Re: English Everywhere (kaj cxi tie)
From: Ronald Crosier <rbcrosie@cbda9.apgea.army.mil>
To: donh@netcom.com
Cc: rebato-l@netcom.com, rbcrosie@cbda9.apgea.army.mil
Subject: Re: English Everywhere (kaj cxi tie)
Message-Id: <9410031003.aa24400@cbdcom.apgea.army.mil>
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Don Harlow wrote:
> As to the children of today’s go-getters "taking Chinese" … no."Your"
> children will be taking Chinese. But I suppose that will be "their"
> problem, not yours.
It is not national politics, but generational politics, that prevents the
widespread adoption of Esperanto. If students had the option of meeting their
foriegn [sic] (or should that be sick? – i before e except after c) language
requirements with E-o, (mi opinias, ke) the overwhelming majority of students
in ALL countries would choose Esperanto.
One issue of the ELNA Update mentioned that more Polish students choose to
study German than English. I wondered why until I spoke with a summer
employee here who studied German. "It actually obeys the rules," she said.
Now I see why: German is much easier than English. The difficulty of
English is not apparent to native English speakers;
"the unsuitability of English as an international language because of its
extraordinary difficulty should be pointed out when refuting pro-English
articles in the English language press."
English has more irregular verbs than any other language (Guiness Book of
Records), the second worst (least fonetic) spelling, and plural formation
so difficult that the writer of one English grammar book wrote "there are
so many rules and so many exceptions to the rules that one might just as
well memorize the plural of every noun separately."
What articles like "English Everywhere" don’t mention is the number of
people who tried to learn English, but were not able (I correspond with
two of them). It’s a common fallacy to make arguments on the basis of
what you see (English is popular) and ignore what you don’t see (the many
failures of English as an international language).
—
Ronald Crosier <rbcrosie@apgea.army.mil> Ciuj malpretendoj aplikigxas.
Esperanto: A planned language with regular grammar and phonetic spelling.
See the FAQ for soc.culture.esperanto in news.answers or soc.answers.
Info & free postal course (USA only): 1-800-828-5944 or elna@netcom.com
ftp ftp.netcom.com /pub/elna
Other countries: contact me for address of your national E-association.