Often when people point out what they consider a suboptimal aspect of Esperanto they are met with "Esperanto is a language just like any other, you wouldn't criticise eg English for having eg irregular verbs, so why do you criticise Esperanto for having some feature or other."

Perhaps this is an explanation for different expectations.

A natlang is equivalent to a patch of weeds.
It has developed over time in response to many influences with minimal direct intervention.

A constructed auxlang is equivalent to a rose garden.
Someone has gone to a lot of time and effort to develop it.

If you see a nettle in a patch of weeds you won't even notice it, it's just another weed.
If you see a nettle in a rose garden it immediately draws your attention.
Every person seeing that nettle will probably remark on it.
No matter how many times the gardener explains that the nettle is there deliberately because they happen to like nettle tea the next person that comes along will remark on the nettle.
No matter how beautiful the rest of the garden is people will likely notice the nettle and remark on it.

Like it or not, people hold higher expectations for rose gardens than they do for weed patches.
like it or not, people hold higher expectations for constructed auxlangs than they do for natlangs.

The question is: how do you get people to realise that if Esperanto is a carefully developed rose garden, then it is one that has been left free to grow on its own for over a century and, while its foundation has stayed the same, it has been, just like a patch of weed, exposed to the influences of the weather, the evolution of the ground's chemical balance, the surounding plants and flowers, the bees, and a number of random lucky and unlucky events, and has become home to many other kind of plants, insects and animals in such a way that it is now very difficult not to call it a sort-of-natural rose garden?

My problem with people saying "you wouldn't critisize english for this or that" is I critisize english and norwegian (my native language) all the time.
Not long ago I met somenone at a party using a word I had never heard before, because they had made it up.
More and more people I know just stop using grammar rules they find unecassary like the accusative of "hun" (she) fewer and fewer people say or merging of the male and female wordgender.

The problem is that with a native language people do this with their friends that they speak to everyday, but people who learn to speak esperanto online have their network in forums like this and therefor present their ideas more direct and straightforward rather then just mentioning it for people in conversation. Thats my percpective at least.

jagr, would your friends speak in their modified Norwegian in court, or for an important presentation for work?

erinja:jagr, would your friends speak in their modified Norwegian in court, or for an important presentation for work?

Probably not, but my point is that other language actually change by people choosing to speak differently and use new words until they "catch on". Other languages split of into dialects. Esperanto does not have this possibility as people who speak esperanto don't live next to eachother. The language is shared by esperantujo across the world, while other languages fade more gradually from region to region. From your friends to your region to your city to your country, new words can spread gradually and stop when they are no longer succesfull. But in esperanto that doesn't work to the same degree, so when people want the language to change instead of sending it through this kind of a network they just throw it out there.

Also in the 15-hundreds Bergen (a norwegian city) traded with the german Hanseatic League. Then it was important that they understood eachother so Norwegian was simplified making it easier to learn for the germans, removing the female wordgender among other things. This way is how they speak in bergen now (obviously not excactly the same as the language has evolved over the last 500 years, but you get my point). I'm not saying that proposed reforms are justified, but that they're not necessaraly because people see esperanto as a toy-language.

jagr2808:

erinja:jagr, would your friends speak in their modified Norwegian in court, or for an important presentation for work?

Probably not, but my point is that other language actually change by people choosing to speak differently and use new words until they "catch on".

Because of Esperanto's diffuse nature, almost every situation is essentially a formal language situation. The very few people who speak Esperanto at home or with their partner surely have their own private language usage, to a degree, but such usage seldom leaves their private conversations (i.e. such a couple would not use their own words when talking to an outsider).

Your suggestion on randomly inserting slang into everyday Esperanto conversations to see if it catches on is not a great idea. Your Norwegian friends understand that a new word is slang because they speak Norwegian fluently. Esperanto is full of beginners and you can have beginners hearing these words and assuming it's normative Esperanto. Not a great combination.

I am actually not even sure of the meaning of the analogy that started the thread. I can read it in more than one way, ending up with contradictory conclusion. What was the intended meaning?

For example, "Esperanto is an orderly garden. So when someone comes into the community and starts speaking differently, they are easy to pick out and tell them that they're wrong, because the language is so simple that why can't they just get it right??? Whereas with a national language you can say, well maybe that is how they talk in that person's region" [I am pretty sure that is not what was meant by the analogy but I am still not really clear on the intended meaning]

... and I think that history of any one national language is a poor example for what would happen to Esperanto. Regarding the situation in Bergen, I suspect that people chose for themselves to add more German words in order to make Germans understand -- this is the normal process of developing a creole. It comes from the people, not from a centralized source saying "This is how you're going to talk now". And if they didn't speak Norwegian, what else are they going to speak? So they have a choice of speaking Norwegian with no changes (and not being understood by their important trading partners) or speaking Norwegian with changes and making lots of money. You can see the obvious incentive.

With Esperanto, if you change it a lot, people will say "This language is clearly not done being worked on, so forget it". Because no one needs Esperanto to live, they can certainly get by fine with whatever language they were born with, that carried them through life just fine until they heard about Esperanto. No one is monolingual in Esperanto except a few babies who perhaps haven't been sent to school yet.

yyaann:The question is: how do you get people to realise that if Esperanto is a carefully developed rose garden, then it is one that has been left free to grow on its own for over a century and, while its foundation has stayed the same, it has been, just like a patch of weed, exposed to the influences of the weather, the evolution of the ground's chemical balance, the surounding plants and flowers, the bees, and a number of random lucky and unlucky events, and has become home to many other kind of plants, insects and animals in such a way that it is now very difficult not to call it a sort-of-natural rose garden?

Except that in the original garden plan, it clearly says "plant nettles here." And, what's more, you can never remove the nettles, only try to hide them.

00100100:
Except that in the original garden plan, it clearly says "plant nettles here." And, what's more, you can never remove the nettles, only try to hide them.

Some people find the nettles to be an intolerable nuisance, other pick them up and make healthy soup out of them. Or maybe we're just taking the analogy a little too far.

That being said, can you get rid of the nettles of the English language all by yourself? If not, how is that different from Esperanto?

A nice metaphor, bemused, but it has a fundamental flaw: In Esperanto what are roses to some people are nettles to other people, and the other way around.
Depending on your native language (and maybe your expectations with regard to an IAL) you may like or find difficult some features which are easy and pleasant for people with another background. It's impossible to please everyone, and in fact some "nettles" at a second glance may turn out to be more beautiful than some roses: Having spent 20+ years with Esperanto now, having had a look at many planned languages and having experimented a lot with conlangs I would, if I were to remake Esperanto, keep nearly all the nettles so often critisized like accusative, diacritics, root character etc. (I'm not sure about adjectival agreement, but for other reasons than the critics usually adduce), as IMHO they are in fact advantages instead of flaws.