> Thank you, Paige, for your kind comments about my website. I have now
> uploaded a brief page about Quickscript, along with a comparative chart. The
> site URL is:
>
> http://www.geocities.com/simonbarne/
>
> I am afraid I cannot agree that English is not difficult to learn. I teach
> it here in Indonesia and my students have real problems with it. (It may be
> their teacher's fault.)
>
> It is true that other European languages have far more inflexions. English
> has no cases or gender. However, if you compare it with certain non-European
> languages, it is still unnecessarily complex.
>
> Indonesian, for instance, has no tenses. When it is important to indicate
> the time, Indonesians use words like "already" or "tomorrow". English has
> about 20 tenses (active and passive), including the progressive or
> continuous forms, which do not exist in many languages. There are several
> subtly different ways of talking about the future. There are many irregular
> verbs (e.g. shake - shook - shaken).
>
> I used to think English had very little grammar - until I started teaching
> it!
>
> Nevertheless, I have amended my website from: "English, a difficult language
> to learn", to: "English, quite a difficult language to learn".
>
> One question about the Read Alphabet: isn't it being overtaken by
> technology? Writing is increasingly being done on a keyboard, so there is
> less need for a cursive script. In fact, cursive type is less clear -
> especially on a computer screen - than normal type. I find Shavian fonts
> easier to read than the Read Alphabet.
>
> It is an attractive script, though, and I like both alphabets for aesthetic
> as much as utilitarian reasons.
>
> Simon Barne
>
>
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> At 12:22 PM 12/28/00 +0700, you wrote:
> >I am afraid I cannot agree that English is not difficult to learn. I teach
> >it here in Indonesia and my students have real problems with it. (It may be
> >their teacher's fault.)
>
> Simon:  I may have stepped in it.  Here you are actually in the trenches
> teaching it, and I'm just speculating about my thoughts about learning
> it.  Obviously, since it is my native tongue, and I have never tried
> teaching it , I cannot properly evaluate the difficulty it poses to foreign
> students.  I have always thought (and read in print) that English is a
> subtle and flexible language.  Of course, that does not necessarily make it
> suitable for a "world language."
>
> According to studies I have read about, Esperanto is much easier to learn
> than any native tongue.  The estimates I have seen are that it is four to
> six times easier to learn than another European language.  Grammatically,
> it is certainly much easier.  But, that does not turn Esperanto into a
> world language.  Unfortunately, masses of people do not take action based
> on logic or efficiency, but, rather, on what they see as in their own
> self-interest.  Esperantists claim several million Esperanto-speakers in
> the world, but what is that compared to a population of roughly six
> billion!  Obviously, a drop in the ocean.
>
> Returning to English:  I did not intend to claim it had discarded all
> unnecessary grammar, just that it was considerably simpler than other
> European languages.  I have no experience with Asian languages so I cannot
> compare them to English.
>
> I am not sure if this is correct, but from some things I have read, it
> seems that languages reached a high level of grammatical complexity
> thousands of years ago, and that since then some languages have been
> discarding that needless complexity.  This seems counterintuitive to me.  I
> would have expected that language would become more complex over time
> instead of simpler.  I have read that the discarding of inflections in
> English may have been prompted by the necessities of communication between
> the Angles and Saxons (I believe) and Vikings who eventually settled in the
> north of Britain after centuries of raiding.  They all spoke germanic
> tongues with many similar root words, but the inflexions got in the way of
> comprehension.
>
> >It is true that other European languages have far more inflexions. English
> >has no cases or gender. However, if you compare it with certain non-European
> >languages, it is still unnecessarily complex.
> >
> >Indonesian, for instance, has no tenses. When it is important to indicate
> >the time, Indonesians use words like "already" or "tomorrow". English has
> >about 20 tenses (active and passive), including the progressive or
> >continuous forms, which do not exist in many languages. There are several
> >subtly different ways of talking about the future. There are many irregular
> >verbs (e.g. shake - shook - shaken).
>
> I would agree that some of these tenses are needlessly complex.  On the
> other hand, the preceding makes me wonder:  when an Indonesian uses
> "tomorrow," meaning "in the future", does he still signify the next day, or
> does it mean some unspecified future time?  And if the latter is the case,
> then when he really means "tomorrow," i.e. the next day, he would have to
> further specify that in some manner.  A speaker of a language using tenses
> might find that needlessly complex.  Obviously, language is interwoven into
> a culture so deeply that it is difficult to look with fresh eyes at a
> language that is radically different from your own.  Do other cultures
> really experience time differently from the way we do?  Does the lack of
> tenses in a language mean that the speaker does not view time as something
> that passes -- that yesterday is forever gone and that tomorrow has not yet
> arrived?  This manner of seeing the universe seems so strange to an English
> speaker that it is difficult to believe in it.
