RiotNrrd:Now someone needs to come up with an even better way. Then we can spend twelve pages hassling it out, continually getting more and more acrimonious as the pages proceed, until sometime around the point the Hitler references start popping up everyone will decide that every suggestion is kontraŭfundamenta anyway, and the thread will die the way it should have twelve pages earlier the end. Although there will likely be one or two people still muttering under their breath about some imagined slight endured within the thread a year from now, so the exercise will have done some good after all.

Wait, can we just skip to the end, count your post as the obligatory Hitler reference, and go happily along?

This thread has actually been (with a notable exception) surprisingly good-natured and kind in the disagreements. I wish it was always like this.

Killjoy.

RiotNrrd:
Ooh! I don't know about that third example, but I like the idea of a way to shorten the pattern "X kaj/aŭ malX", so I thought of an even better way.

Use the prefix "baŭ-". I snapped it off of "ambaŭ", although obviously it's entirely arbitrary. But I like the way it works out.

baŭamikoj
baŭfrue

The repetition in the third example is of a different nature; "baŭejo" doesn't work right.

Now someone needs to come up with an even better way. Then we can spend twelve pages hassling it out, continually getting more and more acrimonious as the pages proceed, until sometime around the point the Hitler references start popping up everyone will decide that every suggestion is kontraŭfundamenta anyway, and the thread will die the way it should have twelve pages earlier the end. Although there will likely be one or two people still muttering under their breath about some imagined slight endured within the thread a year from now, so the exercise will have done some good after all.
...

It is too bad that people who want discuss about the language and suggest some changes without proposing them as reforms do not have a simple way to do it, without offending conservative esperantists. Something like:

Then would follow the text in special Esperanto and finally a tag :
.

That could be a clean way to do it without triggering controversies.

Altebrilas: It is too bad that people who want discuss about the language and suggest some changes without proposing them as reforms do not have a simple way to do it, without offending conservative esperantists.

It's actually pretty simple. Changes that are within the fundamento, within the normal bounds of Esperanto grammar, aren't reforms, so you can simply use them.

Changes that are not within the bounds of normal Esperanto grammar are reforms. The 'conservative' Esperantists that you cite are actually the majority of the community.

That could be a clean way to do it without triggering controversies.

There is no clean way to do it. It is always going to be a vocal few reformists making lots of waves, a vocal few proponents of ordinary Esperanto explaining to the reformists why their reforms aren't normative Esperanto, and a vast majority of people who simply want to learn and use the language as it is without engaging in reformism.

erinja:The 'conservative' Esperantists... are actually the majority of the community.

I think that is true. I think we intuitively understand the need for stability in the language. I don't want to devote my time to a language that is broken up into dialects.

Having a language that is standardized is more important to me than having a language that is perfect.

I can only revert to my standard riposté in these situations:

If you were to propose a reform to some other language (French, Ukrainian etc.), as a single individual with no particular credibility or power behind him, you would be laughed out of the room. "Hey Ukrainians, I've been studying your language and I don't like that you've retained the vocative case. Russian gets away without it just fine. Can't we replace it with the nominative everywhere." You can envision the reaction.

So I can't understand why anyone walks in here and expects to be taken more seriously.

Tempodivalse:...a single individual with no particular credibility or power behind him, you would be laughed out of the room. "Hey Ukrainians, I've been studying your language and I don't like that you've retained the vocative case..."

Maybe, when someone talks about reforms, we should tell them that they have to be fluent in Esperanto first or they won't be taken seriously.

Alkanadi:Maybe, when someone talks about reforms, we should tell them that they have to be fluent in Esperanto first or they won't be taken seriously.

We do. We generally ask that they post reform related posts in one of the Esperanto language forums (sometimes as a last resort). It's funny how often reform-minded types don't post anything there. It's almost like they don't have a good command of the language (although how could we tell?).

Then there's the other type of reform: I'm a beginner and I find X hard to remember, and my native language does it Y, so why don't we just do it Y and forget about X? I understand this type of reform idea quite well, as it occurred to me too in the early days. It's tempting to become a little sharp with these sorts of reform ideas, but really they are just an expression of frustration by a beginner; it's best to actually take the time and explain why Y isn't in the cards, since these *are* beginners we're talking about.

But for the ones who simply want to change the language because of some "idea" they've had: go post it in the Esperanto language forums. If you can do that, perhaps it can be debated. If you can't... why are you wasting our time?

The curious thing, RiotNrrd, is that beginners in other languages would never dream of making a change to the language just because it differed from what they were used to. Instead, the attitude is: "well, get used to doing it this different way." When it happens in Esperanto, the first instinct is instead - "let's change this because it must be bad/non-ideal".

I think this difference in attitude has much to do that people view Esperanto, even if only subconsciously, as a "toy" of sorts, or somehow deficient compared to other languages; this persists for a while, until the learner has a more or less solid grasp of the language and is able to appreciate that almost everything in EO is there for a reason, even if it looked funny at first.

erinja:

That could be a clean way to do it without triggering controversies.

There is no clean way to do it. It is always going to be a vocal few reformists making lots of waves, a vocal few proponents of ordinary Esperanto explaining to the reformists why their reforms aren't normative Esperanto, and a vast majority of people who simply want to learn and use the language as it is without engaging in reformism.

Hello Erinja,

In this case, I just wanted to suggest a way to test innovations such as "na", "ri", "Bau", etc. , while demonstrating one's respect for the Fundamento and specially for the reasoned dogmatism Zamenhof advocates in his Antauxparolo.

Some may feel that a word is lacking, and introduce it as a neologism into the language. This is allowed for lexical words. Why not do the same with grammatical words? Such a process led to the invention of arithmetic, formal logic, or computer languages. This does not mean that one has to speak in everyday life in a programming language, but just to provide more flexibility in the use of the language without altering it.

Personnally, I would prefer debate about it in the esperanto forum, but it seems to be more and more dedicated to political topics...