Esperanto, from my point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

D: ah, Espo, how do I love thee? Not very much at all.
I already noted the 'ranto' site. It goes into details. In the notes on this book, I noted the following.
1) difficult consonant clusters. E.g KN in "knabo", or boy. kuh-nah...
2) some letters are actually composite consonants
3) the system requires diacritics
4) I get confused by seemingly familiar English letters with different sounds
5) the need for agreement between grammatical elements is bewildering
6) it mentions word order but indicates grammatical element via infixes - no need.
7) the stress system is ambiguous - timing or not? New Zealand English is hard to follow due to a different stress system. No stress system at all might be preferable.
8) a whole lotta homophones. Dieto. Diet-o for noun. OR: di for god, -et- for tiny, -o noun. Either a diet or a demigod. The list goes on and on. This is due to not carefully considering how various syllables, when strung together, will make both pronunciation and meaning unclear.
9) a failure to keep common terms brief. His idea to use mal- for "opposite of" as a way to reduce the need to memorize vocabulary was only somewhat clever.
10) a complete ignorance of biomechanics. Many sounds get blurred via co-articulation. Just advising one to carefully sound out each sound ignores the fact that normal human speech happens at a fast continuous pace.
11) generally, a failure to use one system to the full extent possible and to stick to it. Often, he uses a new word when a variation of an existing one would be more sensible and easier. It is not coherent. Alternatively, sometimes he needs more nuance.

About the inventor:
http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Zamenhof_L_L.html
"Dr. Ludovic Lazarus (Ludwik Lejzer) Zamenhof (December 15, 1859 - April 14, 1917) was a Polish-Jew ophthalmologist, philologist and the initiator of Esperanto, the most widely spoken constructed language to date. His native languages were Russian and Yiddish, but he also spoke Polish and German fluently. Later he learned French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and English, and he also had an interest in Italian, Spanish and Lithuanian."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido
D: like Volapuk, Espo had serious flaws. The original inventor, feeling his project was complete, like a proud father, resisted change. This led to a schism in the movement.
The project was somehow viewed as complete despite being a work in progress.

Lacking UPSID study data back then, he had no grasp of what was globally easy and difficult for language speakers to learn. Since Esperanto was being promoted as an auxiliary language, one must assume many adopters were already adult. Without the right language background (Eastern dialect of Polish!), this language is prohibitively difficult.
http://bahai-library.com/books/lango/lang36.html#a
" A suggested compromise phonology for Lang25 would consist of the 20 consonants identified by the UPSID survey and the 5 vowels found in Spanish, Japanese and other tongues. It so happens that the most universal words for things within the common experience of the whole of humanity tend to fall within this phonetic range."

D: the only safe syllable construction is CV (consonant - vowel). Even CVC and CCV are tricky.
Esperanto made something of a comeback in the '60s/'70s by being associated with the international peace movement. However, today there are only a few still using it. Most people have never even heard of it.
For kicks, you might want to rent an early William Shatner film called "Inkubo" which is entirely in Esperanto.

QOTD: "A logical analysis of reflexive usages in French shows, however, that this simplicity is an illusion and that, so far from helping the foreigner, it is more calculated to bother him. "
Edward Sapir

the very first designed language: Volapuk

Before there was Esperanto (Espo) there was Volapuk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volap%C3%BCk
The Flemish cryptographer Dr. Auguste Kerckhoffs was for a number of years Director of the Academy of Volapük, and introduced the movement to several countries. However tensions arose between Dr. Kerckhoffs and others in the Academy, who wanted reforms made to the language, and Schleyer, who insisted strongly on retaining his proprietary rights. This led to schism, with much of the Academy abandoning Schleyer's Volapük in favor of Idiom Neutral and other new constructed language projects. Another reason for the decline of Volapük may have been the rise of Esperanto. In 1887, the first Esperanto book (Unua Libro) was published. As the language was easier to learn, many Volapük clubs became Esperanto clubs.

D: http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.html#volapuk

The first world congress of Volapük was held in Germany in 1884, the second in 1887, the third in 1889. At the first two congresses, business was carried on in German, the language of most of the participants. This may have been a good thing; at the third congress, business was carried on in Volapük, and it was then that the Volapük movement received its death blow.

The forces that shattered the Volapük movement were both linguistic and social in nature; language, after all, does not function in a vacuum. A quick look at them may be instructive, and help us understand the development and fate of later constructed languages, not least of Esperanto.

D: forming words with infixes could be very demanding. Many folks were annoyed at the use of deformed European word roots. For example, Volapuk means "world speech".

