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by akvadrako 2581 days ago
>> Esperanto is easy to learn because it's very regular, has a small vocabulary, phonetic spelling, etc...

> I had delved into Esperanto enough to see that this is not necessarily true.

Do you mean esperanto doesn't have those features (regular, small vocab, phonetic) or that those features don't make a language easier to learn?

Because either claim sounds farfetched.
1 comments
lifthrasiir 2581 days ago
Yes, both sound farfetched because "easier to learn" does not imply "easy to learn". Those characteristics do make the language easier to learn, but its Indo-European lineage (that I have detailed in the sibling comments) makes it much harder to learn for non-Indo-European speakers.
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akvadrako 2581 days ago
The point is it's easier than all other human languages, not that it's easy in some objective sense - I don't even know what that would be.
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lifthrasiir 2580 days ago
Your point is still not substantiated. There are many language pairs closer than Esperanto (I mean, there exists x and y such that `d(x,y) < max(d(x,eo), d(y,eo))`), even after the easiness due to the artificial origin is accounted for.
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akvadrako 2580 days ago
Of course there are languages that are so close together speakers can understand each other without even studying.

But I'm sure there is no language (with at least 1 million speakers) which is easier than Esperanto to learn for the average Asian. It isn't a European thing.

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