I am totally annoyed with using letter characters with diacritics. Being able to use an alphabet with no diacritics in my own private writing and typing on my standard English keyboard is practically the one thing that encourages me to keep on learning Esperanto. One shouldn't have to use special software just to type in Esperanto.

petropensilvanio:the Earth-language alphabet

Which alphabet would that be? The alphabet containing all characters of all the languages spoken on planet Earth?

petropensilvanio:One shouldn't have to use special software just to type in Esperanto or any other international language.

So, if Esperanto were written in Chinese characters, you would be happy? No special software needed for typing Chinese characters.

Now seriously, I really hope you were being sarcastic in your post, otherwise it would be really sad that someone equalled the characters which are represented on a "standard English keyboard" to the "Earth-language alphabet".

nornen:

petropensilvanio:the Earth-language alphabet

Which alphabet would that be? The alphabet containing all characters of all the languages spoken on planet Earth?

petropensilvanio:One shouldn't have to use special software just to type in Esperanto or any other international language.

So, if Esperanto were written in Chinese characters, you would be happy? No special software needed for typing Chinese characters.

Now seriously, I really hope you were being sarcastic in your post, otherwise it would be really sad that someone equalled the characters which are represented on a "standard English keyboard" to the "Earth-language alphabet".

I agree. The English alphabet is basically the Latin alphabet, and it is not the world alphabet any more than Latin was ever really the world language. There are so many alphabets in the world, and each one is beautiful in its own way; if you believe that our ABC is the only one worth bothering with, you miss out on a lot! I actually have a special fondness for the letter ĝ; I'm not sure why. I am also currently learning Russian, and one of the biggest incentives for me was its really neat alphabet.

As for language-learning struggles, my greatest issue has always been fear. I don't want to talk to people who speak the language, for fear of saying it wrong and sounding dumb. I am trying to overcome this; that is another part of my reasons for studying Russian; I hear it is a notoriously difficult language, and I feel like maybe learning a difficult language, and actually going to a place where it is spoken, as I have reason to hope that I will, will help me face and overcome my fear. I remember the first time I did the Russian speaking exercise on LiveMocha, it was several tries before I could get the words out, and several more before I could say them loudly enough for the mic to pick up, and when I was done I was shaking and sweating. Maybe that sounds really weird, but that's how it was. When I started learning Spanish many years ago, part of me wanted to talk to the Spanish-speaking lady at church, and part of me was too scared. And she wasn't even a native speaker! I could jabber Spanish on and on to my friend who didn't understand it at all ("su pelo es como una zanahoria," and such like), but not to anyone who might know what I was saying and catch my mistakes. I want to overcome this phobia, so I can actually learn languages fluently.

I am feeling tired because I have been working really hard lately. I don't have a lot of energy for it.

I am struggling a bit with prepositions and accusative.

I disagree with the comments about the Roman alphabet. It has far deeper penetration than English does.

Cyrillic, and Greek, are so close to the Roman alphabet, that I'd argue all three essentially variants on the same theme, and easily learnt by users of the others. Obviously there are many quite different alphabets e.g. Arabic, Geez, Armenian, and scripts which are quite different altogether such as Chinese characters etc.

The Roman alphabet is currently used for just about ALL the languages of the Americas (with the exception of a handful which use syllabics), the vast majority of languages in Oceania, the languages of southern Africa, and many African languages south of the Sahara (with some exceptions) etc.

Asia tends to be the exception, but even within Asia, there are major languages which use it e.g. Turkish, Bahasa Indonesia, Vietnamese, Filipino, Azerbaijan, Uzbek etc. It also has major traction in India, and even Japan, where it has been adopted as a fourth writing system, and has been used for the Ainu language.

Other languages have discussed going over to Roman, such as minor ones in the former Russian Empire (for political reasons), Kurdish to offset Arabic cultural imperialism, as Romanian, Turkish, Indonesian etc already have.

I strongly suspect the Roman alphabet's going to be with us long after English dies off! Its major disadvantages include the facts that it does not mark syllabic stress or tones.

Nephihaha:I strongly suspect the Roman alphabet's going to be with us long after English dies off! Its major disadvantages include the facts that it does not mark syllabic stress or tones.

In many languages, syllabic stress is regular, with either one rule for every word or a very small set of rules (e.g. Spanish).

Hmong does indeed mark tones with the letters of the Latin alphabet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_language#Tones.

To return to our friend's complaint about the diacritics, I have sad news. Most languages necessitate some amount of diacritics to type. All the Romance languages do, as does German; and God forbid thee learn Vietnamese!

I am struggling to learn Polish - and it is 100 times harder than Esperanto!

I has also given me some idea of why it was a Polish speaker who came to the conclusion that a language would be a lot easier to learn if it were made simple.

I myself do not and have not tried to learn Polish (or many other languages). Zamenhof himself spoke Polish and had knowledge of various other languages, including a smattering acquaintance with English. Yes, unquestionably, people may criticize Esperanto on this or that point, and for over a century people have. Nevertheless, proposed modification after proposed modification has invariably failed.

The only one that has gained any traction at all has been Ido, and even then, although I myself think well of it, I have no illusions that in this day and age it will overtake Esperanto. Yes, no constructed language is "perfect" -- whatever that might even mean!!! -- but I myself am of the opinion that the only helplingvoj that have any hope of widespread use, at least in the west, are Esperanto (far and away in the lead) and faintly Interlingua.

bartlett22183:Yes, unquestionably, people may criticize Esperanto on this or that point, and for over a century people have. Nevertheless, proposed modification after proposed modification has invariably failed.

That's because each person has a different idea of what should be changed. I myself must confess to having some notions of "If we just tweaked this a little, it would be better;" we probably all do to some degree. But we'll never all agree on what it is that would be better, and I think it is much better to have a language that everyone can use than to spend our time arguing about supposed imperfections. Esperantists using normal, "Fundamenta" Esperanto understand each other just fine. And we can read the writings of the early Esperantists just fine. And that is way more important than having a "perfect language," even if we could figure out what that even is. All which is rather off-topic, but I couldn't resist giving my little rant .

robbkvasnak:I have been trying to acquire Mandarin. One of the biggest obstacles is the stupidity of Taiwan, Singapore and Hongkong who insist on using the old characters and sometimes the Wades-Giles (or yet another) transcription. They should just accept the fact that the majority of people use the simplified characters and the standard is Putonghua. It is even more confusing than the old fashioned British spelling and British irregular verb conjugations in English.
In Mandarin this makes everything super confusing, especially if you don't live in China and the native speakers with whom you can talk (in language class) insist on using their out-dated forms - which also exist is several variations. It is too much information with too many exceptions for the beginner. They are so steeped in their political convictions and their antiquated poliitical biases that they are defeating the whole purpose for the foreign student. I could, in deed, one day learn the old characters but first I have to stand on one leg.
When I teach English, I teach my students the easier American versions and point out the other irregularities. If they want to later study these specifics, they will atleast be able to feel confident in what they do know.

This is really rude and ignorant. 'They should just accept the fact that the majority of people...' Look up the history before making such ignorant claims!

No argument intended but it could be pretty offensive if somebody from one of them countries reads it and Esperanto is supposed to be accepting of all cultures and languages isn't it.