I was never able to understand The Fundamental Paradox of Esperanto :

"Esperanto tries to change the whole world, but it is extremely closed to the changes on itself." (Even to the possible future necessary reforms by Akademio.)

The other one is that: "Esperanto is an IAL but has five times more root words than Chinese".

Can anybody explain these?

utku:"Esperanto tries to change the whole world, but it is extremely closed to the changes on itself." (Even to the possible future necessary reforms by Akademio.)

Because if everyone came up with changes to the language, it would end in numerous Esperanto dialects and no one would understand each other anymore. Isn't that why Volapük died?

utku:I was never able to understand The Fundamental Paradox of Esperanto :

"Esperanto tries to change the whole world, but it is extremely closed to the changes on itself."

Sounds like an inaccurate paradox. 'Closed to changes' superficially means, in many people's minds, 'bad', while 'change the whole world (for the better) means 'good'. So 'bad' = 'good' - an apparent paradox. Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. As Darkweasel pointed out, changeability would be counter-productive.

utku:

The other one is that: "Esperanto is an IAL but has five times more root words than Chinese".

Where did you read that? I don't know the chinese, the only thing I know is that Chinese have more or less 50000 ideogrammes. Does it mean 50000 root words?

utku:The other one is that: "Esperanto is an IAL but has five times more root words than Chinese".

I know nothing of Chinese but in my opinion the quantity of word roots in Esperanto is around about optimum. Whether this quantity is more or less than in other languages doesn't seem to me to be particularly relevant to anything. It doesn't always automatically follow that less roots = good, because reducing the number of of roots has the result of requiring more schematically constructed words, which results in less recognizability, more syllables, and general longwindedness which IMO Esperanto already has quite enough of. It's a balance to be struck and I think Esperanto has the balance about right. Not perfect of course, there are plenty of useless roots in Esperanto but not really enough to get me worried about it. And in any case you can usually communicate quite effectively using only a small subset of all the roots available in the language.

Esperanto isn't trying to change the whole word, it's trying to change the world of intercultural communication. This doesn't require Esperanto itself to change and indeed this would be counter productive to the goal, as others have already pointed out. I see no paradox here.

jan aleksan: Where did you read that? I don't know the chinese, the only thing I know is that Chinese have more or less 50000 ideogrammes. Does it mean 50000 root words?

Kenneth Searight, an old non-esperantist colanger, wrote it. Also I don't know Chinese. So, that claim may not be true. But even if there are 50000 ideogrammes, I think most of them simply compounds of more basic ideograms. (kunmetitaj vortoj)

utku:

jan aleksan: Where did you read that? I don't know the chinese, the only thing I know is that Chinese have more or less 50000 ideogrammes. Does it mean 50000 root words?

Kenneth Searight, an old non-esperantist colanger, wrote it. Also I don't know Chinese. So, that claim may not be true. But even if there are 50000 ideogrammes, I think most of them simply compounds of more basic ideograms. (kunmetitaj vortoj)

It's far from being so simple. Jes, ideograms are compounds of more simple ideograms (except those particular simple elements). But it doesn't work like Korean. When, as a learner, you find a new ideogram: you cannot pronounce it, and you cannot guess the meaning.

At least you can guess to what notion it belongs to (example the ideograms of lake, sea, ocean, water, etc has the same element).

Maybe the answer provided by Bertil here
is a good explaination of this 2nd paradox.

utku:"Esperanto tries to change the whole world, but it is extremely closed to the changes on itself." (Even to the possible future necessary reforms by Akademio.)

To delve on the complexity of this paradox, the biggest problem that any change would have is acceptance. As we've seen with English spelling reforms, they don't go down well now that we have books printed everyday, and people no longer have to rely on whatever their parents or village elders said for their daily dose of "correct" grammar. Esperanto's a step further - the entire language was basically created in a controlled environment, where the language's grammar, sounds and writing style were all pretty much set in stone (English on the other hand was born out of sheer convenience).

So it's not so much a law made by people, but more just the way things work - Esperanto is resistant to change because many won't bother learning something new unless it slowly becomes popular style or is more attractive. Until either condition is met, any attempt to change the language will really just create another "daughter language/dialect". The reason why Esperanto doesn't change is not because it was made unchangeable, but because it now is almost unchangeable due to the large size of the speaker group that has to be won over.

ceigered:

utku:"Esperanto tries to change the whole world, but it is extremely closed to the changes on itself." (Even to the possible future necessary reforms by Akademio.)

To delve on the complexity of this paradox, the biggest problem that any change would have is acceptance. As we've seen with English spelling reforms, they don't go down well now that we have books printed everyday, and people no longer have to rely on whatever their parents or village elders said for their daily dose of "correct" grammar. Esperanto's a step further - the entire language was basically created in a controlled environment, where the language's grammar, sounds and writing style were all pretty much set in stone (English on the other hand was born out of sheer convenience).

So it's not so much a law made by people, but more just the way things work - Esperanto is resistant to change because many won't bother learning something new unless it slowly becomes popular style or is more attractive. Until either condition is met, any attempt to change the language will really just create another "daughter language/dialect". The reason why Esperanto doesn't change is not because it was made unchangeable, but because it now is almost unchangeable due to the large size of the speaker group that has to be won over.

But if the implication is that Eo doesn't change as much as other languages change (or other languages of comparable or even greater numbers of speakers), then there must be a reason for that. I think the key is here: "daughter language/dialect" -- in that particularly in Eo, a dialect *is* a daughter language, simply because Esperanto is used a lot more online in proportion to speaking in person than other languages, or if not that, then because relatively few Esperantists are native speakers.. native speakers learn from their parents; secondary speakers learn from canonical sources. So it may have a million speakers, but they're not a million people with any particular geographical relationship to each other -- they're just people in the world who use the internet (or read books). Whereas in other languages, "dialects" can remain specific to region (which is pretty much the whole point/meaning of a "dialect"). So in Eo, by contrast, a lot more people have to "won over" simply because there is no mechanism for grouping such as proximity or lineage -- unless, of course, you count the hypothetical possibility of "daughter languages" per se.

i'm not much of an expert on Esperanto, so my presumptions could be wrong. Just sharing my two bits.

It is wrong to say that Esperanto doesn't change, just as it's wrong to say English doesn't change. The paradox is based upon an incorrect assumption.

Esperanto adds words to keep up with changing times, just as English does. And although formal written English has changed somewhat in the last 120 years, formal written Esperanto has changed somewhat as well.

It is incorrect to say that Esperanto style has not changed. It's true that we still hold the Fundamento to be an example of good style, and that Zamenhof's words are (mostly, but not all!) considered to be good style. But Esperanto writing style continues to evolve. Various "schools" of Esperanto writers have all made their mark on how we write today.

The fundamental flaw of so-called paradoxes like this one is that the fail to treat Esperanto as a living language. Esperanto IS a living language, and it changes as living languages do. It would be absurd to say that Chinese has fewer words than English, therefore that Chinese is a 'better' language. It would be absurd to say that Icelandic is 'better' than English because speakers of Icelandic can still read ancient texts, while English speakers can no longer read ancient English texts without a lot of language study. These comparisons are foolish and pointless.