nornen:I tried to say, that your mother tongue will always influence your way of expressing yourself in any language.

In conversation, that way it also stipulates some native speaker to question its native language. Why some non-native should absorbe bad linguistic habits of natives? I.e. for German natives it sounds very strange that often non-natives put verb directly behind subject. But its much more efficiently than how German natives do it by placing verb on the end of some sentence.

Furthermore, somewhat off-topic: Regarding English, French, Islandic. Why there are no official efforts to make their languages more phonetic by establishing different writing system? Do they use their languages spoken only? Mostly children first learn to speak, later to write. To make them learn to write non-phonetic is some type of traditional non-sense. Thats probably why I never will reach native level of English language. I'm also not keen of to this because I very much like more or less phonetic character of my native language German. (Yes, I know German is not full phonetic language).

Yes, your last comment / question is a little off-topic but perhaps we can allow it. I cannot speak knowledgeably about Icelandic, for example, but I do have some reading knowledge of French, at least. Concerning English, which is my native language (General American dialect), it is well known that the basic forms of English orthography were more or less established in royal chanceries many centuries ago, and printers beginning in the fifteenth century then continued the fixing. However, the pronunciation of English changed drastically since those early days. Many sounds dropped out of words (as they did also in French), and the Great Vowel Shift (still not fully explained) happened. But the spelling did not change much, so that English now has a notoriously poor fit between pronunciation and spelling. (French is not so good, either.)

There have been many attempts to regularize English spelling. One problem, however, is whose English? English pronunciation varies widely around the world in the different "accents" and dialects, although we educated native speakers can usually understand one another. Nevertheless, whose dialect should be chosen as the standard for spelling? For example, in my dialect post-vocalic is strongly pronounced, but in some dialects is it missing. Should it be represented in spelling or not? Words spelled without it would seem very, very strange to me, and so on.

This is one of the advantages of Esperanto (to come back to the forum). Yes, undoubtedly speakers from around the world may tend to "pull" their E-o pronunciation in the direction of their native tongues, but nevertheless there is a correspondence between spelling and specified phonemes. This is one of the great advantages of the language.

sudanglo:

The "copying" of structures of one's mother tongue into foreign languages, decreases with the proficiency level, but is never eradicated

Simple question, Nornen. What mother tongue intrusions can we find in the writings of Zamenhof?

Most of the vocabulary, most of the grammar and most of the pragmatics. But as it was Zamenhof, who invented and defined the whole thing, his usage is ipso facto the very definition of Esperanto and doesn't count as intrusions. It is a posteriori after all.

Is "elten/" a root or is it composed of "el'ten/"?
If the latter is the case, how do you get to "endure" starting with "out-hold" [1]?

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[1] That is, if you are not German or speak a language which uses a similar pattern as aushalten.

nornen:

kaŝperanto:If it is a fixed phrase then the problem lies not with Esperanto but with the speakers' learning of Esperanto and its correct usage.

Obviously the problem doesn't lie with Esperanto, and neither with Spanish. The problem lies with bad Esperanto and the fact that we all as beginners are prone to copy known things into foreign languages. My point was that another Spanish speaker could autocorrect this sentence and get the meaning, while for an English speaker it is unimaginable that one could mix up "never" with "ever".

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Definition of the Spanish Royal Academy concerning jamás:

RAE:jamás
1. never
2. always
3. ever

They define "nunca" as exclusively "neniam", but according to my personal experience, both are (at least here) interchangeable.

I would stand by my assertion that it is at least an effective fixed phrase. It is essentially the same as saying that in language X we use the same word for left as for right. If you told your wife that another woman "was the most beautiful woman I have never slept with" is she going to divorce you or applaud your willpower?

This is most certainly a peculiarity I would say is language specific and newbie specific, if only since the definition for "neniam" is "en neniu tempo", which is not even close to "iam" or "cxiam". It seems kind of like the English word "irregardless", which is incorrect but used often enough that it is accepted as a word. It contains a double negative, and its meaning is not able to be reasoned from the meaning of its constituent roots/affixes. I'm not saying Spanish is in any way "wrong".

kaŝperanto:I would stand by my assertion that it is at least an effective fixed phrase. It is essentially the same as saying that in language X we use the same word for left as for right. If you told your wife that another woman "was the most beautiful woman I have never slept with" is she going to divorce you or applaud your willpower?

She would kill me and no mistake.

kaŝperanto:This is most certainly a peculiarity I would say is language specific and newbie specific, if only since the definition for "neniam" is "en neniu tempo", which is not even close to "iam" or "cxiam".

Surely this is newbie specific. I was just trying to give an example of an error, which can be corrected by other native speakers, but is uncorrectable by speakers of other languages. (In the context that there isn't a direct connection between correctness and understandability (if such a word exists), and that if two speakers speak the same natural language, they will have an easier time figuring out what the other is saying in bad Esperanto)
It is somewhat of a quirk in Spanish, but you have to accept language such as they are. Same thing happens in my opinion between German "ich muss - ich muss nicht" and English "I must - I must not". This still gives me the occational headache even after thirty years. Even in Esperanto I catch myself sometimes wondering whether "mi ne devas" is English "I must not" or German "Ich muss nicht".
Both ways of negation are logical in their own way, but unfortunately orthogonally opposed.

spreecamper:
Furthermore, somewhat off-topic: Regarding English, French, Islandic. Why there are no official efforts to make their languages more phonetic by establishing different writing system? .

-Firstly, thair iz noe " Akkaddemi ov English" or other Offissial Boddi in English that kud make such ann effort.

