Hi Islander,

actually, in German we have 4 different possessive pronouns in the singular forms:

sein, seine, ihr, ihre

sein: the subject is male (or "saechlich", the third non-mal, non-female), the object is male (or saechlich)

seine: the subject is male (or saechlich), the object female

ihr: subject female, object male (or saechlich)

ihre: subject female, object female

OK, we have 4 variants, depending on the subject and the object, usually, we would have 9 (3x3) but the third gender (das, like das Kind, the child) behaves like male (towards possessive pronouns).

Gerald

There are a few things going on in this discussion--all of them interesting. One of them is how to classify Esperanto, linguistically. In terms of its overall grammar, vocabulary, and morphology, I'm perfectly willing to say it's Indo-European. It uses definite articles, conjugates verbs for tense, has adjective-noun agreement, etc. These are things found in many Indo-European languages. The great majority of its roots are drawn from French, German, and English. The way in which its affixes can function as standalone words is *not* an Indo-European trait, though, and that is what makes Esperanto a somewhat paradoxical mix of isolating and agglutinating, even though those two are normally thought to exclude each other.

Japanese has something rather like the table of correlatives.

As for why Esperanto hasn't "caught on" internationally the way English has... I don't doubt that it has a lot to do with the economic reach of the anglophone countries. Films and recordings and books are certainly written in languages other than English, but the ones in English find their way into all corners of the world, propelled by money. Add to that the fact that there are still many--including many linguists--who believe that an artificial language "can't possibly work"--and it's not surprising that Esperanto's growth hasn't been what Zamenhof hoped for.

As for English being simpler than Esperanto....in some ways, yes. Invariant adjectives are simpler than adjectives that take grammatical endings. There are no doubt a few other ways in which it is simpler. But there are *countless* ways in which it is more complicated--so many that I don't know where to begin (although the spelling is a good starting point).

As somebody wrote before: it's easy to speak some English, but it's quite difficult to speak real good English (obviously, also for some native speakers).

Anyway, it's a long time ago that I learned English, but only to learn all the exceptions from basic rules (like irregular verbs) takes more time than to learn Esperanto.

And the most important point: If you know the rules from Esperanto, you are (theoretically) able to build up (nearly) all words. Try to do that in any other language!

In other languages it's mostly about learning and not about thinking. In Esperanto it's the other way round. And that really pleases me!

I don't know too much about Esperanto but after learning several other languages, Esperanto seems to be real fun (to learn).

Anyway, English has economics (as stated by T0dd) on it's side and also in case you ask somebody to learn Esperanto they will ask you things like:

1. How many people speak the language?
2. Will it be an advantage in my job?
3. Does my bookstore around the corner have books in Esperanto?
4. What about newspapers, radio, DVDs, films...

All of these things rather would favor English (and other languages).

I think, that Esperanto still would be the most cost effective (in terms of time an energy spent) language but this only counts once a critical mass of people speaks and uses (writing, films ...) the language, so communication is possible also outside the (still) small community of Esperantists...

Gerald

Hi,

what source claims that English is the third most difficult language to master?

From what I know (personal experience) and what I heard from friends who speak several languages, as well as from more professional sources, English is the easiest language of the bigger Western European languages to learn (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish). From those, supposedly German ist the most difficult and Russian is supposed to be about as difficult as German...

Gerald

erinja: I think that the US and the Commonwealth don't really matter that much. If it's in someone's economic best interest to learn a language, they will.

I think too that the economic argument is major. Yet we can no longer work without English and we are bad parents, if our children don't speak English.
The economic cost of learning the English language is enormous. But that is not a fatality, we can imagine a more equitable system.

EL_NEBULOSO:sources, English is the easiest language of the bigger Western European languages to learn (German, French, English, Italian, Spanish). From those, supposedly German ist the most difficult and Russian is supposed to be about as difficult as German...

Gerald

I think it depends on what language you're coming from. Perhaps for a German speaker it would be easier, but if you start off speaking something like Spanish, I think Italian or French would be vastly easier than English.

Well, English has (like Esperanto) only one gender. Actually, I think the fact that Esperanto has only one gender is one of the main reasons why it's so easy to learn it. In Spanish and Italian, you know for most words by the ending, what gender it has. In French you rarely know, is German it's even worse, additionally, you do have 3 different genders...

For personal pronouns: In other languages, they depend on the subject (English) or object (French, Italian, Spanish), in German they depend on both, so it's more difficult for a beginner.

Irregular verbs you have in all of these languages (German, French, Italian, English, Spanish), so there is no big difference.

From other aspects of grammar, these languages are also similar, pronunciation might be rather difficult in French, partly also in English, Spanish, Italian and German should be easier there (some English-speaking friends told me, the fact that (without little exceptions) you know how to pronounce a German word by seeing it, is the only easy thing when learning German). Also in Esperanto the direct correlation between the written and the spoken word (concerning pronunciation) is one of the main advantages.

In Spanish and other romanic languages the subjuntivo is a bit difficult for some people to learn, also things like estar and ser, both of which mean "to be" and you just have to know when to use which. Similarly, for can be "por" or "para"...

Anyways, I am not the big language expert, but I guess from what I know English ist the easiest of the 5 languages to learn, especially at the beginning. As said before, it's still difficult to speak it well.

Anyways, I know several people who are scientists and live in Austria or Germany since 15-20 years. They speak German most of the time and use English mostly to talk to other scientists. Still, there English is much better than their German (despite having less training)...

Hope I don't have too many typos, it' already quite late here, just wanted to add a little comment...

Geraldo

Basic English grammar is fairly simple. English spelling is a nightmare, even for native speakers. It may be a surprise to some to realize that there are many highly educated native speakers of English who cannot spell. In conjunction with this is the fact that English pronunciation is very hard, mainly because we have so many vowel sounds, in comparison with other languages. In my dialect of English, the following words are all different: bat, bait, bet, beet, bit, bite, bot, bought, boat, bout, but, boot...not to mention bird.

English has many idiomatic phrasal verbs. "Put down" (let go of, insult); "put up" (place higher, get someone to do something, commit to do something (put up or shut up), tolerate (put up with)); "put over" (get away with); "put on" (don an item of clothing, deception); "put out" (extinguish, make available)...to name a few.

Something can blacken, whiten, or redden, but nothing can brownen, greenen, or bluen.

I agree with Todd on his points.
And to add my bit. The spell checker was a great invention.

Confusion also exists with the variation of spelling from American English and British English.
We also have the problem of some words are pronounced in a different way by a Brit and an American.
For example buoy, from a Brit is pronounced as "Boy", but from an American it has another pronunciation.

But hey variety is the spice of life.

I agree that the English language does have its particularities and difficulties but to say that some of its native speakers have spelling problems (and I assumed you meant more than other languages) is unfair.

Often do I find myself asking how a (french) word is spelled, if it does have 1 or 2 "L" or "N". I actually find English spelling more strait forward. I do use the spell checker a lot more for French, my native language, then I do for English. I do, however, use the grammar checker a lot more in English.

All modern countries have their share of people who cannot write properly, some not at all. Measuring the difficulty of any given language by this standard is simply not accurate as may other factors would come into play.