There is, of course, nothing to stop you from using either semi-recognized neologisms, such as "liva", or brand-new forms of the correlatives, or anything else. In doing so, however, you actually increase your chances of being misunderstood.

If the environment is truly so noisy that "kia", "kie", and "kiel" can't be distinguished, you can do what people often do in such conditions: Add words to make things clearer. You can say "kiu speco de", "kiuloke", and "kiamaniere".

Todd

I speak a lot of Esperanto and it's rare that kie/kia, or kiel/kial makes a problem - it happens about as often as making a "when/where" mistake in English (and if you aren't sure, you ask the person to repeat - just like in English!)

I think this list is stunningly ill-conceived. This Bill person - that is his name, it seems? has a lot of strange ideas I have never heard before. It makes me wonder how much practical experience he has speaking the language.

Regarding his pronoun "me", isn't he worried about that getting confused with "ne"? And why is he leaving "min" instead of writing "men"; it could still be confused with "nin", if he is worried about m/n confusion.

The most worrying thing is that he is a teacher of the language, passing these things to his students (apparently to multiple students based on his text) and encouraging students to speak in his modified Esperanto. It seems unethical. If you're going to teach French, you ought to teach French, not your reformed version of how you wish French would be. You don't just give your French students a whole list of French language reforms to try out on French speakers. Language teachers have a duty to teach languages as they are spoken - not as the teacher wishes the language would be spoken.

And as for the argument that Esperanto is still new and open for change - sorry, that boat sailed more than a hundred years ago. It's too late to make these changes. The language is already well into natural evolution. Let nature take its course. How long exactly do you think a language should exist before it can be left alone to evolve by itself? How is a hundred years, a successful speaking community, and an established culture and body of literature not enough? What does it take to have you accept that Esperanto shouldn't be manipulated anymore? What are you waiting for, a Papal edict? Do you have a fixed period of time in mind, that a language can be changed for the first hundred fifty two years, five months, and two days? And on the third day after that, it's not changeable anymore?

Go ahead and make your changes as you see fit, by all means. But it won't be Esperanto; it will be just another esperantido, another [failed] reform project. And don't expect to get a positive reception for these ideas (I know they're "Bill"'s and not yours). Most experienced Esperanto speakers are sick, sick, sick to death of hearing reform proposals, and of hearing that Esperanto would be perfect, if only we changed these few things. Of course each proposal has a different few things that it wants to change, so no reform proposal could possibly gain enough adherents to succeed.

[Oh, and on the -n ending - I depend on those endings to understand sentence. I'm a tutor and I see all kinds of n-related mistakes in student lessons, and even after years of experience correcting lessons, I still sometimes have no clue what the student meant to say, due to garbled word order and misplaced n's. Getting rid of -n is a false economy because it forces the speaker to employ a certain word order, which must be memorized, and more frequently than you think, it creates ambiguous meanings which -n would resolve. Having said that, it is usually considered rude to correct beginners' grammar, unless they have asked to be corrected]

sudanglo:And as I have previously commented, I think the only way to do that is to sell it on the basis of its educational value rather than as a competitor to English on the international stage.

I've seen you mention this on numerous occasions, and it doesn't usually generate much discussion. Which is too bad, because I also think that this really IS where "activist" energy ought to be applied, too.

Esperanto's value as an international auxiliary language is debatable. Yeah, it would most likely work, but it'll take a long time to get there. Whereas its educational value is (nearly) self-evident. It can shine at giving people confidence that they really CAN learn a foreign language, it breaks people of the idea that foreign languages are just word-for-word translations of their native language (a difficult concept for monolingual people), and it teaches people the parts of speech of their OWN native language. Esperanto is an excellent educational fundamental, even if no one ever uses it again after learning it.

Although, of course, many WOULD use it. And that's where the long term benefit for the Esperanto "movement" lies.

The real difficulty will still be convincing parents that their kids should learn a language "no one speaks", instead of something like French[1] or German[1] that few will ever actually use[2].
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[1] Aimed at the native English speakers, of course. Native French or German speakers may replace these examples with others more appropriate to their own curricula.

[2] I took BOTH of those languages, and have never used either one for anything. And, at this point, don't remember much of either, either.

