It is possible to say: "La domo staras tie kie iam staris stacidomo" and "la arbo staras meze de la kampo", etc. even though English might idiomatically avoid those expressions sometimes - German uses them more often and Spanish almost exculsively. It would be interesting to know if Esperanto-speakers prefer to say "Mi venis tuj" or "Mi iras tuj" when they are talking to someone on the phone and telling that person that they (the E-speakers) are going to the house of the person spoken to. The Germanic languages prefer "I am coming over right now" "Ich komme sofort vorbei" or "Jeg komer med en gang" whereas Romance languages prefer "Eu vou", "Yo voy", etc.

sudanglo:The linguists error again! - treating Esperanto as though it were a national language.

You simply can't have a rule in Esperanto that a particular root be used in a particular part of speech. This undermines the simplicity of Esperanto and its flexibility.

It may certainly be alright if you want to speak a national language like the natives to recommend that you only use a particular word as a verb or a noun, or in certain contexts. But such recommendations have little place with regard to Esperanto.

Just think of the complexity that this imports.

Anyway to equate disipi with malsxpari just because in some contexts the two words may have the same translation in English (ie waste) is to ignore the actual difference in meaning.

La varmdisipaj turoj of a power station are not there to malsxpari the heat.

It's not same meaning, but different usage. It's different meaning. The same goes for the difference between danki por and danki pro.

Yes, in English you have to say fast food' and not 'quick food'. You have to learn the collocation. But Esperanto is different.

Esperanto is susceptible to the same processes that shape natural languages, at the moment, it is simply too young for those affects to be apperent to anyone other than the linguist (or people willing to do a lot of research and analysis). In fact, because Esperanto allows its users a great deal of creativity that affect will be even greater. If Esperanto continues to evolve and its number of speakers grow as well, then it will become more and more irregular and idiomatic like natural languages. No grammar rules or opinions can stop evolution. I know many Esperanto speakers cling to this delusion that Esperanto is somehow immuned to evolution because they want it to stay relatively regular and easy to learn but that just isn't how living languages work, contructed or otherwise. It's okay for things to change, you can still enjoy Esperanto even if it becomes less regular and more idiomatic. The only languages that don't change are dead ones, and that's okay.

captainzhang: I know many Esperanto speakers cling to this delusion that Esperanto is somehow immuned to evolution because they want it to stay relatively regular and easy to learn but that just isn't how living languages work, contructed or otherwise. It's okay for things to change, you can still enjoy Esperanto even if it becomes less regular and more idiomatic. The only languages that don't change are dead ones, and that's okay.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Icelandic is an example of a language that has been very resistant to change over hundreds of years. The other thing is that the position of Esperanto in the "language ecology" is very different from most other languages: it exists in a small and very dispersed community right across the world. The language is curated by that community and I believe it is this feature that will continue to make Eo resistant to change.

I know many Esperanto speakers cling to this delusion that Esperanto is somehow immune to evolution because they want it to stay relatively regular and easy

The vanity of linguists who think that because something is observed in national languages it must be observable in Esperanto.

You have to distinguish between two types of evolution.

Changes that undermine the systematicity of the language, or make the language more difficult to learn, and changes that don't.

Of the latter type of evolution Esperanto has had plenty. Do you think that Esperanto was born fully formed equivalent to what it is today. Of course, not.

No grammar rules or opinions can stop evolution

Grammar rules are just post hoc descriptions - let's leave them to one side. But opinions do affect evolution.

Only when the purpose of Esperanto is no longer felt by the majority of its speakers will the language have a chance to evolve in the higgledy-piggledy way of national languages.

In order to have a well-founded linguistic opinion or theory about the likely future development of Esperanto you properly need at least several instances of cases of the evolution experienced by constructed languages. Well, you don't have that.

Esperanto is unique. It is the only fully artificial (or constructed) language that has acquired a substantial literature and body of speakers over an historical period, and has been used in an international environment.

So, if you want a theory of the likely evolution of a constructed language that exists for facilitating international communication among adults who have not acquired the language from birth, then your best bet is to study what has happened during the 125 years of evolution of Esperanto.

