Every language* needs an accusative in order to distinguish between subject and object. Whether you mark the accusative via -n or the place of the word in the sentence a priori makes no difference, there is always at least one rule to learn.

"Another idea: Just marking the object when the Word order isn't SVO."

Hello Ido.

(BTW: Thread N-o 61666526548 that should have appeared in Esperanto.)

*with nominative-accusative alignment, of course

Please see the first post of: Language is arbitrary - deal with it.

Esperanto is not open to tinkering anymore. It started out as an experiment, but has now joined the domain of the living languages and has a life of its own.

One can no more decide that Esperanto should not have an accusative, than insist that Russian be written in the Latin alphabet or that Italian removes the subjunctive - even if it were true that this would make the language easier. (I incidentally think a lack of accusative would make Esperanto *more* difficult and less expresive.)

The accusative in Esperanto is alive and well, used fully in both spoken and written forms.

traubenschorle:I just don't understand why the accusative is needed for a (constructed) language that wants to be as easy as it is possible.

It is not needed.

traubenschorle:It seems to be the biggest problem for beginners who don't mark objects in their native language.

Yes, i guess you're right.

The Esperanto-community is split into several camps. Some advocate changes, others execrate them. The language is somehow imprisoned and i can only advice you to inform about alternatives to ESperanto, if you want a lanugage that values usefulness higher than tradition.

... Und warum du den Thread ins Englisch-Forum gestellt hast, erschließt sich mir auch nicht.

... Und warum du den Thread ins Englisch-Forum gestellt hast, erschließt sich mir auch nicht.

You're welcome to start a thread in the Esperanto forum.

The Esperanto-community is split into several camps. Some advocate changes, others execrate them.

I find this statement rather misleading.

There is a large - I would say overwhelming - majority of Esperantists who follow established norms and are content to let the language live and evolve like any other.

Then there is a very small, vocal minority (anti-accusativists, icxists, naists) which points out perceived problems that everybody else has been using just fine, usually unaware that there is a problem! The reformers as a whole can't even agree on what exactly needs to be changed.

This has nothing to do with tradition or dogmatism; rather, it's an acknowledgment that Esperanto has entered the domain of the living languages.

A big, legislated reform is simply not going to fly, any more than a proposal to remove gender from Russian or articles from Italian. Are those languages "imprisoned" - their speakers close-minded and dogmatic and unreasoning because they refuse such reforms?

traubenschorle:Many people don't get hang of the accusative. In another thread it was said that nearly every Esperantist on a higher level uses the word order SVO. So why is the accusative still necessary in spoken language?

traubenschorle:I just don't understand why the accusative is needed for a (constructed) language that wants to be as easy as it is possible. It seems to be the biggest problem for beginners who don't mark objects in their native language.

I think I understand your question: “Why Esperanto does have two grammatical cases, since it aspires to be the world easiest language and for many people accusative generates trouble?”, ĉu? There are few aspects of this problem and one may see them as factors or vectors affecting the final outcome: shall we create a language with or without the accusative.

One goal of Esperanto is to be very easy; there's no question about that. Including second grammatical case means adding one more rule, which indeed can cause some trouble for the beginners (so some negative points to that idea). On the other hand, however, it also means that the sentence structure is more flexible; it can therefore better appeal to speakers of different language backgrounds, by allowing them to imitate their native language structure (so some positive points). If we were to allow free word order in general but fix it somehow there, where we use both a subject and an object (without any preposition) that would arguably make the language (especially that presented by beginners) more ambiguous, since new question would arise then: is he using the language properly or did he forgot about the order? When we have the accusative that's more obvious: either a beginner erred and we see that from the lack of “-n”, therefore have to assume some word order or get the idea from the context, or there is “-n” and everything is fine.

I could argue that there was another (maybe not as strong, but clearly visible) intention of Zamenhof, and that is to create language capable of artistic beauty. That requires its usefulness in poetry or literature in general. Fixed language structure would forbid many things and that adds positive points to the idea of the accusative.

