What is the meaning of "bros-"? Is it a thing or an act?

It's a thing. But the rules of Esperanto require the grammatical function of words (which are not stand-alone roots) to be marked.

So you must either say brosa, brose, broso or brosi (or mark it with some other grammatical root or root sequence).

The different behaviour of 'komb' and 'bros' comes from the meaning already contained in these roots.

why is "bonan tagon" accusative? I never really understood that

Well, if you had started to learn Esperanto you would know.

So many courses begin with 'Saluton', mia nomo estas XXX.

But to explain, 'Bonan Tagon' is a greeting, whereas 'Bona Tago' is a comment on the weather (or that the day is good in some other way).

By marking it with the accusative, it is clear that it can't be short for 'estas bona tago hodiaŭ'

razlem:But for speakers of languages that don't have a proper accusative case (English, Chinese, Romance languages), it can be difficult to learn how it can be used. (I know this first-hand).

English does have an accusative case, but it's limited to pronouns. Spanish and French also have pronominal accusative marking. Interestingly, mistakes with the accusative are common in native English and Spanish speech. I'm not sure about French.

I find the complaint about the accusative to be one of the most tiresome. Suppose we grant for the sake of the argument that Esperanto would be easier to learn if it did away with the accusative and adopted fixed SVO syntax, even in relative clauses.

If the claim is that linguistic science reveals the flaws in Esperanto, then it's only fair to demand scientific evidence for some other claims. What is the scientific evidence for the claim that difficulties with the accusative, and other morphological details, have held Esperanto back?

If you are serious about the auxlang idea, and your project is not just for your own amusement, then you have to be convinced that starting over with your improved version of Esperanto is likely to achieve better results than what Esperanto has already achieved (whatever you may think of Esperanto's achievements, or lack thereof). In a scientific spirit, you should have evidence in support of that conviction.

If you have the talent to create your own auxlang, then you have the talent to make a positive contribution to Esperanto. Again, if you are serious about the auxlang idea, then you have a responsibility to ask yourself what is the best use of that talent. You could find that you spend a lifetime perfecting a "better" language that nobody ever learns. You wouldn't be the first, or the second, or third....

So the question you should be asking isn't whether your language is better than Esperanto. It should be: Does your language have better prospects than Esperanto, given everything you know about the world we live in, the history of Esperanto and other language projects, and all other relevant cultural and sociolinguistic information.

Todd

All greetings are given with the -n ending, since the assumed context is something like "Mi deziras al vi ...[bonan tagon]"

So we also have:
Feliĉan Kristnaskon [Merry Christmas]
Feliĉan Naskiĝtagon [Happy Birthday]
Saluton [Greetings/Hello]
Bonan nokton [Good night]
Bondezirojn [Best wishes!]
Bonan ŝancon [good luck!]

----

I like Todd's argument on the likelihood that a language reform will succeed. A language reform that is just for your personal amusement - no problem, either way, go right ahead. But if you are doing a language reform with the goal that your reform should replace Esperanto, then you should make a sober, rational assessment about your likelihood of accomplishing that. And on whether more people would really learn Esperanto if only it had/didn't have [whatever].

Most people decide not to learn Esperanto without even learning about a single one of its attributes, so they have already decided not to learn it even though they are completely unaware of any of its flaws. I have mentioned Esperanto to many people. I have mentioned that it wasn't very hard to learn and that I have had a lot of benefits from it (international travel, meeting interesting people, etc). No one has decided to learn it based on those attributes, and I never said a single thing about any of the grammar of it, so they really have no basis to judge whether they like or dislike the grammar.

I believe that the population of people who have decided not to learn Esperanto due to specific grammatical features is very small.
You have to decide whether this small group is big enough and potentially committed enough to draw enough adherents to make your esperantido into a successful replacement for Esperanto as we know it.

