razlem:I wanted to know why there is an accusative in a self-named neutral and international language.

My wikiwalks on the Wookiepedia have been interrupted by interest on this discussion! ARGH!

Perhaps because said accusative may be neutral and international.

From my knowledge, here's a list of languages embracing the marked accusative (and giving it some of their oddities).
- Japanese (wo) (sometimes marks accusative role using topic marker or even subject marker, from a European perspective, e.g. "watashi wa anata ga daisuki desu")
- Arabic (?) (not sure how it works, language's grammar is confusing, was going to investigate but got stuck on wikiwalk on wookiepedia reading about the Second Imperial Civil War.)
- Most Indian languages, at least all descended from Sanskrit.
- All slavic languages (-u, -a, etc), although Bulgarian's unique
- German (already known )
- Maybe the celtic languages, Irish at least plays with the innards of various words if they're accusative or not, annoyingly.
- Various african languages, which ones and how I can't remember, but they follow some pretty unique rules anyway
- All/Almost all Turkic languages (so, Turkish, Kazakh, Mongolian, Korean (if you classify it as such)) or so I've read. Turkish uses the accusative selectively at times, and sort of uses it to fulfil the role of a definite article for accusative words.
- Finnish
- Hungarian
- Some Australian aboriginal languages I believe also use it

Languages which staunchly avoid marking the accusative
- Chinese (strict word order, since most words are unmarked - Also, Mandarin (official) Chinese words are starting to become more and more multisyllabic)
- Indonesian/Malay (gets REALLY confusing when the word order changes for some reason from SVO to VSO or OVS etc).
- Add some more if you can think of any, I can't think of any past the European languages which still have accusative remnants, or object cases, similar to Esperanto.

Also, remember, by leaving the accusative out, you'd be working against that big list of languages that use the accusative - thus undermining neutrality to cater for the little guy. In this case, "leaving a feature out" doesn't really work since all that's been done is changing the marking of the accusative from explicit in implicit.

darkweasel:

Genjix:I read these differently:
Mi iras Parizen
Repeated activity. I go to paris (every so often).

Mi iras Parizon
I am going to Paris (right now).

Why? I don't see how the choice how to express "to Paris" can decide if it's a repeated or one-time action.

I too don't fully understand how frequency plays into the equation - to, me, all that's happening is using iras intransitively and then transitively. I think though I can understand the notion of frequency arising from the use of -en, since the "e" gives an impression about the manner of the action, where as the other one stresses the destination.

Ultimately though I don't think there is a difference between the two other than the spelling and pronunciation.

I think for "Mi iras Parizen" vs "Mi iras Parizon" is being conflated with "Mi iras lunde" versus "Mi iras lundon".

In the accusative of time, -n usually indicates a single instance, where -e indicates a habitual action. In the accusative of direction, this isn't the case.

Mi iras hejmen means that I am going home NOW. It doesn't mean that I usually go home. Most people never say Mi iras hejmon. The -n on a simple noun to indicate direction of movement is rarely seen, although it is correct (so "Mi iras urbon" and "Mi iras Parizon" and "Mi iras Italion" are all correct, but rarely seen anymore)

ok, thanks for clearing that up.

@ceigered
"From my knowledge, here's a list of languages embracing the marked accusative (and giving it some of their oddities)."

Oddities being the key word here. Not every language that marks the accusative uses it in the same ways.

"Also, remember, by leaving the accusative out, you'd be working against that big list of languages that use the accusative - thus undermining neutrality to cater for the little guy."

Then should there be conjugated verbs as well? A huge amount of languages have this feature. By your implications, it is neutral and international.

Languages with the accusative often have the dative (Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Indic, Altaic, Japanese, Arabic, German). Is this not also neutral and international? Why doesn't Esperanto have it?

I don't really understand this numbers game.

It seems open to exploitation on both sides.

"Most languages do X, so Esperanto should do X too"

or "Esperanto is supposed to be easier than most languages, so it shouldn't do X, since most languages do X and it's hard".

It really seems to be a matter of taste. Some people really like X and think it makes a language easier. Some people don't like X and think it makes a language too complicated. Some people note that languages with X usually have Y, so why doesn't Esperanto have Y, since it has X? (answer: Esperanto isn't those other languages, and just because it takes one common language element and uses it, doesn't mean that it has to take everything that usually accompanies that element).

