Re^6: [PT_BR] Escrever em Português no Perlmonks

[Your Mother]

The point of Esperanto is that it is no-one's first language, so all speakers are on equal footing, and it is easy to learn.

Tell that to anyone who doesn't know the Roman alphabet or grew up with a language lacking phonemes common to South-Western Europe.

[LanX]

>... with a language lacking phonemes common to South-Western Europe.

Sorry, could you please explain what you mean?

AFAIK, Esperanto has a big influx of romance languages, including Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese, or are you talking about Basque?

[Your Mother]

You're right. Those are in the South-West of Europe. I'm talking about Chinese(s), Vietnamese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, etc etc, etc, etc. Esperanto is Romance/Europe-centric so it's a bit strange to say it's meant to be easy for everyone. India alone has 20ish languages which would not provide any easy path to Esperanto. Add China in the mix and you're already at just about half the world with two countries. So perhaps only a middling minority of the world would find Esperanto easy to learn.

[poqui]

I don't know about most of those languages, but for Chinese speakers, I can go to the Esperanto pen pal website and most of the non-english speaking entries are Taiwanese and Chinese speakers.

I work with many people of Indian extraction and they tell me that the most often used language besides their native regional languages is English. That being the case, entry into Esperanto should not present a difficult case, despite the difference of their native script from roman scripts.