jan aleksan:Every time I hear "fina venko" I think about the nazi's "final solution"...

I agree. I think that la fina venko is one of the things that gives folks the wrong idea about Esperanto. I think it sounds either militaristic or culty.

How about "la tutmonda akcepto"?

Or maybe "la fina sukceso"?

I personally think that "Esperantisto" is a misnomer. If one believes in the internal idea of Esperantism (not necessary the final victory/success), then a "Esperant[ism]ano" that one is. If one only speaks Esperanto, then he/she's just a mere "Esperanto-parolanto".

Arpee keeps complaining about Esperanto - saying that it has consonant clusters and too many sounds. He thinks an IAL should have no more than 5 consonants and 3 vowels and a CVCV structure.

These things aren't mentioned in Wikipedia at all!

However, I think that Esperanto's more of a language (a complete language) than Toki Pona, Bon Wen, Puna, Vuyamu and Puna Pala (which are a bunch of 18-200 words). It's really hard to make a mini-lang because it's really hard to know which words should go together and which shouldn't.

patrik:Or maybe "la fina sukceso"?

I was avoiding the "sukceso" and "fina" part - success is good, but at what cost is what some might think. And "final" insinuates that Esperanto is the absolute final language ever of sorts, and that it's somewhat irreplaceable. Unless it's Esperanto's final success before imploding, which is a rather bad thought as well

@ K1attack:

There are *many* benefits to CVCV structure::* (Japanese, Hawaiian, Maori, all beautiful languages and they all have this. And they could all be world languages. And Mandarin isn't far off, and is THE world language by native speakers), and there are many benefits to 3 vowels (Arabic, a major world language, has this). But you're right - there's no rule that says this is the way to speak. They're just things that most speakers of any language should be able to handle. But, let's say the ENTIRE world spoke English fluently. Then, in say 500 years, it would be likely that every language born from English would have English like features, and things like Japanese and Spanish with many pure vowels would be a strange thing.

So, really, a good language is one that's based off of a culture that already exists and is accessible to many people, in the words, sounds, writing and grammar, which is why Esperanto and Interlingua are very popular for conlangs. They just work for people. As you said, minilangs don't necessarily compare to Esperanto, probably because they are hard to adapt to how people think (rather, they try to change the way people think. That's why I like Lojban as it's able to adapt to many different ways of speaking. Only it's insanely hard for a normal language).

::* EDIT: Reading Andogigi's post after mine - I do somewhat agree with you, but that doesn't necessarily nullify the benefits of CVCV structure (I mean, at least EVERY language has a CV sound in there somewhere. It doesn't help with the amount of words you can add in a language before stuff get's complicated though). The point is, there are pluses and minuses to all systems, and I wouldn't endorse any as being infinitely awesome. But CV's the most basic system (at least until babies start saying "schrijveningen" as their first word instead of mama and baba).

I'm not sure that I agree with the CVCV construction concept making a language easier. For example, I know many people think that Polish looks like a difficult language because of the large number of consonants. I don't believe this is the case. In fact, Polish is a very easy language to pronounce once you learn the rules of pronunciation. (about 15 minutes worth of effort)

The truth is, the vast majority of languages on this planet stick to the one vowel per syllable concept. IMHO, this makes all of the difference.

k1attack:Arpee keeps complaining about Esperanto - saying that it has consonant clusters and too many sounds. He thinks an IAL should have no more than 5 consonants and 3 vowels and a CVCV structure.

More importantly, why do we even care what Arpee thinks? Or J.B. Rye, with his huge and detailed anti-Esperanto website?

There will always be people who strongly disagree with what you're doing. There is not much point in paying attention to them. Do what you enjoy, and if someone else doesn't like it, that's their problem, and not yours.

Arpee has his opinion and he is welcome to it. You have your opinion and you are welcome to yours as well. No point in getting into a big debate over it.

andogigi:I'm not sure that I agree with the CVCV construction concept making a language easier. For example, I know many people think that Polish looks like a difficult language because of the large number of consonants. I don't believe this is the case. In fact, Polish is a very easy language to pronounce once you learn the rules of pronunciation. (about 15 minutes worth of effort)

Give it a try! I tried I definitely prefer japanese. It is really straitforward.

Maybe you say that because your mother language is english, so clusters consonnants don't bother you.

(note that Japanese is not CV, but (C)(Y)V(V)(N), or something like this ).

Back to the "who is an Esperantist" debate, I would say than an "esperantisto" is someone who actively uses the language, whether they are promoting it or not.

I wouldn't use the word esperantano, because to me it implies a sort of membership in a group, through the -an- suffix.

However, if someone has some knowledge of Esperanto, maybe they can speak it or read it some, maybe they learned because they were writing a book or a play that included Esperanto - this person has some knowledge but doesn't actively use it and doesn't consider themselves to be part of the Esperanto community - to me, this is not an Esperantist. I'd call this person an "esperanto-parolanto"

Calling someone an Esperantisto doesn't relate to believing in the 'internal idea' or even in the 'fina venko', in my opinion. To me it's all about whether this person considers himself or herself to be part of the Esperanto-speaking community. It's something that only the speaker can know.

jan aleksan:(note that Japanese is not CV, but (C)(Y)V(V)(N), or something like this ).

Gotta love the morae (Haikus, anyone?)