It's striking how often beginners, but not only beginners, think about ways to eliminate the accusative. It's as if that -N ending is deeply disturbing, for some reason. The early Idistoj weren't beginners at Esperanto; they were experts. Not long ago, there was much discussion of a new particle, na, whose sole purpose would be to act as a preposition after transitive verbs, so it could be used instead of the -N ending. I've been out of touch for a bit, so I don't know what became of that idea. I imagine it has been forgotten, but maybe not. And I admit that I went through my own phase of thinking about this seemingly important "improvement" to Esperanto.

The reasoning seems to be like this:

1. Lots of people, even denaskuloj, make mistakes with -N. Even experienced Esperantists make these mistakes from time to time.

2. The -N ending is not needed. Esperanto could function as well without it.

3. So, getting rid of -N would make Esperanto easier.

4. If Esperanto were easier, more people would learn it, and that would be a Good Thing.

5. So, getting rid of -N would be a Good Thing.

I think statements 1 and 2 are indisputably true, but statement 3 is far from clear. The reason why statement 3 is unclear is that in order to get rid of -N, various other changes would have to be made. These would include stricter word order, and it might be desirable to retain an accusative for pronouns after all, as many languages (such as English) do. One could make SVO word order obligatory, but then one would have to consider whether this would even apply in clauses with relative pronouns. English "I see what you mean" has the clause "what you mean" as the direct object of "I see". But "what" is the direct object of "you mean", so a simple SVO word order would make the sentence "I see you mean what." In Esperanto, without -N and with comparably strict SVO word order, you'd get, Mi vidas tio, vi volas diri kio. Without the tio, which is sometimes omitted in current Esperanto, it would be Mi vidas vi volas diri kio. Is this easier?

We could relax the SVO rule in relative clauses, but then we introduce more complexity into the rules. I'm not convinced that people would make fewer mistakes this way.

I make mistakes with -N. I make mistakes in English too.

Todd, you also forgot to mention that most people decide not to learn Esperanto never even being aware that the -n ending exists; and of the people who start learning and stop, we don't actually know that "It isn't easy enough due to the -n ending" is the reason (and if this is really the case, then why don't all of the constructed languages without an accusative ending enjoy much greater success than Esperanto?)

For me personally, I don't think I ever wanted to get rid of -n, but as a beginner I had the classic exaggerated idea of how fast the language was likely to change and how open it was to reforms, and I did experiment with forms like "na" and "far". I left that behind little by little as my confidence with the language improved and I saw there was no need for that stuff. i accepted -n pretty much from the beginning, although I didn't understand until I spoke the language better how useful -n is, and how it removes ambiguity from such a wide range of different situations.

Incidentally, "na" hasn't died out entirely but you see it so very seldom. I know one or two experienced speakers who use it, but aside from those individuals, I basically never hear it.

It does make me a little sad that many beginners seem so convinced that if only we reformed Esperanto, more people would learn it. I have never heard a student of Spanish complain that Spanish should remove the subjunctive (or whatever) to encourage more people to learn it. It does bother me that Esperanto is held to a different standard, as if it is somehow open to reforms just because of the way it was born.

I don't happen to agree that native speakers of Esperanto just can't get -n. I haven't read the study but the native speaker population is quite small and I have the impression that the study must have necessarily been so small that its results were likely without statistical significance. If you want to play that game, then most native Esperanto speakers I've met speak Esperanto correctly with -n, so does that mean that my anecdotal evidence 'beats' the study's anecdotal evidence? Incidentally, loads of 'natural' languages have an equivalent of the -n ending (which is in many cases more complicated than the way Esperanto does it), and I don't see their native speakers dropping it. Obviously it doesn't present anything particularly alien or difficult to the human brain.

It's not so much -n that is disturbing, but -ojn. To English speakers anyway it isn't terrible pleasing to the ear.

I don't know why the accusative would be a problem, since speakers of Latin and Russian did and do manage it well enough, along with a few other cases. Most major languages just don't utilize an accusative, which may or may not be a problem for a constructed language like Esperanto. I know little of desnaskesperantoj, where can I read up about them?

So words like coin, purloin, groin, loin, join etc must be very painful for English speakers, I suppose? I have never heard that this -oin sound is so bad to listen to.

I'm also not sure where the math comes from for this 'most major languages' statement.

I would venture to say that most European languages use a form of the accusative for their pronouns, so basically you can't speak almost any European language correctly unless you can use the accusative correctly. (so you don't go around saying "I see he" instead of "I see him" ).

It also depends on what you call major. Of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world (Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German) I think Chinese is the only one without the accusative in any form (at least not that I'm aware of, maybe I'm wrong). Some of the languages mark it with a preposition, some use a suffix, some use it only with certain kinds of words (maybe pronouns only, maybe definite nouns only, etc) and not others. But the idea is not foreign to most people in the world, even though when learning Esperanto, they'd of course have to learn Esperanto's way of doing it.

If you expand that to the 15 most spoken language in the world, you have Wu Chinese, Javanese, Korean, French, and Turkish. Wu Chinese doesn't seem to have an accusative and I don't know about Javanese, but the other three use the accusative in some form.

So...if roughly 12 or 13 of the 15 most-spoken languages in the world have some form of the accusative, I'd have to disagree with you that most major languages don't utilize an accusative. But you can disagree, maybe your definition of "major" requires more languages than that.

Hundies19:To English speakers anyway it isn't terrible pleasing to the ear.

