Arpee:For a language that's supposed to be an international language it is not simple enough for the average person.

I believe you are trying to say, it is not average enough for a simple person.

But that's not the point of language, especially and international one. The point of an international language is to communicate simplistically and efficiently.

That is your opinion, and who is to say it is not a valid one?
But see through this point of view: if the language would be reformed every time someone thinks there is something wrong, there would be no language at all - for language is, in my opinion, about padronization of communication, and personally I think Esperanto meets this goal with relative ease compared to widely spoken national languages.

Arpee:Yes, I am, and that new hobby is finding an easy language to speak since Esperanto is too difficult. It's just a bit disappointment that Esperanto is possibly the best candidate for artificial international communication and I was really hoping to speak it but it takes too much work. I've been studying Esperanto for a few years off an on and while I've gotten used to seeing "kv". It's still hard to pronounce and it takes me a while to say when practicing talking.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of that. I think it's fine that you recognize that Esperanto isn't your cup of tea, and have decided to look for something that is. Good for you.

What I do not understand is your desire to tell us about it. At length. In detail.

This is a site for people who ARE interested in Esperanto, and who likely do not have the same difficulties that you do, or who aren't looking for the "perfect" language and just want to find a conlang to have fun with.

Why do you think that they want to hear you bash Esperanto? It's like going to a forum about guitar-playing and repeatedly stating that guitars SUCK, that people who want to play the guitar are wasting their time, and that piano's are the better instrument. Do you really think that the guitar players are going to nod in agreement with their newfound arpee-given-insight and suddenly decide to forgo guitar playing and instead devote themselves to the piano?

THAT'S why I called you a troll. Because you are acting like one. You don't seem to recognize the purpose of Lernu or the general attitude of the people who come here regularly.

Arpee:You are mistaken RiotNrrd. Esperanto is NOT the easiest language in the world.

Tok Pisin is a natural language and it is way easier than Esperanto.

That's fine. I really don't care, because I'm not interested in Tok Pisin. I think it's fine if you have decided that's a better language (but don't really care if you haven't). If you want to learn Tok Pisin instead of Esperanto, I'm fully supportive of your efforts. However, this site isn't about Tok Pisin. It's about Esperanto. If Tok Pisin were twice as easy - no, three times as easy - no, wait - if Tok Pisin was ONE HUNDRED TIMES easier than Esperanto, that would not change the fact that THIS site, Lernu, would STILL be about Esperanto. It's an Esperanto site, and will likely remain one regardless of how easy or hard ANY other language is.

Hopefully there are some Tok Pisin sites that are, perhaps, more to your liking?

Arpee:I don't know how I'm a "Troll". I'm talking about Esperanto, if I remember correctly, this IS what this forum is for, right?

No, you aren't JUST talking about Esperanto. You are bashing Esperanto on a board that is concerned with teaching it. See my analogy (above) to a guitar forum for a (perhaps) better understanding of the reception you are getting here.

I find it incredible that people think that this site is focused around a logical and balanced debate of the merits or demerits of Esperanto*. It really isn't. It's a site by and for Esperanto enthusiasts; populated by people who actually LIKE Esperanto, actually WANT to learn it, and who generally don't care about its shortcomings.

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* And there ARE places where those discussions occur. General conlang boards, for example. But Lernu, a site devoted to teaching Esperanto, is also a place that is generally PRO-Esperanto. Which makes perfect sense, if you think about it.

Donniedillon:It seems that this is troll week here at Lernu!

+1

RiotNrrd:And there ARE places where those discussions occur. General conlang boards, for example. But Lernu, a site devoted to teaching Esperanto, is also a place that is generally PRO-Esperanto. Which makes perfect sense, if you think about it.

Holy crap, you're kidding me, right?! This website totally needs a warning underneath the logo explaining that doesn't it?

