razlem: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.

I said nothing of the sort. I did say that it was Zamenhof's goal. I did NOT say that NO speaker today shares that goal.

It's fine to quote what I say, but please don't just make things up and attribute them to me.

You seem to see the world in one of two states - either everyone supports the goal, or no one supports the goal. Believe it or not, there is a third option. I was quite clear that the third option is, indeed, the state of things now, and that therefore "what Esperanto wants" is dependent on who you happen to be talking to. Which means that you cannot generalize about "what Esperanto wants" (which you have been doing repeatedly throughout the conversation).

(Ooh! This is post 1000 of mine!)

I didn't say it was impossible, just that it was more difficult. In a SMS there is no italic, bold or underline.

Regards,

Daniel

razlem:"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.

RiotNrrd:(Ooh! This is post 1000 of mine!)

Gratulon! There's only a handful of people who've done that.

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.

Did you read the bottom part of my comment? I am perfectly aware that Lenin treated peace hypocritically. And no man is "simply" a dictator.

I referred to Zamenhoff and Lenin's goals, not their means.

Lenin, Stalin, all these people view as tyrants (although I suspect the last one, very few would argue against being a tyrant) are humans and as such have similar goals in mind (or had similar goals, but then lost them). What separates them from people like Gandhi, Zam, etc are the methods. As such, Esperantists, simply because we have good intentions, are also not immune to making very grave and bad decisions in regards to how we treat fellow humans, and we should learn from those who have made mistakes before us to understand how to avoid them.

Luckily, Esperantists have neither power nor influence nor motivation, that could cause an atrocity .

Danielcg:but the Soviet Union imposed the Russian language over the other republics, something Zamenhof wouldn't have approved of.

Definitely! The irony of the marxist revolutions was that it involved language unity in an impersonal manner, identical to the way the aristocracy had ruled! The Soviet Union I feel was set to fail given its wobbly base.

razlem: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.

Such languages with emphatic particles don't just use emphatic particles but also play with word order too, and have rules about when an emphatic particle appears. Most emphatic particles I know of apply to a whole sentences as sort of a verbal exclamation mark, and don't give emphasis to a single word.

Languages like English that have such stress patterns are rare too, thus the typical idea of an English speaker of what a foreign language sounds like generally involves a highly rhythmic accent unlike our own.

And bolding/underlining doesn't work so easily anymore. Underlining is more used for hotlinks, some languages don't bold or avoid it (Chinese for example - google in Chinese and you'll see what I mean), and italics works badly with cursive text. Most importantly, anything officially written or scientific/technic writing in nature shouldn't be using text formatting like bolding/italics/underlining, as they can be TOO distracting according to those in the field . Thus, more discreet methods are preferable, in most languages anyway. The problem is that getting acquainted for formal methods of showing emphasis in a language is very hard, and I bet most English speakers barely know how to do so.

Danielcg: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?

Has/tiene, no? The "or" means that only one of those singular noun phrases is the subject, so I guess "have/tener" declines to "has/tiene".

"Neither (the first) nor the second one has the accusative"
"Ni el primero ni el segundo (no?) tiene la acusativo."
Do they feel correct?

T0dd:

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?

I believe this has contributed to it, but I can not say for certain.

razlem:

T0dd:Just for the record, do you actually believe that Esperanto is not THE international language because it's not easy enough?

I believe this has contributed to it, but I can not say for certain.

Do you think that a forum for learners of Esperanto is the best place to learn this information? Perhaps you should find a place with "ex-learners" of Esperanto. Anyone reading these posts has clearly stuck with it, at least to a degree.

erinja:

razlem:
I believe this has contributed to it, but I can not say for certain.

Do you think that a forum for learners of Esperanto is the best place to learn this information? Perhaps you should find a place with "ex-learners" of Esperanto. Anyone reading these posts has clearly stuck with it, at least to a degree.

I wanted to see if people were aware of my linguistic concerns, and you all are. You learn the language for the experience and the community, which I completely understand. I went into this argument with a different assumption. I don't want people to stop learning Esperanto, but it isn't for me obviously

razlem:I wanted to see if people were aware of my linguistic concerns, and you all are.

And if we weren't aware, would that bother you, and would you then try to teach us the error of our ways, with speaking such a flawed language?

erinja:

razlem:I wanted to see if people were aware of my linguistic concerns, and you all are.

And if we weren't aware, would that bother you, and would you then try to teach us the error of our ways, with speaking such a flawed language?

It would only have bothered me had you been trying to convince me that Esperanto is the best possible language. Since this has been my experience with Esperantists before (one even said to my face "Esperanto is the perfect language."), I assumed there were many who shared this perspective. I wanted to go to the source and see why people thought that, given that there are (debatably) international alternatives. But it is evident that many people actually don't think like this anymore.

Even if I thought you all needed to be taught, this isn't the venue for it, and I doubt many would listen.

erinja:

razlem:I wanted to see if people were aware of my linguistic concerns, and you all are.

And if we weren't aware, would that bother you, and would you then try to teach us the error of our ways, with speaking such a flawed language?

If we weren't aware then we'd probably deserve it since that'd make us pretty thick headed to think Esperanto isn't flawed, so I would hope so at least I so could reevaluate why I put so much time into learning Esperanto, hopefully coming to the conclusion that it was for the right reasons and not for the wrong ones.