erinja:
You seem to be making a false equivalence between languages, as if all languages are equally as easy to learn because all you have to do is learn the codes and the meanings.

I'm making no equivocations predicated on ease of learning. There are clearly problems of idiomatic expression in national languages, but once you know them, you do know them.
A practised Esperantist may forget that learning the building of words is like learning any skill; it's an art! And it is also counter intuitive to people which is probably why natural languages are not logical in the first place. And contrary to what people think neither is much of ordinary human behaviour. Creatures of habit find most learning painful, and only people who find they have the aptitude for something (maybe in particular) fare better.

Who can deny that Esperanto is more logical and ordered? Not me. But I don't believe that it has been so structured as to absolutely overthrow the universal problem of learning. It has only eased it.

I'm not trying to be difficult, learning Esperanto is easier than learning any existing romance language. What "easier" means here is another question.

Vestitor:A practised Esperantist may forget that learning the building of words is like learning any skill; it's an art! And it is also counter intuitive to people which is probably why natural languages are not logical in the first place.

Practised Esperantists also remember, most of them, what it was to learn. They remember encountering a word and being unsure of how to parse it in order to look it up in a dictionary, etc. They can compare their experiences with learning Esperanto, to their experiences learning other languages. Esperanto grammar requires study and practice, it doesn't come overnight. But it's easier to learn the system than to memorize, separately, thousands of words that would be easily formed using Esperanto's system of affixes.

But imagine that one language has a logical way of counting from one to a hundred, and another language has a separate word for each word between one and a hundred, that follows no logical system.

You could say "Language one is not significantly easier than language two; sure, language two requires memorising a hundred words, but language one also requires you to learn their system, which doesn't come naturally to everyone!"

Sure. You have to learn the system. But it's faster (by a lot) to learn the system than it is to memorise 100 totally unrelated words, just to count to 100.

I believe someone did a study in this regard. It related to Esperanto's system of correlatives, which are formed through a table, which is foreign to pretty much everyone (though as it turns out, our own correlatives bear more similarity to Esperanto's system of construction than you might think). Ido forms its correlatives through individual words, like 'natural' languages. This study compared students' abilities to memorise Ido's correlatives, which are similar in form to those of Romance languages, to their ability to memorise Esperanto's correlatives, which are totally unlike Romance correlatives in form, but are formed using a logical system.

To the surprise of the researchers, the students were able to learn Esperanto's correlatives more quickly and accurately, though they were unfamiliar in form. It was the logical form of construction that did it.

I can't find an online reference for the study, so I don't remember the details with any precision. Possibly I read about it in a physical book.

There was a long list of such positive studies somewhere among this similar discussion about the merits of Esperanto (it's 44 pages long! I couldn't find the exact page). It might be the same as this from Wikipedia.

There was also another post that caught my eye about someone who teaches Czech according to the Michel Thomas method - to people who had studied quite a while (but were getting nowhere) - and getting results in weeks/months rather than years.

The systematisation of Esperanto very likely does speed things up. I concede this. There is a primary schools Esperanto programme in the UK overseen by the University of Manchester, researching the premise that it speeds up further foreign language acquisition. I'm from Manchester and a teacher in that study copied the idea and brought it to the school where my younger sister followed a similar, informal programme. I wish I'd considered it then because I'd be interested now in seeing what the teaching materials were.

In any case the study for the Manchester study concluded:

Denton Study:"A child can learn as much Esperanto in about 6 months as he would French in 3-4 years... if all children studied Esperanto during the first 6-12 months of a 4-5 year French course, they would gain much and lose nothing."

In the Wiki article all are generally equally as positive.

I think the writer may be right to some extent. At least it rings true to me. I have started learning Esperanto for slightly more than a year and while I have done it in the most casual and undisciplined way, nevertheless invested a considerable amount of time studying it in the course of the last year.

