Scientific comparison of the respective difficulty of Esperanto and
other languages, based on properly collected and tabulated results,
does not seem to be yet obtainable. It is difficult to get high-class
schools, where language-teaching is a regular and important part of
the curriculum, to give an artificial language a fair trial. Properly
organized and carried-out tests are greatly to be desired. If and when
they are made, it will probably be found that Esperanto is not only very
easy of acquisition itself, but that it has a beneficial effect upon
other language-learning.[1]

[1]See pp. 145-55 [Part III, Chapter I].

Meantime, the present writer has carried out one small experiment in a
good secondary school for girls, where French and German are regularly
spoken and taught for many hours in the week. The head-mistress
introduced Esperanto as a regular school subject at the beginning of
the Easter term, January 1907. At the end of term a test paper was
set, consisting of English sentences to be rendered into French and
Esperanto without any dictionary or other aid, and one short passage
of English prose to be rendered into both languages with any aid from
books that the pupils wished. The object was to determine how far a few
hours' teaching of Esperanto would produce results comparable with those
obtained in a language learnt for years.

The examinees ranged from fourteen to sixteen years. They had been
learning French from two to seven years, and had a daily French lesson,
besides speaking French on alternate days in the school. They had learnt
Esperanto for ten weeks, from one to one and a half hours per week.
_Taking the papers all through, the Esperanto results were nearly as
good as the French._