Vestitor: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.

English became official in Britain's various colonies in an era before mass media (radio and TV) which is the reason for "so many Englishes." With mass media as it exists even now, I doubt that would be Esperanto's fate.

Vestitor: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.

Well, that depends on users' motivations for using and speaking Esperanto.

If speakers want to make themselves understood with people from a diverse variety of countries, with whom they might otherwise have no common tongue (a common reason for learning EO), all parties involved will make an implicit commitment not to violate the Fundamento, to ensure mutual intelligibility.

However, there may, and probably will, be regional differences that respect the Fundamento. In fact, you already see this a bit with Asian vs European Esperanto. For instance, the former are, in my experience, more eager to use the zero copula (sxi belas vs sxi estas bela).

Also. People tend to overstate the limitations the Fundamento imposes on Esperanto. The limitations deal only with the kernel of the language - the parts slowest to change, if they change at all.

For example, the fundamental grammar of English hasn't really changed in over half a millenium. The greatest differences are in lexicon, which is exactly the area where the Fundamento is the least restrictive.

There is room for much, much evolution within the Fundamento's constraints. Standard Esperanto could have evolved to look quite different from the way it looks today, even without violating the Fundamento.

orthohawk:
English became official in Britain's various colonies in an era before mass media (radio and TV) which is the reason for "so many Englishes." With mass media as it exists even now, I doubt that would be Esperanto's fate.

I think not. Despite the larger presence of media, the different strands still evolve independently and have been doing so non-stop.

Tempodivalse:If speakers want to make themselves understood with people from a diverse variety of countries, with whom they might otherwise have no common tongue (a common reason for learning EO), all parties involved will make an implicit commitment not to violate the Fundamento, to ensure mutual intelligibility.

One would hope so, but I imagine that regional variations would be routinely passed on in common speech (i.e. in use rather than people poring over grammar texts). In essence people would always understand one another just like people from the UK more-or-less understand someone from a West Indies island, though there will be some startling differences in grammar, syntax and vocabulary in the English of the latter (and probably the former come to that).

So, there is somebody who doesn't like we - uh, us - and so he sits at his 'puter in Germany and tell we, uh us, that us, uh, we, should chuck the -n ending which is not really the accusative since in Esperanto for HIM (für IHN) is por li. The -n ending has its specific rules and believe I, I mean me, once you get the hang of it it works just fine..... Uffff, always the beginners... and if you chuck the -n you run into all sorts of other problems that just make matter worse - look at all the circumlocutions in Mandarin to make sure that people REALLY understand what you want or the doubled objects with promouns in Spanish - JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU KNOW WHAT PEOPLE MEAN - not to mention English - my local language - with the singular 'you' so we have to invent y'all, y'uns, you guys, both of you.......
What to some people is hard, is easy for others. THAT, my friend, is the secret meaning of Esperanto - it is a middle ground to which each speaker puts one foot forward to meet other speakers.

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?

It's not "necessary". Many, many things in many, many languages are not necessary. Does it serve a practical purpose? Absolutely. Such as:

*It helps speakers of languages with an accusative or non-SVO word order to express themselves with less confusion on both sides of the conversation.

*It provides a greater degree of freedom in creating poetry and prose.

*It (and for me this is an important one) is a very useful teaching tool. If you are using Esperanto as a stepping stone to learning other languages, when you try to learn
Russian or another language with an accusative, it will be immediately clear to you. Also, the existence of other cases (genitive, dative, instrumentive, etc) is made easier because you have already been familiarized with the mental gymnastics needed to speak/write those grammatical forms correctly.

*It provides a great deal of amusement to your fellow Esperantists: MI NENIAM FORGESAS LA AKUZITIVO!!!

traubenschorle:Many people don't get hang of the accusative.

That is actually untrue. I don't know of ANY English speaker who says things like "He loves I" or "They love we". I'm sure Tempo could tell us if he knows any Russians who would say "ya lovil ryba" (it should be "ya lovil rybu").

The problem is not that people don't "get the hang of" the accusative. They just don't realize that they in fact do get the hang of it. As teachers we need to lead people from the unconscious use of the accusative to the conscious knowledge that they do and to apply it in the proper situations.

traubenschorle:Many people don't get the 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?

Many people who speak highly inflected languages do get the hang of accusative. It's possible that they would find a strict word order difficult to get used to.

I think having only two cases, is sort of a compromise.

People who speak languages with several cases have to learn to use prepositions for some of them, but have a relatively free word order, so they don't have to learn to think in a different order (which is possibly harder than learning to use the accusative case).

People who speak languages that rely heavily on word order really only have one case to learn, but they can also usually use whatever word order is natural for them.

It might be true that higher level speakers converge on similar word orders, but one of Esperanto's goals is to be easy for the beginner to learn. To that end, it's important to preserve the accusative for speakers who are accustomed to using cases, and for speakers who are accustomed to a different word order (for example, ending the sentence with the verb).

Any style conventions that high-level Esperantists converge on aren't necessary to be understood or to create a grammatically correct sentence. And I certainly wouldn't want to limit myself to understanding only some Esperantists.

I've definitely read plenty of sentences that I would not have understood if the -n of the accusative had been left out.

Grammatical cases have a bad rap, but there is nothing intrinsically challenging about them. The problem arises with irregular/unpredictable inflections - e.g., in Russian, you have to memorise a set of new endings for each declension (there are very very many). And with some verbs you have to (arbitrarily) use a non-accusative to mark the direct object.

This layer of complexity never appears Esperanto, with no gender and one completely invariant accusative form. It's as simple as a preposition.

A little knowledge of some basic grammar concepts will go a long way. Once you've grasped those concepts, in about 98% of cases it should be obvious where the accusative is used, and you can often make an educated guess about the other 2%.

But if you don't know about those concepts (and many people don't), you're not going to do well in any language, no matter how simple. Everything will just look like a random string of words on a page.

I've had university-level language classes where some students were not sure what a clause or a direct object was. It seemed they were just memorising sentences by rote. Needless to say, those students struggled on the simplest of examinations, and could not produce spontaneous sentences.

There are plenty of things in Esperanto harder than the accusative - tio vs tiu probably takes the longest to be grasped, since it is a subtle distinction and does not have direct equivalents in many Western languages.

An even more hopelessly complex area is the definite article la - even experienced Esperantists vary in their usage of it.

Yet funnily, few or no people propose simplifying those things. For some reason it's always the accusative which gets the negative attention.

Cases are a wonderful thing, actually. I regret Esperanto does not have more - to replace the sometimes tedious prepositions. They would be no more difficult to learn than prepositions (due to no genders or noun classes) and result in more pithy sentences.