I'd like to hear from people who didn't find Esperanto as easy as they were promised by the Esperanto propagandists. What I think is, Esperanto is not difficult as long as one keeps himself/herself limited to 'Hello, how are you? and similar useless stuff.'

The moment a person (specially Asians and Africans) opens his/her mouth to explain or to understand some important text, he/she feels mugged. There is a as much vocabulary (almost)to learn as there in English or French or German or Chinese!

Second thing is I don't understand why Esperantists attack only the English language.

When someone proposes to facilitate Esperanto by creating words from basic radicals instead of just borrowing the Greek or Latin equivalents, he/she is ridiculed as a pironist or with some similar term. This, in turn makes a sect with in a sect, which is just ridiculous!

It is more like Christianity where both Catholics and the Protestants claim to be the true Christians or like Islam both the Sunni and the Shia claim only their version of Islam is the true one. Or Esperanto can be compared to communism which promised heavens to the poor but soon they found themselves in hell!

My point is: all these things make Esperanto harder to learn than it would be if these neologisms and factions didn't exist!

Demian:I'd like to hear from people who didn't find Esperanto as easy as they were promised by the Esperanto propagandists. What I think is, Esperanto is not difficult as long as one keeps himself/herself limited to 'Hello, how are you? and similar useless stuff.'

Esperanto maybe could be easier. The thing is that it's easier than any national language.

Demian:The moment a person (specially Asians and Africans) opens his/her mouth to explain or to understand some important text, he/she feels mugged. There is a as much vocabulary (almost)to learn as there in English or French or German or Chinese!

No, you're exaggerating. Although Esperanto does have some unneeded neologisms, there's still much less words to learn than in English, French, German or Chinese.

Demian:Second thing is I don't understand why Esperantists attack only the English language.

Do they?

Demian:When someone proposes to facilitate Esperanto by creating words from basic radicals instead of just borrowing the Greek or Latin equivalents, he/she is ridiculed as a pironist or with some similar term. This, in turn makes a sect with in a sect, which is just ridiculous!

Nobody ridicules anyone because of such an attitude. I believe that most who do use neologisms like biologio instead of combined words like vivoscienco are just lazy. While I try to use combined words where that makes sense, this really is a difficult task for a European.

Feel free to use combined words if that's easier for you. And how exactly is Esperanto a sect?

Demian:It is more like Christianity where both Catholics and the Protestants claim to be the true Christians or like Islam both the Sunni and the Shia claim only their version of Islam is the true one. Or Esperanto can be compared to communism which promised heavens to the poor but soon they found themselves in hell!

No. Esperanto does not promise the heaven but gives the hell. Would you prefer English over Esperanto?

Demian:My point is: all these things make Esperanto harder to learn than it would be if these neologisms and factions didn't exist!

Maybe. However, in a living language you can't avoid that people add new terms, even if they are unneeded. If you're going to restrict this, you're effectively killing Esperanto because no new words may be added to the language (isn't that why Volapük failed?).

Esperanto maybe could be easier. The thing is that it's easier than any national language. No, you're exaggerating. Although Esperanto does have some unneeded neologisms, there's still much less words to learn than in English, French, German or Chinese.

Any artificial language would prove as good.

Nobody ridicules anyone because of such an attitude. I believe that most who do use neologisms like biologio instead of combined words like vivoscienco are just lazy. While I try to use combined words where that makes sense, this is really is a difficult task for a European.

How about the non-Europeans?

Feel free to use combined words if that's easier for you.

And do the work which the incompetent AdE or the PIV are supposed to do. Later some European or an American would say you work was never official.

No. Esperanto does not promise the heaven but gives the hell. Would you prefer English over Esperanto?

Read Esperanto propaganda! They present it as if it were panacea to all the problems.

Maybe. However, in a living language you can't avoid that people add new terms, even if they are unneeded. If you're going to restrict this, you're effectively killing Esperanto because no new words may be added to the language (isn't that why Volapük failed?).

I agree, we can't stop people. But how about the AdE itself.

Regarding the whole thing about Esperantists attacking "only" English - I might add that while they certainly attack a lot more languages (as do the speakers of those languages attack Esperanto) than just English, English kind of is a pet hate to all who think that only a neutral IAL is acceptable, so that statement in a way almost deserves the superlative usage of "only".

Other things I'd add to the hate-list:
- Chinese (because it has lots of speakers, tones etc).
- Lojban (because of the supersition that speaking lojban turns you into an emotionless information terminal, and also because any courses in Lojban are riddled with non-helpful jargon).
- Ido (because there is no word for "slight change" in Esperanto (just joking - it's "sxangxeto").
- Interlingua (because it's too italic)

My little attempt at sad humour aside , Esperanto has more words than languages like Hawai'ian, but less than in European languages. If I had a language to compare it with, I'd probably go with Malay or Indonesian, or maybe Latin (without the declensions and verb forms).

As for using neologisms, I think the biggest justification for it (I'm personally neutral and change my preference depending on my mood and writing style) is that the terms often brought into Esperanto have little nuances that would turn natural equivalents into makeshift dictionaries. The sciences are a bit of a grey are; Biology isn't just about life, but the general field is centred on the research of life. "Fiziko", however, I have no problem in using, but if someone can give me a good example of a bonlingvema word, let me know (remember, physics is a lot more than just Newton and Einstein, especially this day and age).

