> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Henry
> I think it's in _La Bona Lingvo_ that Claude Piron wrote that
the only
> think keeping Indonesian from being easier than Esperanto for
the
> average person for whom Esperanto's phonology is a problem is
> its complex formal/informal pronoun system. He may have been
> exaggerating for effect, though. It was in a context, I
think, where
> he was arguing against revival of the
obsolete-almost-as-soon-as-
> the-language-was-born intimate pronoun "ci". (He argues,
IIRC,
> that Zamenhof put the intimate pronoun in to satisfy certain
speakers
> of languages with formal/informal pronouns who would complain
> if it were absent, but deliberately gave it an unpleasant
sound
> so no one would actually us it for very long.)
Most of my creations are auxlangs so Indonesian and other
Austronesian languages did grab my attention when I first
started looking at them. I actually have to agree about the
simplicity factor. Indonesian really only has a couple of
difficulties, one being the issue of formal and honorific forms,
and the other being the use of measure words.