| ate bass pain pay dahlia vein they | great eh! gaol gauge champagne campaign straight | feign weigh aye obeyed weighed trait halfpenny1 |
1Prof. Skeat adds a twenty-second: Lord Reay!
(Compare eye, lie, high, etc.)
In Esperanto this sound is expressed only and always by "e." In fact, the language is absolutely and entirely phonetic, as all real language was once.
As regards difficulties of vocabulary, the same may be said as in the case of the sounds. Esperanto only adopts the minimum of roots essential, and these are simple, non-ambiguous, and as international as possible. Owing to the device of word-building by means of a few suffixes and prefixes with fixed meaning, the number of roots necessary is very greatly less than in any natural language.1
1Most of these roots are already known to educated people. For the young the learning of a certain number of words presents practically no difficulty; it is in the practical application of words learnt that they break down, and this failure is almost entirely due to "unnecessary" difficulties.
As for difficulties of structure, some of the chief ones are as follows:
Multiplicity and complexity of inflections. This does not exist in Esperanto.
Irregularities and exceptions of all kinds. None in Esperanto.