erinja:

ceigered:for what it's worth there's also "na", which is an unofficial but known amongst many middle-level and up esperanto speakers, and used by some of them, which replaces the function of -n and acts like any other preposition.

I just want to clarify here that among fluent Esperanto speakers, the number of people who use "na" is vanishingly small. "na" tends to be used by people who are past the beginner stage, knowledgeable enough to start experimenting, but not yet experienced enough to understand that "na" is truly unnecessary. [...]

I totally agree with that and I strongly discourage using "na". It's really totally unnecessary. If you by all means need to use a preposition to mark something as non-subject, use "je".
For example: "Andrew amas JE Amy, sed Amy ne amas JE Andrew. JE Andrew amas Joanne." Here "je" makes clear who loves whom. No need for "na".
Johannes

johmue:I totally agree with that and I strongly discourage using "na". It's really totally unnecessary. If you by all means need to use a preposition to mark something as non-subject, use "je".
For example: "Andrew amas JE Amy, sed Amy ne amas JE Andrew. JE Andrew amas Joanne." Here "je" makes clear who loves whom. No need for "na".
Johannes

I agree that I don't think na is totally necessary but I wouldn't say "je" is a replacement for it (personally, I believe that while ever -n exists, na won't be needed, since even with non-Esperanto words, people can guess by context even if the writer/speaker hasn't added a hyphen-n combination at the end. But je carries the nuance of being the preposition that's used when you can't figure out what else fits, so I reckon that could bring more confusion that even slackly forgetting the accusative .

("Andrew amas je Amy" comes off the same way as "Andrew faras ame Amy-n" does to me, which doesn't make much sense )

Erinja:I just want to clarify here that among fluent Esperanto speakers, the number of people who use "na" is vanishingly small.

Not surprising, since fluent speakers would need (or perceive less of a need) for a prop-up (erm, comfort blanket?) grammatically speaking, I guess? Anyway what caught my eye was "vanishingly" - does this mean that the number (however little it is) is decreasing (e.g. "na" even had popularity at some point? ) or it's just straight small?

Thanks Erinja for that clarification , rereading my post I did give the impression that "na" was crash hot, not exactly what I intend

More info about "na" in this article at Lingva Kritiko, if anyone's interested in reading futher: http://lingvakritiko.com/2007/08/21/pri-la-na-is...

ceigered:Anyway what caught my eye was "vanishingly" - does this mean that the number (however little it is) is decreasing (e.g. "na" even had popularity at some point? ) or it's just straight small?

I used vanishingly to emphasize that there are so few experienced speakers that use "na", that it might as well be zero. The only smaller linguistic reform I can think of is "ri", of which I know exactly zero experienced speakers that use "ri", though I know they exist somewhere.

I experimented with "na" as a beginner, I thought "way cool, how useful!" but I outgrew it, I realized it wasn't necessary. I wasn't the only one I knew who had this experience. Everyone I know outgrew it and stopped using it (except for one guy that I can think of, the one person I mentioned who uses it).