If you believe you have a realistic chance, then I urge you to learn from Zamenhof and spend significant time using your language before asking people to learn it. Zamenhof spent a lot of time translating texts and writing poems and fine-tuning the language before releasing it, and I think this is necessary. Because once it has been released, it's too late, people don't want to be told to re-learn the language because you just released version 2.4.

But if it's just for fun, just a hypothetical "improved Esperanto" for you to play with and enjoy in your free time, then sure, go ahead. Edit away!

sudanglo:As regards interlinguistics, Ceiger, if this is the study of Pidgins and Creoles, then OK.

If it is the study of auxiliary languages like Esperanto then it is just the study of Esperanto, since there aren't any other auxiliary languages that are spoken and have a sufficiently large corpus for serious study.

The so called conlangs are just people's schemes for languages. Hardly a serious academic subject,

A "serious" academic subject like medicine where we waste time and taxpayer's money to teach people to heal those so imperfect they can't fix themselves?

Whether something is serious is unimportant to its benefit or worth, as the above sentence might demonstrate (from a fairly nihilistic viewpoint which I do no agree with in the slightest).

And to be quite frank, I don't care whether one thinks this following statement is overvaluing constructed languages or demeaning to pidgins and creoles, but they're all about as important as each other to the rest of the world. Papua New Guinea isn't exactly the most productive country in the world, and neither are languages like Esperanto very important in the scheme of things lately. Whether you're learning Esperanto or Tok Pisin, they're pretty useless unless you have some specialised niche goal in mind.

And be careful with your words. Esperanto is after all one of those said conlangs, and was originally just a scheme of a language, and seemed to stay that way for a while until it gained more traction. If you don't think conlangs are worth study at all, then I suggest you rethink why you bothered learning Esperanto and are sticking with it today.

sufficiently large corpus for serious study.

People spend their lives dedicating thier time and energy to studying the Christian Bible or the Islamic Quran, I'm sure people don't need EO's library to be satisfied, especially if they're studying the field in general where they would be expected to take multiple languages into account. Plus, such corpuses of literature are pretty unimportant to interlinguistics because it does not have terribly much to do with people communicating with one another outside the environment of a native language. Interlinguistics is also something probably taken as part of a larger field of study, e.g. general linguistics.

Razlem:@ceigered

The most neutral alignment is, well, Neutral alignment, also called Direct alignment. It means that there is no distinction between the Subject, Agent, and Patient. In other words, no cases. The problem of the Agent/Patient distinction is solved by standardizing the word order. I chose SVO because it's used by 3 billion people.

http://www.frathwiki.com/Morphosyntactic_alignment

Cheers mate for that interesting info! Be wary though (If you don't know it already) since that may not be entirely neutral - to my understanding, SOV one of the more neutral ones too since (interestingly) many ancient languages used to use this, and many still do (I believe Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, most turkic languages(?) and most Indic languages(?)). Also, most SVO languages aren't true SVO, for example:
- the Germanic languages are stuck between VSO and SVO. They seem to have come from a SOV order, suggesting they had been moving towards a VSO order, but then VSO became the questioning order and SVO became the normal one (except in certain cases we'll not mention here)
- Furthermore, Western Germanic languages have SVOV2 order, although English has pretty much dropped it having a more flexible word order.
- the Romance languages switch between SOV and SVO when pronouns get involved, French being a big offender.
- Russian and the Slavic languages generally have free word order but default on SVO (for the heck of it)
- Chinese DOES (luckily) have SVO order, but Chinese doesn't really treat grammar the same way as any other language anyway
- Indonesian appears to have SVO order but it also has traces of every other order you can think of.

In addition, I've heard (and can't provide concrete evidence but it seems right to me) that SVO is merely an intermedial step to VSO from SOV for many languages. Since this occurred in the Celtic languages, half way in the Germanic languages, a small bit in the romance languages, and otherwise SVO languages have often an unstable word order when compared to VSO/SOV languages, it's not too hard to believe.

