Miland:I would want to know which language you were proposing as an alternative, and why you felt that it were better than Esperanto. For example, would it be easier for a larger number of people to learn than Esperanto? I'm not sure that such a language exists. Languages limited to one language group like Interlingua, Folkspraak or Balaibalan are liable to favour one section of humanity at the expense of another. But languages with an international vocabulary may be tougher than Esperanto in other ways. We have here a problem of utility: the greatest good for the greatest number, in this case the least effort of learning (to attain a given level of proficiency) for the greatest number. That may be difficult to assess.

In my opinion there should be a kind of cut off. The "western" and "eastern" (respectively) are so different that there are very very few roots between them, and the ones that are there are probably universal (to humans in general).

I think they need to go with the most efficient way of conveying the most amount meaning with the least amount of effort possible. If that means getting rid of grammatical genders, grammatical articles, going against common word orders, so be it. And honestly, I don't think many languages such as Japanese or Chinese fit these discriptions. Both have (especially the later) complex and confusing writing systems.

I think that languages with a phonic based alphabet (English, russian, ect.) are more suited for a "wordlang", they also have more logical ways of determining word meanings, roots, ect. I have nothing against the languages or it's peoples, but they're needlessly complex. Someone has to draw the line somewhere, and say "Sorry you got the short end of the stick, but it's for the best."

I agree with Abii, someone's gonna miss out, but it would be for the better.

And plus, when a world language is created, their culture and fragments of their own language will undoubtedly be drawn into that word language, just like what happened to Afrikaans which now resembles a Dutch-Native African creole than just 16th Century Dutch, and just like what happened to English when the Norman invasion happened (why we say 'language' rather than 'speak'), and just like the hypothesis that the Germanic languages were originally a creole between the indo-european languages and some other language - the point being, even if people 'miss out', they will still influence the language and make it rightly their own.

(But then we have the problem of the world language splitting up into different dialects and then different daughter-languages)

Abii:Someone has to draw the line somewhere, and say "Sorry you got the short end of the stick, but it's for the best."

Even with Esperanto, speakers of languages that are neither Romance nor Germanic are indeed at a disadvantage compared to those who are, for probably every word is brand new. But there are two obvious reasons why the language was born in such a state:

1. L. Zamenhof, for the most part, was proficient only in European languages. Studying other major, non-European languages in order to incorporate features/words of as many as possible would have taken too much time and effort.

2. A mint-condition, factory-fresh language with zero speakers other than the creator himself needs to acquire a decent number of speakers as quickly as possible, if it actually intends to pique sustainable interest. Making a language with an egalitarian distribution as far as properties and vocabulary are concerned could have reduced the inclination of those, who ended up becoming its first speech-community.

Abii:I think they need to go with the most efficient way of conveying the most amount meaning with the least amount of effort possible. If that means getting rid of grammatical genders, grammatical articles, going against common word orders, so be it.

The terms "efficient" and "effort" are very subjective.

Grammatical gender can be troublesome even for native speakers. And it's unnecessary, as English and Esperanto demonstrate.

Abii:I think that languages with a phonic based alphabet (English, russian, ect.) are more suited for a "wordlang"

English doesn't have a phonetic alphabet. Orthography is one of the biggest obstacles that a learner of English faces. The orthographies of languages like German and French are far more regular, according to me.

The Arabic script, including the vowel marks, is effectively phonetic. The Devanagari script, used to write Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, and many other Indian languages, is also phonetic.

Abii: they also have more logical ways of determining word meanings, roots, ect.

"More logical"? Than what?

I think roots are just as transparent, if not more, in Arabic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triliteral_root

The Indo-Aryan languages are the daughter languages of Sanskrit, just as the Romance languages are those of Latin. In many cases, words in Romance languages are self-explanatory because of the Latinate affixes they have. The same is true for the Indo-Aryan languages.

Here's a comparison for example:

English: 'tri-gono-metry' (from Greek, literally something like 'three-angle-measurement')

Sanskrit: 'tri-kona-miti' (the same word is also used in the Indo-Aryan languages)

In fact, in this case, I think an English-speaker needs to know more etymology than a Hindi speaker, since 'gono' or something similar is not the English word for 'angle' (obviously because neither English nor Norman descended from Greek), while 'kona' is indeed the word for 'angle' in Hindi, Marathi, etc.

Suppose you take a Latin-based word like 'constellation'. A person knowing both English and Esperanto (or a Romance language) could equate it mentally to 'stelkunaĵo' the very first time he encounters this word. But what about a person who speaks only English? The prefix 'con-' might not make much sense to him. And the '-stell-' part might become clear only after mulling over it a while and maybe stumbling upon 'stellar'. That's not very transparent to a layman, is it?

...but they're needlessly complex.

So's English, in many ways. At least most other European languages have some degree of regularity as far as orthography is concerned. Even my linguistics study-material, often written by native English-speakers, keeps pointing out the funnier aspects of the orthography, grammar, and what-not of English. Unfortunately, it's no laughing matter for English-learners.

Rohan: The orthographies of languages like German and French are far more regular, according to me.

No no! no logic in french orthography! And german is just a bit better. For germanic language, Dutch is more simple.

I have recently read about Hangul (corean alphabet). really interesting and close to perfect phonetics:

Dutch, in terms of phonetic alphabets, has just about one letter combination for every sound in there alphabet and as result, despite being long and complicated, is very regular in pronunciation. Similarly, Danish (spare the Stød) is *fairly* regular but also very complicated

English, on the other hand, is not 'phonetic' because of a few reasons: Current English spelling varies from location to location (e.g. Colour, color), Middle English had many different writing systems, and English has had so many loanwords and influences from other countries which has also brought their spelling systems. These many different influences merged together form our current English spelling system. Many things are regular in our spelling system, it's just the reliance on loanwords that English has and the many different incomplete spelling reforms which stuff everything up.