@ Arpee:

kv isn't too troublesome - you don't have to produce both sounds purely. Think about how you would say it using English phonology, then do it in Esperanto. It doesn't matter so much if it sounds like kf, or a bit like gv (although I think kf is more preferable to "gv" since there is actually "gv" in Esperanto, where as "kf" appears very rarely). In fact, even "kuv-" instead of "kv" would probably sound clear and articulate. (one might even get away with saying "kŭ" instead of "kv", but I'm sure it would sound strangely soft and muffled, like how Danish sounds to English speakers).

There's no point in stressing over such minor details, it's simply not a human approach. Languages tend to have "padding" for minor mistakes or deviant approaches to pronunciation and grammar, which is what makes slihgtly more complicated IAL conlangs like Esperanto nice in that aspect - the complicated aspects of the language, including pronunciation, act as a sort of redundancy based backup system. For example, EO adjectives and adverbs both end with "a" and "e" respectively - some might think this is a very small difference, and possibly confusing too, and then some then go on to say that it'd be better to just merge the two together because differentiating between them can be too hard. But if they're "mergeable" features of the language to some, then what's the worry in not differentiating between them clearly?

Another person might go "why is it "fakto" and not "fato"? "fakto" is too hard to say for some people!" (yeah, because Hawaiian totally is the most spoken language on the earth ). But this redundancy ensures that at least "fakto" will sound different to "farto" if the speaker has a habit of dropping post-vocalic R's.

I think I've posted once a piece in Esperanto without any word endings, and most people understood it perfectly, which shows that you don't have to be anal about every part of the language and it's still understandable.

Se vi ne kred mi, tiuokaz mi ne pov help plu vi kompren.
(Either:
If you don't believe me then i can't help you understand any more
or
If you don't believe me then I can't help your understanding any more
See? They mean the same thing essentially, so there wasn't a need to be strict on getting everything correct. It just helps when you wanna be precise, which is why we have all those rules).

Are you sure you have been studying Esperanto? By chance wouldn’t it be another language? Let’s make a trial: move this conversation to an Esperanto thread.

If finally you discover that you were learning another language you can begin now with Esperanto. If you are a normal person, within a few months you can say some words. And do not forget the grammar!

But if you only want to make a claim for the difficulty of Esperanto you should direct it to Zamenhof.

I beg your pardon for my bad English. I hope you understand it!

are you f kidding me??

I studied persian for a year living in iran and could only say basic broken phrases, not understanding anything.

I studied german all through school and can't say anything except "where is bla blaa" and get the basic meaning or jist from a long piece of text.

I've studied Esperanto this 3 weeks from Teach Yourself Esperanto intensely all day every day, and I can chat on IRC no problems, understand speaking and reply speaking very slowly and stuttering.

native english speaker.

and your claim that akvo is ugly is entirely subjective. i think akvo is nice and your suggestion of agvo is horrible. the sound of esperanto for me is not bad and not excellent.

and the synonyms: they have different meanings for slightly different things. also the language is sucessful because it can evolve, so words do change over the years in esperanto. only the grammatical strucutr is fixed.

you have to still learn. You're lying if you say you've been studying for a few years...

Arpee:Most people I know can't tell the difference between an adverb and an adjective. In English, I think this distinction is dieing. "I'm doing well" vs. "I'm doing good".

It's dying because both adverbs and adectives do the same bloody thing - they describe. People don't think "oh, look, that's a verb, and that's a noun, and that's an adjective" when they read or listen to something, they tend to regard all words on the page as being the same thing (not a noun, not a verb, but a "meaning"), and infer their meaning in relation to other words (context).
E.g. "an ugly pig" does not get computed as "ARTICLE (indefinite, singular) ADJECTIVE (negative connotation in regards to beauty) NOUN (singular, modified, related to Suus scrofa).

The brain would compute "an ugly pig" as "first word meaning: one, second word meaning: something I don't like looking at, third word meaning: pink animal with a nose with big holes in it and no fur".

Then there's all of the Participial suffixes. Why do we need them? An international language should be balanced between precision AND ease. It would be better to just have (past, present, future, imperative, and conditional). It would still be difficult for some but at least it will easier than it is now. I still struggle with these suffixes.

