One thing would-be reformers should know: there is no one that can officially put your proposed changes into effect. Esperanto has no governing authority-- the Akademio is an advisory body with a narrowly-defined role. No official or committee can change Esperanto. Undemocratic? Actually it is the ultimate democratic system-- there is no one you can appeal to in order to force your changes down everyone's throat. Esperanto is community property. It belongs to everyone and to no one.

trojo:One thing would-be reformers should know: there is no one that can officially put your proposed changes into effect. Esperanto has no governing authority-- the Akademio is an advisory body with a narrowly-defined role. No official or committee can change Esperanto.

I am aware. I have read the Fundamento and Unua Libro, which is why my additions would have to be part of an Esperantido.

erinja:

With all due respect, ceigered, I think you've completely missed the point.

I think that most Esperanto speakers don't have a problem with the idea of analyzing Esperanto, or comparing it with other languages. Many of them spend hours doing so, happily.

The problem is when you get into this positive/negative thing. You bring up that they get offended when someone says Esperanto isn't perfect, or speaks negatively about aspects of Esperanto.

The problem is not comparing aspects of Esperanto to aspects of other languages - the problem is to say that Esperanto does these things in a "better" or "worse" way than other languages.

I apologise Erinja - I wasn't trying to say that (my prior mentioned comments) account for all of the issues that are being brought up here, just the stuff regarding linguists etc. (continuing sort of below)

Sudanglo:But that's my point, Ceiger, I don't think that that they are linguists does put them in a special position - other than that if they know some Esperanto and they know language A or B then they are in a position to make comparisons with A or B and Esperanto.

But then all Esperantists are also speakers of another language so they can make such comparisons anyway.

It's only if you accept that there is some special theoretical knowledge about natural languages that linguists have acquired AND that Esperanto is 'just another language' that the linguist is in a privileged position.

This doesn't make much sense though - a linguist studies languages, of course they're endowed with knowledge that non-linguists don't have as a general rule. Unless of course this relates to Erinja's comments about me missing the point, in that you're referring to saying a language is better/worse than each other. In that case, then that is true, the linguist shouldn't have any bonus in determining that because the question about whether one language is better than another isn't even something that should really be answered.

I apologise if I've been misunderstanding this - I thought that you were saying that linguists have nothing to say about Esperanto at all, but it seems now that I may have misunderstood the topic and we're still talking about languages being better/worse - in which case I agree with you

Sudanglo:However, the real objection to this line of argument is that there must be an unlimited number of rules that one could conjure up that would be not be found in most, if not all languages. But this doesn't establish the positive presence of universal rules.

Well, a universal rule is a universal rule. It depends on what the "universe" here is. If we're talking human languages as the "universe", a universal rule is that grammar must be present, since I think most would agree that hooting noises that contain the meaning of entire sentences would lack the essence of being a language and would be more like primitive animal calls. But this can't really be discussed much more without diverging from languages completely I feel..

Glauro:... if a language is supposed to become a universal language, it ja estas supposed to be adapted...

By who? Who will adapt it? Who will change it? Who will identify what is a flaw and what isn't?

Here's who: those who speak it fluently. Beginners do not have the necessary experience required to make decisions about a language they barely speak (if they speak it at all).

There are lots of fluent speakers. Yet "flaw" fixes and "improvements" don't seem to come from them. Aren't THEY the ones who would best understand what is a flaw and what isn't? So why aren't THEY adapting and fixing the language?

Perhaps it is because what beginners who know next to nothing about the language see as flaws are, in fact, nothing of the kind.

Esperanto is not static, however. It HAS changed over the last century (as have all languages). Some of the forms Zamenhof used are no longer common. Some of today's forms have only become common in recent decades. Vocabulary has been added constantly; what would the people of Zamenhof's time have known about computers and the internet, atomic weapons, or automobiles? Esperanto has been adapting all along, as need has dictated. The fact that these adaptations don't match the wishes of people who haven't yet learned to properly speak the language is of very little account.

