How Esperanto works

The short version

• Roughly a tenth of the hours of a natural language to the same functional level. The FSI never rated it, but every serious estimate and every teaching study points the same way.
• No irregular verbs. None. Not few. The verb system is five endings, identical for every person, on every verb in the language including *to be*.
• Roots compound. 200 roots behaves like 800 words, because any root takes any ending and the affixes are fully productive. This is the real reason it is fast.
• The accusative -n is the one genuinely new thing for an English speaker, and it is one rule with no exceptions.
• The propaedeutic effect is the strongest argument. Studies repeatedly find a year of Esperanto followed by two of French beats three of French. Learning it appears to make the next language easier.