At its peak, about 100,000 folks could speak Volapuk. Whether they could carry on a conversation remains unclear. Attempts to simplify aspects of Volapuk that were too complex for an international movement failed. Attempts at reform met with resistance. While the infighting ensued, Zamehof introduced Esperanto.

D: what are themes we see in Volapuk? These are themes we will continue to see throughout the history of such language movements.
1) simple imitation of the structure of the local language
2) the mistaken assumption that this structure will be easy to outsiders
3) use of synthetic infixes rather than analytic word particles for meanings
4) initial success and enthusiasm
5) resistance to reform that would fix shortcomings
6) internal strife in that language movement
7) a better language comes along.

http://www.zompist.com/kit.html
D: this is a nifty how-to kit to design your own language. You too can have a language that only you know, and nobody else wants to learn!
Don't worry - that is just me being cynical.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1061407
D: each entry on this blog will include some charming aspect of English that is irregular or difficult.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_irregular_verbs
We tell children and foreigners to add -ED to show past tense. Well, we don't say SINGED. We say SANG. Just one of many that must be exhaustively memorized from lists.

QOTD: "A common allegiance to form of expression that is identified with no single national unit is likely to prove one of the most potent symbols of the freedom of the human spirit that the world has yet known. "
Edward Sapir

the UN should adopt a new world language in 2045 on its 100th anniversary

Hello.

First, I shall review how the prior organisation before the UN, the League of Nations, very nearly adopted an official world language.
"The official languages of the League of Nations were French, English and Spanish (from 1920). In 1921, there was a proposal by the Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations, Dr. Nitobe Inazō, for the League to accept Esperanto as their working language. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language of diplomacy and saw Esperanto as a threat. Two years later the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula."

D: today, Esperanto is merely a fringe oddity. Even Klingon is more popular.
Franky, I am glad Esperanto (hereafter Espo) was not adopted. The language, in its attempt to emulate aspects of natural language, has serious deficiencies. These problems are best summarized at the following website.
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
I half-learned it, before finding it much more complex than it needed to be.

This has not stopped many aux-langers (auxiliary human language designers) from continuing to try. The best clearinghouse online, including a link to one of mine, follows.
http://www.langmaker.com/db/Deafese
D: I have decoupled visemes from the math subject matter since then. I think visemes should serve as a universal deaf lip-read language. Sadly, sign language is not universal. The math content has been ported to other projects, particulary Decimese, which is in the works.

What qualities should a world language have? Most discussions by English-speakers end with a dismissive suggestion that everybody should learn English. Well English has so many irregulars and exceptions and cases of mandatory agreement, as well as multiple ways to say the same thing that it is very hard for many foreigners. A good indication of how innately hard a language is can be gained by looking at international literacy comparisons.
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/1076154634613
Finns are literate about 2 years prior to English-speakers. This despite starting written language learning years later! But why?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language#Standardization
The key features include very regular spelling and letter names that contain the sound of the letter.
The spill-over benefits of early first-language literacy are huge. Finns also dominate in second and even third childhood languages, and in math and science literacy. These facts are not unrelated - the time not wasted on overly complex language systems can be spent on learning actual content. By coincidence, since they often learn Swedish as their second childhood language, English later on becomes easier to learn. Swedish shares many features with English.
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html

What features make a language easy to learn? The best summary of such a language follows.
http://bahai-library.com/books/lango/index.html#L

The writing system, including alphabet and spelling, count for much.
http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j25/finnish.php

Some great attempts at a more sensible letter convention have been attempted. Perhaps my favorite is Bell's "Visible Speech", by the father of the Bell famous for telephones.
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/visiblespeech.htm
D: English spelling is a nightmare. Some argue that spelling would hide the etymology of a word. I would point out that we don't say PREE for preposition, and we drop a letter in pronunciation v.s. pronounce. Not a very reliable way to make words for clarity.
Besides, English spelling has never been standard, and suffered terribly from the Great Vowel Shift.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_vowel_shift

D: my own attempts have been modest to date. I need to refine and expand. But yes, if you have not suspected yet, I wish to discuss what features an artificial human language should contain as an auxiliary and first language.


QOTD: "A standard international language should not only be simple, regular, and logical, but also rich and creative. "
Edward Sapir

http://www.geocities.com/dinosnider666/anatomical_phonetic_font.html
http://www.geocities.com/dinosnider666/VERy_Simple_English.html
http://www.geocities.com/dinosnider666/Mathese_Computerese.html
http://www.geocities.com/dinosnider666/reformed_letter_names.html
...666/childese_4_kids.html