Miland:

Vilinilo:

Miland:

Vilinilo:In my opinion, .. Esperanto is .. not an ideal auxlang for international communication.

Do you have a better alternative?

Many. There is a handful of auxlangs better than Esperanto..

So name half a dozen auxlangs that you think are better than Esperanto.

No need to start a fight lads.

And whatever is perceived as better is generally relative and personal or influenced by public perception.
There was however neo-patwa and another language by some guy call Arpee on YouTube and unilang, both of which were better than Esperanto in many ways, however for me the critical weaknesses were that they were too tokiponaish and that they lacked incentive to be learned.

Anyway apparently one of the easiest languages to learn as a child is Turkish, would would show advantages in the agglunative system vs the mixed system that eu languages and eo have. Unfortunately, majority of conlangs are not totally agglunative, or are agglunative but complexly, so really the conlang world is looking a bit stark for good languages for me ATM

Miland:
So name half a dozen auxlangs that you think are better than Esperanto.

I second ceigered's thoughts. And, as a matter of personal opinion, I'd point LFN, Ido, Lojban and maybe an improved version of Toki Pona or Sona as better alternatives than Esperanto (I definitely don't think being 'tokiponish' is a bad thing), but I don't want to start a flamewar here.

Vilinilo:

Miland:
So name half a dozen auxlangs that you think are better than Esperanto.

I'd point LFN, Ido, Lojban and maybe an improved version of Toki Pona or Sona as better alternatives than Esperanto (I definitely don't think being 'tokiponish' is a bad thing)

I must ask, because I love discussions about lojban (although i wish to keep this from becoming a flame war too) what your opinion of lojban is. I find it too complex and, well, thought inducing to use so I stopped learning

LFN as a choice I can relate to, but I tend to regard all latin and germanic based conlangs as hard to pronounce xD - that's something I find absurb about conlang vs natlangs, conlangs always stress correct pronunciation, where as seemingly more complex natlangs can have the laxest pronunciation ever. I guess there aren't enough conlangers with pronunciation slaugheterers like Australians in mind.

And Sona is an interesting sounding one! Thanks for mentioning that!

Fight? Flame war? All Miland did was ask a question

As has been previously said, what constitutes "better" largely comes down to definitions and subjective criteria, however I would humbly suggest that one important criterion for an IAL is that it have some chance of success and have a relatively substantial user base already in place so that people learning it can actually have some kind of a real experience using it. You know.. the whole point of the thing existing in the first place?

Whatever it's flaws, Esperanto is the only conlang that ever managed to achieve AND maintain such a thing. So in that context I'd say Esperanto wins out by default, despite objections by those who don't like this feature or that feature (something which I suspect will be the experience of any conlang, no matter how objectively good it may be).

I would say that few, if any, auxlangs have been as extensively tested as Esperanto was by its founder before he published it, especially via translations from other languages. The life and character of the founder is also worth considering.

One suitable criterion of what makes a 'better' language may be that it be easy for as many people as possible. My understanding is that lojban is difficult to learn, while LFN is intended for speakers of romance languages, so that it might be more difficult for speakers of slavic languages.

Miland:lojban is difficult to learn, while LFN is intended for speakers of romance languages, so that it might be more difficult for speakers of slavic languages.

I wouldn't disagree much with you there mate. But LFN is a bit of a mixed bag.

Lingua Franca Nova:
- Probably easier grammar because of similar methodology to pidgins or some east asian languages
- Stress is before final consonant
- Lack of EO style lexical categorisers (o,a,as,os etc)
- Smaller sound inventory
- romanesque-centric lexicon (this is where Slav's lose out a bit)
- smaller speaker base

On par with EO in my books analytically speaking. Oh wait forgot one thing
- No equivalent to lernu community
OK forget that LFN loses!

ceigered:
I must ask, because I love discussions about lojban (although i wish to keep this from becoming a flame war too) what your opinion of lojban is. I find it too complex and, well, thought inducing to use so I stopped learning

I don't think lojban is that complex, yet I think it doesn't sound quite natural and, in my opinion, some words are very hard to pronounce, but I think it's a very exciting idea, although I've never intended to really learn it.

ceigerd:LFN as a choice I can relate to, but I tend to regard all latin and germanic based conlangs as hard to pronounce xD - that's something I find absurb about conlang vs natlangs, conlangs always stress correct pronunciation, where as seemingly more complex natlangs can have the laxest pronunciation ever. I guess there aren't enough conlangers with pronunciation slaugheterers like Australians in mind.

