waxle:Todd, I don't know what it is about your posts, but the way you put things while explaining them just makes sense.

Maybe it's because you are more experienced than most of the people in this thread.

At any rate, I deeply respect you.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not all that experienced an Esperantist, but I've been using the language in one way or another, for a couple of decades. My day job requires me to be able to express myself with some precision, so I get a lot of practice at that.

More to the point, I've been exactly where Nick is, i.e., at the point where certain aspects of Esperanto got "up my nose." It's an interesting thing, that when you learn a constructed language such as Esperanto, you want it to be a certain way. You start thinking, "If *I* had designed it, it would be different (i.e., better, easier, more logical, etc)." Those who really get into this may perhaps abandon Esperanto, because they can't accept that it isn't the way they would have liked it to be. They may become interested in other constructed languages, or even work on their own.

I don't mean to sound patronizing (old geezer saying "Yes I was once a young whippersnapper like you..."). I'm merely pointing out that it's natural to have these questions and even *objections* to Esperanto.

Yes, things could have been done differently. History shows that for every "improvement" that you or I or Nick could think of, there are many many people who would find it utterly wrongheaded. This doesn't prove that Esperanto's design is the best possible, whatever that might mean. But it does show that by surviving as long as it has, and by achieving the modest level of success that it has achieved (in terms of number of speakers, original and translated works of literature, music, and so on) it has done something remarkable. The way I see it, that more than compensates for having to learn the accusative, or remember that some verbs are not exactly equivalent to their English counterparts.

T0dd:
More to the point, I've been exactly where Nick is, i.e., at the point where certain aspects of Esperanto got "up my nose." It's an interesting thing, that when you learn a constructed language such as Esperanto, you want it to be a certain way. You start thinking, "If *I* had designed it, it would be different (i.e., better, easier, more logical, etc)."

I remember feeling that way about the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun - indeed I still get a rare urge to use ŝli on occasion instead of ŝi/li

I think some people are being unnecessarily harsh towards Nick. It is unreasonable to expect someone not to have problems with the finer grammatical points of a language after only studying it for a few weeks (going by nw2394's date of joining lernu).

Wow, I leave for a day to start a new job, and the whole forum explodes in my absence!

May I make the suggestion, building on some comments that some other people have made, that depending on your point of view, you could even say that Esperanto doesn't have conventional nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs like some other languages have, so even though we speak of these parts of speech when talking about Esperanto in English, they don't necessarily describe accurately what these words do in Esperanto.

If you take a look at the index of Bertilo's grammar guide: http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/detala_enhavo.html you will not see reference made to nouns ("substantivoj"), adjectives ("adjektivoj"), or adverbs ("adverboj"). Instead, you will read about "O-vortoj", "A-vortoj" and "E-vortoj". In addition - for things that act like adverbs, but do not actually end in -e, you will read about "E-vortecaj vortetoj" ("short adverb-ish words"). You won't read about correlatives; you'll read about "tabelvortoj" ("table words", because they are formed with a table).

Finally - for anyone interested in seeing Esperanto in a somewhat new light that has nothing to do with nouns and verbs, I encourage you to read the passage from Zamenhof that helps introduce the new course "Tiri kaj kunmeti"; I believe the course hasn't been launched yet but I would have to create a new account with fewer privileges to check, so I will paste it below.

It explains a new way of looking at the language, by treating these separate grammatical endings almost as separate words, rather than being concerned with fitting Esperanto into the mold of European languages.

"Here is a rather long but interesting quotation which is particularly relevant for this course. The quotation comes from the "Unua Libro" by Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto. It is followed by an explanatory comment by Claude Piron, an outstanding Esperanto author. However, you might find this page more interesting to read when you have already done some lessons in the course, because you will then probably better understand the essence of the texts below.

L.L. Zamenhof on words in Esperanto:

"I have arranged a complete division of the ideas into independent words, so that the whole language, instead of words in various grammatical forms, consists only of unchanging words. If you take a work written in my language, you will find that in it, every word will always and only be found in one constant form, namely, in the form in which it is printed in the dictionary. And the various grammatical forms, the reciprocal relations between the words, etc. are expressed by joining together the unchanging words. But because a language construction of this type is completely foreign to the European peoples, and to become accustomed to it would be a difficult thing for them, for that reason I adapted this division of the words to the spririt of the European languages, so that if someone learns my language using a textbook, without reading through the introduction (which for the student is completely unnecessary) beforehand, — they won't even guess that the construction of this language is at all different from their native language. In this way, for example, the origin of the word "fratino", which in actuality consists of three words: frat (brother), in (a woman), o (what is, what exists), — the textbook clarifies in the following manner: brother = frat; but because every noun in the nominative form ends in "o" — so frat'o follows; for the forming of the female version of the same idea, one adds the short word "in"; so a sister, frat'in'o; and the apostrophes are written because the grammar requires putting them between the component parts of the words. In that manner, the component parts of the language never embarass the student; he doesn't even suspect that what he is calling and ending or a prefix or a suffix is actually a completely independent word, which always maintains the same meaning equally well, whether it is used in the end or the beginning of another word, or independently, and that each word may equally well be used as a root word or as a grammatical component." (L.L. Zamenhof, 1887)

