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In article <1076@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU> faustus@ucbcad.BERKELEY.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher) writes:
>Are people still pushing Esperanto as a universal language?   Since
>English is becoming more and more widespread, especially in Europe (and
>Esperanto seems to be an amalgamation of European languages), is there
>any use for it any more?  Can anybody tell me what advantages Esperanto
>has over other existing languages, from the point of view of the person
>learning the language?
>
>	Wayne

Whether there is good reason to prefer Esperanto to English as an
international auxiliary language is as much a moral and sociopolitical
question as a linguistic one.

As to the advantages of Esperanto, from the perspective of the learner of
a second language, it is easier.  Although ease of learning has a 
significant familiarity component, there are other factors.  The fact
that Esperanto's vocabulary is most familiar to speakers of Indo-European
languages is not the end of the story.

I submit that two factors contribute to ease of learning of a second
language (these are, of course, in addition to familiarity): (1) regularity
and (2) non-arbitrariness.  The first factor simply means that a language
in which rules are applied regularly will be easier for *anyone* to learn
as a second language than one in which they are applied irregularly.
The second factor means that there should be a minimum of syntactic rules
that do not have semantic content.  On factor (1), Esperanto scores quite
high; on factor (2), it does reasonably well.

It is unquestionably true that a higher-scoring language on both factors
could be, and probably has been, devised.  Another reason for supporting
Esperanto, however, is the fact that it has survived 100 years (almost)
and already has an international speech community.

Todd Moody * {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody * SJU Phil. Dept.