Messages: 253
Language: English
erinja (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 6:36:34 PM
gyrus (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 6:43:45 PM
erinja:Wow Gyrus, we're psychic!It's almost as if the same criticisms of Esperanto are trotted out again and again...
darkweasel (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 6:47:19 PM
I don't mean to sound unkind, just my opinion.
razlem (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 6:55:20 PM
erinja:That's actually what I'e done in my revision, removed "to be" altogetherGenjix:the accusative case is confusingSure, it would work. You could definitely do it. It just wouldn't be Esperanto, it would be a new language based on Esperanto.
....
I'm not even sure esti as a verb is needed:
...
Can someone tell me why that wouldn't work?
razlem (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 7:05:10 PM
erinja:I am quite satisfied with these responses, even if they aren't all positive. I did know in advance that some would not approve of reform (some outright denouncing linguists themselves). I love arguing though, especially when it involves language- my passion.
Are you happy with the responses you have received so far? Is it what you were expecting? And if not, what did you expect to happen differently?
I mean this in a nice way (I do), but it sounds to me like you already have some pretty fixed opinions if you've gone so far as to write your own esperantido. I'm curious as to why you bothered coming here. Surely you must have known in advance that you wouldn't get a positive reception for your ideas?
I wanted to see if there was something I missed. I don't share the same feeling as most Esperantists about it becoming the IAL. I'm pragmatic in nature and honestly just don't see it happening. As for my own reform, I wanted to see if it was possible to change Esperanto for the better- and it is. I don't intend to release my language any time soon though (if at all).
erinja (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 7:20:40 PM
You didn't miss anything. You just aren't an Esperantist and you are looking at the language with an outsider's view. Your mindset on the purpose of Esperanto is very different from most Esperantists' mindsets, and that's reflected in the disagreements. Someone who knows something only on a theoretical level always has a very different perspective from someone who actually does the thing.
"possible to change Esperanto for the better"? Of course. There's no perfect thing on the whole planet. It's curious though that you seem to think it's worth killing off the whole language and its culture in order to accomplish a task (the fina venko) that will never happen regardless.
If you're really interested in the idea of a functional international language, I would encourage you to spend six months or a year actually studying Esperanto and learning to speak it to a good level of proficiency, and then revisiting your changes to see if you think they're still necessary. You might surprise yourself. It seems a shame to trash something without really knowing what you're trashing.
I'd also encourage you to take whatever you have with your "new Esperanto" and posting it to a blog where people can respond to it. This debate is a little pointless since you are making a lot of jabs at Esperanto without necessarily offering much information on how you would go about improving that. It's a little like hiding behind a wall while throwing rotten tomatoes at someone in full view. This forum isn't the place to post your stuff but I'm sure that if you put your stuff on a Wordpress/Blogger/whatever page, you'll find plenty of people to comment on it and provide you some feedback.
T0dd (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 7:35:03 PM
razlem:And your evidence for this is...? I'll keep asking for evidence as long as you keep presenting your opinions as if they were documented fact.
"As for efficiency, how do you quantify that?"
-Amount of memorization. A strict SVO syntax is easier to memorize than a variable syntax plus the grammatical marker.
"...such as replacement of prepositions.""Al" and "je". See PMEG for the basic rules regarding -N.
-Which prepositions?
"Why "fix" something that you haven't taken a single step to ascertain is broken"Esperanto does not "represent" languages at all. This claim is nonsensical. It is used by speakers all over the world, however. It is not "THE" international language, no. But you have been asked again and again in this thread to show (not just assert) that this is due to its real or imagined linguistic defects. You haven't done so, and have largely ignored the issue. But if you want your ideas to be taken seriously, you'll need to come up with more than just impressions, anecdotes, and preferences.
-Esperanto is broken if you're clinging to the idea that it is THE international language (international in the "worldwide" sense). Just the fact that it does not represent any language outside of Europe proves this.
"Impressions, anecdotes, and preferences do not add up to science."But they are not the basis of a scientific approach to language. Your impressions, anecdotes, and preferences have no more claim to anyone's attention than anyone else's.
-Yet these are the deciding factors that go into learning a language.
As erinja has already pointed out, nobody has said that Esperanto is "perfect", whatever that might even mean. We can all think of things that we wish Zamenhof had done differently. But the ship has sailed. It's either Esperanto as it is, or some other existing reform project, or start over. And if you start over, what reason do you have to suppose that your project will fare better than Esperanto, or Ido, or Mondlango, or Lingua Franca Nova, or Novial, or Volapuk, or Lojban, or Glosa, or aUI, or Sona, or Kotava, or Frater?
razlem (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 7:47:36 PM
"...you seem to think it's worth killing off the whole language and its culture in order to accomplish a task"
No, that's not what I want. I encourage the growth of Esperanto, else I would not have learned some of it myself. It seems a waste to kill off a linguistic phenomenon. I knew I could not change Esperanto directly, so I formulated one of my own.
"It seems a shame to trash something without really knowing what you're trashing"
Is there anything I said in particular that would lead you to this conclusion? I would say something similar for the many critics of my language.
"I'd also encourage you to take whatever you have with your "new Esperanto" and posting it to a blog where people can respond to it"
No one asked for it, so I didn't bother (though a few people sent me messages and I offered some basic info about it). But the information is on YouTube and the Conlangs wiki, both sites have plenty of comments. If you would prefer that I post the links here I would be happy to, but I didn't think it would be appropriate.
erinja (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 8:00:52 PM
razlem:You were bashing the idea of the accusative ending, but as Todd mentioned, -n has several uses that go beyond indicating a grammatical object. But you don't seem to have learned enough Esperanto to know even this fact.
"It seems a shame to trash something without really knowing what you're trashing"
Is there anything I said in particular that would lead you to this conclusion? I would say something similar for the many critics of my language.
Critics of your language are not critics of your language per se. They are critics of the idea of reforming Esperanto. No one here is a critic of your language, because no one has even seen it. They are critics of reforming Esperanto and calling it Esperanto. Of course if you want to create a new language and call it something other than Esperanto, who are we to judge?
If you would prefer that I post the links here I would be happy to, but I didn't think it would be appropriate.I don't have a preference one way or the other. But you can feel free to post a link if you want. It wouldn't be against the site's terms of service to do so.
T0dd (User's profile) January 14, 2011, 8:17:54 PM
Speaking for myself only, I'm critical of some of the rather grand claims you've made, without any support. Your language looks interesting.