Comment by Claude Piron:

You will probably be surprised that, for Zamenhof, language elements such as o and in are words. In my opinion, he used those terms to emphasise that the language consists of unchangable units that can be added to each other without ever bringing about a change of form within any of those units (changes of this sort occur frequently in western languages such as English: "foot > feet"; "come > came"). My impression is that he saw a description of the Chinese language somewhere, with examples - perhaps he even took a Chinese grammar in his hands - and he noticed that the structure of that language has many advantages, on the one hand because of its perfect regularity, and on the other hand because of the ease with which it is possible to express complex concepts by combining simple words. Now, in the nineteenth century, texts about Chinese, which were based on writing without consideration of the spoken language, generally used the term 'word' when in fact the text referred to the basic immutable units that the language consists of. Probably for this reason, Zamenhof applied the same terminology which, confusing though it might be, is not really inaccurate, if we consider for example that the word in is not essentially different from words such as patr or frat: it too can be used autonomously with any grammatical ending, making it entirely different from the suffices of the inflexional and agglutinative languages.

In the preface to Vere aŭ Fantazie I gave the name "subwords" to the components that together constitute a full word. Using that terminology, you could say that fratino is a word that consists of three subwords: frat, in and o."

This is an interesting way of looking at the language, and has some somewhat suprising implications.

For example, it occurs to me that using this idea, the word virino (woman) isn't really formed from the word "viro" with a feminine suffix, but instead can be considered to be composed simply of the roots "vir", "in", and "o". In other words, it's equally valid to think of it as a male root with a feminine suffix (and statement of "nounness") OR a female root with a masculine prefix (and statement of "nounness").

Would this also mean that the "true" word for "noun" (to Zamenhof), rather than being "substantivo", would simply be "o"? Or perhaps "oo"? Heh.

"Nouns are objects"
"Oj estas objektoj".

I don't know if that would fly. But it's an interesting thought.

Claude Piron is my Esperanto hero. His thoughts about Esperanto, as well as his way of expressing himself in Esperanto, are incomparable. The admins of this site mention his book, _La Bona Lingvo_ (see Piron), a book that I can't recommend highly enough to those interested in getting a real feel for the power and beauty of Esperanto. It's a book *about* Esperanto, not written necessarily for beginners, but still accessible with a bit of concentration.

I hope I get a chance to meet him someday.

waxle:I simply can't understand the problem with just memorizing it and moving on.

Because I do not work on the basis on memory as such. I think algorithmically.

In a simple sentence, I normally want to say something in Subject Verb Object order. This seems the default order in E-o and, in any case, it is a premise of the grammar that I can do that anyway. Fine.

So, with the accusative in play as well I can say, "Subject does something to ", now let me think, was that transitive, ok, was it a direct object, ok, the object I want to say has an "n" on the end.

It is slow because I am not used to it, but I can speak like that.

With questions, it is different. In writing I can still manage it - for the simple reason that if the interrogative, that I normally put at the front of the sentence should have been accusative, and/or pluralised, I can go back and change it.

But with speech it is different, you can't unsay a word once you've said it. So I have to think, before I say anything:

1) Is this a who/what/which question, in which case I've got to compute which of kio or kiu is appropriate because the equivalence is not 100%.

2) Is this interrogative one which can be pluralised and should I do that?

3) Is this interrogative one which can take the accusative?

4) If it is one that can take the accusative, am I using it in the fashion that someone else is going to regard as a grammatical object.

5) Is the verb which I haven't decided on yet actually transitive?

Having figured out all of that I can utter the first word of the sentence.

It is too much work just to ask someone at an airport where the toilet is. At least it is for me.

I hope that answers your question.

Nick

erinja:Wow, I leave for a day to start a new job, and the whole forum explodes in my absence!

Sorry Erinja, I wasn't trying to 'stir it up'.

erinja:May I make the suggestion, building on some comments that some other people have made, that depending on your point of view, you could even say that Esperanto doesn't have conventional nouns/verbs/adjectives/adverbs like some other languages have...

Thanks Erinja. I need a new paradigm for understaing E-o grammar. Pronoun and blah de blah from other languages simply isn't doing it for me.

I will study what you say. But not today as I am too fired up. I couldn't study anything straight at the moment.

