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Is Esperanto really easier to learn than English? I'm basing on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Grammar
by nayuki 9y ago
Is Esperanto really easier to learn than English? I'm basing on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Grammar
English uses 26 un-accented letters, which is easily the lowest common denominator for typewriters and computer text systems. Esperanto has 28 letters with one type of diacritic.
Esperanto has word inflections for case (e.g. subject vs. object) and more verb tenses than English. Are inflections really easier to use than having auxiliary words or relying on word order?
I think English became a lingua franca for a reason, because it has far fewer grammatical and orthographic features than other European languages like French, German, etc. I think Esperanto has more complex features of European languages than English.
- btilly 9y agoFor years the lingua franca was French. (In fact lingua franca is an Italian phrase meaning "French language".) And based on experience, I believe that French is easier to learn. The transition to English only happened after the British Empire became economically and politically dominant. It retained its importance because as England declined, the USA became one of the two world superpowers. The big win of English is not that it is easy to learn. We often have parallel words for the same thing (eg earth vs dirt). Words that would be related in any other language aren't (eg cow vs beef). Attempt to read http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html aloud if you need further convincing. The big win is that the people you most want to talk to already speak it.