nw2394:
Esperantists rightly (in my view) claim that the Fundamento and its rigid rules are what makes Esperanto strong. It makes clear to the learner that the rules don't change.

But then I find that all manner of other changes that are built on top of the Fundamento are all OK. Anything goes. And yet Esperantists think that anyone who complains about such things have a "negative attitude". Well, I am sorry. That simply isn't good enough.

That's correct; the rules don't change. But the Fundamento did not and could not set a limit to the expressive possibilities of the language. The things that have been added to the language don't *change* the Fundamento. They are additions, not modifications, and Zamenhof knew and explicitly said that this would, and should, be the case. He, unlike some other language designers, recognized that a single person could not anticipate the needs and proclivities of future generations of speakers spread round the world.

Compounds are a core part of Esperanto (and many other languages). They are meant to be used liberally, because restricting compounds entails increasing the number of roots that must be learned, just as Erinja has explained. This is a fundamental design feature of the language. The use of part-of-speech marking is also meant to allow the transparent use of roots in more than one grammatical category.

-- Mi iris al Londono per trajno.

-- Mi iris Londonon trajne.

-- Mi trajniris al Londono.

Take your pick. There's more than one way to say it (and more than these three), and that is indeed a virtue of the language, not a sick joke. Moreover, none of the above expressions is less "plain" than the others.

I don't really see what's so problematic about "plifleksebliĝi". One could say "iĝi pli fleksebla," using exactly the same elements. In writing there's white space between the words; in speech there isn't. In speech, no matter which way you say it you must recognize the components and derive the meaning. One is not clearer or "plainer" than the other, except in being closer to the way it would be said in English, which is beside the point. You won't find a word like this in a dictionary because it doesn't need to be there. It's meaning is transparent. You may complain that it's not transparent to *you*, and indeed it may not be. You're still a beginner. We've all been there (except for a few hundred denaskuloj). But it's amazing how quickly the language opens up to you.

I know you're in the UK; I don't know if you're anywhere near London. But it would be worth a field trip to London to attend one of the meetings of the London Esperanto Club, now located in Camden Town. When I was living in London in 1992 I made a point of going whenever possible. London is such an international city, there were usually visitors and/or speakers from around Europe and beyond. Just show up and have a listen to what's being said around you. You'll find that you understand a great deal, although you'll miss some things. You'll also find that if you are brave enough to speak to people, you'll get much encouragement. There is simply nothing like *speaking Esperanto*, however haltingly, to gain a real appreciation for the language. Remember, in any language the spoken form tends to be simpler than the written form. People use more elaborate constructions in writing, and that's why written speeches have an "oratorical" quality that you don't find in normal conversation.

When it comes to compounds, I'd say that about 90% of what you hear are compounds that are so common that one soon ceases to be aware of them as compounds at all. The fact that they are compounds makes them easy to acquire in the first place, but their compoundness soon vanishes from awareness. I'd have to remind myself that "foriri" and "alloga" are compounds. Of the remaining 10%, most are clear enough at first glance; a few are obscure. Some are striking, as when someone uses a compound that just captures a concept in a way that I never thought of.

erinja:I don't really understand your argument about languages with words that aren't in dictionaries being used in international negotiations. As things stand now, there are plenty of international discussions in English. These might make use of words like "rewiring"

Hi Erinja. I am at least a little less angry today. But stop right there. The word "rewire" is in my English dictionary. In fact it has some 45 large pages (with small print that I need my glasses to read) of words beginning with "re-", most of which are compounds, but never-the-less warrant a dictionary entry.

On top of that it separately lists, but does not explicitly define (at the bottom of the appropriate pages where the word would have appeared) what appears to be about 600 or 700 words that are in the language beginning with "re-" that do not warrant a separate entry on the grounds that the prefix and root are sufficient definition alone. They do, however, warrant listing as being a recognised word.

The writers of this dictionary thought that "rewire" did warrant a separate entry as it does not simply mean to "wire again"

Compare the above with the first paragraph of chapter twelve of one of your own courses on this site:

"Sinjoro Pipelbom estis alta, dika peza kaj larĝa. Tio donis al li havindan korpoforton kaj lia grandula aspekto ludis ne etan rolon en la fakto, ke la plimulto el la homoj, se ne lin timis, certe respektis kaj almenaŭ pripensis antaŭ ol decidi malkontentigi lin."

