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From: hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: Esperanto? The EU? (Very, very long)
In-Reply-To: livesey@solntze.engr.sgi.com's message of 24 Feb 1995 23:18:09 GMT
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Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 14:41:21 GMT
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In article <3ilpfh$39p@fido.asd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.engr.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:

   I think that the fallacy here is quite clear.    The set of people
   who learn English includes a lot of people who are not language
   hobbyists; they learn English because they need to for business
   or educational reasons.

   It's not surprising if their skills sometimes fall somewhat below 
   those of people who choose to learn Esperanto.  People who never
   succeed in mastering Esperanto to the point that they can make
   themselves understood probably drop it and so don't appear in
   your sample.

I don't think that is the major reason but of course I cannot prove
it. But since my point was not that Esperanto is much simpler
phonetically than other languages (which it isn't), but that English
is much more difficult than others, let's substitute Italian or
Spanish for Esperanto.  That makes argumentation a bit more difficult
for me, since I speak neither language reasonably well, but I have
been told by speakers of both Italian and Spanish that they rarely
have difficulties understanding foreigners speaking their language due
to bad pronunciation.

My hypothesis (and not only mine) is that English is especially difficult
due to its complicated vowel system. The fact that it also has a
strong regional variation makes things even worse.

--
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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
Departement de Chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
Universite de Montreal            | Fax:  +1-514-343-7586
C.P. 6128, succ. A                | Deutsch/Esperanto/English/Nederlands/
Montreal (QC) H3C 3J7             | Francais (phase experimentale)
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