Looks cool.
I might look into learning it this summer..

I heard Kiswahili is supposed to be very easy to learn, and that it is used as sort of an east African auxiliary language. And it seems everyone I've meet who speaks the language, learned it as a non-first language.

Senlando:I heard Kiswahili is supposed to be very easy to learn, and that it is used as sort of an east African auxiliary language. And it seems everyone I've meet who speaks the language, learned it as a non-first language.

Kiswahili is not at all like English. It is fairly regular but has a pile of noun gender/class thingies and other very un-English traits.

That part of the word is filled with many co-existing languages and dialects; many people speak a bunch of languages. I think they find Swahili easy because their brains are conditioned to learn languages. And of course they hear it in action.

It is as you say, much more common as a non-first language and allows people to communicate with other groups while retaining their mother tongues.

This site is worth a look: http://mwanasimba.online.fr/E_TABLE.htm

Thanks Vejktoro! That looks like a great website for learning Kiswahili. Perhaps if i have the time, I'll try to learn it. The vocabulary will be quite hard to learn for me, but I'm always looking for a challenge, and I already know a few people who speak it as a second (,third, forth,...) language (one of them happens to be a girl who grew up in Newfoundland, and who picked up the language after living in Kenya for 2 years). So if i ever needed to find people to practice with, it shouldn't be to hard. On the plus side, I've found 2 words that are the same as in Mandarin (and many other languages i'm sure), which are Baba for father and Mama for mother (although without the tones). I wonder how many languages in the world have those two words, they are a lot more international then Esperanto's Patro and Patrino and it seems most babies say it no mater what their native languages are.

Easiest to pronounce would probably be Japanese after a bit of practice But, since we're talking about languages as a whole, I'd have to say it comes down to the following:
1. Indonesian (For just about any speaker of any language, in particular one of its dialects is apparently the easiest of any language to learn - in fact I'm nearly convinced that Indonesian is EASIER than Esperanto )
2. Afrikaans (For English speakers with a knowledge of Dutch)
3. Scots (for English speakers only I'd say)
4. Frisian (For English speakers familiar with German, due to conjugation etc)

Frisian sounds a bit like a 'what English could have been' language, along with Scots, but retains some older features like proper verb conjugation and an older pronunciation system.

Indonesian is an awfully easy language (despite some harder grammatical features) because it is more of a 'branching language' of many dialects and therefore has probably been simplified over time. However I could be slightly biased as Indonesian is one of the languages they teach South Australian primary school kids.

Of course, Indonesian doesn't resemble English much.
I'll put some phrases in Frisian and Scots and you'll probably understand (and remember) them much easier:
FRI: Wy hawwe gjin freonen! = We have no friends!
SCO: We hae nae freends! = We have no friends!

I can't remember how to say that in Indonesian, which shows the main problem with the language for English speakers - it can be very hard to remember vocabulary simply because it looks so alien The main problem for Frisian learners is that there are almost no resources for English speakers (however if you speak Dutch you're in luck!), and the main problem for Scots learners is that it often isn't taken seriously as a language and you might appear to be insulting if you aren't a Scotsman.

Ah, there are so many great languages out there, just so hard to learn them
The only good place I've found to learn Frisian is EduFrysk but it now costs money for English speakers

ceigered:Easiest to pronounce would probably be Japanese after a bit of practice But, since we're talking about languages as a whole, I'd have to say it comes down to the following:
1. Indonesian (For just about any speaker of any language, in particular one of its dialects is apparently the easiest of any language to learn - in fact I'm nearly convinced that Indonesian is EASIER than Esperanto )
2. Afrikaans (For English speakers with a knowledge of Dutch)
3. Scots (for English speakers only I'd say)
4. Frisian (For English speakers familiar with German, due to conjugation etc)

Frisian sounds a bit like a 'what English could have been' language, along with Scots, but retains some older features like proper verb conjugation and an older pronunciation system.

Indonesian is an awfully easy language (despite some harder grammatical features) because it is more of a 'branching language' of many dialects and therefore has probably been simplified over time. However I could be slightly biased as Indonesian is one of the languages they teach South Australian primary school kids.