People who have no medical training may have opinions about treating illnesses. People without pilots licenses may have opinions about the proper way to fly jets. People who have never taken a photograph may have plenty of opinions about how to direct a movie. But the doctors, pilots, and directors who have actually learned to do what they do are blameless in ignoring those who haven't. This is the case in any field of endeavor, and it is also true with Esperanto.

Learn to speak Esperanto first. Then your criticisms may hold some water. Until then, you're just flapping your gums about something you aren't experienced with, and few of those who have the experience will pay you much attention.

RiotNrrd:Beginners do not have the necessary experience required to make decisions about a language they barely speak (if they speak it at all).

No, but beginners do have the ability to recognize inconsistencies, especially if they have studied other languages.

RiotNrrd:There are lots of fluent speakers. Yet "flaw" fixes and "improvements" don't seem to come from them. Aren't THEY the ones who would best understand what is a flaw and what isn't? So why aren't THEY adapting and fixing the language?

Could it be that they can not see the flaws? I'm a fluent English speaker, but I couldn't at first see the flaws of using an irregular derivational morphology until I started to develop my model language.

RiotNrrd:People who have no medical training may have opinions about treating illnesses. People without pilots licenses may have opinions about the proper way to fly jets. People who have never taken a photograph may have plenty of opinions about how to direct a movie. But the doctors, pilots, and directors who have actually learned to do what they do are blameless in ignoring those who haven't. This is the case in any field of endeavor, and it is also true with Esperanto.

Then any person who has not taken a course in linguistics would not be qualified to change a language. Seeing as I actually do have the experience required (way more linguistic experience than most Esperantists), I am qualified to suggest changes to Esperanto or create a better Esperantido.

So here's the deal,

All hands learn fundamental Esperanto and chat amongst yourselves as you will.

Learn and learn and learn some more until you really got it. You will probably find your ugre to mess with things wanes plenty. And even if it doesn't, Book-speak is often different then Common speech, sometimes very different; as long as we can all communicate on the fundamental level first, you can dialect your head off with your buddies, or your blog, or yourself for that matter.

Who's in?

vejktoro:Look razlem,

An Esperanto argument!!

(just kidding guys).

Very good example I think this one though was more misunderstanding what was going on, on my behalf!

Glauro:Having learned how some stuff in Esperanto truly work and knowing that, as one of you mentioned above, changing the Fundamento would be creating a new language instead of just changing Esperanto itself, I knew it just hadn't the slightest chance.

Try changing any language artificially and you generally end up with a new language. Every language has its own "fundamento" in the hearts of its speakers, and thus only natural changes can occur to a language without turning it into something existing speakers feel is not the same language.

Over time, languages evolve naturally so much they can't be called the same language, as with Latin and Portuguese.

At first, men thought planet Earth was flat.

This is because science evolved naturally, no one really artificially changed the way science works, otherwise you then create a religion/other belief system.

A good example would be creationism (please, people, don't take sides ). Creationism is essentially parts of science taken out of their natural environment and adapted into a theological environment. This is no longer science however, because science in its pure form cannot make such assumptions since one can't (at our current technological level) test for the existence of such a being.

I have no problem with Esperantidos, but they can't be Esperanto, and Esperanto can't be then. You wouldn't call a human a fish because we evolved from a type of fish, and you wouldn't call a fish a human because humans evolved from some type of fish.

Similarly, you wouldn't call some cyborg-mutant a human simply because they were a human, because now they are changed into something new. Whether that new creature survives and becomes popular (or even replaces the old humans, hopefully peacefully) is a different topic.

There is however one constructed language that did have major artifical changes applied to it and was accepted by its community, and that was Volapük. Those changes occured though when Volapük was almost dead, and Arie de Jong helped revive it with his changes (and he was very well known by the small amount of Volapukists too, so he could easily get in contact with speakers and inform them "hey guys, stuff's changing now!" ).