The word "korpforton" is not in the vortaro, nor is "grandula" and nor is "malkontentigi".

On top of that, "se ne lin timis" (literally if not him was afraid, or perhaps better, if afraid not him since "lin" is an object), is extremely bad. It is bad on the grounds that it is not really clear, despite the use of the accusative - it makes it sound like something is making him afraid, which is not what I gather from the context. Furthermore, putting "ne" in front of "lin" makes it appear that if the other people (who we later gather at least respected him) were not afraid of him, then they would be afraid of someone else. The phrase is far from being unambiguous.

This sort of muddle of words not in dictionaries and plain, simple unclear choice of words, is defended by this community as "expressive". Humbug. I strongly put it to you and this community that you are kidding yourselves.

And this is not in conversational Esperanto, nor is it in poetry or prize winning literature. It is in your course material for beginners.

~~~~~~~~~~

Todd, in particular, talks about the freedom of language being expressive. So does Piron elsewhere. I've read most of Piron's articles in English, and, read alone, they sound strong arguments. But the arguments do not withstand analysis.

Take, for example, this song that I found on the net:

"Ne lasu min.
Ne lasu, kara, min.
Okulprofund' tre vokas min nun.
Kaj inter ni – grandega distanc' sen fin'.
Vagas en sol' vi sub la Lun'.

Brilu do,
Por mi brilu, ho, mia stel',
Kiel fajr' en la ĉiel'.
Ho, mia stel'.

De malfeliĉ' venis terura hor'.
Kaj restis mi sen la subten'.
Sed nur al vi strebas nun mia kor',
Kaj savos min via reven'.

Brilu do,
Por mi brilu, ho , mia stel',
Kiel fajr' en la ĉiel'.
Ho, mia stel'.

Ho, mia stel'."

I am not sure if this is everyone's 'cup of tea'. I think it is extraordinarily beautiful. Not merely expressive, but evocative to the point where, if I am in the right mood, tears roll down my face. It is quite one of the most exquisite things I have recently come across.

However, leaving aside the emotion etc, I look at that and I see two compound words. "grandega" which *does* warrant an entry in the vortaro here. And "okulprofund'" which, honestly, could have been written "okul' profund'" or "okul-profund'" without losing a thing.

Therefore, I conclude that being "expressive" absolutely does not require the coining of new words on the fly.

I know you're at a difficult point in your studies....

Languages are hard, and you're not going to reach a very high level overnight....

Clearly I am at a high enough level that I find beauty in poetry and can, at least with some difficulty, read it.

It does not make sense to me, therefore, that I find so much difficulty in postings to fora. And, furthermore, the words sometimes are not in dictionaries and that the word parsing program cannot even come up with an interpretation of the pieces of such words.

In English, the reverse is true. It is in literature that one finds authors speaking in excessively long sentences with unfamiliar words. It seems to me that Esperanto has inverted this tendency.

Furthermore, I wish to register protest at this. It is not necessary. Absolutely not necessary.

Nick

T0dd:That's correct...

Todd, I appreciate your helpful input. However, see my reply to Erinja above. Clearly I do not agree, in the strongest possible way, with your point of view about this "expressive" business.

I am aware of the address of the London E-o people and other groups that exist around the South East of England. At the moment I do not relish the thought of trying my hand at speaking this language. Despite the fact that my E-o vocabulary is (now) far larger than that of Russian and despite the fact that my certainty of the grammar in E-o is far better, I think I would rather hop on a plane to Moscow and see Swan Lake.

I cannot explain why this is so. It doesn't make sense. I can only put it down to the fact that I FEEL that I ought to be fluent with this and I am not and that I have no excuse, because it is, or ought to be, so easy. Whereas, with Russian, I would be hopeless, but I have an excuse for that - it is a hard language and that a policeman in the street, being patient with my reading from a phrase book to ask for directions, would merely dismiss me as another gloopy anglichanin (stupid englishman). Erinja says not to be so tough on myself regarding E-o - well I just am. I can't do anything about it.

However, I do feel (and I think rightly) that Esperanto is making itself more difficult than it need be. Witness the fact that I can read Z more easily than I can postings here. This is, for me at least, an objective fact, and indeed measure, of the difficulty of modern Esperanto (or at least, some people's idea/use of it). I might have misidentified the reason for this phenomenon, but I cannot get away from the fact that this is my experience whether others here like it or not.

Nick

nw2394:
The word "korpforton" is not in the vortaro, nor is "grandula" and nor is "malkontentigi".

