Hi all
I have been crazy about languages since the beggining, my ultimate objective is to learn this one language that has deep cultural roots in my family, English is so far the only language I can fully understand, but it does run deep in my blood.
and I hear English is not sufficient as a international language either!
so I really gotta start learning languages!
I found Esperanto it seemed like a simple and snazzy language for a international language, but when I heard that the word for "Father" and "Mother" were "Patro" and Patrino" I was put off for awhile, until I realized that saying "mouse" and then saying "mice" instead of "mouses" was just as unnatural (I still think Patrosso and Matrino would have been better).
and also I heard that in the Esperanto world they do not fuss about "accents" like they do In the english speaking world and my accent is a bit different to other peoples and changing my accent would destroy any value english ever had to me as a ethnic language. I plan to learn Esperanto as a neutral international language along with my true ethnic language.

I am new to Esperanto and I am having trouble with "abverbs" cause they don't all end with "e".

Dankon

Welcome to Esperanto, and to the forum!

I myself think it would be nice if all the adverbs ended with "e", and don't really know why they don't. But, with practice, one learns them okay.

Your response to "patro" and "patrino" sounds similar to my reaction to finding that the words for "right" and "left" are "dekstra" and "maldekstra". That "left" would not have its own root seems to me like an unusually blatant example of how the general dextrocentricity of the world influences language...

But in any language, there will be things you like and things you would rather were different; it's just a matter of whether the language as a whole, overall, seems "good enough" to be worth learning. And I think that, overall, Esperanto is the best language I know of! It's more regular, and also allows a lot of freedom in ways of expressing one's ideas; for example, there is often an option of whether to use an adverb or a prepositional phrase ("Ni interparolis Esperante" and "Ni interparolis en Esperanto" both mean the same thing). The amazing variety of ways one can convey ideas using the Esperanto word elements is one of my favorite things about it.

I've only been speaking Esperanto for about a year and a month, but if there's any way I can help you, I'd be glad to!

There is the old saying, "One person's meat is another person's poison." I have been around the realm of constructed international auxiliary languages (conIALs) for many, many years, and I have not seen a single one which has not been criticised by somebody over this or that feature of each one. That is just the way it is. As Christa627 pointed out, Esperanto is "good enough."

Yes, if I had been Zamenhof, I would have done this and that differently. If I had been Gode, I would have done this and that differently in IALA Interlingua. Ido has some features I think "should have" been done differently. I am familiar with such more or less a priori languages as Suma, Sona, Oz, Ruggles's Universal Language (1829), and Ro. Every one of them is open to some kind of criticism. (The only one I myself have not adversely criticised has been Peano's original Latino sine Flexione, but I do not delude myself that it has a snowball's chance in hell of revival and widespread success.)

The point is that there now is and probably never will be any constructed international auxiliary language which somebody, somewhere, at some time will not criticise on some points. That is just the way it is. However, rather than fall into endless tinkering, at some time we must just set aside our objections and use something. I suggest that most of the conIALs are in fact more or less usable, so as Mario Pei pointed out in his One Language for the World, what is important is that something be accepted and taught to the world's children, not that it be "perfect" (a notion which cannot even be defined well).

To be honest, Esperanto is not my personal favorite conIAL, but that is somewhat beside the point. What works? (Yes, E-o works.) What has the greatest likelihood of greater use (other than English, the most widespread international auxiliary language in the history of the planet -- it just is not a constructed one)?

Welcome. I think Esperanto is so easy. I spent years and years trying to learn Arabic. I am still trying but it probably will never happen. I have been studying Esperanto for less than a year and I can read it with pretty good fluency already.

Why does Patrosso and Matrino make any more sense...? I think it should be like "virpatro" (male parent) but other than that I don't fuss about the ending. I don't think that there is any big difference in "mother" and "father", it's literally just the biological gender of the person, so I don't think that they should have different root words.

More adverbs can end in e, I thought. I thought it was optional to say ex. preskaŭe and not just preskaŭ. I've seen some people do it anyway and there are some forms in my (older) dictionary that are like that so I thought it was okay to do.

It seems there is another word for "left", which is "liva", but I don't know how many people use it and I HAVE seen people explicitly complain about the word (due to "we don't need even more words in Esperanto, maldekstra is fine enough, it's difficult enough with vocabulary for those of us learning who don't know any language that EO was derived from you know" ). But, well, when I first started learning I was irritated that "farm" had a unique word lol (in Swedish it's kind of like "land-(habitual)-use"...)

What I find weird though is that there aren't more courtesy words, ex. how do I translate someone speaking super politely? Haha. I understand that stuff like that isn't needed in a language where everyone is supposed to be equal, but it would come in handy for translations.

marbuljon:I don't think that there is such a big difference in "mother" and "father" that they should have a different root word.

Maybe, but then one should not derive the root from a word, which really addresses a male person and the Latin word "pater" means only "father" and not "parent".

Fenris_kcf:Maybe, but then one should not derive the root from a word, which really addresses a male person and the Latin word "pater" means only "father" and not "parent".

English takes Latin/foreign words and changes their meanings all the time, so I guess I don't see the problem LOL

Fenris_kcf:

marbuljon:I don't think that there is such a big difference in "mother" and "father" that they should have a different root word.

Maybe, but then one should not derive the root from a word, which really addresses a male person and the Latin word "pater" means only "father" and not "parent".

Isn't it the same with "frato"?

marbuljon:It seems there is another word for "left", which is "liva", but I don't know how many people use it and I HAVE seen people explicitly complain about the word

Yeah, I use that word in my personal writing (journal, etc.), but if I talk about it on the forum I risk getting get barked at...

But the Firefox spell-checker likes it just fine! Not that it's any authority on the matter.

Christa627:

marbuljon:It seems there is another word for "left", which is "liva", but I don't know how many people use it and I HAVE seen people explicitly complain about the word

Yeah, I use that word in my personal writing (journal, etc.), but if I talk about it on the forum I risk getting get barked at...

But the Firefox spell-checker likes it just fine! Not that it's any authority on the matter.

I agree with the use of liva. If Esperanto is ever widely spoken, it will at times have to be used in situations where instructions must be given in a noisy environment. Imagine giving the following instructions to a worker in a noisy factory with large machines that have the potential to cause serious injury: "To shut off this machine in an emergency, hit the button on the non-right." There is a good possibility of being misunderstood, possibly with disastrous results. It seems to me that the same principle applies to maldekstra.