Can adverbs be overused? Take the following example:
Estas ege danĝere, aparte nokte. (It is extremely dangerous, especially at night.)

So far as I know, this is grammatically correct, yet 4 of the 5 words in the sentence are adverbs. Is this good usage? Should it be reworded, perhaps changed to include more parts of speech? Perhaps:
Tio estas ege danĝera, aparte dum la nokto.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Do you mean that nighttime in general is dangerous or are you referring to a specific activity that is implied and would be understood by the listener? If it's the latter, "Danĝere" would become "danĝera" if you name the activity, for example- La naĝado en la oceano estas danĝera, aparte nokte. If you don't like too many adverbs, you could state it that way or say "dum la nokto" or make other adjustments.

However, to me the sentence is fine as it is.

Mustelvulpo:Do you mean that nighttime in general is dangerous or are you referring to a specific activity that is implied and would be understood by the listener? If it's the latter, "Danĝere" would become "danĝera" if you name the activity, for example- La naĝado en la oceano estas danĝera, aparte nokte. If you don't like too many adverbs, you could state it that way or say "dum la nokto" or make other adjustments.

However, to me the sentence is fine as it is.

It's not that I have a problem with adverbs. I don't. I'm just trying to find out if too many adverbs in a sentence is considered bad usage by the E-o community. If it is questionable, then, as you say, I can reconstruct the sentence. Thanks for your response.

apok2:Can adverbs be overused? Take the following example:
Estas ege danĝere, aparte nokte. (It is extremely dangerous, especially at night.)

So far as I know, this is grammatically correct, yet 4 of the 5 words in the sentence are adverbs. Is this good usage?

I see no problem with that sentence, it is entirely comprehensible.

In my quest (if it can be called that) to learn Esperanto, I joined the Lernu website. I have access to a lot of E-o learning material so I didn't join for Lernu's course material so much as for access to Lernu's forum. A large percentage of the posts on the forum are simply 'sensencaĵo' -- sorry, but you all know that as well as I do -- but there is also much of value. The most valuable resource is being able to ask for help from the far-more-proficient E-o speakers on this site. Lernu's little vortaro is a gem, also.

I like the Esperanto language but, contrary to what many of you seem to think, Esperanto is NOT an easy language. If you think it is, then ask yourself why there are so many questions relating to grammar and usage being posted here. For the newbie, E-o seems to be a marvelously simple idea. But get a few miles under your feet and you see that what seemed so simple at first can actually be rather treacherous. So the somewhat experienced newbie is faced with the fact that E-o grammar and E-o usage are two different things. Esperanto was developed for speakers of all languages and there is the necessity to keep change and especially slang to a minimum. Esperanto may be a living language but it has an extremely sluggish 'metabolism'.

So..., the necessity to ask questions about grammar and usage is real. This was the basis for my question about the overuse of adverbs. There are, as you all know, eight parts of speech. When a five-word sentence contains one verb form and four adverbs and that sentence is grammatically correct, I see no problem with questioning "usage." And sure, I know that the sentence can be 'reconstructed' to avoid most of those adverbs.

I try to blog for my own personal benefit. But the difficulty with that is that you don't get feedback. Take the following sentence: "If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world." How in the world do you express "trying to get to heaven." Ĉielo is the word for both sky and heaven, but doesn't seem to fit in this situation. So the budding young Esperantist has to guess. Here's my guess: "Se vi estas kristano, vi ne estas civitano de tiu ĉi mondo kiu penas atingi la regno de Dio; anstataŭe vi estas civitano de tiu ĉiela regno, vojaĝanta tra tiu ĉi mondo." How far off the mark am I? I welcome the feedback.

Hopefully I've shown that even if my question about adverbs being overused was "stulta," I at least had a valid reason for asking it. Hopefully you don't still think of me as being a 'stultulo.' Thanks again.

You did absolutely no wrong asking. More stupid is the one who doesn't ask.

Did you mean "sensencaĵo"?

Oijos:You did absolutely no wrong asking. More stupid is the one who doesn't ask.

Did you mean "sensencaĵo"?