>
> If we think of language as a code for communicating ideas, there are
> obviously methods that can compact the code.  Inflections enable more
> information to be packed into fewer words.  Word order becomes less
> important, as in Latin.  With fewer inflections, word order becomes more
> important, as in English.  I believe Chinese uses no inflections so word
> order is crucial.
>
> Any native speaker of a language has no trouble using it fluently, which is
> not to say eloquently.  Simplification of grammar probably aids a
> non-native speaker in attaining fluency, but it also condemns the native
> speaker to a less efficient form of communication all his life if the
> simplified grammar becomes the norm.  Of course, throughout history, the
> non-native speaker was always vastly outnumbered by the native speakers so
> they newcomers had little impact on the evolution of a language.  Might
> that be changing now with the increasing use of English in the world?
>
> English tenses may seem needlessly complicated to a speaker of a language
> who gets by with fewer or no tenses, but the meaning, as you noted,
> sometimes has to clarified with the additional words specifying when
> something occurred.  I would suppose tenses seem so useful to us as a means
> of reducing additional explanations of when events occurred that they are
> worth effort of learning to us.
>
> You did not mention it, but I can only assume you are not using Shawscript
> with your students.  Can you differentiate how much of the difficulty they
> experience in learning English is related to the grammar and how much to
> the roman alphabet?
>
> The difficulty of learning a language is, I assume, closely related to what
> language you already speak.  I assume it would be easier for me to
> learn  German than it would be to learn Chinese since English is a germanic
> language.  If we could compare all the languages of the world and rate them
> on a scale indicating the difficulty in learning them, where would English
> appear?  I believe that English would not be one of the most difficult
> languages to learn.  Perhaps, it would be in the middle of the pack.  I
> would be willing to bet that if the student was taught English with
> Shawscript or Quikscript, they would make considerably faster progress than
> they do with roman script.
>
> >One question about the Read Alphabet: isn't it being overtaken by
> >technology? Writing is increasingly being done on a keyboard, so there is
> >less need for a cursive script. In fact, cursive type is less clear -
> >especially on a computer screen - than normal type. I find Shavian fonts
> >easier to read than the Read Alphabet.
>
> I am flummoxed about the name for this alphabet.  Reed called it
> Quikscript, and I have always used that term.  Some people did not care for
> that.  Some liked Revised Shaw.  When I began this site,  I chose Read
> Alphabet, thinking it would honor its creator.  And some people did not
> like that name.  At this point, I am still using Quikscript.
>
> To my mind, the beauty of Quikscript really appears in the Senior version
> (as Read termed it).  Junior Quikscript keeps all the letters
> separate.  Senior Quikscript permits all letter joining that occurs
> naturally, i.e. without additional connecting lines.  This means the
> letters always retain their normal shapes.  One letter will connect to the
> next  when the first letters ends at the point where the next letter begins.
>
> "Cursive" may not be the best word to describe QS's appearance since in
> roman writing that term implies the use of connecting lines which change
> the appearance of the letters.  (I have seen recent high school graduates
> use a connecting hump in front of an "m" (intended in cursive to connect
> the letter to a preceding letter) even when the "m" is at the beginning of
> a word.  Thus, you get a peculiar three-humped letter that looks bizarre to
> me.  And they will write "n" with two humps no matter where it appears.)  I
> used the term cursive because many letters are connected to each other as
> opposed to Shavian where they are all separate as in printing.
>
> Regarding technology:  while it is true that many people write with
> keyboards, that does not prevent a font such as Jerome from being
> attractive and perfectly usable with a keyboard.  It reproduces a good deal
> of the spirit of handwritten QS and is perfectly legible.  QS's letters
> were designed to connect easily.  The roman alphabet was not.  And I
> believe pens and pencils are in no danger of disappearing.  Most of us
> still use them on a daily basis.  Perhaps, we should worry when
> voice-recognition software really gets good. :-)
>
> I can read Shavian, but I'm much faster at QS since I've been using it for
> 25 years and gave up Shavian in 1974 or so.  QS is perfectly legible.  I
> would expect that you just haven't had the practice with QS that you've had
> with Shavian.
>
> Paige
>
>
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