Could it also be that the net and mass communication has caused, for all languages, people to sort of relax and tolerate strange quirks and imperfections in eachothers' language acquisition? Since English, Spanish, Japanese and Chinese seem to be the biggest languages online that I can think of off the top of my head (German and a few others like Russian no doubt can join in too), that leaves a lot of people trying to use non-professional and imperfect language skills to communicate with each other. Then we all end up becoming more tolerant and indeed more flexible with our language abilities, and in a way kissing strict grammar rules goodbye.

After all, the net is the most successful anarchy yet.

Ceiger, it is difficult to gauge what class of people the Net is bringing into the ranks of the movement, but viewing the Esperantists as a group with a political motivation - they want to change the way people think about international communication - then it would be to the greatest advantage for the movement to concentrate their recruitment efforts on the brightest and best young people, who will later be among the movers and shakers of the world.

However, everybody who knows something of Esperanto and treats it with respect is useful to the political causes of the Esperanto movement.

As regards your point about everybody becoming more relaxed about non idiomatic/non-grammatical usage of their mother tongues, I suspect you are right, at least in Europe.

Turn on the radio here in the UK and one finds oneself constantly exposed to foreigners speaking English with a less than perfect command of the language.

And I remember a friend who moved to London complaining that she could walk down the street and not see an English face or hear English spoken.

But I don't think there is any argument there for tolerating ungrammatical Esperanto. The grammar of the language is hardly difficult, is it? Besides, what sense would there be in allowing Esperanto to develop into some sort of Pidgin.

Erinja, I thought it particularly interesting how in the Kabe interview he was disparaging of Esperanto poets and stressed the importance of translated works over original ones.

On the latter point, I am with him 100%.

sudanglo:But I don't think there is any argument there for tolerating ungrammatical Esperanto. The grammar of the language is hardly difficult, is it? Besides, what sense would there be in allowing Esperanto to develop into some sort of Pidgin.

I concur - I must say I wouldn't mind "Pidginised" Esperanto existing in a benign form, but that is something that has many questions about it. E.g. what happens then to THE Esperanto? How would its evolution occur (considering dropping word endings can end up with unpronouncable tidbits)? A pidgin can work for human communication, but a worldwide one I can only see successfully occurring naturally (e.g. like the original Lingua Franca, of which Lingua Franca Nova is a modernised variant - pity no one considers Lingua Franca part of their heritage). Whatever the case, Esperanto in its pure, grammatically correct form, can help us as humans consider the idea of an international auxiliary language, not just in the practical sense (e.g. does Esperanto work? Yes, it's working right now), but in the way the language is constructed (e.g. it acts like a sandbox for grammatical features, since Esperanto can emulate many grammatical features but all in a nice simple form).

For EO to be pidginised, unless its what the world wants, seems contrary to what EO's useful for, and sounds more like a playtoy of an idea than a "more viable" solution.

(cut down version: we can hope that if anything, Esperanto will usher in a new era of global communication, if not the feature of the era itself. Hopefully, while not necessarily requiring them to abandon their creative methods of communication they currently employ, Esperanto can help the masses see the other side of the spectrum, a language with structure and a sense of purpose, so that the future of communication can be more balanced than out of control anarchy or draconian schematicism (not that Esperanto is draconian , but it's certainly schematic)[/quote]

sudanglo:Erinja, I thought it particularly interesting how in the Kabe interview he was disparaging of Esperanto poets and stressed the importance of translated works over original ones.

It's interesting that you should pick up on this point in particular. I didn't re-read the whole Kabe article when I posted it here, so I missed that particular comment.

However, if you follow Libera Folio, you will have noticed the recent interview with Edmund Grimley-Evans, which talks exactly about this topic. That is, it emphasizes the need to translate literature and to read translated literature, as a way to get to know world literature through Esperanto. It discusses the idea that many Esperantists prefer to read original literature to translated, but that they are missing out on a lot. To this end, Grimley-Evans has written a list of most popular/most worth-reading translated works in Espearnto.

Erinja, that's two very interesting articles that you have put me on to now.

I think I'd better start reading Libera Folio regularly.

What Grimley-Evans has done is very interesting, but the point that Kabe was making is that translations stretch the language. Too easy for authors writing directly in Esperanto to side-step problems.

On the subject of 'broken' Esperanto - I was shocked when browsing the Forums at Edukado.net to find a lengthy contribution with an incredible number of mistakes from someone who had put himself down in his profile as a Teacher of Esperanto.

Obviously, when I learnt Esperanto in the 60's, I must have moved in exalted circles.

Or perhaps the Esperantists today have oversold the notion that Esperanto is easy to people who have not been taught grammar at school, or don't really have much aptitude for foreign language learning.

I have met beginner-level Esperantists who teach the language. As soon as they learn a little, they're so enthusiastic that they want to teach it. It's nice to see they're so excited but it's unfortunate that they decide to teach before they've reached an adequate level.

I have met people who seem to have very poor aptitude for language learning, who speak excellent Esperanto. I think that some people aren't willing to put in an adequate level of effort to get good at Esperanto, and a small minority truly does not have the necessary aptitude. It's true that to become skilled with Esperanto you have to be somewhat of a go-getter. Esperanto speakers won't come to your door to help you; you have to actively seek out Esperanto through books or online, in most cases, and not everyone is that much of a self-starter.