razlem:"...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.

"Unmatched"? To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, there are other -- probably many other -- languages which can match English in its expressiveness. For example, ask a native French speaker if French is defective in its expressiveness. Then duck your head. Indeed, the anecdote goes that France objected in the old League of Nations to the idea of Esperanto on the ground that French was already the international language and that therefore the world needed no other. End of argument. Will you say that English is more expressive than French? If not, then how can you say that Esperanto is less expressive than English when it has been used to translate major world works (e.g., the Qur'an, the Bible, and Shakespeare)?

@bartlett22183

I was being sarcastic, hence the "rido."

razlem:"...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.

And now I *know* you don't speak any language other than English.

razlem:The whole purpose of this thread was to ask "why" things are in Esperanto.

In this case you have come to the wrong place, and you were born 100 years too late. Only Zamenhof can answer why he did things a certain way. We don't create the language, we only speak it. You may as well ask an English speaker why English does things a certain way. How should we know? We didn't create English, we only speak it. If you truly want to know the answers to your questions, the best you can do is to learn Esperanto well and read a book called 'Lingvo kaj vivo'. It's a collection of essays about Esperanto. About a third of the book talks about the development of Esperanto, and the author's opinions of why Zamenhof did things a certain way, based on documentary evidence (that is, based on the evolution of Esperanto as recorded in early drafts of the language, as recorded before it reached its final form)

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.

The language is just as Zamenhof intended it to be, therefore it has not "strayed" from anything. It has not become as widespread as Zamenhof would have hoped but he was a man with big ideas -- and I think it's astonishing that people all the way in Japan, India, Africa, all over, meet up to learn and speak a language written by a nobody in a backwater of the Russian empire 120 years ago.

Zamenhof did not intend for us to rewrite the language and still call it Esperanto. This is pretty obvious in his writings. However if you think that another language could be better than Esperanto, sure, make up your own. But Esperanto isn't broken. We use it and it works perfectly. Maybe you like something else better and that's fine, don't bother with Esperanto, go do your own thing.

Some people like cats and therefore they own cats. Their cats are not "broken" just because they don't run around barking at things. Someone who wants a pet that will run around barking at stuff should probably get a dog rather than try to train their cat to bark at things. But at any rate, a dog person shouldn't criticize a cat person for having a cat.

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

Well, I personally like conjugated verbs - thus why I like volapük. However, conjugated verbs are redundant in Esperanto, because there are mandatory pronouns (except in the odd case a pronoun can't be applied, e.g. "estas dek katoj" (there's ten cats).

Conjugated for person and number is essentially the same as sticking a pronoun on the end of a verb. And indeed in Proto Indo-European, it's likely the endings for person and number and the personal pronouns were once the same thing, but with use they diverged, since the conjugated endings were used all the time, and when emphasis was deemed required and redundancy was introduced, only then did the personal pronouns make a big appearence. The excessive use vs the lack of use of the two probably led to them diverging.

Thus, to conjugate a verb (many langauges with distinct conjugations per person are pro-drop languages), or to have a mandatory pronoun for a verb (many languages with distinct pronouns have vestigial conjugations), are the same thing.

The accusative and other prepositions ensure that the subject is never separated from the verb in some sense, so there's no need for added redundancy to increase understanding, unlike with adjectives etc which agree with the thing they describe so one does not misunderstand what's being modified - for that, see the ambiguities of English thread here, to see why some feel that marking adjectives so relentlessly is important compared to English's unmarked system.

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.

Technically there is a dative - that -en thing. It handles all situations, along with -n after a preposition, which "al" cannot handle (prettily at least. "al en" etc are a bit clumsy, but workable). Actually, Esperanto has the pronouns to have a fully functioning dative, genitive, inessive, ablative, illative, pseudo-partitive, abessive, and comitiative. Which is really just a list of Finnish's bazillions of cases, and the only difference is that Esperanto uses prepositions (for all spare the accusative), and Finnish uses those word ending, and that Esperanto has a space between its prepositions, and the postpositions of Finnish lack a space between the word they modify and themselves.

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.

As said above, the dative and genitive do function. The problem here is not that they're lacking in Esperanto, but that Zamenhoff made it so every grammatical case that he knew could have a preposition in languages he was aware of had a preposition in Esperanto. There isn't really an "accusative preposition" out in the world though, but there are accusative postpositions.

Eitherway, Volapük's main postpositions with some prepositions (Volapük has a lot of vowels but not enough for EVERY case, and for some reason people back then loved the idea of vowel-revolving-around word endings ) didn't seem too popular compared to Esperanto's "almost everything's on one end of the word minus the accusative", and that one "exception" didn't seem to cause any problems evidently for them.

Ultimately, as a conlanging, my best advice is to keep ALL CASE MARKING DOOWACKIES ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE WORD , but Esperanto does go to show that one out of place doesn't have the "Volapük" effect.

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.

It hasn't strayed, it's always been this way. Well, praesperanto was a bit different (and I thought it looked cooler, albeit it more irregular/stranger), but Esperanto's unfixable.