And my own personal rant: there is a lot of pressure to learn Esperanto grammar precisely - but, creative use of language between individuals is probably the most powerful thing in communication, I think.

Demian:No. Esperanto does not promise the heaven but gives the hell. Would you prefer English over Esperanto?

Read Esperanto propaganda! They present it as if it were panacea to all the problems.

Maybe. However, in a living language you can't avoid that people add new terms, even if they are unneeded. If you're going to restrict this, you're effectively killing Esperanto because no new words may be added to the language (isn't that why Volapük failed?).

I agree, we can't stop people. But how about the AdE itself.

Demian is right about the first point - I don't know what panacea's are or what they taste like, but it Esperanto's importance, is, unfortunately, overestimated by many a speaker.

As far as Volapük goes, it failed simply because it looked too alien. Esperanto looked European. Now that Europe is no longer in colonial grasp of the world, that's apparently a bad thing as well. Heck. Let's just grunt to eachother .

Without the ability to add words, though, you're risking EO's capability to stay relevant with the times. People will end up speaking something completely different to the original Esperanto, and it'll just die off as the language turns into many different dialects.

ceigered:- Lojban (because of the supersition that speaking lojban turns you into an emotionless information terminal, and also because any courses in Lojban are riddled with non-helpful jargon).

Funny, I visited Lojban BEFORE Esperanto, and the guide I used was very useful. But no matter how hard they try, I find Lojban to be impossibly hard to wrap my head around without dedicating multega kiomo da tempo to it.

And I find the coloring somewhat humorous since I rarely see anyone use it.

Demian, I think you misunderstand the role of the AdE and the PIV. The Akademio does not control Esperanto. One could say that no one controls Esperanto, or that everyone does. New roots appear in literature or common speech, and if they become widespread enough, the Akademio makes them "official".

"Official" status is more of a guideline than a rule anyway. One is free to use Esperanto as they want, with official roots, unofficial roots, or whatever. The Akademio has no means of enforcing its additions to the vocabulary if you don't want to use them. Whether a root is "official" or not is of interest mostly to the dictionary-writers, who by the way do not control Esperanto either.

It occurs to me that maybe you might want to read the foreword to the Fundamento, to get a better grasp of how Esperanto's growth is supposed to happen. It's in Esperanto of course, but it was written in 1905 by Zamenhof himself before the Akademio was founded and LONG before the PIV was published, so it is free of the influence of the dreaded Akademio or PIV:

La Antaŭparolo

Demian:
Read Esperanto propaganda! They present it as if it were panacea to all the problems.

I admit that I have seen such propaganda. However, is it fair to say that all Esperantists feel this way? I don't.

I've never felt that Esperanto would bring world peace overnight. There are too many examples in world history of people creating wars who were more than capable of speaking to each other in a common language.

However, it isn't a stretch to say that Esperanto *could* help solve many of the world's problems. If we had the ability to communicate with each other on a fairer and simpler basis, wouldn't this facilitate the search for solutions to our problems? This seems obvious.

Demian:
Nobody ridicules anyone because of such an attitude. I believe that most who do use neologisms like biologio instead of combined words like vivoscienco are just lazy. While I try to use combined words where that makes sense, this is really is a difficult task for a European.

How about the non-Europeans?

For them word combining is probably easier. I'm not saying that words like biologio are good. I'm only saying that for Europeans using them is much easier and if we try hard not to use them, the result may look like biolo ... ehhhh... vivoscienco. I've really been trying hard to use combined words where I know them, but what you're accustomed to always wins.

Demian:Feel free to use combined words if that's easier for you.

And do the work which the incompetent AdE or the PIV are supposed to do. Later some European or an American would say you work was never official.

If you use the roots that the language already has, your writing is automatically official. As both VIV/ and SCIENC/ are Fundamental roots, nobody could in any way say you're wrong if you combine them logically. Same for all similar words.

Demian:No. Esperanto does not promise the heaven but gives the hell. Would you prefer English over Esperanto?

Read Esperanto propaganda! They present it as if it were panacea to all the problems.

The fact is that it's a much easier language than national ones. And it's more neutral.

Demian: Maybe. However, in a living language you can't avoid that people add new terms, even if they are unneeded. If you're going to restrict this, you're effectively killing Esperanto because no new words may be added to the language (isn't that why Volapük failed?).

I agree, we can't stop people. But how about the AdE itself.

They do not control Esperanto. A language lives from its users.

Demian: There is a as much vocabulary (almost)to learn as there in English or French or German or Chinese!..

I wouldn't exaggerate. But it is true that the word-building capabilities of Esperanto could be better exploited.

Demian:I don't understand why Esperantists attack only the English language..

The reason is that English has come to occupy the position of the international language of science, commerce and diplomacy that Esperanto aspired to. But English can be a difficult language for people who haven't used it as children, and so Esperanto still has a chance, at least to become an international language of friendship.

Demian:all these things make Esperanto harder to learn than it would be if these neologisms and factions didn't exist!

The debate over neologismoj is not going to go away. I suggest that you look for the consensus position on disputed questions, when in doubt.