How beneficial though those changes were is extremely hard to tell since war in Europe effectively ruined the day for such wonderful social experiments like socialism, volapük and esperanto, and volapük was largely forgotten until lately. It's safe to say though that Volapük's acceptance of such reforms was because Volapük was more complicated than it is now, and complicated for pretty silly reasons.

However, if you want an example of what happens when someone wants to change Esperanto, you get Ido. Esperanto and Ido are actually more daughters of what was once the same idea, Esperanto the more conservative daughter, and Ido the more coup-d'état-revolution daughter

Honestly, if a flaw is so subtle that the speakers of the language can't see it, then I question whether or not that flaw is worth fixing.

No one who knows anything about Esperanto has ever claimed that it isn't inconsistent. Inconsistency is not necessarily a flaw. Esperanto wasn't designed to be "perfect" or "logical", however. It was designed to be EASY. Which it is. It is very debatable whether any "fixes" would make it soooo much easier that they are actually warranted. Sure, they might make it a little easier, but there is definitely a point of diminishing returns, and I think most speakers would claim it has already reached that point in its design.

vejktoro:So here's the deal,

All hands learn fundamental Esperanto and chat amongst yourselves as you will.

Learn and learn and learn some more until you really got it. You will probably find your ugre to mess with things wanes plenty. And even if it doesn't, Book-speak is often different then Common speech, sometimes very different; as long as we can all communicate on the fundamental level first, you can dialect your head off with your buddies, or your blog, or yourself for that matter.

Who's in?

Me!!!

razlem:Could it be that they can not see the flaws? I'm a fluent English speaker, but I couldn't at first see the flaws of using an irregular derivational morphology until I started to develop my model language.

If I may ask - "irregular derivational morphology" - can you give a few examples? I can't think of any, and if there are I would recommend not using them as they could be mistakes. If you're referring to things like "-al-" (originala) and "-aci-" (nacio), then they aren't actually suffixes or whatnot and are part of a radical (also worthy of mention is that "origino" means "the point of origin, where something came from" and "originalo" means "the original form, not a copy", and both are sort of loan words from Latin and its daughter language). Anyway, I'd advise caution in thinking about Esperanto as a natural language with strangely formed words, and think of EO as a language that has almost no native words of its own and only loan words fitted with EO grammar and phonological rules.

Then any person who has not taken a course in linguistics would not be qualified to change a language. Seeing as I actually do have the experience required (way more linguistic experience than most Esperantists), I am qualified to suggest changes to Esperanto or create a better Esperantido.

This is where I can understand some of Sudanglo's wariness towards linguists (no offence intended, as I can be similar).

It's not quite all black and white though:
What is "better"?
What is more popular?
What are people willing to speak?
Are people as receptive to the idea of new conlangs (that aren't zonal like interslavic and interlingua) when there's a more established conlang with a large speaker group?
- from that, one must weigh up the two - will people get their conlang fix just from Esperanto, or does something have to be new?
Feel free to add to that list yourself, as such brainstorming is quite important for conlanging.

Also, as with any creation, the creators intent leaks through it. If you want to make something better than Esperanto, it may show, almost like an Oedipus complex. This is something you want to avoid, since it can turn an Esperantido into something that looks like a wanna-be Esperanto or Ido (if we imagine them to be the parents in this oedipus complex analogy ).

Furthermore, a linguist is to study and report back on the features of languages and analyse them so that we better understand languages. That does not make a good conlanger. Similarly, a conlanger is not a very good linguist. One must acquire both skills respectively as neither automatically provides someone with the other when attained.

RiotNrrd:It was designed to be EASY.

Haha, let's avoid that too, I can imagine that leading to the promotion of Toki Pona and other stuff like that for being the successors of Esperanto . I think it was just made to feel good, really. It's a good language. It was a combination of things which the creator felt a new common language for his community could need, like a lexicon made of fairly common words with some more folky words chucked in for balance, moderately easy and regular compared to the surrounding Slavic languages and German, and a sound set moderately familiar to anyone in the area.