What are you trying to say, Ceigered? In summary, perhaps in a paragraph, how do you think the Esperanto community should work, and how would you contrast that with the way that it works today?

erinja:What are you trying to say, Ceigered? In summary, perhaps in a paragraph, how do you think the Esperanto community should work, and how would you contrast that with the way that it works today?

I'm not saying how it should work, just making observations and discussing them. You can read Sudanglo/Evildela's points and my comments, counterpoints and agreements with them about the nature of the Esperanto community and what we might see in the future.

Summary though: basically esperanto's growth has literature and respected individuals taking a surrogate role for what would normally be native speakers, and that in the future, a possible increase in native speakers may be a bit of a wild card, as it's hard to tell how they'd improve or detract from the balance enjoyed today (would they end up taking back that "authority" role that they never had, or would they not care like they do today?), and a hypothetical increase in undedicated learners is also problematic because unlike natives who are brought up in EO culture, they might not care and I don't know how EO would be affected if it were treated like a commodity.

It might be worth thinking about these things as a community if we see signs of growth continue, so that EO culture can be kept intact and we don't lose things like speaker neutrality, or conversely have the language treated like a heartless tool. And if worse comes to worse, what are our feelings for Esperanto with all the skin-deep benefits gone? (that's not so much planning for the future, but more a philosophical question ).

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If we link this back to the original topic though, it might show how we're still sort of in the formative stages of Esperanto - usage hasn't become quite as important yet if I go with what you, Sudanglo etc have said. Perhaps this mentality needs to be safeguarded or fortified if Esperanto booms? Or does it need to be? A question for the community because I don't have a preference anymore anyway.

The topic is very hypothetical, because there really is no point in producing 'native' speakers of Esperanto - except to perform psycholinguistic experiments on language acquisition in the very young child.

As regards the situation where the majority of Esperanto users are beginners or uncommitted, we already have the answer on how this influences the development of the language since this is the situation today and has been in most periods in the past.

Nobody has considered, or is likely to consider, the usage of 'komencantoj' to have any serious authority over the core of the language, however statistically prevalent any usage might be.

At most the influence is likely to be limitd to some fairly trivial shifts in the lexicon, or syntactical/grammatical aspects, where these are not in conflict with the over-arching principles of the language.

Yes, the dictionary listed meaning of 'komputi' got shifted with the ubiquity of the computer to accommodate the term 'komputilo'. Perhaps it will become accepted to used 'pri' in front of an infinitive. But in both those examples one might see the change as in the direction of greater systematicity rather than the reverse.

A situation quite the opposite to that existing in the natural languages where usage can quite comfortably override other considerations.

Edit: the reason why I am deeply philosophically opposed to Raŭmismo - in my view an intellectual and emotional dead-end - is that once you start treating Esperanto as 'just another language' which can go its own way, without regard to its destined function, then you open a Pandora's box of all sort of vicissitudes characteristic of the natural languages.

sudanglo:The topic is very hypothetical, because there really is no point in producing 'native' speakers of Esperanto - except to perform psycholinguistic experiments on language acquisition in the very young child.

Yeah, it's without purpose except where a family needs it to communicate, so we shouldn't see any major growth for a while if at all in that demograph. But I guess the seeds of romance could be being sown right now here on lernu! for all we know!... the large male population probably being an impediment towards getting native speakers mind you...

As regards the situation where the majority of Esperanto users are beginners or uncommitted, we already have the answer on how this influences the development of the language since this is the situation today and has been in most periods in the past.

Nobody has, or is likely to, consider the usage of 'komencantoj' to have any serious authority over the core of the language, however statistically prevalent any usage might be.

Well of course, beginners are never an authority. But if we look at say English dialects for example, we have grammatical "deterioration" in some registers and dialects due to speakers with imperfect knowledge of the language bunching up and forming communities and becoming the new "standard" for any generations of younglings they bring into the world.

Or with English as spoken by learners internationally, sometimes we get big groups of learners/immigrants/whatever banding together, with respect for eachother, which seemingly influences their English - after all, who you communicate with the most probably is the biggest influence over your own command of a language until you reach a certain degree of fluency and can decide how you want to speak for yourself provided you know the option's available.

At most the influence is likely to be limitd to some fairly trivial shifts in the lexicon, or syntactical/grammatical aspects, where these are not in conflict with the over-arching principles of the language

Yeah, I'd imagine vocab and things more learned speakers are less aware of or don't care much about would be most likely to shift. But there's still a risk that some speakers might get lost in a growing network of learners, possibly something that we may or may not want to plan against....

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the reason why I am deeply philosophically opposed to Raŭmismo - in my view an intellectual and emotional dead-end - is that once you start treating Esperanto as 'just another language' which can go its own way, without regard to its destined function, then you open a Pandora's box of all sort of vicissitudes characteristic of the natural languages.

Not really, you can have the same happen with Finvenkist attitudes. I think this is a new distinction we're looking at, creating a 2x2 paradigm - "Hands-on" and "Hands-off", for example.

A hands-on raumist would probably want to guide the evolution of Esperanto (where it goes from there isn't specified), where as a hands-off would want it to grow by itself.

A hands-on finvenkist would probably want to guide the evolution of Esperanto as it ascends to stardom, where as a hands-off finvenkist doesn't care what happens to Esperanto, they just want the finvenk' part.

I think we could divide each category into another 3 groups - "conservative", "progressive" and "reformist", conservatives wanting the language intact as it was (or as much as possible), progressives want the language to evolve gradually but in a vague, unspecified "progressive" manner (maybe riists?), and reformists want the language to change however drastically to suit the means of an international language (once again, vague criteria with no specifics).*

And of course there are those who are neutral too, which I probably would be classified as, with most my eggs in everyone's baskets. I'm probably becoming a conservative hands-off raumist though, with a strange obsession with non-mal forms where I suddenly try to become hands-on. I'm also a learner though, which can factor into things a bit.

Using this, I'd probably call you Sudanglo a conservative hands-on finvenkist (or at least venkist, I don't know how you feel about any "finaj venkoj" vs "venkoj" in general)

*Reformists, after reforming would then possibly change into a new category post-reform, like how many Idists then became rather conservative about how they felt about Ido..