One other way to promote Occidental (and other auxlangs)

Presidante-electet Barack Obama introducte Nance Killefer, ne monstrat ci, a li novmen creat position de "Principal Oficario de Performantie", mercurdí, jan. 7, 2009, in su oficie de transition in Washington. (AP Foto/Lawrence Jackson)

One thing I'd really like to see is a comparison of natural languages with Occidental, with a stress on exactly what it is that makes the natural language so much more difficult to learn. With a language like Occidental that resembles other languages it's easy to arrive at the unconscious conclusion that since the two languages kind of look the same that perhaps they would take the same amount of time to learn, but a more detailed look into the grammar of the two would be able to show the vast differences that lie beneath. That's kind of what happens with students who first study German under the impression that it's all about Das Wasser and Das ist mein Buch and other sentences that look just like English, until they get a bit deeper into the subject and realize just how different the two languages are (and that's often when they quit or switch classes).

Here's a small example of what I mean:

Occidental	English	Notes
Presidante-electet Barack Obama dit jovedí qu li recession* vell "tardar durante annus" si li Congress ne...	President-elect Barack Obama said Thursday the recession could "linger for years" unless Congress...	said - irregular past tense of say could - l is not pronounced
"Yo ne crede que it es tro tard por changear li cursu, ma it va esser talmen si noi ne...	"I don't believe it's too late to change course, but it will be if we don't...	believe - 1st person. 3rd person is believes. don't - do not. 3rd person is does not - doesn't.
Un mal situation posse devenir dramaticmen plu mal," dit Obama, monstrante un pictura trist...	"A bad situation could become dramatically worse," Obama said, painting a dire picture...	worse - irregular comparative of bad. Superlative is worst. dire - pronounced "daiyer".

And so on, but with better examples of course (I just picked this article because it was the first one on the front of the Huffington Post), basically sending the message home that the language on the left is easy to learn, while the one on the right is full of tricky exceptions and extra things to remember before one can master it. Notes on irregular stress would be great too, especially with words like photographer vs. photograph, and "he's present" vs. "they present themselves well", with no indication whatsoever as to the stress.

BTW, what's the Occidental word for recession?