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International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar by Walter J. Clark
page 26 of 269 (09%)
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_[1]. 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.

[1]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.

A little reflection will make this truth so absurdly obvious, that the
only wonder is, not that it is now beginning to be recognized, but that
any one could have ever derided it.

That the "unnecessary" difficulties of a natural language are more than
one-half of the whole is certainly an under-estimate; for some languages
the proportion would be more like 3:4 or 5:6. Compared with these, the
artificial language would be three times to five times as easy.

Take an illustration. Compare the work to be done by the learner of
(_a_) Latin, (_b_) Esperanto, in expressing past, present, and future
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