Perhaps we, as those wanting that Esperanto is taught to our little Englishers, should perhap develop a "transliteration" scheme for phonemically representing Esperanto in a way that doesn't easily encourage the speaker to use their habits of reducing syllables in words etc.

E.g., "kia" looks exactly like the name of a car brand which would be pronounced "kij@", where as "kie" looks like some German word that should be pronounced "ki@" as well.

But, if the reader sees "kee-yah" and "kee-yeah", they will more likely stress both parts more equally than if they saw "kiyah/kiyeah" where they look like the same word so the speaker will probably dilapidate it anyway, and unlike "ki-a" and "ki-eh" which introduces an unnatural hiatus.

But I'll leave that for the text book writers and those actually teaching.

It would be somewhat useful orthographically if Esperanto had inherited from the Slavic languages the habit of putting -j- in between i and a vowel that follows it. That would also help people more fluently pronounce more complex vowel clusters, like stressed i followed by an unstressed other vowel (Ido just says that you can pronounce it as if it was "j" then, for an alternate view). But from an Esperantist's view, "kijo", "opinijis", "sciji" all look very superfluous if we already know that "i" never gets reduced to something like "kjo", "opinjis", "scji", and it makes spelling more complicated at the very first stage since non-slavically-acquainted people could be a bit confused. And it's not quite so neutral I guess...

Anyway, it's good to bring up these issues, for reflection about the way we treat our language in the future (totally missed Erinja's post, but I agree with that too, but alas I won't say much since it's been said to death now )

@ education topic, RiotNrrd, you reminded me about my own German education in highschool - it was practically a token course , really. In fact, I think you could learn more in two years through our highschool's german course through a lonely planet phrasebook (not sure if they have 'em over stateside), by closely analysing all the different words. I think it's a self-defeating effort though and not truly the fault of teachers or the curriculum, since the curriculum basically ignores the important ground steps in teaching older children/adults the grammar aspect of a language. Something university level language courses do.

Who knows, maybe school curriculum advisors are in the cahoots with the universities, to make universities more important for aspiring language learners haha!
Anyway, we don't want that with Esperanto, so I feel that we should make sure that teaching of Esperanto never becomes "just another language subject" and stays like a beginners linguistics subject too.

Thank you Riot.

Though I am not sure that a major obstacle will be convincing parents of its value.

Those parents that have had the experience of learning a foreign national language at school and subsequently have never used it to read a book in that language, or watch a film in that language, or through it become acquainted with another culture, will be well aware of the dubious nature of some of the arguments advanced to support the learning of French, German, Spanish or whatever.

And I believe it is not uncommon now in many English-speaking countries for parents to feel that they were never taught any grammar at school and think that instruction in gramatical concepts IS valuable and should be taught in school.

The biggest problem may be to change the mindset of Esperanto activists, still firmly wedded to the historical raison d'être of Esperanto, and who are too blinkered to see that it will never substantially succeed in its original purpose until the number of speakers of Esperanto is massively boosted - and who also have not seen that if Esperanto were widely taught in school then the result would be (as you point out) that it would get used as an 'interlingvo'.

By changing tactics in the propaganda, at one fell swoop, most of the traditional counter arguments to Esperanto - the solution to the language problem - would cease to have any force.

As you say, the educational value of Esperanto is (nearly) self-evident.

The argument that there are insufficent teachers of Esperanto has been already dealt with in the most practical terms by the initiative in Australia where they have produced and tested a kit of materials which permits any trained teacher to run classes in Esperanto, learning the language at the same time as the pupils (though obviously somewhat more quickly).

To learn more about what the Australians have done go to Mondeto,com. Here's a link and another one.

I think the greatest obstacle would be the academic community, especially linguists and teachers of natural languages.

Language teacher quickly discern that because Esperanto is easier to learn than other languages, students will prefer it. Every student who chooses Esperanto over some other language course helps to reduce the demand for that other course. While it's true that anyone who already teaches languages could be readily trained to teach Esperanto, most will not want to. In most cases, they teach the language they teach because the love it, and think it's important. They have devoted years to learning it and/or training to teach it. These people will not be happy to see Esperanto encroaching on their already besieged territory.

