Altebrilas:Has someone who doesn't understand economics the right to tell what economic system is best for him? Or a citizen of a town the right to make suggestions about its management, even he his not an expert about roads, schools and public transportation?

People can express whatever opinions they want.

But I would hardly expect a website devoted to the teaching of French to host a forum topic about ways to reform the French language without even bothering to learn it first.

If someone speaks barely a word of French, how much would you listen to them when they describe ways to improve French? How can they know what to improve if they don't even speak the language?

I never much settled for the "leave it as it is" idea. Many things were fine as they were, until something new came along, and now we can't imagine life without the new thing. There are those who are as stubborn as an ass and flat out refuse to accept anything new. What I'm studying specifically with constructed interlinguistics is how people change how they speak- if they're willing to forget what they know to learn something more modern or more simple.

Do I want to change English? Of course. Is it feasible? Absolutely not. It's difficult to explain the relations between the effects of the proposed changes and the active speakers of Esperanto (I could probably map it out, but it'd be complicated ). The only way to reform Esperanto would be to create an ido, but those never get much traction (I made one anyway, but that's for another thread).

@erinja
I dont' think it's fair to compare Esperanto to natural languages like English or French (for a number of reasons). Compare it instead to another constructed language like Ido or Interlingua.

Altebrilas:
But I am for freedom of speech.

Who isn't?

But then you also have to remember the balance betwee rights and obligations.

Currently, there is a certain number of people that always come onto the forums here and kick up a big fuss about this and that suggested reform to Esperanto. The *vast* majority of users here are not interested in such ideas, they would prefer to learn the generally accepted form of Esperanto.

The problem is that these people that kick up such a fuss end up having a overly strong representation on these forums - they distract the forum users from what they would prefer to do, which is to learn Esperanto. Reformers have the possibility to express their views elsewhere - so they have freedom of speech within the community of the internet. Surely it is only fair to expect such reformers to respect the wishes of the site-creators and the vast majority of its users?!

'Free speech' does not mean a licence to go round wrecking everything - it also entails the obligation to respect others. Lernu is for learning Esperanto, so people should respect that.

And you should not forget that Lernu users are very tolerant towards reform suggestions when they are made in Esperanto. Whilst this thread has been going on, there has been another thread in Esperanto happily discussing if anyone would like to change anything about the language. The difference is that in that conversation, there is more respect between the different parties - everyone speaks Esperanto and so the opinions on the matter are more credible. Whereas, here in the English forum, the debates get much more heated due to the fact the 'reformers' often don't have a clue what they're talking about.

I'm going away for four days now. Hope you all manage to come to the best solution.

Actually laŭ mi it's not so much about freedom of speech of lack of authority to speak about something or rights and obligations, but more that lernu!'s being (what is felt to be) inundated with the same stuff. It's happening too often and detracting from other subjects, but the main point is that it's the same thing over and over and over and over again.

If these sorts of questions e.g. can I get rid of the accusative, were only asked sporadically or rarely, no one would care or be frustrated. But if they're asked over and over again it's a pain in the arse, just if I copy and pasted the world "anticonstitutional" 1000 times. It's overwhelming on the senses, and coupled with any minor dissatisfaction over the actual content of the messages it becomes a problem.

Thus, perhaps on this info page about using Lernu! as a platform to change EO, perhaps add an FAQ about the most commonly propositions.

E.g.
Q) I don't like the accusative. Can I delete it from the language?
(there may be a section already dedicated to the general topic of changing the language which deals with that content)[/k}
As for the accusative, the reason we have it is blah blah blah, the reason we don't get rid of it is blah blah blah, the pros and cons of the accusative are blah blah blah and ultimately it's a non issue blah blah blah.

This FAQ might be a community contributed (from here or whatnot) text, since no doubt some of us have a great deal of knowledge on one feature of EO and its presence in other languages (e.g. the accusative), where as far as some people might be concerned they only support the accusative because "don't fix what's not broken" - this sort of answer generally isn't a very specific nor informative answer for those genuinely interested in WHY it exists, thus causing a great deal of frustration for them.

erinja:
But I would hardly expect a website devoted to the teaching of French to host a forum topic about ways to reform the French language without even bothering to learn it first.

If someone speaks barely a word of French, how much would you listen to them when they describe ways to improve French? How can they know what to improve if they don't even speak the language?

It may be pedagogic. If the forum is in french, they will have to improve their french to express their arguments. Many reforms of french have been proposed. But they were rejected, because if they enhanced some feature of the language, they worsened some others.

It is the same with esperanto. The reforms proponed by newbees are most of the time incompatible with features of the language, but it is an opportunity to learn those features.

In any case, the risk of seeing reformists threatening la Akademio with machine guns to force them to adopt their reforms seems very low...

Altebrilas:It is the same with esperanto. The reforms proponed by newbees are most of the time incompatible with features of the language, but it is an opportunity to learn those features.

In this case, we need no changes to our forums whatsoever, because people are free to go to the Esperanto-language forums and discuss their ideas in Esperanto, with the side benefit of providing excellent practice in their study of the language.

@Razlem, if Esperanto wishes to be taken seriously as a "real language", then YES, it absolutely should be treated the same way as English or French. As long as we treat our language as a 'second class' citizen, we should not be surprised when others treat it as a project rather than as a living language. No offense but this seems to be a view that you hold, if you are suggesting using languages like Ido and Interlingua as a basis for comparison.

Languages such as Bahasa Indonesia and modern Hebrew are also partially planned -- to a lesser degree than Esperanto, but to a certain extent, someone took structures of existing languages and constructed something new for use in the modern world. Those are both fully living languages and no one would think of treating them with less respect than a language like German or French.

