When Esperanto has millons of speakers using it on a daily basis any 'problems' in Esperanto will get ironed out in a process of natural (if slow) evolution.

In the meantime the emergence of Latin, then French, and, now, English as lingua franca's, more than adequately demonstrates that the choice of any language for such a role has little to do with the structural properties of the language chosen.

The Esperantists are wasting their time in arguing for Esperanto's adoption as an interlingvo, because it is easy to learn (only partially true) and logical.

The way forward is surely to argue for the widespread introduction of Esperanto in the schools for its educational value.

Because it is not encumbered with all the irregularity, unproductive complexity, and historical debris of national languages, it permits less gifted students to experience the learning of another language without a massive demand on curriculum time, and also, realistically, to the point when they can begin to express themselves and actively use the learned language (which latter point is not true of much foreign language learning as it occurs in schools today).

Also Esperanto provides an experimentally proven valuable stepping stone to the learning of foreign European national languages, for those who wish to take up such studies.

Additionally, in an ever-shrinking world, in which some perspective on, and tolerance of, other cultures seems desirable. Esperanto can permit direct contact with pupils in many other countries, and through this they may acquire an understanding that their own culture is not a universal pattern of human thought.

I think every person who learns Esperanto at some point creates a "wish list" of things that he or she would like to see changed. For some, the feelings of dissatisfaction are strong enough to drive them away from Esperanto, perhaps to some other constructed language, or to abandon the whole idea of constructed languages. For the rest of us, we reach a point of acceptance. To use the overworked expression, "It is what it is." Some of come to love even the quirks of Esperanto that once annoyed us.

But it's still always fun to discuss these suggested reforms.

I wonder if English speakers tend to have more complaints about the correlatives than others. Native English speakers have a very strong tendency to replace unstressed vowel sounds with "schwa". This is disastrous in Esperanto. The pronunciation of "kiel" and "kial" really should be distinctly different, but this is hard for English speakers to remember to do (myself included). For that matter, we do the same with the final 'a' of adjectives, often making it hard for listeners to tell whether the word is being used as adjective or adverb. But this is our problem, not Esperanto's.

Concerning the whole matter of accusative and adjectival agreement, I can only say that I've found these to be more useful than I would have expected. The repetition of sounds in a sentence such as "Mi vidis bluajn florojn" actually helps me to parse it. For me, one of the hardest things about learning a foreign language is hearing a stream of words rather than just a stream of sounds. Esperanto's use of the accusative in nouns and adjectives can be a real help with this. And it serves a similar purpose in the written language, where sentences can be much more complex.

Todd

I have never seen a (set of) suggestion(s) driven by only practical purposes. Your teacher's suggestions start well, addressing known problems, but they end with pure cosmetic, subjective and plain confusing changes: peta should be a derivative of peti, not a new adjective. Where does it come from, anyway? We can say eta without any reform.

After "kimel", everything looks completely unnecessary. Also, it annoys me that his suggestions introduce irregularities (to me it'd be ok to say kimel, timel, imel, etc., but he proposes to change only kiel to kimel).

Notice that you can laŭfundamente say tiumaniere/tiamaniere instead of "tiel" when you need to emphasize the word.

Also, Ido starts well, changing Mi to Me, Ses to Sis, adding a masculine suffix (which unfortunately clashes with an existing Esperanto suffix, ul), then it goes overboard changing ALL the correlatives and simple words like Ĉevalo to Kavalo. Who cares whether it's ĉevalo or kavalo, i just want to learn one word for the animal and be done with it (notice that altho we say "cavalo" in Portuguese, i prefer ĉevalo because i don't want the international language changing under my feet).

T0dd:
The repetition of sounds in a sentence such as "Mi vidis bluajn florojn" actually helps me to parse it. For me, one of the hardest things about learning a foreign language is hearing a stream of words rather than just a stream of sounds. Esperanto's use of the accusative in nouns and adjectives can be a real help with this.

This is one of the most interesting things I have read in a while about "suggestions of improvement". If we could keep the discussion at this level (with real, practical considerations, not just cosmetics and guess-work), it would be much more interesting and useful.

ceigered:
But common words, things like "maldekstra" etc, things that might contribute to plane crashes (although I do hope that the fate of a plane is not left up to the words "left" and "right" ), they're worthy of attention - and that's up for us and future esperantists to address in their style, not in any full blown schematic changes. Even then, "alternatives" may only appear in certain branches of the language, like the beforementioned airman-speak, and thus may have a "pilot" stigma attached to them (replace with whatever profession you want).

I prefer the word "liva" for "left" for the precise reason that you said. "Dekstra" and "maldekstra" could easily be confused in a noisy environment.

I prefer the word "liva" for "left" for the precise reason that you said. "Dekstra" and "maldekstra" could easily be confused in a noisy environment.[/quote]Agreed on the overabundance of "mal-" words, and agreed on "liva" vs "maldekstra."

marcuscf:After "kimel", everything looks completely unnecessary. Also, it annoys me that his suggestions introduce irregularities (to me it'd be ok to say kimel, timel, imel, etc., but he proposes to change only kiel to kimel).

Notice that you can laŭfundamente say tiumaniere/tiamaniere instead of "tiel" when you need to emphasize the word.

Yes, I was wondering the same about his suggestions - why he didn't suggest extending "kive" (extending this to "tive" etc) and "kimel" (extending this to "timel" etc). But I think as he briefly stated in the email back then, he wanted to leave as much Esperanto intact as possible, and just address those words causing the most confusion.

(And as to the schwa comment by another reader: Interesting. And yes that's probably true of most English speakers. (At least me.) But is it really just our problem? Other speakers are more precise in voicing the final, unstressed syllable?)

T0dd:I think every person who learns Esperanto at some point creates a "wish list" of things that he or she would like to see changed. For some, the feelings of dissatisfaction are strong enough to drive them away from Esperanto, perhaps to some other constructed language, or to abandon the whole idea of constructed languages.

On top of my personal wish list for Esperanto list I put broading of contemporary art/culture and nothing else. I.e. E-o music, movies with E-o voices k.t.p.

One of the advanced e-o speakers I know pronounces his correlatives very clearly, separating the front bit from the back bit. For instance he'd say 'ki-es' enunciating each of the two syllables separately, though close enough so that you know it's 'kies'. I find it very clear and easy to listen to. I've started to do this myself as I'm still at the 'thinking about which one to use' stage rather than the 'use automatically' stage of speaking. Helps to keep it clear en la noggin.

chicago1:(And as to the schwa comment by another reader: Interesting. And yes that's probably true of most English speakers. (At least me.) But is it really just our problem? Other speakers are more precise in voicing the final, unstressed syllable?)

The final unstressed u/a distinction is used very often in my language (Brazilian Portuguese), so it's easy to hear the difference and to pronounce clearly (at least in a way that another Brazilian could hear the difference ). Besides, u and a are very far apart from each other.

However other endings are more likely to be merged in careless speak, specially the o/u pair.

3rdblade:One of the advanced e-o speakers I know pronounces his correlatives very clearly,

I think we should all pronounce this way. I'm still practicing (I have recorded my voice and listened to it a few times to be sure i'm pronouncing clearly). It's not hard at all, you just have to get used to the fact that you can't shout KI then mumble the ending and expect to be understood. But I guess people do not get much feedback about that, the accusative seems much more "interesting"