LOL, I agree with you. But in my opinion LFN's pronunciation is a lot easier than Esperanto's. Well, maybe I'm biased, because I'm a natural speaker of Portuguese. Though, I think Esperanto has too much consonantal clusters, such as in words such as 'scienco', 'Finnlando', 'ŝtrumpo' and even freaks like 'majstrskribisto'. I'm a westerner and I'm barelly able to pronounce those words, imagine an East Asian trying? LFN still has some consonantal clusters, but not as bad as those in Esperanto.

Considering that a large part of world population is natural speaker of languages with a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel structure, many people around the world would have a hard time trying to master Esperanto's pronunciation. That's why I think Toki Pona should be a model for conlangs - it's got few phonems, no consonantal clusters (except for n+consonant) and in addition, it's vocabulary is more universal.

tommjames:Fight? Flame war? All Miland did was ask a question

Better safe than sorry . I think that's a subject that may rise emotional reactions.

tommjames:As has been previously said, what constitutes "better" largely comes down to definitions and subjective criteria,

Definitely.

tommjames:however I would humbly suggest that one important criterion for an IAL is that it have some chance of success and have a relatively substantial user base already in place so that people learning it can actually have some kind of a real experience using it. You know.. the whole point of the thing existing in the first place?

Whatever it's flaws, Esperanto is the only conlang that ever managed to achieve AND maintain such a thing. So in that context I'd say Esperanto wins out by default, despite objections by those who don't like this feature or that feature (something which I suspect will be the experience of any conlang, no matter how objectively good it may be).

Well, the IAL which has got "some chance of success and have a relatively substantial user base already in place so that people learning it can actually have some kind of a real experience using it" is not Esperanto. It's English. Why not stick to English, then? The whole point in suggesting an artificial language rather than English as an IAL is an ideal of neutrality and fairness.It would be also desirable that such an artificial language would be easy to learn for everybody, regardless of it's linguistic background.

My question is: is Esperanto enough neutral, fair and easy? In my opinion, it's an alternative better than English, but it's not good enough. It's not neutral, since speakers of European languages have an unfair advantage (LFN, Ido, Interlingua, and many others have the same problem) and it's not as easy as it could be, as there are many unnecessary complications, such as the accusative, the distinction between adjectives and adverbs, the nominal agreement, the excess of phonemes (Esperanto has as much as 34, while Japanese has only 22 and some dialects of Spanish have 24. Hawaiian needs only 13), etc.

ceigered:
On par with EO in my books analytically speaking. Oh wait forgot one thing
- No equivalent to lernu community
OK forget that LFN loses!

LOL! That's true. The major advantage of Esperanto over its contenders is its community.

Vilinilo:Well, the IAL which has got "some chance of success and have a relatively substantial user base already in place so that people learning it can actually have some kind of a real experience using it" is not Esperanto. It's English. Why not stick to English, then? The whole point in suggesting an artificial language rather than English as an IAL is an ideal of neutrality and fairness.It would be also desirable that such an artificial language would be easy to learn for everybody, regardless of it's linguistic background.

I think that there’s hardly a comparison between English and Esperanto. The latter is not perfect, but it can still be used effectively by an Asian in much less the time needed to learn English.

Ideologists might insist on a perfectly neutral language (like Solresol or Lojban), but the way I see it, it’s a lot harder for Westerners to learn those languages—as well as harder for non–IE language speakers. And Chinese learners of Esperanto won’t be able to use their vocabulary learnt from the IAL in learning English or another Western language.

The main advantage in Esperanto is its flexibility and lack of restrictions regarding idioms. Although Romance-langage speakers may have an advantage as far as how quickly the language is obtained, there is no real advantage once the language is learnt. It’s the idioms that affect control over a language. Take French and Italian, for instance. Although they are closely related, a native French speaker will never feel as at home with Italian as a native Italian, except in the case of long total immersion—which would have the same results as being immersed in a less-closely related language, such as German.)

Having a neutral language at the expense of just changing the vocabulary to equally unfamiliar roots (see my proposition, which is purely for fun) does not make it any easier for the other nations. It only has a detrimental effect on the Westerners.