Then how do you describe "the eating pig" or "the kicked-in-the-head dog"? You're still gonna need a way of working around it. In Indonesian, there aren't really any participle suffixes, but there are ways around them: "The cooking man sits on a chair reading a book" = "The man which cook sit at chair time read book" (Orang yang masak duduk di kursi waktu membaca buku). So, the -nt- participle can be avoided, but even in Indonesian there's a suffix or something for passive participles.

Ultimately though, in verbal constructions, participles are barely used. I'd learn them though if you want to learn participles in any European language though, EO makes it easier to comprehend.

Then there is the crazy consonant clusters. I'm not going to make the boring "Asians can't pronounce it" argument. The problem is, I can't even pronounce some of these words and I'm AMERICAN where there's many consonant clusters.

knabo
kvaro

and then certain words are ugly (akvo).

Say begin. It should sound like "bgin". Do the same for knabo.
As for kvaro, is that meant to be just "kvar"? Anyway, as i said before, say "kfar" or "kuvar" or "kŭar" if you really need to.

The original Latin word was "aqua", now I know in Esperanto you need an -o to make it a noun so why not something like "aguo" which looks similar to "aqua"? "Kv" and "gv" just looks ugly. Yes it is a personal opinion but I'm sure most other people would agree too since most languages have "ku" and "gu" rather then kv and gv.

The original Latin word was "AQVA" (possible from something like "AQYA" when pseudo-Greek writing was used), which then was written "aqva/aqua" - in fact, back in the day, u/v were just different ways of writing the same letter.
Most languages though have ku and gu as being proper consonant + vowel constructions and not consonant + semi-vowel constructions. Ultimately, it's not a big point of concern, I'm sure you can get away with say "akŭo" or "kŭar" instead of "akvo" and "kvar".

One thing I look about Esperanto is the mal- prefix meaning opposite. But what is not good, is the many synonyms. Having 4 different ways to say one word instead of just using "mal-(root)" will make learning this language difficult.

I must say I completely disagree with that and would fight it to the end if I actually cared enough . I hate seeing "mal" used all the time, e.g. my pet example, "mallonga" vs. "kurta" - who's to say that "longa" is the default "description of length"? I'm sure my mind doesn't go "hey, that thing over there is the opposite of long!".
But I ultimately don't mind it too much. I like the neutral balance at the moment in fact.

That's why I gave up Greek, it was too many ways to say "The" (20-something).

That's a very odd choice for an international language .
But I imagine that you musn't have liked Greek too much. Pity, I like the way some languages have many forms of essentially the same word, it has a sort of sandhi effect to it. But I must admit sometimes multiple forms of the same word can get annoying when there's no proper correlation. Fortunately in Greek there is, due to case agreement (another feature of redundancy in a language to allow better understanding).

(continued)

(continuation)

Although words in Glosa are also difficult to pronounce, I found it way easier than Esperanto because there is much less inflection and only about 6,000 words. In Esperanto you will keep learning and learning and never be done.

Glosa words seem easier to pronounce than Esperanto ones, let alone many other conlangs.

Perhaps Arpee you need to better study phonetics of languages or something, as you might be making a routine error that you don't notice but still manages to throw out the whole works so to speak (I can't remember how many of them I've had to tackle, or still have). If not that, the problem might be physical and you might need to see a speach therapist or the problem isn't solvable (e.g., I think some consonants I produce won't sound anything like the perfect pronunciations you here on some instructional language learning tapes due to the way my teeth are (mal)aligned. Or you might just be expecting way too much of yourself - if you study languages by yourself with little real-life audio help, it's easy to misjudge your own pronunciation as being imperfect, and get stuck in a cycle of constantly trying to be even more perfect. Having a speaker to practice with helps, since you get a better feel for how "slack" you can get in your pronunciation of another language and still be understood and conversed with smoothly.

Genjix:are you frebadulatingly kidding me??

Pardonnez-vous votre Français, monsieur