SDG:What is the purpose of Esperanto?

Last I checked, to be a second language for all.

Does it want to be like any other natural language?

I'm not sure if this is what it wants, or if it has wants at all. I am of the opinion that it can be one.

The red car which was fast zoomed by the green car.

I am still speaking English even though I should have used "that."

I am not a native speaker, but I would consider your sentence to be correct, at least for some contexts.

If I go to the streets and hear "ax" instead of "ask," that is still English. It is a broken English that is moving away from the standard, but it is English nonetheless.

If your question is, "Can one make mistakes while speaking Esperanto and still be understood?" then, yes, of course, beginners are a great example of that. But if you are breaking the language on purpose, it would not be Esperanto anymore.

However, when people are recruited into a wonderfully consistent language that is easy to learn, it shouldn't be surprising that some of them dabble in reforms.

It's not surprising at all. I guess it is some sort of phase to go through, for many speakers, especially those who speak at least two or more other languages. However, most of them then understand that you do not have to invent a language, you just have to learn it and use it. I am in that group. When I was a beginner, I was stunned to hear that my more experienced friends were dismissing my great ideas. Now, I have lost count of how many "great ideas" I have (politely) dismissed by my students.

However, this is not an attack on personal freedom, nor a negation of the "natural" evolution that most languages experience as they are being used. Feel free, of course, to discuss what you perceive to be improvements, but be advised that most speakers will not be interested. However, if your proposals catch up in the community of speakers, sooner or later they might end up in the dictionary.

If your meaning is 'la ruĝa aŭto, kiu cetere estis rapida, preterpasis facile la verdan aŭton, then use 'which'.

If the meaning is that among a number of red cars it was the fast one that shot by the green car then use 'that' and no commas.

A better example would be 'the man that I marry will be tall and handsome. Here 'which' would be very strange.

SDG:However, when people are recruited into a wonderfully consistent language that is easy to learn, it shouldn't be surprising that some of them dabble in reforms.

I totally agree that anyone should be able to work on whatever reform projects they want to. Go ahead, change the language all you want.

What I don't understand is why people think that anyone else wants to hear about their projects. Because I can practically guarantee that the majority of Esperantists don't.

But that shouldn't stop anyone from working on whatever they want to. Go ahead. Knock yourself out.

If you are learning Esperanto because you think it has a realistic chance of becoming a worldwide international language in your lifetime, you're likely to be deeply disappointed. If you're learning Esperanto because you want to meet a lot of fun and interesting people (and also some nutcases), then you're likely to be glad of the time you've invested in learning.

It's hard to tell what kind of response you were really looking for from Esperanto speakers. I don't know if people that you spoke to about reforms were rude or what. Most people I know are polite but express that they are not interested. It's hard to know what you expected them to say when you brought up the topic of reforms. Were you hoping that the Esperanto speakers you spoke to would tell you "Good idea, I will now stop speaking Esperanto as it was written and start speaking with your wonderful language reforms"? Or "Yes, we should definitely look at the possibilities for reforming the language to make it easier"? It's hard to see what the end state would be. We could make your reforms. And then what about the next person's reforms, should we make those too? Should we hold a vote as to which reforms should be enacted? And then what happens when (inevitably) part of the community votes for the reforms, and part against; do we lose half the community, do we splinter into a hundred communities, all speaking different versions of the language, depending on which reform proposal they support? I understand very well the reasons why Esperanto speakers aren't receptive to reforms. But I guess I don't understand the reformist perspective very well. It's not clear to me what the end state would be; or would it be a constant process of reform? And when would we theoretically decide to stop making changes?

At any rate, certainly no one is stopping you from devising reforms, no one is stopping you from talking the way you want to talk. No one will "kick you out" of anything. You have a right to propose reforms, and other people have a right to say "Sorry, I'm not interested". I see it as political leafletting. Political parties I agree with and disagree with are all free to offer me their leaflets, and I am free to accept their leaflet or reject it. I don't deny them their right to tell me their viewpoint, but I don't need to listen to them if I'm not interested (and vice versa, of course).

You indicated you'd had some contact with the Ido community - did you propose reforms to them, and how did that go?

erinja:But I guess I don't understand the reformist perspective very well.

I think I do. I believe it goes something like this:

1: I'm having trouble with aspect X of the language.
2: I wouldn't have trouble with aspect X if aspect X wasn't part of the language.
3: Hey everyone, let's get rid of aspect X! Or at least do it in a different, "easier" way that's more like MY native language.

