Esperanto is easy to learn, fans say

Fans of Esperanto, the artificial language devised in the late 19th century Poland by Ludwik Zamenhof, say it’s relatively fast and easy to learn, pronounce and use. Some 75 percent of Esperanto’s vocabulary comes from Latin and Romance languages, notably French, and around 20 percent from Germanic tongues like German and English. The remainder is drawn from the Slavic languages Russian and Polish, while most of its scientific terms come from Greek. And, to ease learning, the language is phonetic. Esperanto uses a modified Latin alphabet, every word is pronounced exactly as spelled, and there are no “silent” letters or exceptions. What makes Esperanto exceptionally easy, however, are its logical rules. afp