I will, however, return to your post here and the suggestions you've made...

Thank you.

Nick

Le Hibou:

nw2394: I have a MENSA level IQ.
Nick

I used to have an irrational predudice against members of MENSA and people like them who make similar claims about their IQ.

I'd like to thank you, Nick, for changing my mind.

I now realize that my prejudice was in no way irrational.

Well, actually, I have never joined said organisation for the same reason you dislike it.

I was, in fact, responding to the claims of others who were "strutting their stuff" about I'm a this and a that.

I made the mistake of responding in kind.

I would however point out to you that you picked up on what I said and complained about that, not the assertions of status made by those who you happen to agree with.

So you have taken sides too. I can forgive you, if you can return the favour.

Nick

nw2394:
Because I do not work on the basis on memory as such. I think algorithmically.

I can relate to that. Even a complex rule is (for me) somehow preferable to brute memorization. When it comes to vocabulary, however, memorization is necessary. Verbs mean what they mean, and so you must remember whether the Esperanto verb is transitive. Its English counterpart may not be, and probably isn't, an exact translation.

With questions, it is different. In writing I can still manage it - for the simple reason that if the interrogative, that I normally put at the front of the sentence should have been accusative, and/or pluralised, I can go back and change it.

Consider that if Zamenhof had opted for strictly invariant SVO word order, then the question "What do you see?" would have to be expressed "You see what?" Esperanto allows, but does not require you to do this. "Vi vidas kion?" You might actually find it helpful to form questions this way, putting the interrogative pronoun at the end, at least until you feel more comfortable with the whole process.

1) Is this a who/what/which question, in which case I've got to compute which of kio or kiu is appropriate because the equivalence is not 100%.

This is actually pretty interesting. In English, "who" and "what" are interrogative pronouns, and "which" is an interrogative adjective. In Esperanto, "kio" is an interrogative pronoun, but "kiu" is an interrogative adjective (I'm ignoring the use of these as relative pronouns for the moment). So when "kiu" is used interrogatively you should always think of it as bound to a noun. When that noun is unspecified, it is assumed to be a person. So in that sense "kiu" means "which person" = who.

In context, "kiu" may modify some other noun that doesn't refer to a person.

"Mi vidis kelkajn botelojn da vino."
"Kiun vi aĉetis?" That is, which one did you buy? It's clear that in this instance "kiu" is bound to bottles of wine, not people. To make it crystal clear, some might say "Kiun el ili vi aĉetis?" but it's not necessary to do so.

2) Is this interrogative one which can be pluralised and should I do that?

3) Is this interrogative one which can take the accusative?

The word "interrogative" is simply too generic. If it's an interrogative pronoun or adjective then yes, it can take the accusative ending, just like any other noun or adjective. When it comes to the plural, we have a small wrinkle.

Strictly speaking, the words "kioj" and "tioj" are "legal" Esperanto words, but they are almost never used. In PMEG it says the -o correlatives "normally" don't take the plural ending, and it's true; they don't. But as far as I can tell this is a pattern of usage and not something that is strictly required by the rules. Maybe someone else can offer a better explanation.

4) If it is one that can take the accusative, am I using it in the fashion that someone else is going to regard as a grammatical object.

5) Is the verb which I haven't decided on yet actually transitive?

There's really only one question here. Is it a subject or object? If you know what the verb *means* then you know whether it is transitive or intransitive. If you're guessing its meaning from its one-word English counterpart, then the problem is you don't actually know the precise meaning of the word you are considering using. I can't emphasize this enough. Transitivity isn't an arbitrary add-on to the meaning of a word; it's an inherent part of it's meaning. If you know that "droni" means to die by aspirating water, then you know it's intransitive. There's nothing more to memorize. If all you know is that "droni" generally corresponds to the English word "drown," then you don't know enough, because the English word is ambiguous.

T0dd:If all you know is that "droni" generally corresponds to the English word "drown," then you don't know enough, because the English word is ambiguous.

Well, Todd, thanks for your efforts in explaining things.

I guess I'm just disappointed. The sales pitch for this language is that it is easy. And sure, you can read all sorts of material on the web, as indeed I have done. You can also download all sorts of stuff. And you do the exercises and they are easy.

But then I go to try to form a sentence and realise that, in fact, I haven't grasped it at all and, that, in fact, it is a hell of a lot of work.

I know an Austrian lady. I pull her leg about German nouns and their gender. She just says, "mumble duh" (i.e. for der, die, das = the = la), as loads of German speakers routinely get the gender wrong themselves anyway. I don't seem to have a similar get out clause with E-o.

I'm determined to master it one day, if I have to resort to doing exercises in front of a mirror for hours.

Nick