I am a mature, university educated speaker of (General American) English who grew up in the central United States in the 1940s, 1950s, and (early) 1960s. In my environment, languages other than English simply did not exist. I vaguely recall my (US born) mother telling me that her (foreign born) father (who died long before I was born) may have once spoken something other than English, but if you didn't "talk like us" there was something wrong with you. You weren't "natural." (I seem to recall reading in the writings of the late Don Harlow that he once encountered someone in a rural area of China who was amazed that organisms who seemed to be human could make vocal noises that were meaningless to her. I had a similar experience with a niece the first time she heard Spanish.)

Yes, it may be that English has become the most successful international auxiliary language (just not a constructed one) in world history to date, but that does not mean that even we native English speakers consider it an optimal solution. I am not a fervent E-a finvenkisto, but I do support the ideal of a simplified conIAL, and E-o is "in the lead," whether it is my personal first choice or not.

So for those of you who do not speak American English as native speakers - and quick without looking them up, what is a free way? As opposed to a park way and a drive way? are free ways always free or could they also be turnpikes? what is a driving range? what does it mean: he died in a drive by? or a drive in? or a drive through? quick, quick.... hehehe

As a speaker of British English (the Queen's English), I am baffled by the expression freeway. Is it a toll-free motorway?

As far as I know all our motorways are toll-free here in the UK. So we don't seem to have much use for the idea of a freeway.

A parkway (again in the Queen's English) is an out of town railway station, eg Bristol Parkway (the station in the city is Bristol Temple Meads).

orthohawk:
A number of years ago I got a job at a private school teaching, among othrer things, Spanish. There was one student in particular who was a Junior (next to last year) when I first started who had never had any inkling to study a foreign language, just never had any interest. During that first year, he "got the bug" as we say, and now, 20 years later he's a professor in a major university teaching.....................you guessed it: Spanish. We never know what will happen as a result of a "forced" class of Esperanto. Most likely nothing, but maybe there's the next William Auld out there somewhere just waiting to be introduced to our language.

My thoughts exactly. How different would the world be if he, or perhaps Tolkien, had not heard of Esperanto (I believe it was much more popular in their time than ours).

spreecamper:

kaŝperanto:I also find vocabulary interesting, but not everyone does. Again, I am talking about the "normal/average" person who doesn't want to study language outside of her/his required classes.

Those you name 'normal/average' persons and who don't want to learn new root words should stop learning some foreign language because they are to lazy to improve their skills and prefer to keep their own at eternal beginner state.

It has nothing to do with lazyness if they do not have a desire to learn some foreign national language. I'm saying that these people would be better off to continue studying Esperanto than to switch to Spanish or French. These "lazy" people will certainly choose classes in Esperanto over another language, because it is several orders of magnitude easier to learn. I would say you are almost guaranteed an A in an Esperanto class if you are capable of even passing a foreign language class at all.

spreecamper:

kaŝperanto:I suppose I feel more strongly about these issues because in my country there are VERY few people who can speak a language other than English (if English was their native language), despite having almost a decade of foreign language study in school.

I don't agree that there are 'very few' people in Germany who are not capable to speak another language than English.

I'm talking about the United States, where few people not born into a bilingual family will learn a foreign language to any appreciable degree. We already speak the current IAL, so we don't have the economic interest to learn any other language but our own. I would certainly believe, as you say, that many Germans speak a language other than English (did you mean to say German?).

sudanglo:As far as I know all our motorways are toll-free here in the UK.

I see you haven't been to the M6 toll in the Midlands. And maybe you're better off avoiding it.

"Freeway" and motorway both seem to mean a controlled access road where the flow of traffic is supposed to be unhindered - though if you drove on the M6 sometimes you might not have thought so.