orthohawk:
As for the celtic languages, Welsh uses an object particle, at least on personal nouns. Hawaiian (and i'm just assuming, all the Polynesian languages) uses an object marker as well.

You don't consider the placmeent of the accusative in a specific spot in the sentence a sort of "marker"? The dog bit John. How do you know John was the one bitten? He's after the verb. The location itself is the marker for the accusative.........

Well, I would, but it's irrelevant since the point is arguing the position of a noun being the accusative marker vs. having an explicit particle/affix being the accusative marker. Thus one type of marker vs all the others

(before I go on, thanks for the information about the Celtic and Polynesian languages. As for "all Polynesian languages", I can't confirm that, but not all Malayo-Polynesian languages have object markers.)

Erinja:I am not well acquainted with the world religion, which is called Homaranismo (that's the Esperanto wikipedia page, though the English page also has a much smaller article). From what I understand from skimming the article, Homaranismo has many common traits with Unitarian Universalism, but there are some significant differences.

(rest is too big to quote)

Wow, thanks for that Erinja! I didn't expect such a big description, sorry about that . It's rather interesting though - I've often thought of Zamenhoff as a Jew due to his heritage, but he seems distant from that in a way the more I learn about him, as if he was a (nonjew?) who had a great interest in jewish culture (thus his work with yiddish etc). I guess he was the type that liked to remove himself from his own personal upbringing, viewpoints, etc, and view the world from a third person perspective.

Off topic, but doesn't this statue look like they had excess Lenin statues in stock? (The irony being that I can draw some parallels between the two men, other than their facial hair - they both wanted world unity, and wanted peace and neutrality. One through language, the other through political means. Ironically, the latter meant that peace would be sacrificed if necessary, so that the bourgeoisie could be overthrown)

I think the more free (not absolutely free) word order in Esperanto, has advantages at different levels of learning:

1) For beginners, it gives them the chance to use the word order they are familiar with in their native languages, and yet be understood. Regardless of emphasis, "du katinojn mi havas", "havas du katinojn mi", "mi havas du katinojn" kaj "mi du katinojn havas", essentially mean the same. (Those knowing me would probably switch the accusative from "katinoj" to "mi", sed that's another can of worms.)

2) For more advanced speakers, it gives them more flexibility for emphasis and style effects.

I still think the accusative is an excellent feature of Esperanto. And take into account that neither my native language nor my second one have (*) the accusative, at least not in the form of a word ending, so I believe my opinion is impartial.

Regards,

Daniel

(*) Should I write "has" in singular, since I am referring separatedly to each one of the languages, or "have" in plural, since they are two?

BTW, I made an exception to my rule of "thinking in each language" and compared how it should be said in Spanish (even if there is no guarantee that both languages will resort to the same solution). Believe it or not, I have the same doubt in my own native language ("tiene" or "tienen"?).

Long live Esperanto! I would use "havas" without any possibility of mistake.

erinja:I think most languages that have grammatical markers also have a fairly standardized word order.

The difference is that you can use variable word order to add emphasis and impact. In languages without these grammatical markers, your ability to re-order the words in order to add impact are very limited.

Wikipedia has a nice illustration of how this works in Hungarian.

It may be worth adding that the [url=Dogmoj http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilelismo]Dogmoj de Homaranismo[/url] are effectively the 1906 declaration by Zamenhof of Hilelismo (see pp 127-135 of the compilation by Aleksander Korĵenkov of Zamenhof's ideological writings Mi estas Homo); the 11th and 12th sections (the first of which mentions a homarana templo) are missing from the 1913 Deklaracio pri homaranismo, and for a good reason: Zamenhof received assurances from Christians that they wouldn't be allowed to attend such a temple; see Ch 11 (p.125 in the UEA paperback) of Privat's Vivo de Zamenhof.

danielcg:
Long live Esperanto! I would use "havas" without any possibility of mistake.

... but you'd run into the same problem on:
nek mi nek vi estas prava(j)

It seems however that at least in Esperanto you should use the singular in such cases at least with aŭ (and nek is quite similar).

ceigered:
Off topic, but doesn't this statue look like they had excess Lenin statues in stock? (The irony being that I can draw some parallels between the two men, other than their facial hair - they both wanted world unity, and wanted peace and neutrality. One through language, the other through political means. Ironically, the latter meant that peace would be sacrificed if necessary, so that the bourgeoisie could be overthrown)

Lenin favored killing other people who didn't follow his movement flag. Red Terror. So please don't put Lenin into the world peace corner. He simply was a dictator, too.

"In languages without these grammatical markers, your ability to re-order the words in order to add impact are very limited"

There are other ways to add emphasis. In English, for example, extra stress is given to the emphasized word(s). Other languages may have emphatic particles.

Besides, I don't know if Lenin himself was responsible for this, or it was something that happened after him, but the Soviet Union imposed the Russian language over the other republics, something Zamenhof wouldn't have approved of.

Regards,

Daniel

qwertz:

ceigered:
Off topic, but doesn't this statue look like they had excess Lenin statues in stock? (The irony being that I can draw some parallels between the two men, other than their facial hair - they both wanted world unity, and wanted peace and neutrality. One through language, the other through political means. Ironically, the latter meant that peace would be sacrificed if necessary, so that the bourgeoisie could be overthrown)

Lenin favored killing other people who didn't follow his movement flag. Red Terror. So please don't put Lenin into the world peace corner. He simply was a dictator, too.

Yes, emphasis can be conveyed by means of stress or accent. However, for non native speakers to understand the sense of what is being said, it is much easier to rely on makers or word order, than on stress or accent. Appart from the fact that it is more difficult to mark stress or accent in written texts.

Regards,

Daniel

razlem:"In languages without these grammatical markers, your ability to re-order the words in order to add impact are very limited"

There are other ways to add emphasis. In English, for example, extra stress is given to the emphasized word(s). Other languages may have emphatic particles.

"Apart from the fact that it is more difficult to mark stress or accent in written texts."

Italics or Bold or Underline.

In my opinion an affirmative particle would be easier to use.

razlem:
In my opinion an affirmative particle would be easier to use.

Just for the record, do you actually believe that Esperanto is not THE international language because it's not easy enough?