Esperanto, Why Don't You Come to Your Senses?

Before going to Spanish class last week, I ran into a friend who's taking Chinese. We started talking about all of the different rules that are in Chinese and Spanish, among other languages, that make no sense. For example, in Chinese, the same word can mean many different things depending on its tone, not to mention that the written language is also incredibly complex, and the different dialects within Chinese are mutually unintelligible. While I find Spanish easier than Chinese, it still has its fair share of irregular verbs and strange idioms. Why are languages so complicated? You'd think that after all of these years, people would have come up with a better system. What about Esperanto, you may ask? Esperanto was intended to be a universal language that would be easy to learn. It obviously hasn't become a language for trade or one that is considered simple enough to be widely used.

Then I started thinking about English. English might be a top contender for the strangest language. I can't imagine knowing another language and trying to learn English. It has so many strange rules about spelling and pronunciation, and a lot of the time, it doesn't even follow its own rules. Even some of the very first things we learn in the English language don't make sense. Think about it: Our numbers sound nothing like they're spelled. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. While this is supposed to be simple, if you spelled them phonetically, you'd get a completely different-looking set of words. But before I criticize English too much, I have to say that I'm really glad it's the language I learned. It's constantly evolving, and it's full of new things to discover all the time. Plus, its complexities are what allow us to play with words to create just the right meaning. That's where the fun is.