If you compare middle English spelling (e.g. catte = cat /kæt/) with say modern Danish, you'd see how regular it *used* to be before the merger of the different spelling systems. Also, if you trace back the English and Germanic sound shifts (e.g. long /i:/ goes to /aj/ or /Ej/, or English /ki/ or /kI/ --> /ch/) you'd find that English was originally based off of a regular system. What's wrong is our 'pronunciation' .

If we were to base our spelling system more on something like Danish, Dutch or other Germanic systems (spare German, the sounds are slightly differing) we would have a more reliable system, however it would not work for all dialects - Australian English's 'U' for example is much more forward than the US version, and not all English dialects are Rhotic (e.g. R pronounced in all positions). I see the same problem arising with any other widespread language, as the same thing happened to Latin and the Proto-Germanic language. So, if a word language was created, it too would inevitably 'split up' after time passed.

I don't think that there is any more neutral & easier language than Esperanto, now.
If I imagined that the votes would be between: English, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua. I would choose Esperanto, however, I voted for
(Only if it's a neutral planned language), if I hypothesized that there were an easier language more supported than Esperanto, because I think that Esperanto isn't a perfect language. However, it's the easiest & most neutral of any other natural or constructed language available. We have to keep in our minds that Esperanto is the most supported constructed language, which gives it a preference over any other language, especially Interlingua.
Interlingua is very strange to me! It is as irregular as any natural language & not easy. I come from Egypt & I find that Esperanto is the easiest constructed language that could be practical.

The Arabic script, including the vowel marks, is effectively phonetic.

No! I tell you why:
كتب could be (he wrote "katab كَتَب") or (books "kotob كُتُب"). Do you see the difference? there are tiny vowel marks that are added to the word. It's really hard to view it on small screens. The same problem faces other abjad orthography-based langauges. We mostly rely on the context. Arabic letters don't natively have the /e, o/ vowels, however, in countries, such as Egypt, we pronounce them instead of short /i, u/ most of the time.
In my opinion, what makes an alphabet-system easier, is that all sounds are written in the order they are supposed to be pronounced.
Example: "katab", the sounds are written in order. We don't have to read modifications above the letter or under it. All the sounds are written on the line. (كَتَب , reads from right-to-left then
up (or down), then right-to-left, then
down-to-up (or up-to-down; depending on the vowel /a, u/ are up; /i/ is down). This example, applies on Korean, for example or other complicated scripts.
There are other languages that use Arabic script more phonetically; such as Kurdish, if it were written in Arabic script, because it can be written in a modified Latin version, similar to modern Turkish alphabet[/color], using ۆ for /o/ & ێ for /e/ (both are not in the native Arabic alphabet & is hard to distinguish on small fonts.
Arabic script has another problem, that letters differ in shape when are connected or isolated.

I'd support any IAL neutral and easy-to-learn. My interest on Esperanto is more philosophical than linguistic, indeed I think although it's a wonderful language it's got a lot of major flaws that may make it unsuitable as a global language, such as, e.g., it's complicated phonology:

It's got too many consonants and some of them are hard for speakers of many linguistic backgrounds, as the l/r for chinese and japanese. Also, some consonantal clusters, such as those in words like "sciencisto" and "ŝtrumpo" may be too difficult for speakers of languages with a CVCV syllable structure (as the matter of fact, even I have had a hard time learning to pronouce those words, and my first language is a Western language!) In my opinion, an IAL should have a simple-as-possible phonology, like tokipona and its mere 14 phonems (half as much as in Esperanto), permitting a lot of allophonic forms.

I bet if someday an international government was inclined to use an IAL, it would build a new one from scratch.

Totally agree with Vilinilo. I would add though that Esperanto as the advantage to prove that such IAL languages are possible and efficient. So don't put Esperanto in the bin too quickly. It's still a flag that indicate that there should be more investigation on that field.

To Dudi_okdek_sep, your post is interesting. I would like to know if the writing of arabic is constant over the different arabic speakings. As in the case of the chinese ideograms which can be read easily by different native speakers.

I have taken a look to a large number of IAL (maybe more than 30) but it seems to me that it's just the top of the Iceberg. You discover Esperanto and you learn about Volapuk, Ido and interlingua. Then you look more closely and you hear about Toki pona, Loglan/Lojban, Novial, LFN, Kotava, sona, Ro, Ygyde, etc etc... they are countless... and it's hard to say which one's the best...

jan aleksan:Totally agree with Vilinilo. I would add though that Esperanto as the advantage to prove that such IAL languages are possible and efficient. So don't put Esperanto in the bin too quickly. It's still a flag that indicate that there should be more investigation on that field.

Perfect. As I've said, Esperanto is a wonderful language. And as you pointed, it's also a living proof that a constructed language can work. It's a highly successful experiment, in my opinion, and it should be more widely promoted to show people that a solution for our linguistic problems is possible.

Vilinilo:

jan aleksan:Totally agree with Vilinilo. I would add though that Esperanto as the advantage to prove that such IAL languages are possible and efficient. So don't put Esperanto in the bin too quickly. It's still a flag that indicate that there should be more investigation on that field.

Perfect. As I've said, Esperanto is a wonderful language. And as you pointed, it's also a living proof that a constructed language can work. It's a highly successful experiment, in my opinion, and it should be more widely promoted to show people that a solution for our linguistic problems is possible.

I think Esperanto will always be to conlangs what latin is to western european languages - the one that really "hit it off"
And it wouldn't surprise me that any other successful IAL in the future will share inspiration from Esperanto, probably not vocab or spelling wise, but rather the logic behind the language (word building comes to mind).