Why should they be? A dictionary is not needed to understand these words, if the roots (which are in the dictionary) are known. That's the whole point. If you know "korpo" and "forto" then you know that "korpoforto" means what would be expressed in English as "bodily strength." If you know "granda" then you know that a "grandulo" is a large person, and "grandula" simply converts the term to an adjective. "Malkontentigi" (a commonly encountered compound, by the way) is clearly to make someone the opposite of content; we might say "to upset." Certainly, you *could* write a dictionary that lists every possible compound. You may find ReVo, which lists many, more to your liking.

On top of that, "se ne lin timis" (literally if not him was afraid, or perhaps better, if afraid not him since "lin" is an object), is extremely bad. It is bad on the grounds that it is not really clear, despite the use of the accusative - it makes it sound like something is making him afraid, which is not what I gather from the context. Furthermore, putting "ne" in front of "lin" makes it appear that if the other people (who we later gather at least respected him) were not afraid of him, then they would be afraid of someone else. The phrase is far from being unambiguous.

In fact, it is perfectly unambiguous. "se ne lin timas" could *not* mean something making him afraid, because "timas" doesn't mean "making afraid." "Timigas" means that. "la plimulto el la homoj, se ne lin timis, certe respektis..." etc. The position of "lin" in no way implies that they fear someone else.

This sort of muddle of words not in dictionaries and plain, simple unclear choice of words, is defended by this community as "expressive". Humbug. I strongly put it to you and this community that you are kidding yourselves.

It's not a muddle; it's crystal clear. I can no doubt find some muddled texts in Esperanto, but this isn't one, by any stretch.

Therefore, I conclude that being "expressive" absolutely does not require the coining of new words on the fly.

That's poor logic. For one thing, nobody is arguing that being expressive *always* requires coining of compounds. The point is that compounding facilitates expressiveness. You claim that Piron's arguments are weak, but you haven't actually mentioned his arguments, let alone refuted them. You simply reproduced a nice bit of poetry that uses only a few compounds.

It does not make sense to me, therefore, that I find so much difficulty in postings to fora. And, furthermore, the words sometimes are not in dictionaries and that the word parsing program cannot even come up with an interpretation of the pieces of such words.

You've yet to explain what it is, exactly, that you find hard to understand about words such as "malkontentigi", apart from the fact that this manner of doing things is still relatively unfamiliar to you. That unfamiliarity is not a defect in Esperanto. Are you skeptical that people really use and understand and even *enjoy* this aspect of Esperanto?

In English, the reverse is true. It is in literature that one finds authors speaking in excessively long sentences with unfamiliar words. It seems to me that Esperanto has inverted this tendency.

In literary prose, this may be so; not in poetry. In English poetry (and in that of many other languages) the tendency is to use shorter words when possible, which is why iambic pentameter is so dominant. The use of longer words (which tend to form dactylic clusters) tends to produce a comic effect, which Gilbert & Sullivan recognized and took advantage of. The words that you complain about as "unfamiliar" are simply not unfamiliar after you get used to the way they are made and used.

Furthermore, I wish to register protest at this.

With who?

Esperanto has no central authority. It is not a product put out by a company, which can just be revised with the next release if the "customers" don't like a particular feature.

There is no indication of a forthcoming language reform, at least anytime soon. People have been using it now for 120 years - it is not a language "proposal" anymore, but instead an actual language. It has the inertia of over a century of use behind it.

At this point, it is what it is, and will only change at the slow pace of natural evolution, and those changes will be decided upon by actual usage by the mass of speakers - not by any one individual.

At this point, it is what it is, and no amount of complaining will change that. You can either take it as it is, or leave it as it is. Protesting it is an absolutely pointless waste of time, since said protests cannot have any effect. They won't change the language, that's for sure.

At this point, it is what it is, and getting mad about it is just a waste of energy. What's there to get mad about? It's like getting mad at trigonometry because of a mental block with remembering how to plot the graph of a cosine. You either remember it or you don't, and trigonometry doesn't give a hoot either way.

Your protests aren't helping you in any way, obviously. They aren't helping anyone else, either, since most of us just accept the fact that Esperanto is what it is, and learn it from that standpoint.