In any public/civic school system, the national or local government usually has something to say about what gets taught in schools. School boards and committees usually turn to experts to find support for proposals. In this case, the experts would typically be linguists and university-level language instructors. I have some familiarity with this population, and I promise you that they are about the last people to look with favor upon Esperanto instruction.

I've spoken with many linguists about Esperanto, over the years. A few, of course, are actually in the Esperanto movement. My experience with those who are not, however, has been without exception unpleasant. Their response goes way beyond skepticism; it's been openly derisive. It's about the same response I'd get if I went to my colleagues in the Biology department to discuss adding some courses in creationism.

Moreover, because of its history, you can't really separate Esperanto from its idealistic ambitions. If people know anything about Esperanto at all, they know that it was meant to be a world language, not an educational instrument.

Finally, if there is any place where political correctness tends to be at its peak, it's in the academic community. The perceived "sexism" and "colonialism" of Esperanto will be more provocative there than just about anywhere else.

Sorry to be a wet blanket. As you may imagine, I've had more than my share of unpleasant encounters over the years.

Todd

T0dd:My experience with those who are not, however, has been without exception unpleasant. Their response goes way beyond skepticism; it's been openly derisive. It's about the same response I'd get if I went to my colleagues in the Biology department to discuss adding some courses in creationism.

Happened with me with an Esperantist!
Now whenever I mention my fascination with conlanging and my occasional 1-minute projects, I get warned by them not to expect too much about changing the world and that I shouldn't wast time in it blah blah blah... Blimey, I'll remember next time I engage in a hobby like watching a movie that I'm not going to become Jame's Cameron just by doing that too

It suffices to say they were an "Esperantisto" lingve kaj ne kulture, but so am I mostly... Anyway, good guy, that bit just made me pull a strange face that's all.

It's important to note that there's scepticism everywhere from everyone - there's a modern day culture to be sceptical (the tea party being related I believe in origins), and unfortunately that attitude can find itself stuck in less than helpful places. Just because the gov't ain't trustworthy doesn't mean everything else related to more than 100 people isn't either

Well, Todd, linguists can be a pain and especially their theories of language.

Any proper academic would realise that any theory of language would have to accommodate Esperanto (which is a language of homo sapiens) rather than ignore it.

The Australian initiative seems to be aimed at primary schools, maybe sensibly, since university academics might be less concerned with what goes on at this level.

In the UK, and I believe some other countries, there is the Springboard project - which does not bring Esperanto into conflict with Language teachers since the thrust of the argument there is that Esperanto serves to facilitate the learning of national languages. In other words its value is as a stepping stone to foreign language learning.

I believe your point about a preference for Esperanto being exercised, when faced with a choice, may already have had some realisation in France.

The story I have heard is that with the introduction of a regulation requiring teachers in certain educational establishments to have a foreign language qualification and with the appearance of exams in Esperanto which have been recognized as meeting some European standard (there's more about this on edukado.net) some wily French would-be teachers have sussed out that it is far easier to get the qualification in Esperanto, and have gone for that.

As regards the idealistic aspirations of the Esperantists, these do not have to be abandoned by a change of tactics in the promotion of Esperanto.

It's a matter of practical politics as to what is the best way to present Esperanto to a sceptical world in order to get to the numbers we need to convince the world that Esperanto might indeed be of some use as an interlingvo.

Trying to sell Esperanto as a better lingua franca than English in today's world has not got the Esperantists anywhere. Some revision of tactics is imperative.

No need to tell everybody that the long term goal remains unchanged. We can keep that to ourselves.

I'm going to open a separate thread on this, since it's not really about the "improvements" point anymore.

Todd

chicago1:Saluton.
Would be interesting to finally hear what the actual Eo world has to say.

I agree with him totally about most of the mal- words. Those are only needed when they correspond directly to a comparable word in a historical language, such as disappear, unhappy, inappropriate etc. All other mal- words frankly sound Orwellian and conjure up images of 1984 and Big Brother. Therefore I reject them and refuse ever to say or write them. Where alternatives don't exist I'll create my own.

As an international language, Esperanto has to be able to express anything that can be expressed in other languages, including English.