esperanto is ridiculously easy to learn, even from a global linguistic perspective. the grammar, in particular, is predictable and avoids irregularities. you’re probably referring more to familiarity than ease of learning. of course it is even easier to learn if you come from europe since it adopts many european words, but that doesn’t change it’s general simplicity.
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rockerface@lemmy.cafe 13 hours ago Let me guess: your native language is Germanic, Romance or Slavic.
Esperanto’s phonetics, phonotactics, vocabulary and grammar are all overly Eurocentric and twice as complicated as they should be for a language that is presented as a tool for global communication. And don’t even get me started on diacritics.
Anyone who grew up speaking a non-Indo-European language is going to have a hard time even getting the hang of the alphabet and all the sounds.
Boppel@feddit.org 12 hours ago
ayyy@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
I’m not convinced that the consistent grammar and spelling is actually a feature of Esperanto. I think it’s just a feature of being a language that nobody uses so it hasn’t had a chance to inevitably evolve like actual languages people use.
- rockerface@lemmy.cafe 12 hours ago
That still makes it a poor tool for global communication. Within EU, maybe. But not global. More than half of global population is going to have to learn a dozen of new sounds and distinctions in pronunciation to even start.
timestatic@feddit.org 4 hours ago
Not really possible to make a language everyone is familiar with as languages globally are so different.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz 8 hours ago
So the solution would be to have Esperanto but with the phonetics of, say, Hawaiian?
- rockerface@lemmy.cafe 4 hours ago
Toki pona is an interesting example, though it’s not an international auxiliary language. But it still relies on a simplistic phonetic inventory and limited core vocabulary to make communication as easy as possible.
Boppel@feddit.org 12 hours ago
one could of course try to make an easier or better suited language but calling it a poor tool is harsh critique considering that esperanto is the most sucessful attempt for an artificial global language today and already avoids many hard to learn features from other languages.
trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
Why even make a language, if there are plenty of existing languages to choose from?
Just pick the most widely understood one and you’re done.
- rockerface@lemmy.cafe 12 hours ago
What can I say, the bar isn’t high. It avoids some hard to learn features but introduces others, mostly in the phonetics and orthography.
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Even just within the EU, interligua would be a much better alternative. That one has specifically been designed for use in the EU though, and not for global communication.
_cnt0@sh.itjust.works
trxxruraxvr@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I agree with you there, but I think the problem is that they took the wrong base languages to build Esperanto from, not that they took the hardest parts of those languages.
That is also true.