ceigered:What's this deception? I've heard about it but never quite figured out what people point to when referring to it.

The deception has nothing to do with the language itself, or vocabulary choice or anything like that.

What happened was that there was going to be an international committed that would hold a meeting to choose which was the best international language, of the many projects of the time, so that international organizations could support the best one. Each language sent a representative to the meeting, to make the case for that language. A certain person was sent to represent Esperanto at the meeting, a longtime Esperantist, trusted by Zamenhof and by the community. Long story short - he didn't represent Esperanto at all. The man was Louis de Beaufront, co-author of Ido. Instead of being a proponent of Esperanto at the meeting, as he was meant to be, he proposed that the international language should be an "improved" Esperanto - Ido! He denied having been involved in creating Ido, and he denied having stabbed Esperanto in the back at the meeting. Oh, and by the way, the leader of the delegation to choose the language? Couturat, the other co-creator of Ido, who had previously assured Zamenhof that no problem, the committee would definitely choose Esperanto.

You can read about it in greater detail on Wikipedia

Can anyone provide a strong argument for noun-adjective agreement in number

Yes.

Redundancy is the argument. Redundancy in the sense of including the same information more than once in a sentence, so that if the sentence is misheard or miswritten, the important information will still get transmitted, because it is being transmitted in two ways and not just one.

This could be considered important for something like an international language, where people with different native languages and different accents are communicating; sometimes a little redundancy helps in ensuring the point gets across.

Even in English we have some degree of redundancy. Verbs change form for singular or plural (depending on which pronoun), so the pronoun and the verb form both give information on singular or plural subjects.

The same rationale works for the accusative. Word order provides a hint about what the object is - and the -n ending emphasizes it. So you have two pieces of information, not just one, to ensure that you have understood correctly.

erinja:
The same rationale works for the accusative. Word order provides a hint about what the object is - and the -n ending emphasizes it. So you have two pieces of information, not just one, to ensure that you have understood correctly.

In Esperanto, word order doesn't provide a hint, it's completely meaningless except for a stylistic effect.

No, not even in sentences like "iom da virinoj ŝatas iom da viroj". Strictly, here only the context can disambiguate. Of course you can still turn these "iom"-s into nouns to disambiguate: "iomo da virinoj ŝatas iomon da viroj", or use the unofficial preposition *na*: "iom da virinoj ŝatas *na* iom da viroj".

Personally, I never had big problems with adjectival agreement. Although it does occur in German, it doesn't occur in be-phrases:
die neuen Häuser = the new houses
die Häuser sind neu = the houses are new
And still I never had problems with "la domoj estas novaj".

The language is as it is, and you can't reform it because it's a living language. Or are you going to reform English too?

darkweasel:In Esperanto, word order doesn't provide a hint, it's completely meaningless except for a stylistic effect.

No, not even in sentences like "iom da virinoj ŝatas iom da viroj". Strictly, here only the context can disambiguate.

I was always taught that Esperanto has a "default" word order that is Subject-Verb-Object, as described in PMEG and I do believe most grammarbooks. With that in mind I think it may be going a bit far to say word order is completely meaningless. Certainly I can imagine speaking with someone who I know from experience tends to stick to the default word order, your ambiguous iom da virinoj ŝatas iom da viroj may be at least tenuously disambiguated from word order. Although without doubt that will be impossible in a great many situations with any reliability. But don't forget, there are other aspects of the grammar that require and depend upon word order, and where subjects and objects intermingle with these constructs I think it's very fair to say there can be a hint about where the object is.

darkweasel:No, not even in sentences like "iom da virinoj ŝatas iom da viroj". Strictly, here only the context can disambiguate. Of course you can still turn these "iom"-s into nouns to disambiguate: "iomo da virinoj ŝatas iomon da viroj", or use the unofficial preposition *na*: "iom da virinoj ŝatas *na* iom da viroj".

You can use 'al' (or in extreme cases 'je') instead of 'na', with the added bonus of being completely official.

Re: word order, it does matter, consider for instance:

homoj estas bestoj
bestoj estas homoj

Personally, I never had big problems with adjectival agreement.

Me neither, but mostly because of the fact that Italian has the same mechanism. I agree with those who believe it is needlessly redundant. The English sentence 'yesterday I hit the three white sheep' is understandable without any plural or tense markers. It would be less understandable without the specification of time and number, but their presence would render grammar markers redundant; in Esperanto, they would still be mandatory. As much as I have no direct experience of this, I do not believe angry English-speaking shepherds are more subject to the ill effect of lack of redundancy.

I accept the fact that redundancy can be good (but not necessarily essential; if I were to hear 'la bela domoj' I would be still confused, even though the information about plural has passed through, even if partially), especially in the light of the fact that Esperanto has been planned to ease communication, but I would not say that it is strong enough, as an argument, to justify the agreement in plural and case as essential. My impression is that it has been lifted from other European languages, to make Esperanto look more natural.

