort of evidence to accept this claim.

emodendroket 9y ago

In the sense that it is way easier for native speakers of Europeans to learn than for native speakers of languages such as Asian languages I don't think it actually succeeds in the goal of decolonizing, if you will, the lingua franca.

SerLava 9y ago
Well, Chinese is a very cool language but it's awful for keyboard input and the like. Ideally we'd use a language with an alphabet that also isn't tonal.
- FRex 9y ago
  What's wrong with Chinese input using a decent IME actually?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    It's much slower than a skilled alphabetical typist can do. In Japanese, and I assume also in Chinese, there is a faster system used by people who do jobs that require fast typing, but it's very complicated and most people do not learn it.
    - FRex 9y ago
      What is that Japanese system?
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        Sorry, it's been a while since I read about it and I'm having trouble finding the info again. I imagine it's similar to the stroke-based Chinese entry systems because each character would then have an unambiguous key sequence, obviating the need to keep checking the screen and selecting words from the menu. e: Actually I found some info here: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E7%9B%B4%E6%8E%A5%E5%85%A5%E5%8A%9B https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E7%9B%B4%E6... It looks like some systems are T-Code, TUT-code, etc.
      - yorwba 9y ago
        For Chinese there's the Wubi method [1], which assigns each radical component of a character to a key, by typing the right combination of keys for some of the components, individual strokes and disambiguation keys, any Chinese character can be almost uniquely identified (some typographic variants have identical representations). I'm currently trying to learn it, because I hate scrolling through long lists of homophones to find some rarer character; but I have not yet achieved the level where I can just freely type out anything without looking up its key sequence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_method
  - restalis 9y ago
    I wish I could say that people are lazy and Chinese is fine if only one can employ the right tools for it, but the thing is, the Chinese writing, through its inherent nature, imposes a heavy cognitive load on its users. In this regard it is comparable to English, which does the same thing through its vocabulary. Many are criticizing the inflections in a given inflected language but that is actually a trick to lessen/optimize the language's vocabulary. The language and writing are communication infrastructure. The less we're paying for using those and the less they are getting in your way - the better.
- colanderman 9y ago
  Surely an explicitly tonal alphabet is preferable to a language with implicit tone (e.g. English). I can only imagine that learning English's implicit tone curves pose a challenge to speakers of Asian languages. (Esperanto is intended to be perfectly understandable without tonal inflection, through the use of particles such as "ĉu" and "ja", though in practice Westerners universally tonally inflect their speech because they don't know otherwise.)
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    What? Who has a tonal alphabet? Why would annotating tone in a non tonal language be helpful?
neltnerb 9y ago
To be fair, a huge fraction already learn solid basic English as the local lingua franca due to differing dialects or international trade. I don't know though, what features from Asian languages do you think are objectively simpler to learn than those in Esperanto? I don't know Esperanto, but I am pretty sure that not all Asian languages are particularly tonal. So I doubt that would come naturally to them either. Particles? Those are pretty fantastic, but does Esperanto already have them? Maybe a lack of gendered conjugations? Or just no conjugations at all and instead a separate word modifier or particle for different contexts? Certainly the syllabary of Japanese is wonderful, I think it's better than English. Every consonant except 'n' has a vowel after, every vowel sounds the same regardless of context. Removing the distinction between 'r' and 'l' or 'm' and 'n' seems wise though. But maybe they already did that too?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  There is no such thing as "objectively easy." Languages are easy or difficult in the degree to which they share common features and vocabulary with a language you already know. If you speak Spanish as a native language then English is much easier to learn than Japanese, but if you speak Korean as a native language the opposite is true. You might well answer that, in that case, being truly neutral seems more or less impossible. Maybe so, and maybe you do need to just pick something. But then we get away from the idea of removing political dominance from the equation.
  - Chris_Jay 9y ago
    I disagree with your opening argument. Python is objectively easier to learn than c, no matter which one has learned first. In my own experience, I learned Esperanto at about 10X the rate at which I learned French (though this was also due to teacher quality). Esperanto has no irregular verbs, unambiguous pronunciations, and only a quarter of the usual vocabulary to learn because nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs all share identical roots. Being a native English speaker I did know similar roots more often, but no more so than I did for French. The only place where I would agree Europeans have a significant advantage is that Esperanto has a European style letter script rather than an Asian character-based one. A fair point, and unfortunately no one has come up with something halfway between a letter and a character script. The best apolitical solution to that may be to make two alphabets for the next iteration of Esperanto.
akvadrako 9y ago
This is wrong, but it certainly gets repeated a lot; Esperanto is still the easiest secondary language for Asian speakers to learn.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Easier than neighboring languages sharing thousands of words with common roots? I think I would need to see some sort of evidence to accept this claim.