(Ran outa space)
Erinja's got a nice analogy there with the cats and dogs. Esperanto's the cat of the conlang world, not very loud, active, etc, but it's presence is still big. I can't think of the linguistic equivalent of a dog, but we'll call native languages dogs, or zonal conlangs like Interslavic. They fit right in with people, having similar nuances, being loud and illogical and very active, but because they fit in they don't really stand out.

I feel that what you're proposing is a domesticated fox (look it up, it's a cool idea, they even have spots!). A good mixture between the two.

But it's important that if you want to make such a foxy language (wrong connotation, but you get my drift), that you don't treat yo...

Another reason for not following in the footsteps of EO or other languages is that, in addition to prior mentioned concerns, your language could then adopt the perceived faults of EO, while being perceived as a fault in itself by the EO community, and thus no one will appreciate it for what it's truly worth. And then your language might act more like an advertisement for Esperanto, or as a warning for people not to get into conlangs. So it's very important to have your language find it's own path and "destiny" if you would forgive me for applying such lame terms.

Of course, if you feel prepared to deal with the very criticism that EO has had to deal with, then feel free to model the language as an improved EO, but even a few traits of EO will immediately remind the critics of Esperanto of their pet hate and your language may suffer the same fate.

To save the lad time

trojo:

razlem:"...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.

And now I *know* you don't speak any language other than English.

razlem:@bartlett22183

I was being sarcastic, hence the "rido."

.

(I normally do "(nur ŝercas)" under my comments to avoid these sort of awkward situations, since most of what I say can probably be taken the wrong way )

"Some people like cats and therefore they own cats. Their cats are not "broken" just because they don't run around barking at things. Someone who wants a pet that will run around barking at stuff should probably get a dog rather than try to train their cat to bark at things. But at any rate, a dog person shouldn't criticize a cat person for having a cat."

So is Esperanto a cat-person language?
If so I suppose I'm making the dog-person language...
The great struggle continues!!!

Again with my reason for studying Esperanto and interlinguistics- I want the world to have an auxiliary language. RiotNrrd said that this was no longer the opinion of Esperanto speakers, that this was the vision of one man and no speaker today shares this idea. From that I conclude that you want to learn Esperanto for the sake of learning this kind of language, which is fine, but the differing basis I think are affecting our argument. If I am mistaken, then correct me- why did you learn Esperanto?

"Zamenhof did not intend for us to rewrite the language and still call it Esperanto."

What Zamenhof wanted was an international language, and for the most part, he got one. He just overestimated its influence. (If you look on the map of registered users of lernu, which region has the highest density?) Others have tried to create new languages but have made the same mistakes (grammatically and promotionally). I'm trying something new- something I have not seen done before. Whether it succeeds or fails, it will be a learning experience.

"Another reason for not following in the footsteps of EO or other languages is that, in addition to prior mentioned concerns, your language could then adopt the perceived faults of EO, while being perceived as a fault in itself by the EO community, and thus no one will appreciate it for what it's truly worth."

I understand what you mean, and I'm not prepared to unveil the language yet. I would prefer to have a bit more experience with other languages (including Esperanto) and advanced linguistics before I do something irreversible. What you see currently is a framework. The final product may look completely different- I don't know yet.

razlem:Again with my reason for studying Esperanto and interlinguistics- I want the world to have an auxiliary language. RiotNrrd said that this was no longer the opinion of Esperanto speakers, that this was the vision of one man and no speaker today shares this idea.

It's a hyperbole but it represents things nicely, in that it's not so much the internationality of Esperanto that attracts people but the existing community and the language. Some people do share the idea of having an international language, but that's not the subconscious binding factor (otherwise, the curse of knowledge would be enough to undo any commitment to Esperanto knowing that it won't achieve the hefty dreams and aspirations associated with it).

I understand what you mean, and I'm not prepared to unveil the language yet. I would prefer to have a bit more experience with other languages (including Esperanto) and advanced linguistics before I do something irreversible. What you see currently is a framework. The final product may look completely different- I don't know yet.

Hopefully, this is how humans will get a universal or widespread neutral lingua franca, by keeping their choices open and being aware of various languages and basically choosing what works best naturally. For this reason I believe a true global conlang of sorts would be like a global creole guided by the various ideas of those interested in such a goal, although not artificial in nature like many conlangs today chasing that goal but naturally formed based on what words fit best according to human nature. Alas, it might come to be that other languages die out in the process, and the "final language" may be a combination of only the most popular languages (that chinese-latin mix comes to mind). But what the people decide in this case shouldn't be too bad even if it does mean that many languages have died.

Anyway, I encourage you to continue your search for knowledge and experience as far as this subject goes, and who knows, if it's what you want you may become a sort of Zamenhoff of the 21st century! Esperanto, however, has cemented itself in its own little role, unforunately. I guess it's not impossible for it to achieve that "finavenko" stuff, but if it's not a natural adoption I'm not sure what would happen.

As a lover of Esperanto and cats, I wholeheartedly agree.

Regards,

Daniel

erinja:
Some people like cats and therefore they own cats. Their cats are not "broken" just because they don't run around barking at things. Someone who wants a pet that will run around barking at stuff should probably get a dog rather than try to train their cat to bark at things. But at any rate, a dog person shouldn't criticize a cat person for having a cat.