If clarity of information were such a key point for Esperanto, I would also expect more diverse personal pronouns (mi, vi, li, ...); they tend to be difficult to distinguish especially over a disturbed connection (phone, radio). Much too late to change them now, of course.

Thank you all for your responses.

The simplest justification is that agreement in number is evident from the untouchable Fundamento (Section 7, 2nd example and section 11, last example). I think Rogir has made an important point: if you feel that in this or that respect the language should have been differently designed, and you change it accordingly, then you no longer have Esperanto but some other language. That is how Ido came into being.

The language is as it is, and you can't reform it because it's a living language. Or are you going to reform English too?

I don't see anything about reform in my original post. I am just curious about the views of other Esperanto speakers.

Personally, I never had big problems with adjectival agreement.

I wouldn't call my problem big. I'd just like to make a small problem smaller.

I suggest that you read these two chapters from the book "Lingvo kaj Vivo" of Gaston Waringhien [translated into English by Don Harlow], justifying the usage of the accusative ending [the one-half of the noun-adjective agreement].

I have read these chapters. As I wrote in my original post, agreement with respect to case doesn't bother me, only agreement with respect to number.

I'm trying to learn to love it.

Give it time.

Good, practical advice. If Winston could learn to love Big Brother, I suppose that I should make an effort.

Redundancy is the argument. Redundancy in the sense of including the same information more than once in a sentence, so that if the sentence is misheard or miswritten, the important information will still get transmitted, because it is being transmitted in two ways and not just one.

I agree that redundancy is the best argument. With respect to number though I'm still not convinced that it is worth the extra rule. Maybe statistical / information-theoretic analysis would change my mind. That said, I do agree that it does clarify a few sentences without imposing too great a learning burden.

I think we Aussies are less likely to like the esperanto plural because it probably reminds us of Kath and Kim or some other over-exaggerated Australian accent

I myself quite like the way the concordant "aj"s and "oj"s impart a particular aesthetic to the sound of Esperanto, which I find quite pleasing.

Actually, that's just about the only thing I don't like about the language. I think it just sounds silly when you've got a phrase that has a sequence of words ending in ajn ajn ajn ojn. I'm trying to learn to love it.

I'm almost out of room, so I'll file those excellent comments under "Arguments From Euphony." Thanks again for views and advice.

ceigered:

Miland:The next generation of "improvers" attempted deception..

What's this deception?

A good account will be found in the chapter 'A man and his betrayers' in Marjorie Boulton's Zamenhof: creator of Esperanto. The affair occurred between 1907 and 1908, and the two main figures involved were Couturat and de Beaufront. An international conference on the choice of an international language had been formed. Couturat had assured Zamenhof that Esperanto had nothing to fear from it, while Beaufront had been sent there in good faith by Zamenhof. At the convention, without having consulted Zamenhof or the Esperanto movement, Couturat proposed a reformed version of Esperanto to be called Ido, and Beaufront then sided with his reforming party. Zamenhof indicated his suspicion concerning Beaufront in 1908. The whole thing went downhill from there, and the chapter will give further details to anyone interested.

arkadio:As I wrote in my original post, agreement with respect to case doesn't bother me, only agreement with respect to number.

I also think it would be illogical if adjectives agreed in case but not number.

arkadio:

I'm trying to learn to love it.

Give it time.

Good, practical advice. If Winston could learn to love Big Brother, I suppose that I should make an effort.

This is not the same situation at all. Winston was forced to love BB by miniluv, the only thing that would ever force you to follow grammar rules are you and your desire to be understood,

@ Erinja and Miland:

Ah I understand now - sounds like a mafia story to me now though

Samenuovo (aka Zam) is doing deals with Couturat (aka Kudos) that will allow la famiglia di Speranza to pull off the biggest heist of the century. Zam sends his most trusted man (Bellafronte aka Beaufront) to pull off the job, with a list of 12 objectives he to complete. However, unbeknown to Zam is that Bellafronte and Kudos are actually planning to betray Zam and pull off the heist themselves with several new objectives.
Gunfighting ensues, casualties are high.
The usurption of the Speranza family is put down, and all is good.
Fin

This is not the same situation at all. Winston was forced to love BB by miniluv, the only thing that would ever force you to follow grammar rules are you and your desire to be understood,

True enough. The analogy wasn't perfect. I accept the rule whenever I use Esperanto. Loving the rule is not the same thing. I understand why Esperantists are at times impatient with questions like mine. No one except an historian of language asks about the evolution of noun-adjective concord in French or Russian, but novices frequently raise the question (and related ones) with respect to Esperanto. It must be wearisome to experienced speakers. It also smacks of Couturat, de Beaufront (real name: Louis Chevreux) Ido skulduggery, and the endless, tiresome, tinkering toward the chimerical end of conlang perfection. Esperantists usually just like languages and want to get on with it. They want to see Esperanto treated like French or Russian. But these discussions are helpful to me and, I assume, to some other novices who are interested in the justifications for some of Zamenhof's more controversial design choices. Asking such questions does not make one a fifth columnist from Ido-land.