---

And I have to say that I fail to understand why you are interested in why Esperanto does things in a certain way, especially since your language seems to have zero similarities with Esperanto. Classifying every single word through the root system as natural or artificial, making every single word a noun root - this language has no resemblance to Esperanto whatsoever. It reminds me more of Toki Pona, in fact. I wouldn't even call it an esperantido by a long shot, so I'm really mystified as to what you hoped to gain in this forum, seeing as your language is not remotely based on Esperanto, you seem to have no interest whatsoever in making your language based on Esperanto, and furthermore, that you seem to have an inaccurate idea in your mind on how Esperanto grammar works (and you don't seem to be willing to be corrected on this, or even to bother informing yourself with the correct information).

"Esperanto isn't those other languages, and just because it takes one common language element and uses it, doesn't mean that it has to take everything that usually accompanies that element"

But why? Why only the accusative? A dative has many potential uses as well and would fit in perfectly with Esperanto, as would a general genitive case.

Is there a logical reason why the accusative was introduced without a dative or genitive? Even English has an objective case that marks both the direct and indirect objects.

"I wouldn't even call it an esperantido by a long shot, so I'm really mystified as to what you hoped to gain in this forum, seeing as your language is not remotely based on Esperanto"

It was inspired by Esperanto and uses several grammatical features unique to Esperanto (vowel classifiers, regular table of correlatives). It is to Esperanto what English is to Proto-Indo-European, if you'll indulge me the analogy.

The whole purpose of this thread was to ask "why" things are in Esperanto. Why are there inherent parts of speech, why is the morphosyntactic alignment nominative-accusative, etc. I introduced my language as a "what if" scenario. "What if" there were no accusative case, "What if" vocabulary had been drawn from different sources. The reason I'm learning Esperanto is obviously different than the reason everyone else is. I see a construction that has strayed from its purpose over time and I want to fix it so it could be restored to that purpose. The thing I don't understand is why people think it isn't broken.

We don't think it's broken because it works well for us. It serves its purpose: an easy and efficient means of communication between people of different native languages.

It has not been widely adopted, that's true. But if cell phones functioned just as they do now, yet most people refused to use them and also refused to investigate how they work, I'd rather review the marketing instead of the devices.

I have a suggestion for you. Instead of having this debate in the English forum, where you are likely to meet many newbies, you'd better go directly to the Esperanto forums and make your proposals there. Though there will also be newbies, the average level is likely to be higher than in a national language forum, and so you'll be able to debate with more qualified Esperantists.

Just in case you find it more difficult to write in Esperanto than in English... well, you could first learn the language before attempting to fix it.

Regards,

Daniel

razlem:I see a construction that has strayed from its purpose over time and I want to fix it so it could be restored to that purpose. The thing I don't understand is why people think it isn't broken.

"...you'd better go directly to the Esperanto forums and make your proposals there."

Even if I was a fluent Esperanto speaker, English is unmatched in regards to expression.

razlem:"Esperanto isn't those other languages, and just because it takes one common language element and uses it, doesn't mean that it has to take everything that usually accompanies that element"

But why? Why only the accusative? A dative has many potential uses as well and would fit in perfectly with Esperanto, as would a general genitive case.

Is there a logical reason why the accusative was introduced without a dative or genitive? Even English has an objective case that marks both the direct and indirect objects.
[...]

I have been around the field of constructed (please note) international auxiliary languages for many years. One thing, if nothing else, I have learned is that conIAL design is above all a matter of "engineering" trade-offs. There is no perfect design, and no perfect language. What trade-offs work, and what do not? Yes, we might go back to the eight cases of proto-Indo-European or the many cases of some of the Finno-Ugrian languages, such as Finnish. We might go to the three voices and six (or was it seven?) verbal moods of classical Greek. But where do we stop? When does the tinkering stop and the actual real world using begin?

No, no language, "natural" or "constructed," is perfect, if we can even come to a realistic notion of what a "perfect" language might even mean. Does Esperanto have so-called "flaws"? In my personal opinion, definitely yes. Does it function as a genuine, workable means of human communication? Definitely yes. Is it, for many, many people, easier than many "natural" languages to attain reasonable facility with in far, far, less time and far, far, less effort than with many "natural" languages? Again, I would say yes.

Having been around the block, given the situation as it is today and not as we might like it to be in some ideal world, are there any serious competitors to Esperanto with respect to the juggernaut of English? I can think of only two, and they are far behind.