Christa627:

tommjames:
It's true that Esperanto differs in many ways from the national languages, but it does not in any way follow that users can just decide how they want to speak, on whatever whim takes them. The time for tinkering with Esperanto has long gone

Which is a decidedly good thing! I've been trying to learn Lojban, which apparently isn't out of tinkering stage yet, and boy, is it frustrating! So many times, I just want to yell, "All right! Get your act together already!" It's fairly small tweaks, mostly, but they add up... Hopefully it'll get the kinks worked out and stabilise sometime; I think it has a lot of potential.

(the most troublesome reform proposal being one to, of course, decrease the number of syllables...)

they're STILL tinkering with Lojban?? intersting parallel: Esperanto appeared in 1887, lojban in 1987. Esperanto was "detinkerized" in 1905, lojban is still being tinkered with in 2015..........10 years longer than esperanto. i don't think they're ever gonna stop.

orthohawk:

Christa627:

tommjames:
It's true that Esperanto differs in many ways from the national languages, but it does not in any way follow that users can just decide how they want to speak, on whatever whim takes them. The time for tinkering with Esperanto has long gone

Which is a decidedly good thing! I've been trying to learn Lojban, which apparently isn't out of tinkering stage yet, and boy, is it frustrating! So many times, I just want to yell, "All right! Get your act together already!" It's fairly small tweaks, mostly, but they add up... Hopefully it'll get the kinks worked out and stabilise sometime; I think it has a lot of potential.

(the most troublesome reform proposal being one to, of course, decrease the number of syllables...)

they're STILL tinkering with Lojban?? intersting parallel: Esperanto appeared in 1887, lojban in 1987. Esperanto was "detinkerized" in 1905, lojban is still being tinkered with in 2015..........10 years longer than esperanto. i don't think they're ever gonna stop.

Well, they're trying to be totally logical, and prevent all syntactic ambiguity. Maybe that takes longer; Esperanto wasn't made to do either of those things. On the other hand, when you're trying to achieve perfection, in any aspect, it is somewhat doubtful that you'll ever be able to stop...