I think I know the basics and all, but I still lack proper cognition and proficiency. My English is also far from being perfect but is still overpowering my Esperanto by a large margin.

My first contact with Esperanto was a Persian blog post I randomly came across while surfing the net. The author had claimed that he had learned this fabulous language in less than 3 months and afterwards could speak it as fluently as his mother tongue.

It's strange how some advocates of EO try to whet interested people's appetite by misinformation, thinking that it is to the movement's benefit. In fact it works the other way round. Back then I debated some of these with Erinja when she happened to be my online tutor at the AP course and I think she is by and large aware of the pace at which I prospered from a total beginner.

Anyway, concerning linguistic competence, I think I am still progressing and enriching my general understanding of the language and I guess I will be doing so for at least a year or two to come before becoming fluent in the literal sense.

BTW, I have been very limitedly exposed to spoken Esperanto and that may be a reason why I have not progressed more rapidly.

Omid is being rather modest. He was a good student and has made rapid progress. He seems to write long messages to the Esperanto forums, with some regularity, which are almost entirely free of errors.

Sometimes others can see your progress more than you can see it yourself. You see only the parts difficulties in understanding, the things you were unsure of, the internal debate over the right form. Others see only correct use of the language coming from you.

It's not fluency but it's a greater level of proficiency than you think! The next step is to make the grammatical skills that you have already learnt come naturally in speech. When you get into an environment where Esperanto is spoken, this step comes faster than you think.

A practised Esperantist may forget that learning the building of words is like learning any skill; it's an art! And it is also counter intuitive

I may be wrong, but I would guess that all the languages of the planet indulge in some degree of wordbuilding that parallels what happens in Esperanto.

The difference (and it is a most significant one) is the lack of restriction in Esperanto. It is this lack of restriction that is unfamiliar.

And it applies right down to the level of parts of speech (root + finaĵo is also word building).

When you learn English you have to learn which parts of speech any particular word can be used as. In Esperanto any lexical root can be used in any part of speech provided it makes sense.

'Bicycle' can be both a noun and a verb. But can I say 'I trained here' meaning I came by train?

And to see the potency of this word-building feature of Esperanto have a go at translating into English 'dometo', 'dormeti', 'kolerega', 'piede', 'manĝilaro', 'peranto'.

sudanglo:It is this lack of restriction that is unfamiliar.

It's this blasted lack of restriction that's led to me making up words on the spot in spoken English as if it's Esperanto!

Damn this tongue! (or damn the attempts to standardise the English language, or both!)

ceigered:

sudanglo:It is this lack of restriction that is unfamiliar.

It's this blasted lack of restriction that's led to me making up words on the spot in spoken English as if it's Esperanto!

Don't be a tease. Do feel free to share some good examples. We could all try & use them & see if they catch on

sudanglo:
'Bicycle' can be both a noun and a verb. But can I say 'I trained here' meaning I came by train?

I got your point. But that also depends on your native language word building mentality and acceptance. I.e. in German normaly Klavier (piano) kann not be used like an Verb. I have to use "Klavier spielen" (to instrument piano). But of course, doing some German word building fun nobody restricts someone to say "Ich gehe jetzt mal ein biss'l 'rumklavieren" (By now I will go to do some piano fiddeling). It would trigger some being amuzed due to that non-familar verb usage of noun "Klavier". But its possible and full understandable. And non-familar usage doesn't mean valuelessly. Who really cares of Der Duden? Someones solely should do some language study of Swiss German, Austrian German and German- German. That languages definitivly have very extensive word building systems.

qwertz:
Someones solely should do some language study of Swiss German, Austrian German and German- German. That languages definitivly have very extensive word building systems.

Indeed. Germanic languages have very extensive word-building capacity by using compounds.The only problem though is that if someone uses the "wrong" compound, someone else makes a point of correcting it. This kills most of the creativity: fixed compounds.

That sort of "official rightness" in compounding words would destroy Esperanto.