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Yeah, I've always wanted to learn a language, but was frustrated by all the grammar irregularities and other barriers to entry. English has that in spades, but

Yeah, I've always wanted to learn a language, but was frustrated by all the grammar irregularities and other barriers to entry. English has that in spades, but it wasn't a problem as you don't have to worry about that with your first language. Esperanto was the first language I've made any real progress with. Spanish is considered a fairly easy language for English speakers to learn, but I knew fairly little after 3 years of study in school. I've put in substantially less Esperanto effort, but am far more confident. I actually believe I could become fluent if I continued to focus on it. When someone (even with an accent) speaks, I can understand the sounds and spell the words no problem. It isn't perfect, but I find learning it fun and not frustrating. The community is also vibrant.

garmaine 6y ago
Pretty much every other language has regular spelling, and many have very regular grammar. English is the exception, being a Frankenstein assemblage of languages.
- musicale 6y ago
  > Pretty much every other language has regular spelling That may be true for Chinese or Japanese phonetic alphabets (e.g. pinyin, bopomofo, hiragana, katakana, etc.) but literacy demands mastery of characters as well. Although many characters have phonetic elements, it is essentially impossible to know how to write a word correctly in hanzi/kanji without knowing the component characters. Among European languages, French seems to have challenging spelling, and there appear to be spelling bees for foreign learners at least. Dutch also seems to have had a spelling/dictation contest until recently.
learnstats2 6y ago
It's probable that Esperanto speakers speak more clearly because: a) that's the purpose of speaking the language, and, b) there are few conversations between two fully fluent speakers; even if you are fluent, you can't expect your conversation partner to be. Spanish does have phonetic spelling, but is also likely to have more elision in every-day speech. Native speakers know and use what is understood without needing to be said, from non-verbal cues.
- 7thaccount 6y ago
  I can understand some Esperanto videos where the speaker is extremely fluent and talking very fast. If I could slow down the videos, I could transcribe almost the full thing even if I don't know all the vocabulary. That is impressive to me. There are a lot of languages that just sound like gibberish to me to the point that I can't even make out the sounds that well.

garmaine 6y ago

Pretty much every other language has regular spelling, and many have very regular grammar. English is the exception, being a Frankenstein assemblage of languages.

musicale 6y ago
> Pretty much every other language has regular spelling That may be true for Chinese or Japanese phonetic alphabets (e.g. pinyin, bopomofo, hiragana, katakana, etc.) but literacy demands mastery of characters as well. Although many characters have phonetic elements, it is essentially impossible to know how to write a word correctly in hanzi/kanji without knowing the component characters. Among European languages, French seems to have challenging spelling, and there appear to be spelling bees for foreign learners at least. Dutch also seems to have had a spelling/dictation contest until recently.

learnstats2 6y ago

It's probable that Esperanto speakers speak more clearly because: a) that's the purpose of speaking the language, and, b) there are few conversations between two fully fluent speakers; even if you are fluent, you can't expect your conversation partner to be. Spanish does have phonetic spelling, but is also likely to have more elision in every-day speech. Native speakers know and use what is understood without needing to be said, from non-verbal cues.

7thaccount 6y ago
I can understand some Esperanto videos where the speaker is extremely fluent and talking very fast. If I could slow down the videos, I could transcribe almost the full thing even if I don't know all the vocabulary. That is impressive to me. There are a lot of languages that just sound like gibberish to me to the point that I can't even make out the sounds that well.