That seems to be an overly broad statement, which you may find a bit hard to adequately defend. For example, I can think of at least *one* English speaker who does not find it unpleasant at all. I have no doubt that I could quite easily find others beside myself who are also not bothered in the least by it.

Perhaps the word "some" should be added to the mix, rather than implying that this is some kind of general rule applicable to all English speakers. It may actually apply to only a very small subset.

Apologies, this is not entirely on topic.
I learned English by speaking, reading, and writing.
For me language is a means of communication, not a puzzle to be solved.
I have no idea what all these words such as accusative mean.
Could someone please explain where this "accusative" is found in English, and how it works in English.

It also depends on what you call major. Of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world (Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German) I think Chinese is the only one without the accusative in any form (at least not that I'm aware of, maybe I'm wrong). Some of the languages mark it with a preposition, some use a suffix, some use it only with certain kinds of words (maybe pronouns only, maybe definite nouns only, etc) and not others. But the idea is not foreign to most people in the world, even though when learning Esperanto, they'd of course have to learn Esperanto's way of doing it.

If you expand that to the 15 most spoken language in the world, you have Wu Chinese, Javanese, Korean, French, and Turkish. Wu Chinese doesn't seem to have an accusative and I don't know about Javanese, but the other three use the accusative in some form.

So...if roughly 12 or 13 of the 15 most-spoken languages in the world have some form of the accusative, I'd have to disagree with you that most major languages don't utilize an accusative. But you can disagree, maybe your definition of "major" requires more languages than that.

One of the earliest Iranian linguist and esperantist (A. Kasravi) some 70 years back claimed that Persian is the most resembling language to Esperanto gramatically (or the most regular language next to Espranto). In the first instance it was hard for me to beleave, but gradually as I enhance my Esperanto I am getting more and more convinced.
One of stricking similarity between these two languages is the accusitive case. -n ending in Esperanto is exactly equivalent to “râ” case marker in Persian. Any noun followed by “râ” is accusative regardless of its position in the sentence. (In Persian the word order is as flexible as in Esperanto, though there is a prefrential one). All the indirect objects are accompanied by a proposition. There is no single excetion to this rule.

The difference beween 'na' and 'far' is that the former is an abomination and the latter has a long history of usage and is useful - la akcepto de la urbestro far la kongresanoj; la akcepto de la kongresanoj far la urbestro.

On the other hand, mi sendis al vi na £3, serves no purpose, except to make one wonder whether this means the same as mi sendis al vi £3.

It is no more difficult to understand Zamenhof renkontis Orlov as Zamenhof meeting Orlov than it is to understand that Leono estas besto does not mean an animal is a lion, or that mi ne povas fari tion is different to mi povas ne fari tion.

Esperanto has word order rules, and when the object would not be marked with 'n', a word order rule takes over.

If we introduce 'na' to explicitly mark an object every time, are we then to say 'Mi ne komprenas na kio estas la diferenco'? Would this then legitimise mi ne komprenas na la diferenco estas kio? After all, la principle argument of the na-maniuloj is the preservation of word order freedom (which is myth anyway).

Quotes from Todd:
1. Lots of people, even denaskuloj, make mistakes with -N. Even experienced Esperantists make these mistakes from time to time.

2. The -N ending is not needed. Esperanto could function as well without it.

Quote from Bemused:
For me language is a means of communication, not a puzzle to be solved.

I totally agree with this statement.
Although the accusative may exist in natural languages, I see no reason why Zamenhof had to introduce this added difficulty in his constructed language. Simply, I do not understand.

Amike.

erinja:Todd, you also forgot to mention that most people decide not to learn Esperanto never even being aware that the -n ending exists; and of the people who start learning and stop, we don't actually know that "It isn't easy enough due to the -n ending" is the reason (and if this is really the case, then why don't all of the constructed languages without an accusative ending enjoy much greater success than Esperanto?)

That's true. I think there are people who do give up on Esperanto because they can't master details of the grammar, but I also think that all or most of these people are unable to cope with grammar in general, not just this or that detail. If a language isn't a grammatical copy of their native language (and it never is), they just don't get it.

I've seen people who never, ever get that it's possible to convey the present tense in another language without literally translating the English "I am X-ing" progressive form. We all struggle to break out of the bonds of our native language, but some people seem just about incapable of it. I hate to be so pessimistic, but that's my experience.

It does make me a little sad that many beginners seem so convinced that if only we reformed Esperanto, more people would learn it. I have never heard a student of Spanish complain that Spanish should remove the subjunctive (or whatever) to encourage more people to learn it. It does bother me that Esperanto is held to a different standard, as if it is somehow open to reforms just because of the way it was born.

Well, I wish they'd get rid of the rule in Spanish where you have to use 'a' before a direct object only if it's a person. That drives me crazy!

I don't happen to agree that native speakers of Esperanto just can't get -n. I haven't read the study but the native speaker population is quite small and I have the impression that the study must have necessarily been so small that its results were likely without statistical significance.

Oh, I wasn't claiming they can't get -N, only that they, like all of us, sometimes make mistakes with it. Native speakers can be careless with the language, just like anyone else. Plenty of native English speakers say "Me and my friend went out", but that doesn't mean they don't get 'I'; they're just comfortable with the bad grammar. I don't imagine native Esperanto speakers are any different.

If you want to play that game, then most native Esperanto speakers I've met speak Esperanto correctly with -n, so does that mean that my anecdotal evidence 'beats' the study's anecdotal evidence?

I think it shows that, despite the fact that L1 and L2 Esperanto speakers do sometimes make mistakes with -N, it doesn't present any huge problem for most.