I would hazard that the majority of reform proposals dovetail nicely with whatever difficulties the reform proposers are experiencing with the language at that time. And so I tend to consider reform proposals an indication of intellectual laziness - instead of expending the effort to meet a particular challenge, the reformers just want to overcome the challenge by removing it; that take a LOT less effort.

You'll notice that it's nearly always native English speakers who want to do away with the accusative, for example. That's because English doesn't really have an accusative (except in some really truncated areas) so the accusative is difficult for them. People whose native languages do have a strong accusative don't seem to be bothered by the accusative in Esperanto.

English speakers, on the other hand, rarely ever seem to propose dumping plural endings, although many Asian languages lack the plural. But English has it, so what's the problem? And so on.

The reformers don't really care about "improving" the language. They just don't want to expend the effort to learn to speak the existing language correctly, and are hunting around for a shortcut. It would be SO much easier if everyone ELSE spoke the language in a way that accommodated the reformers issues, than if the reformer just buckled down and learned to speak the way everyone else does.

By the time someone has reached an intermediate level, they've surmounted nearly all the difficulties, and therefore are less motivated to suggest (or accept) "improvements", because by then they no longer see a need for any.

RiotNrrd:1: I'm having trouble with aspect X of the language.
2: I wouldn't have trouble with aspect X if aspect X wasn't part of the language.
3: Hey everyone, let's get rid of aspect X! Or at least do it in a different, "easier" way that's more like MY native language.

These things had occurred to me, and I have noticed the same pattern, but to a degree, I would prefer that someone has the best of motives (i.e. not intellectual laziness) and I'd like to hear what they have to say.

Especially with regard to how they expected Esperantists to react to their proposed reforms. I would hardly go to a Mac users' convention and hope to gain converts by telling them how much better PCs are (or vice versa) and it would be interesting to know what kind of reaction a person honestly expected to receive, upon telling someone else that their language needed reforming.

erinja:If you are learning Esperanto because you think it has a realistic chance of becoming a worldwide international language in your lifetime, you're likely to be deeply disappointed. If you're learning Esperanto because you want to meet a lot of fun and interesting people (and also some nutcases), then you're likely to be glad of the time you've invested in learning.

We could summarise this as "Esperanto augments the users wishes according to reality" - if you want to meet interesting people, EO helps, because it's a realistic goal. If you want to create a monolingual world, EO doesn't help, because it's not realistic

erinja:... I would prefer that someone has the best of motives (i.e. not intellectual laziness)...

Well, "laziness" might be a bit too strong. No one is getting paid to learn the language, after all.

And I do understand the feeling of "Aargh! I'll NEVER get this" (whatever "this" is). I mean, I personally had difficulties with:

* The correlatives
* The difference between -iĝ and -ig.
* The accusative

To me, the correlatives all freaking looked the same. Until, one day, they didn't. Same for -iĝ and -ig; I kept getting them mixed up. Until one day I didn't. I still make the occasional mistake here and there with the accusative, but for the most part I get it now.

The thing is, eventually you DO get past whatever difficulties you are experiencing. And it usually doesn't even really take all THAT long. It just takes longer than learning the easier stuff.

And that's why most Esperantists beyond the beginner stage either scoff at or ignore all the calls for "reform". Because we know what the root motivation for these calls is, and it isn't necessarily a noble desire to improve the language; it's typically a more selfish desire just to skip learning the harder stuff.

But even the harder stuff isn't all THAT hard. It's just hard-ER. My advice to the beginners: quit accusing US of being inflexible or "religious" or whatever else you can think of to set yourself in opposition, quit calling for changes to the language that just plain are NOT going to happen, and spend a little extra time on whatever is giving you grief. You WILL get past whatever obstacle you've run into; it just may take a little more effort.

I think that what the reformists are saying is that you should remove every portion of the language that someone has to try a little harder to overcome, due to difficulty.

Unfortunately this would practically involve greatly decreasing the expressive power of the language, and removing most of the language (since nearly every aspect of the language will seem difficult to someone, depending on what native language they come from)

Right. The reformers tend to be of the opinion that whatever is hard for them must also be hard for everyone else, so why not just remove that hard stuff? Then EVERYONE would be happy.

Except that it just isn't true. What's hard for each person depends strongly on several factors; individual aptitude, what their native language is, what other languages they speak (if any), and so on.

Each person has their own set of things that are hard and things that are easy. If you remove all the things that anyone thinks are hard, you won't have a language left to learn.

The only people trying to lead reform efforts seem to be the people who haven't fully learned the language yet. But those are the people obviously least qualified to lead a reform effort. The most qualified would be those people who have completely mastered the language and know for a fact what is hard and what isn't. And, of course, none of them are leading such an effort, because really - none of it is all THAT hard.