Of course, Indonesian doesn't resemble English much.
I'll put some phrases in Frisian and Scots and you'll probably understand (and remember) them much easier:
FRI: Wy hawwe gjin freonen! = We have no friends!
SCO: We hae nae freends! = We have no friends!

I can't remember how to say that in Indonesian, which shows the main problem with the language for English speakers - it can be very hard to remember vocabulary simply because it looks so alien The main problem for Frisian learners is that there are almost no resources for English speakers (however if you speak Dutch you're in luck!), and the main problem for Scots learners is that it often isn't taken seriously as a language and you might appear to be insulting if you aren't a Scotsman.

Ah, there are so many great languages out there, just so hard to learn them
The only good place I've found to learn Frisian is EduFrysk but it now costs money for English speakers

All I did last summer is learn languages...Lol learning languages is what I do in my free time. I'm learning german! ^_^

Even if people want to learn many languages, they may be forced to give up the ambition to learn some of them, because there are only so many hours in a lifetime.

With this in mind, two questions at least may be worth considering:

1. What will they use a language for? Travel is a good reason to learn a language to 'survival level'. But to enjoy great literature or speak to an educated level surely requires a serious commitment of time and effort.

2. Does this problem throw any light on the purpose of Esperanto as a bridge language?

Miland:Even if people want to learn many languages, they may be forced to give up the ambition to learn some of them, because there are only so many hours in a lifetime.

With this in mind, two questions at least may be worth considering:

1. What will they use a language for? Travel is a good reason to learn a language to 'survival level'. But to enjoy great literature or speak to an educated level surely requires a serious commitment of time and effort.

2. Does this problem throw any light on the purpose of Esperanto as a bridge language?

You've raised some very good points, Miland. Let me throw my $0.02 into the conversation...

Language learning is my hobby. I do it because I enjoy it. I get an adrenaline rush everytime I cross a milestone in my studies. (first joke, first conversation, first time reading a newspaper, etc)

I used to only study "useful" languages until I realized that not all the "useful" languages interested me. I then began to debate what a "useful" language was. For example, there aren't many people that speak Lithuanian. Therefore, you might not consider the language "useful". Still, it suddenly becomes INCREDIBLY useful when your company transfers you to Lithuania and you have to work there. I've decided that I will not study a language unless I find it interesting.

Esperanto fulfills this need for me. I find it amazing that this language was someone's invention and it can be used for useful communication. The genius of the entire project is what motivates me to be involved in it. I'm sure you all have seen what I am talking about.

Obviously, not everyone has the same motivations as I do. I'd be curious to hear from others.

In general, I wouldn't argue with the rightness of studying that which 'grabs' you. Still, in the end, language is for communication, so if such a motive is not present, something important would appear to be missing.

I reckon I learn languages because it's like learning a different train of thought, a different way of thinking.

For example, in Japanese you'd always put the object before the verb, so in a sense whenever an object is used, that object must be more important (in some sense or rather) than the verb that preceeds it. However in English, the object is generally last. Also in many languages, 'you' can be capitalised, but in English 'I' is capitalised. I'm not saying there's some conspiracy or that English speakers are arrogant, but languages are definitely an amazing insight into the minds of fellow humans (especially the ones critical in the evolution of them).

And technically if humans don't even have a motive for language learning, we still learn language anyway whenever we are exposed to it's usage. Otherwise we probably wouldn't learn language as a baby! Ha ha that would be a problem.

I guess that's why I don't really mind a 'hard' language like Finnish, or why I generally prefer older languages like German over newer languages like Esperanto and Novial etc (you can't really call a language artificial when you think about it, unless it was made by a computer *cough cough lojban*)

Also if you've got time look at this:
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/franklin.htm
It might not help with tourist activities, but I would regard this as another reason to learn language - to see the interesting things history has to hold - I would have never found something like this if it wasn't for a love of language.

And with that I conclude my various reasonings for learning languages. Sorry alexbeard for going off-topic