Ooops, you're right. I corrected it. Thanks.

apok2:Hopefully you don't still think of me as being a 'stultulo.'

Certainly not. Your question was not stupid at all.

As a matter of fact, I feel pretty much the same way. I love Esperanto. And I believe its simplicity is only deceptive. If assimilating the basics of Esperanto is not too hard, I find that becoming proficient is another matter entirely, e.g. acquiring a sovereign command of E-o's vortfarado. But if Esperanto is to be able to express the same kind of subtleties, nuances and shades of meaning the "ethnic" languages do, one can't expect it to be much easier than the "ethnic" languages -- only more regular. And in a way, it's its complexity and flexibility that truly fascinate(d) me and convinced me to learn the language in the first place.

Just like you, I joined Lernu in the hope to learn from people speaking Esperanto better than I do. And perhaps some think my grammatical questions are tedious and/or uninteresting. But then again no one is obliged to read my posts -- that's the beauty of the Internet

So by all means go on posting. I for one might learn from your questions.

Okay, here for me is the problem in a nut shell. Language is not mathematics, will never be and should not be. Be even in mathematics there are many means to an end. Just look at how different nationalities do arithmatic! (Haitian division certainly seems more logical to me than the way that Anglo-Americans do it - I am writing in local Florida jargon, so Anglo-Americans are those who only speak English for us).
Nope, my friends, language is not math - it is a reflection of thought and as you may all well have guessed philosophers still don't understand thought - now we are looking back around 2,500 or more years of thinking about thought.
And the part about parts of speech is a European invention. Take a look at a modern Hawaiian grammar - if possible in the language itself (Ka Olelo Hawai'i). "Adjectives" become verbs and suddenly "words" crop up that defy definition in a Latinist manner. Then we have Chinese that gets along with a series of roots - much like Esperanto - that euro-languages call "words". Esperanto does a great job of reflecting both the Hawaiian (Polynesian) challenge and the Mandarine one.
I think that the complexities arise when one tries to use one's first language (linguists jargonly call this L1) in order to "reason" in L2 (linguistic slang for your second language). Turkish and Japanese (probably Korean as well - I will ask about this the next time I order my kimchi in Minji's Cafe) get by without defnite articles and auxiliary verbs but wouldn't miss a case marker for the life of the language. Now, we do pretty nicely without case markers and Espo-neophytes quander over non-esperanto nouns (and I suppose adjectives) [here I am speaking useagewise, since almost all roots can be slipped from noun to verb to adverb, etc. by adding the appropriate -o, -a, -e, -i, etc.] and whether we then need a preposition (which in this case becomes a case marker) or not.
So there we have the human mind that does know Latin and its babies trying to express itself with sounds and utterances that maybe words or what the Chinese call "ci" which really were words at one time but have shed that slot as Chinese culture became more nuanced and had to modify the "words" (ci) by adding them together to produce a nuanced meaning - so that today there are very few single ci standing around - they have joined into couples or even group sex of three or four (or more - yes, this just proves how slippery the slope as the conservative US Protestants warn us - today a single ci like mei (feminine beauty) joins guo (realm, country, kingdom) to produce meiguo (American) and then then get in bed with this ren guy - hmmm - reader discretion is advised - to make meiguoren (American person). And why can esperanto allow us this luxury on such a broad basis - well, because we don't have to deal with first, second, third, and fourth conjugations, declensions and grammatical gender. Welcome to the absurd world of the human brain. Sit down and have a drink!

Well (the 'nu!' kind, not the 'puto' kind)! It's 6 a.m. and I'm sitting here sipping on a hot cuppa Joe (that's a hot cup of coffee for the non-English speakers), and mulling, pondering and ruminating over the words of wisdom that you just sent my way. I think that in a very round-a-bout and circum-ambulatory way you just informed me that I shouldn't overly concern myself over the number of adverbs a sentence contains and that doing so falls within the category of being a "tempest in a teacup." Very well, my professor, I accept the rebuke. However, I noticed that you didn't grade my translation attempt. I want you to know that I agonized over that and believe that it deserves your closest scrutiny. Aloha, hasta la vista and ĝis la revido to you this fine Sunday morning.