The first unit of the US Foreign Service Institute's crash course in Serbo-Croatian states:

Students should also be reminded that language is arbitrary. Time should not be wasted in discussions of why Serbo-Croatian expresses something in the way it does. The student is to learn how something is said, not why. There is no answer to the question "why" something is said the way it is.

It struck me that a similar disclaimer could be used to dissuade newbies from proposing changes to Esperanto, or complaining that the language is not as logical or regular as they want it to be (e.g., the 20-odd masculine noun roots, transitivity of verbs).

This is just the way Esperanto is.

Yes, it started out as an experiment, but this has been essentially irrelevant for many decades now, as it has entered the domain of the living languages.

So let's give Esperanto the kind of respect afforded to Russian or German - don't think of it as something we can tinker with anymore. Esperanto will not conform to our ideas of a perfect auxlang. Deal with it.

Tempodivalse:The first unit of the US Foreign Service Institute's crash course in Serbo-Croatian states:

Students should also be reminded that language is arbitrary. Time should not be wasted in discussions of why Serbo-Croatian expresses something in the way it does. The student is to learn how something is said, not why. There is not answer to the question "why" something is said the way it is.

It struck me that a similar disclaimer could be used to dissuade newbies from proposing changes to Esperanto, or complaining that the language is not as logical or regular as they want it to be (e.g., the 20-odd masculine noun roots, transitivity of verbs).

This is just the way Esperanto is.

Yes, it started out as an experiment, but this has been essentially irrelevant for many decades now, as it has entered the domain of the living languages.

So let's give Esperanto the kind of respect afforded to Russian or German - don't think of it as something we can tinker with anymore. Esperanto will not conform to our ideas of a perfect auxlang. Deal with it.

+1!

Tempodivalse:
It struck me that a similar disclaimer could be used to dissuade newbies from proposing changes to Esperanto, or complaining that the language is not as logical or regular as they want it to be (e.g., the 20-odd masculine noun roots, transitivity of verbs).

This is just the way Esperanto is.

Substituting the word English for Esperanto, this could equally be applied to that idiotic thread about trying to fix English irregularities.

Don't you think?

Vestitor:Substituting the word English for Esperanto, this could equally be applied to that idiotic thread about trying to fix English irregularities.

Don't you think?

I was talking about newbies or non-proficient speakers proposing changes. I virtually never see truly proficient Esperantists propose big changes to the language - that's because they understand that there's already a workaround for just about everything, and have seen the language already work successfully in a practical setting (that is, beyond someone's abstract speculation, e.g. "Oh, but it must be ambiguous if -au plays several parts of speech", etc).

Yes indeed I quite agree. And the very same principles and reasons equally make the case for not meddling with English even stronger.

I came to essentially the same conclusion after studying Spanish and Russian, and after being asked why we say things a certain way in English by Russian speakers. (e.g. Why 'I did go' and not 'I did went' ).

Why is often a waste of time in foreign languages. Just accept how things are and move on. Answers either don't exist, or they're as simple as 'because that's the way they do it'.

But I think with Esperanto being a constructed language, you could (if you had a time machine) actually get many answers to why questions from Zamenhof. In theory, such answers exist; even if they are as simple as 'because lots of European languages do it that way'.

The fact that Esperanto was constructed by a person who presumably had reasons for what he did might make the temptation to 'improve' the language very strong for some. I also suspect that Esperanto attracts a lot of tinkerers. At least some Lernu threads seem to suggest that.

Tempodivalse:The first unit of the US Foreign Service Institute's crash course in Serbo-Croatian states:

Students should also be reminded that language is arbitrary. Time should not be wasted in discussions of why Serbo-Croatian expresses something in the way it does. The student is to learn how something is said, not why. There is no answer to the question "why" something is said the way it is.

It struck me that a similar disclaimer could be used to dissuade newbies from proposing changes to Esperanto, or complaining that the language is not as logical or regular as they want it to be (e.g., the 20-odd masculine noun roots, transitivity of verbs).

This is just the way Esperanto is.

Yes, it started out as an experiment, but this has been essentially irrelevant for many decades now, as it has entered the domain of the living languages.

So let's give Esperanto the kind of respect afforded to Russian or German - don't think of it as something we can tinker with anymore. Esperanto will not conform to our ideas of a perfect auxlang. Deal with it.

2+

This is exactly what needs to be brought out there.

The features of any particular language are not entirely arbitrary.

Broadly, I suppose, there are two sorts of explanation.

Historical: this feature came from that form, which in turn came from that form and so on. For example, one can assume that the speakers of Continental languages, at some early point in the evolution of those languages thought about objects anthropomorphically and attributed to them a sex (or lack of it), which in turn led to grammatical gender for all nouns.

Cultural: the community of the speakers wanted to be able to talk about certain subjects, which led to an expansion of the vocabulary or the introduction of semantic aspects of certain grammatical features.

Sometimes, these drivers of language evolution will act together.

For example, if the form 'ŝli' were to become established in Esperanto to encompass both sexes this would have its roots in the existing pronoun set and at the same time reflect a cultural shift.

Usage example: Esperantisto estas nomata ĉiu persono kiu scias kaj uzas la lingvon Esperanto, tute egale por kiaj celoj ŝli ĝin uzas

Ok, "not completely arbitrary", but it's still splitting hairs. Just because something ended up a certain way for a historical reason, or because of a parent language or whatever - it is still based on a reason other than logic, and explaining to someone "You have to do it this way in Serbo-croatian because Old Church Slavonic did it this way" actually doesn't help them learn it. Every aspect of a language has roots somewhere but the point is that you need to just learn it, not argue with it. Oh, you wish the Italian word for horse was derived from Greek rather than Latin? Tough.

Tempodivalse:I virtually never see truly proficient Esperantists propose big changes to the language

There are many proficiant Esperantists, that do. I'm not talking about me, but for example Jorge Camacho. You are putting things way to simple, if you think that only komencantoj are willing to apply reforms.

By the way: Why the heck is this discussion in English again?