This is a translation of one of Zamenhof's Lingvaj Respondoj (Language Answers), posted online here

I'm posting it here for reference, because these topics have been discussed here lately, and I think Zamenhof's words on the topic are worthwhile for beginners to read. Though the writing style is old-fashioned, the contents remain relevant.

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Changes

We must guide ourselves in proposals just as little by national taste as we do by personal taste, if the suggestions have no other purpose than crude flattery of this or that country. This action brings no advantage to the thus-"flattered" country, and a great disadvantage to the matter [Esperanto] itself. For example, one gentleman, who is now among the warmest friends of our language, was angrily against it in the beginning for the reason that it "isn't sufficiently international", because it has almost no Russian words. We have already had to suffer much of this narrow pseudo-patriotism with which various individuals have met our undertaking, whose motto is "brotherhood of peoples". Though some have met our undertaking with hostility for the reason that at our debut, the first textbook of our language was published in Russian - the aforementioned gentleman found, at the start, that our matter is "unfriendly to the Russian people, because ...Volapük has the Russian word "ibo", whereas we use the modified French word "ĉar"!

One editor of a Swedish newspaper found that our language has an excessively Italian character. When we couldn't accept his proposal, and had no intention of "de-Italian-ising" our language, the editor waited a short time then tried to make his own mixture of languages, which in his opinion should be more pleasing to Nordic peoples. It goes without saying what would become of our undertaking, if every people, out of sheer vanity, wanted to give it their own character. Our undertaking would become absolutely impossible. And even if it were possible — would the nation thus-flattered even gain anything from that? The Swedish gentleman, who said in the beginning that his changes are necessary, and who spent a period of time making some attempts [at changes], can now see what it has led him to: the language became unattractive to the ear and irregular, and among the Swedes themselves, for whose gratification he wanted to cause our undertaking to perish, no one accepted his changes, while our language in its current form, which is so "un-Swedish", has many friends among the Swedes and is much more convenient and comfortable to them, than the "Swedicised" version, which died before it even reached a defined form.

One of our Slavic friends found that the international language should have as many Slavic words as it has Romano-Germanic. He also wanted to create a new language that would contain many Slavic words; but soon he became convinced our Romano-Germanic words are much more convenient and pleasant not only to other nations, but also to the Slavs themselves. The Slavic words, having been put into a Romano-Germanic system, are cutting to the ear and become much less understandable than non-Slavic words. (If we remember well, the word "internacia" was translated there as "meĵufoka", but ask that any Slav which word he understands and remembers better, "internacia" or "meĵufoka"? He'll be searching for the word in a Chinese dictionary, and it won't even enter his mind that the word is a combination of his own Slavic "meĵdu" and the Germanic "Volk", having lost the d and l, because two consonants should not stand together!) If the friend, like the others, made his proposal only in theory, perhaps he would stand by his opinion even now, and would be angry at us that we were obstinate and didn't want to introduce this "necessary" change; but fortunately he did a practical test, and the test convinced him very well, and now he has again become a warm friend of our language in its present form.

From these statements we can derive the following rule: if we want to propose or enact some sort of change, we must ask ourselves what advantage the change would bring to the language itself, and whether the advantage of the change would outweigh the disadvantage; we must never obey the bottomless tastes and the simple frivolity of any particular nation, because then we would bring great disadvantage to the undertaking, and no advantage to anyone. In all cases, which are not absolutely important due to their contents, needless and vain national tastes must remain in this international matter as absolutely silent as personal tastes, if we don't want to cause our undertaking to perish from national or personal argumentativeness; these tastes had to remain silent at the time of the language's creation, and they must continue to remain silent, if obeying them requires breaking up our language.

La Esperantisto, 1891, p. 49-50

Zamenhof:"It goes without saying what would become of our undertaking, if every people, out of sheer vanity, wanted to give it their own character. Our undertaking would become absolutely impossible. And even if it were possible — would the nation thus-flattered even gain anything from that?"

It is quite possible. And it's not out of vanity- it's wanting to be a part of an international effort.

erinja:This is a translation of one of Zamenhof's Lingvaj Respondoj (Language Answers), posted online here

Thanks so much Erinja. I have the Esperanto version of this. It was nice to compare what I've understood with this English version.
I also have both the English and Esperanto versions of Edmond Privat's Vivo De Zamenhof, which is giving me great insight into Zamenhof's life as well as the interesting lingual style of Privat. He wasn't fond of using the definite article (la).

I've heard that the only major change to the original language after its 1887 publication was that the temporal correlatives originally ended in -an rather than -am. The change to -am was made after less than one year because the -an ending caused some confusion with the -a correlatives in the accusative. Is this true or were there other changes?

Ĉiu kapo havas sian opinion.

Friendly.

Mustelvulpo:I've heard that the only major change to the original language after its 1887 publication was that the temporal correlatives originally ended in -an rather than -am. The change to -am was made after less than one year because the -an ending caused some confusion with the -a correlatives in the accusative. Is this true or were there other changes?

This is true, this is the only reform to the language that ever happened.

However, there are some other expressions which were correct once, but which no longer are. For example in another Lingva Respondo Zamenhof said that *tiom homojn is as good as tiom da homoj - same thing for *du milionoj homoj instead of du milionoj da homoj. The forms without da are no longer considered correct.

Where did Zamenhof say that new correlatives such as alies were wrong? I couldn't find it in the online version of Lingvaj Respondoj.

Miland:Where did Zamenhof say that new correlatives such as alies were wrong? I couldn't find it in the online version of Lingvaj Respondoj.

If you ctrl-f for ali-es (with a hyphen), you’ll find it.

darkweasel:

Miland:Where did Zamenhof say that new correlatives such as alies were wrong? I couldn't find it in the online version of Lingvaj Respondoj.

If you ctrl-f for ali-es (with a hyphen), you’ll find it.

Dankon! Yes, Zamenhof regards the practice of using the endings of correlatives as if they were independent suffixes as kontraŭregula.

la karakterizaj finiĝoj de la diritaj vortoj ne povis esti fiksitaj kiel finiĝoj sendependaj kaj ĝeneralaj (ekzemple mi estis devigita preni la finiĝojn e kaj u, kiuj kiel sendependaj finiĝoj havis jam alian sencon), tial mi devis alkroĉi ilin nedisigeble al la radiko. Tiamaniere ilia uzado sendependa (ekzemple en formoj “ali-u”, “ali-es”, “kelk-om”, k.t.p., kiuj per gramatika instinkto estis uzataj de kelkaj Esperantistoj) estas kontraŭregula.

This is the relevant quote.

What Zam is saying is that you can't use -es or -u or -om, as independent and general suffixes (with the meaning they have in the table words). Right.

BUT this doesn't mean that they can't be used to creat new roots by analogy.

Why is this point so difficult to grasp?

Aren't the words studento, prezidento, regento, precisely a group where the -ento is used to convey a similar meaning, but isn't a general suffix and the first parts of the words are existing roots?

Why is the relationship of prezidento to prezidi so different to the relationship between alies and alia.

Who argues that prezidento or regento aren't valid words?

Come on guys, let's be objective. Also read what Zam says carefully.

Edit: I believe that this phenomenon of 'pseudo-suffixes, where a number of Esperanto roots have similar endings and that part of the word conveys more or less the same meaning, has been documented in various Esperantological works.