Maybe someone could provide more specific arguments in favour of the accusative, I'd love to see that. Maybe some comments by Zamenhof himself? Were he questioned about it as well?

Tempodivalse:Please see the first post of: Language is arbitrary - deal with it.

Firstly: I don't like you raumism at all. Secondly: There was a valid question and cutting it with a statement which one could summarise as “It's just the way it is, deal with it and rack off” is very impolite of you, in my opinion. Thirdly: You're right that nobody can expel accusative from Esperanto, because it is the part of the Fundamento; however, referring here to natural languages is simply wrong, because one person (or a small group) changing a language is exactly what happens. You have king Ram Khamhaeng inventing Thai abugida, tsar Peter inventing his modifications of cyrillic alphabet (which developed earlier in Preslav Literary School, and replaced earlier script invented just like that by ss. Cyril and Methodius), communists who later decided to change the orthography, emperor Sejong the Great turning the Korean writing customs upside down and inventing on his own a script which was not based on any other script at all, 16th century scholars in England rummaging through books to find a reason to change spelling of some words (sometimes mistakenly, like with “iland” → “island”, “sissors” → “scissors”, “ake” → “ache”), Noah Webster doing the exactly opposite and discontinuing English historical spelling, Polish Language Council changing orthography because they wanted certain words to (not etymologically, however) resemble others (like “mżonka” changed to “mrzonka” to look like “marzenie” and not like etymologically related “mżawka”), French Academy inventing new words on its own &c., &c., &c. The list goes on and on.

mbalicki:Secondly: There was a valid question and cutting it with a statement which one could summarise as “It's just the way it is, deal with it and rack off” is very impolite of you, in my opinion.

It was not my intention to be rude, and I don't doubt that the original poster was asking in good faith.

I am simply a little tired of users coming in and proposing to "get rid" of features, something they would not dream of had they been studying some other foreign language. Intentionally or not, this mindset, in my view, betrays a lack of proper respect.

Tempodivalse:

mbalicki:Secondly: There was a valid question and cutting it with a statement which one could summarise as “It's just the way it is, deal with it and rack off” is very impolite of you, in my opinion.

It was not my intention to be rude, and I don't doubt that the original poster was asking in good faith.

I am simply a little tired of users coming in and proposing to "get rid" of features, something they would not dream of had they been studying some other foreign language. Intentionally or not, this mindset, in my view, betrays a lack of proper respect.

Plus, it's always, ALWAYS rank beginners that do this! They come swooping in after a few days' of acquaintance with the language and say what amounts to, "Hey, even though I've known (or even known ABOUT) this language only a few days, I think you people that have been speaking it for years (or in some cases decades) are doing it all wrong! Here's the way it SHOULD work, ..........."

Highly insulting.

one person (or a small group) changing a language is exactly what happens.

That's certainly true, but one important caveat is that those were individuals in positions of enormous authority - e.g absolute autocrats, or totalitarian states. This is not a factor in modern Esperanto.

Also, I suspect that even many of those reforms could not have succeeded had there not already been wide-scale discontent or confusion with the status quo - also not a factor for Esperanto.

In the case of the 1918 Russian orthography reform, there was already substantial confusion about spellings with now-obsolete letters. The jer had started to disappear as early as the 1870s; the yat was so confusing that even authoritative texts contradicted one another about correct usage, and the other deleted letters (izhitsa, fita) were already obsolete except for a few words. Peter I's earlier reforms happened in similar circumstances. These reforms didn't happen in a vacuum.

Slightly aside from the specific thread question... If people were to project themselves into a future where Esperanto really did become a fully world-wide second language, you can be certain that many people would be frustrated by 'natural' deviations from the holy Esperanto scriptures. Most probably caused by people from different language backgrounds bringing influence into their daily use. Any language widely used in differing circumstances and geographical locations undergoes this. Look at English in former British colonies and the myriad ways it has metamorphosed into "Englishes", some with quite substantial grammatical alterations, and yet all of them acceptable as 'English'.

While Esperanto is still contained (as it were) it can be managed, but operating at a similar level English does now is a different matter. Anyone denying this is dreaming.