-Sekondly, even if thair woz such an organnization, it wud bee ignored.
Dhe reaktion wud bee "It's my bloody language, who do you think you are to tell me how to spell it.".

-Thirdli, dhair iz noe korrekt or inkorrekt way tue spell anni word. Dhair are only jennerralli aksepted wayz tue spell. Dhairfor noboddi kan tell yue that yue hav spelled annithing inkorrektli, Dhey kan onli say dhat yur spelling iz unnuzual.

Note:
1) What is written above is consistent with the rules of English spelling, which demonstrates how often those "rules" have exceptions
2) The use of dh is recommended in the BBC pronunciation guide as a way to differentiate dh as in this from th as in thing.

nornen:

kaŝperanto:I would stand by my assertion that it is at least an effective fixed phrase. It is essentially the same as saying that in language X we use the same word for left as for right. If you told your wife that another woman "was the most beautiful woman I have never slept with" is she going to divorce you or applaud your willpower?

She would kill me and no mistake.

That brings up the question as to whether or not she is jealous enough to kill you for pointing out that another woman is beautiful.

nornen:

kaŝperanto:This is most certainly a peculiarity I would say is language specific and newbie specific, if only since the definition for "neniam" is "en neniu tempo", which is not even close to "iam" or "cxiam".

Surely this is newbie specific. I was just trying to give an example of an error, which can be corrected by other native speakers, but is uncorrectable by speakers of other languages. (In the context that there isn't a direct connection between correctness and understandability (if such a word exists), and that if two speakers speak the same natural language, they will have an easier time figuring out what the other is saying in bad Esperanto)
...

I understand, and I agree that there will always be some biases toward certain structures/etc., but in fluent/expert speakers these will be as small as the natural differences between two native speakers in their native language.

I can once again bring up my programmer's analogy using the C language. For the "=" vs "==" mixup, two beginners are likely to understand "if (x = y)" as "If x is equal to y", even though it really means "If the result of putting y into x is true".

nornen:

sudanglo:

The "copying" of structures of one's mother tongue into foreign languages, decreases with the proficiency level, but is never eradicated

Simple question, Nornen. What mother tongue intrusions can we find in the writings of Zamenhof?

Most of the vocabulary, most of the grammar and most of the pragmatics. But as it was Zamenhof, who invented and defined the whole thing, his usage is ipso facto the very definition of Esperanto and doesn't count as intrusions. It is a posteriori after all.

Uh... yeah. Why else would we be stuck saying antaŭ ol and post kiam, when it would be equally or more logical to just say antaŭ and post, or at least either antaŭ kiam and post kiam or antaŭ ol and post ol. I read that that is due to Slavic language influence. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As for reforming English spelling, it's been tried. In fact, there have probably been about as many attempts to reform English spelling as there are Reformed Esperanto projects. And they fail for the same reason. Esperanto is a language currently actively used by a sizeable number of people (regardless of what all my friends say). So, someone can go on and on about how it would be better like this or like that, but it won't be effective because the chances of getting everyone who speaks it to agree with the idea is basically nil. With English we have the same issue, but on an even bigger scale. People spell it the way they spell it, and pretty much nobody is going to listen to some fringy person insisting they spell it differently. The closest thing to success in this area that I know of is Noah Webster's dictionary, which is the primary reason why Americans spell things differently from other English speakers to this day.

nornen: I have repeatedly experienced in RL, that Spanish speaking beginners of foreign languages (mostly English) tend to translate Spanish "El carro más grande que nunca he visto." as "The biggest car I have never seen." and not as "The biggest car I have ever seen.". In Spanish "nunca" and "jamás" mean both never and ever.
If this happens translating from Spanish to English it might as well happen translating to Esperanto, which would yield a wrong "kiun mi neniam veturigis" instead of the correct "kiun mi iam veturigis".

I actually did see something similar to this recently. It was an Esperanto translation of the song "Happy Christmas," and had the words

Esperu ni fide,
Sen nenia tim'.

In my understanding, "sen nenia tim'" would mean the same as "kun ĉia tim'" which is obviously not what is meant. I think the translator was Brazilian, but I'm not totally sure. But I think there is similarity between Portuguese and Spanish, so that might have something to do with the translation error.

Christa627:

nornen: I have repeatedly experienced in RL, that Spanish speaking beginners of foreign languages (mostly English) tend to translate Spanish "El carro más grande que nunca he visto." as "The biggest car I have never seen." and not as "The biggest car I have ever seen.". In Spanish "nunca" and "jamás" mean both never and ever.
If this happens translating from Spanish to English it might as well happen translating to Esperanto, which would yield a wrong "kiun mi neniam veturigis" instead of the correct "kiun mi iam veturigis".

I actually did see something similar to this recently. It was an Esperanto translation of the song "Happy Christmas," and had the words

Esperu ni fide,
Sen nenia tim'.

In my understanding, "sen nenia tim'" would mean the same as "kun ĉia tim'" which is obviously not what is meant. I think the translator was Brazilian, but I'm not totally sure. But I think there is similarity between Portuguese and Spanish, so that might have something to do with the translation error.

Very well spotted. And it shows again how much our native tongues influence our capacity to interpret Esperanto (be it bad, or be it good). I failed to spot the mistake when I read it the first time, automatically matching "sen nenia tim'" to Spanish "sin ningún miedo". Only when you pointed out the strangeness of this construction, I managed to spot the flaw. For example Spanish "ningún problema" means "no problem" and "sin ningún problema" means "without any problem", while "*con ningún problema" (lit: "with no problem" ) doesn't even exist.

So not only means "jamás" both neniam and iam, but also "ningún" means both neniu and iu.