Yes, if it were still a language proposal that we could tinker with at will, that would be one thing. But it's NOT a proposal, it's form has taken solid shape, and that's the shape that new learners are just going to have to deal with. No one is making you learn it - you can always do something else. But if you want to learn it, then learn IT, and not worry so much as to whether it matches up or not with your idealized vision of the perfect IAL. Honestly. It won't. Perfection isn't the point.

T0dd:You claim that Piron's arguments are weak, but you haven't actually mentioned his arguments, let alone refuted them. You simply reproduced a nice bit of poetry that uses only a few compounds.

If you want a link, here it is:

http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/evolu...

Your argument about expressiveness only makes sense to me from the point of view of the expressor. That, frankly, is irrelevant, if the recipient of the communication cannot make head nor tail of it.

You seem to be so hung up on this expressiveness thing that you cannot understand that it obfuscates things for me, at least.

And you yourself, listed several E-o compounds, such as publish, which are a long way from obvious.

And, I still maintain that that phrase about fear is hard to understand. It was not clear to me and only context eventually got it for me. And that remains so even with explanation from you. If a communication is not clear to the recipient of a communication, then it is not clear and the originator has not communicated. Fact, no matter how you want to wriggle with arguments to the contrary or how it is nice to be "expressive". You have epxressed precisely nothing if the recipient cannot understand.

I don't see why my idea that words should be in dictionaries is in the slightest bit weird. I take it for granted in English. In Esperanto, I take it for granted that every second word I cannot find in the vortaro here isn't in the Reta Vortaro either!!!!! That is not acceptable. It is plain lazy speech that shows that the speakers, instead of using the words that do exist, can't be bothered to learn them and want to get away with approximations based on a bunch of simplistic word fragments. Yuck.

Defending this as expressive is obscene.

Nick

RiotNrrd:There is no indication of a forthcoming language reform, at least anytime soon. People have been using it now for 120 years - it is not a language "proposal" anymore, but instead an actual language. It has the inertia of over a century of use behind it.

Clearly you don't get it, do you.

The fact is I can read Zammenhof.

I have difficulty with modern E-o.

Piron documents, in the link I mentioned above, the changes to Esperanto. As I can understand Z and I can't understand a lot of modern E-o, things have got more difficult, for me at least.

This is bad for anything that pretends to be a serious IAL.

DO YOU GET IN NOW!!!!!!!!!

OR DO I HAVE TO CHISEL IT INTO YOUR FOREHEAD?

THE CHANGES THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO EO, PARTICULARLY OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS ARE PLAIN RUBBISH.

Nick

Nuntempemimaligxtrekontentintas,

Hard to decipher? Sorry, I was being "expressive".

Want me to explain what I meant. Er, no, it is my right to be expressive. Go away, it is your fault for not being fluent enough.

nw2394:Clearly you don't get it, do you.

The fact is I can read Zammenhof.

I have difficulty with modern E-o.

Well, here's what I get:

The language is already established. You either learn it as it is, or you don't, but the language is not going to change worldwide to address issues that you have difficulties with. It really is as simple as that.

nw2394:This is bad for anything that pretends to be a serious IAL.

Esperanto doesn't pretend to be a serious IAL. It doesn't pretend to be anything. It's just a tool. You can either learn to use it as it is, or not - your choice.

nw2394:DO YOU GET IN NOW!!!!!!!!!

Why, yes, *I* do.

nw2394:OR DO I HAVE TO CHISEL IT INTO YOUR FOREHEAD?

Hmmm... one wonders if this attitude isn't what is driving some of the more pointed responses you've been receiving. But I suppose that's OUR fault, not yours. Pfft.

nw2394:THE CHANGES THAT HAVE HAPPENED TO EO, PARTICULARLY OVER THE LAST 20 YEARS ARE PLAIN RUBBISH.

OK.

So what?

Nuntempemimaligxtrekontentintas

Hard to decipher? Sorry, I was being "expressive".

Actually, at the risk of ticking you off any more, no, it really wasn't hard to decipher anymorethanthisis.

It took very little effort to parse, as I am familiar with every word you crammed together in there. Never mind that no one would actually use such a construction - the meaning is still completely clear to me.

Word building actually involves a bit more than this rather crude (and clearly contrived) example displays. It doesn't JUST involve removing the white space - and occasional adjectival endings - from phrases or sentences, even if at a superficial level it appears to be only that.