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suggestion that an artificial language is no easier to learn than a natural one. We thus come to the question of ease as a qualification.
IV
THE QUESTION OF PRACTICE (continued)—AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE IS EASY[1]
People smile incredulously at the mention of an artificial language, implying that no easy royal road can be found to language-learning of any kind. But the odds are all the other way, and they are heavy odds.
The reason for this is quite simple, and may be briefly put as follows:
The object of language is to express thought and feeling. Every natural language contains all kinds of complications and irregularities, which are of no use whatever in attaining this object, but merely exist because they happen to have grown. Their sole raison d'être is historical. In fact, for a language without a history they are unnecessary.[2] Therefore a universal language, whose only object is to supply to every one the simplest possible means of expressing his thoughts and feelings in a medium intelligible to every one else, simply leaves them out. Now, it is precisely in these "unnecessary" complications that a large proportion—certainly more than half—of the difficulty of learning a foreign language consists. Therefore an artificial language, by merely leaving them out, becomes certainly more than twice as easy to learn as any natural language.
- ↑ Readers who do not care about the reasons for this, but desire concrete proofs, may skip the next few pages and turn in to p. 20, par. 6.
- ↑ i.e. they do not assist in attaining its object as a language. One universal way of forming the plural, past tense, or comparative expresses plurality, past time, or comparison just as well as fifteen ways, and with a deal less trouble.