We Esperanto speakers should demand the same respect for our language, and we should give it the same respect ourselves. It is not a game, a proposal for a cool idea, a project in development, or a pidgin. It is a fully functioning, LIVING language. It is as old as Modern Hebrew.

I think people who encourage Esperanto speakers to loosen up about reform proposals are not fully aware of what it means to be a living language. They hear "living language" and they think, ok, yeah, people have some conversations in this language, people write some songs in this language, so it's living. Esperanto is living in every sense of the word. People get married in Esperanto and live every aspect of their home life in Esperanto, including yelling at their dog for peeing in the house, berating their spouse for forgetting to take out the trash, and thanking their kids for keeping their rooms clean. People argue in Esperanto, then kiss and make up, or get a divorce. I am sure that people have extramarital affairs in Esperanto, though I have no proof of this. There are families on their third generation of Esperanto speakers.

So please don't insult us all by suggesting that the Esperanto that was good enough for Grandpa to tell stories about the good old days isn't good enough anymore, and that we should reform it so that more people will use it.

Esperanto is a living language. Unless you are ready to suggest reforms in your native language, and start speaking your native language in a way that is "better" than the way your native language is currently laid out, I suggest that you not suggest reforms for Esperanto, or make up your own weird Esperanto grammar to speak.

razlem:
Do I want to change English? Of course. Is it feasible? Absolutely not. It's difficult to explain the relations between the effects of the proposed changes and the active speakers of Esperanto (I could probably map it out, but it'd be complicated ). The only way to reform Esperanto would be to create an ido, but those never get much traction (I made one anyway, but that's for another thread).

It's no more feasible to change Esperanto than it is to change English. This is not to say that Esperanto and English do not change. They both do. But they don't change by being reformed by individuals or committees.

I think you seriously underestimate, or even ignore, one factor that comes into play when any reform proposal is considered. That is, it is impossible to generate consensus on any set of reforms. Once you, or any "official" body, such as the Akademio, says, "Okay, we're going to reform Esperanto", the floodgates open. No matter how reasonable, or self-evident, or well-researched, or scientific, you take your reforms to be, there will be dozens, or hundreds of competing proposals, and endless contention among their proponents.

It wouldn't even be possible to get consensus among the members of the Akademio, never mind the rest of Esperantujo.

The expression "herding cats" comes to mind.

@erinja, T0dd
Perhaps I wasn't clear. I implied that it would be extremely difficult to get Esperanto speakers to accept formal reforms, as it would be for a language like English.

"Languages such as Bahasa Indonesia and modern Hebrew are also partially planned -- to a lesser degree than Esperanto, but to a certain extent, someone took structures of existing languages and constructed something new for use in the modern world."

BI and Hebrew may have been partially planned, but they certainly weren't meant to be simple, neutral, international languages. This was the core of Esperanto, which is why it should be compared to other languages that were also created for this purpose (Interlingua and the like).

People fight in Klingon (much more entertaining in my opinion ), but I wouldn't compare it with Esperanto or English. I don't see it as second-class, just different in origin and function.

"Unless you are ready to suggest reforms in your native language, and start speaking your native language in a way that is "better" than the way your native language is currently laid out"

If there was a formal change to English that made it more logical in construction, I honestly would change in a heartbeat. Why reject something that makes sense?

It's not rejecting something that makes sense, not at all. It's rejecting something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

To the extent that Esperanto is a living language, it doesn't actually matter what it was "meant" to be.

Modern Hebrew was meant to be a unifying language for the Jews of the Diaspora, all speaking different languages, who came to live together in Israel. English evolved on a small island and spread through the world. Does that mean that English and Hebrew should be treated totally differently because they have a different "purpose"? Isn't the purpose of any language just communication?

I am not actually interested in comparing Esperanto to anything. It's a living language, period. And you don't just go about reforming a living language. In this respect I treat all living languages equally. Someone who doesn't like a certain living language is welcome to go and create their own language that doesn't have certain aspects of the old language. Someone can go make up their own Esperantido, their own Klingonido, their own Englishido. But you don't just try to impose reforms of a living language on a population that speaks it. I would call that trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

At any rate, if you like the idea of reforming English, I suggest you go to an English forum and talk to them about it. Or go learn Ogden's Basic English. Start talking that way and see how far it gets you in your studies and in your life.

razlem:
"Unless you are ready to suggest reforms in your native language, and start speaking your native language in a way that is "better" than the way your native language is currently laid out"

If there was a formal change to English that made it more logical in construction, I honestly would change in a heartbeat. Why reject something that makes sense?

I would accept a change for the better in my language too. From my point of view there's not much difference between an archaic rule (that no one ever uses in practice) and a made up rule, and some teachers keep teaching us archaic rules.

Some changes that would be acceptable in living languages:

[LISTO]
Regularizing some verbs (heavily used verbs like "to be" could not be changed)
Regularizing ordinal numbers (I don't know how to say 500th in my own language)
Regularizing demonyms/gentilics
Orthography reform (but only to make it more regular, not to please esthetic tastes of some VIPs)
Addition of prefixes and suffixes (I wish my language had affixes like "mis", "ec" and "ar").
Regularizing existing prefixes and suffixes (how do I create a noun from a verb? With -ment or with -tion?)
If my language had irregular plurals, I would like to have them changed to regular ones (specially for rare words, while very common words could stay as they are)
Dropping archaic features (those that are still taught but are not much used in the spoken language) and adopting features already in use by most people.[/list]I think I can summarize the above list as: grab some specific rules that already exist in the language and apply them to the general case.