Perhaps worthy of thought during conlanging? I don't know. I'm biased nonetheless towards VSO since it's fun.

razlem:
I'm familiar with using an accusative case, it's used in Russian (and to some extent in German).

To some extent?

horsto:

razlem:
I'm familiar with using an accusative case, it's used in Russian (and to some extent in German).

To some extent?

The articles change rather than the roots themselves:
Der Mann
Den Mann
The exceptions are the pronouns (mich, dich, etc.)

Whereas in Russian (which has no articles), the root changes
Я вижу воду
Это хорошая вода

horsto:

razlem:
I'm familiar with using an accusative case, it's used in Russian (and to some extent in German).

To some extent?

You noticed this yourself: vorto de la tago en la germana lingvo (fifth post on the linked page).

For those of you who don't understand German:

horsto:
Ist euch schon mal aufgefallen, dass im deutschen weibliche und sächliche Objekte nicht dekliniert werden? Und damit kann man auch nicht Objekt und Subjekt vertauschen.

= "Have you ever noticed that in German, feminine and neuter objects aren't declined? And hence you can't swap the object and the subject."

darkweasel:Naja, dekliniert werden sie schon - nur sind Nominativ und Akkusativ gleich (Dativ und Genitiv haben aber andere Formen).

= "Well, actually they are declined, but nominative and accusative are the same (but dative and genitive do have different forms)."

@erinja

"You have to decide whether this small group is big enough and potentially committed enough to draw enough adherents to make your esperantido into a successful replacement for Esperanto as we know it."

You misunderstand my intentions. I do not wish to make Esperanto obsolete, nor English, nor any other language.

The language I have created is an experiment to test neuro/sociolinguistic ability. I used Esperanto as a base because of its success as an international language. Even if it gets out of the development stage and into real-world use, I wouldn't be able to predict its success or failure.

RiotNrrd:
Learn to speak Esperanto first. Then your criticisms may hold some water. Until then, you're just flapping your gums about something you aren't experienced with, and few of those who have the experience will pay you much attention.

First of all, quit pointing out what I or any other gums-flapper said and focus on the theme; I am not here to discuss if anyone here is experienced or not nor to discuss E-a history. Respect, always.

RiotNrrd:
The fact that these adaptations don't match the wishes of people who haven't yet learned to properly speak the language is of very little account.

A universal language should be made to fit any beginner, any; this means they simply wouldn't need adaptations. Look at the e-a vortfarado for instance, and the way words change from adjectives to verbs, from nouns to abstract nouns, that's perfect, who wouldn't love that?

It does not matter if the "flaw-finders" are beginners, as long as they are trying to learn. If 1/20 of the world has never heard of Esperanto, and this group would face problems with a particular rule, let's say, this rule should be revisited, and, if fit, changed, why not?

The fact that beginners don't have acquired enough experience doesn't mean they shouldn't be respected and have their opinions count as any other speaker.

Why isn't Chinese throughout the world? Native speakers don't have any problems with it, so why would anyone else have?

I know so many people that just would never want to think about learning Chinese, just because it's "difficult" or "ridiculous". The same goes to English, yes yes. Now, I also know some English speakers that just forfeited learning Portuguese, because it's "difficult" (IMO on the top 10 of most difficult langs); and yes, these are difficult languages!(relatively)

And that's why they are not throughout the world! So any universal language should accept opinions and reconsider their own rules. Now, who would change Esperanto? Those who wish it to be The universala lingvo. Does it need changes? Some people say it does, some don't; so that's when someone pops out from the multitude and says: "Aight, guys. Let's take a closer look"

Hélas, these may be just a bunch of beginner-born insignificant words, right?
Right, but adaptation does not only come from experienced.

Also, fame counts A LOT. Compared to other auxlangs, Esperanto is probably the most famous. And that needs to be used to favour it.

Take care, bye.

Giuliano(Ĝuljano)