Continued../

But even if you develop your theory by studying Esperanto, its validity could be undermined by the appearance of a second constructed international language which demonstrated different properties in its evolution over a comparable period. Of course, pigs might fly!

Your theory would be open to the all swans are white fallacy.

It would be interesting to know if Esperanto-speakers prefer to say "Mi venis tuj" or "Mi iras tuj" when they are talking to someone on the phone and telling that person that they (the E-speakers) are going to the house of the person spoken to

Well, Robb, if you aren't satisfied with the definitions of veni and iri given in NPIV, you can easily discover the usage by searching the Tekstaro with the following formulae.

\bir\VF tuj

\bven\VF tuj

whereas Romance languages prefer "Eu vou", "Yo voy", etc.

French speakers say, as I understand it, J'arrive (mi alvenas) and not j'y vais (mi iras) in the circumstances you describe.

If the other party said 'Venu tuj' and heard mi reply 'Mi iras', they would rightly wonder where I was going, in my opinion.

richardhall:

captainzhang: I know many Esperanto speakers cling to this delusion that Esperanto is somehow immuned to evolution because they want it to stay relatively regular and easy to learn but that just isn't how living languages work, contructed or otherwise. It's okay for things to change, you can still enjoy Esperanto even if it becomes less regular and more idiomatic. The only languages that don't change are dead ones, and that's okay.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Icelandic is an example of a language that has been very resistant to change over hundreds of years. The other thing is that the position of Esperanto in the "language ecology" is very different from most other languages: it exists in a small and very dispersed community right across the world. The language is curated by that community and I believe it is this feature that will continue to make Eo resistant to change.

Icelanders and their language have been isolated from the world for most of their existence, so that's a bad example, while Esperanto would actually be the polar opposite in the future since it will be exposed to everyone in the world if it's adopted as a international language.

sudanglo:

I know many Esperanto speakers cling to this delusion that Esperanto is somehow immune to evolution because they want it to stay relatively regular and easy

The vanity of linguists who think that because something is observed in national languages it must be observable in Esperanto.

You have to distinguish between two types of evolution.

Changes that undermine the systematicity of the language, or make the language more difficult to learn, and changes that don't.

Of the latter type of evolution Esperanto has had plenty. Do you think that Esperanto was born fully formed equivalent to what it is today. Of course, not.

No grammar rules or opinions can stop evolution

Grammar rules are just post hoc descriptions - let's leave them to one side. But opinions do affect evolution.

Only when the purpose of Esperanto is no longer felt by the majority of its speakers will the language have a chance to evolve in the higgledy-piggledy way of national languages.

In order to have a well-founded linguistic opinion or theory about the likely future development of Esperanto you properly need at least several instances of cases of the evolution experienced by constructed languages. Well, you don't have that.

Esperanto is unique. It is the only fully artificial (or constructed) language that has acquired a substantial literature and body of speakers over an historical period, and has been used in an international environment.

So, if you want a theory of the likely evolution of a constructed language that exists for facilitating international communication among adults who have not acquired the language from birth, then your best bet is to study what has happened during the 125 years of evolution of Esperanto.

You keep saying "Esperanto is unique" but I don't see any evidence for that. Of course Esperanto is a conlang but even that isn't unique.

captainzhang:Icelanders and their language have been isolated from the world for most of their existence, so that's a bad example, while Esperanto would actually be the polar opposite in the future since it will be exposed to everyone in the world if it's adopted as a international language.

It's true that Icelandic has been isolated, but isolation alone surely doesn't explain it's resistance to change. Different english-language communities were pretty-well isolated from one another, and evolution of the language began to take different paths. That's why Americans blush when Britons talk about having a fag, and Britons snigger when Americans refer to a fanny pack. It's precisely Esperanto's role as an international auxiliary language which I believe will bolster its resistance to change.

I could, of course, be wrong.

richardhall:It's true that Icelandic has been isolated, but isolation alone surely doesn't explain it's resistance to change.

Icelandic is the language maximally close to the Old Norse (the language of ancient vikings and sagas), and it seems that they make all the efforts in order that it remain so. For example, they avoid borrowing international words, instead they compose new words of native Icelandic lexemes. I heard that instead of the word "television" they use an Icelandic word meaning something like "thrower of pictures".