trojo:

razlem:Why can things only be "rugxa" instead of "kuira" or "donaca"?

Why do you assume they can't be? I would generally read kuira as "culinary". Similarly, donaca, pertaining to a donation, seems pretty clear to me.

While Esperanto has flaws, this particular complaint just boils down to lack of familiarity with the language.

Gah! You aren't understanding the core of what I'm saying.

It's irregular that some roots are inherently nouns while others are inherently adjectives or verbs. The vowel inflections have an irregular transition method.

Let me restate this in a different way:

inherentADJECTIVE
NOUN = something that is ADJECTIVE
ADJECTIVE = ADJECTIVE
VERB = to be ADJECTIVE (but not always)
ADVERB = ADJECTIVE-ly

inherentNOUN
NOUN = NOUN
ADJECTIVE = pertaining to NOUN
VERB = to NOUN (but not always)
ADVERB = as a NOUN

inherentVERB
NOUN = pertaining to VERB
ADJECTIVE = pertaining to VERB
VERB = VERB
ADVERB = VERB-ly

It's obvious that the three methods are not the same. There is no standard mode of inflection because there are arbitrarily inherent parts of speech.

razlem:A priori vocabularies are impractical, so I chose the fairest alternative.

Really, *the* fairest alternative? There are no alternatives that are theoretically at least equally fair? How many languages did you borrow from? Ten? 100? How is that fair to the 101st most widely spoken language? In what proportions from the various source languages did you do your borrowings? I can guarantee you that I could find some unfairnesses there.

As far as impractical, this is impractical: taking a Mandarin root and using it in a non-tonal IAL, and expecting it to be recognizable. (And if it's not recongnizable, it is functionally no different than an a priori root).

No, these traits are just less European.

The notion that the accusative case is "European" would come as a big surprise to an Arabic-speaker...

Then what would you prefer? One whose vocabulary is based on 1 dead root language?

And I love how everyone is totally dismissing my language as an "Ido", not even knowing how it works.

No worries,

"Ido" in the linguistic sense = "daughter"

razlem:

trojo:

razlem:Why can things only be "rugxa" instead of "kuira" or "donaca"?

Why do you assume they can't be? I would generally read kuira as "culinary". Similarly, donaca, pertaining to a donation, seems pretty clear to me.

While Esperanto has flaws, this particular complaint just boils down to lack of familiarity with the language.

Gah! You aren't understanding the core of what I'm saying...

What you said was that things "can't" be kuira or donaca. I pointed out that they can be. If what you actually said and the "core" of what you said differ substantially, then maybe you should try to be more clear.

It's irregular that some roots are inherently nouns while others are inherently adjectives or verbs.

I have heard this complaint before, but I don't think it's a valid criticism. At worst, it's a semantic, rather than grammatical irregularity. Esperanto is grammatically regular in that adding -a to a word will always make it an adjective, and -a can be added to any root where the resulting word would make sense. (This is in contrast to, say, English, where adding -ly will usually make an adverb, as with "quickly", but sometimes make an adjective, as with "friendly" or "godly", and oftentimes can't be added to a word at all). Furthermore, what the resulting a-word means is almost always straightforward and logical, even if there isn't always an obvious English analogue (as with donaca).

The thing is, some roots inherently denote physical objects, some denote traits or properties, some denote actions, and so on. If this is irregular, it's because the semantic universe is irregular. Handling these three types of roots exactly the same doesn't make sense to me: for example would it be more useful to have trajni mean "to be a train" or to mean "to ride a train"? Most everyone who isn't a linguist (along with some who are linguists) would argue that "to ride a train" is the more useful and logical definition. On the other hand, which would be more useful, that ruĝi should mean "to be red" or "to ride red"? Maybe this situation isn't perfectly "regular" but it is logical and common-sensical.

Also, the part-of-speech endings are an essential component of Esperanto's propadeutic value. Someone who has minimal knowledge of their own language's grammar (common in the English-speaking world) who becomes fluent in Esperanto will come away knowing the difference between adjectives and adverbs, or between finite verbs and infinitives, like the back of their hand, and will be able to apply that knowledge if they decide to learn some other language.

Then what would you prefer? One whose vocabulary is based on 1 dead root language?

I already said that I think that I think the only truly international vocabulary would be a priori. As far as I'm concerned, any a posteriori language is ultimately as "fair" or "unfair" as any other, since no natural language has any greater inherent value than any other. I don't buy your statement that an a priori vocabulary is impractical. It seems to me far easier to put together random syllables with the 400 most-needed words than borrowing those 400 words from 400 languages with their diverse sound-inventories and shoe-horning them into your IAL's phonological constraints.

That said, I probably wouldn't learn a new language based solely on the source of its vocabulary. There are other factors besides that for me, such as what poetry in the proposed language sounds like.

And I love how everyone is totally dismissing my language as an "Ido", not even knowing how it works.

You yourself described your language as a "revision", and talked of making changes to Esperanto in the context of the creation of your new language. How is that not an ido? (Ido in the broad sense meaning, "supposedly improved Esperanto", of which there are already many dozens).

I remain skeptical; most of your ideas I've heard before. But even if I hadn't, the burden of proving the awesomeness of your language is on you...

Zamenhoff gave arbitrary roots based on sound inventory and phonetic rules a go early on.

He later abandoned it as a failed, unlearnable language and went on to eventually create what we have today.

Neet huh?

You may think Ceiger that I am unduly scathing in my contempt of linguists. But this thread demonstrates perfectly the problem that I have with them.

If a botanist says I have studied plants, therefore my opinion of a specific plant is likely to be better informed, I'd say fair enough, mate,

But no study of French, Arabic, or Chinese qualifies one for having a superior insight into Esperanto.

Languages are not biological phenomena, they are more like cultural manifestations.

The case for all human languages having shared characteristics, other than what's bleeding obvious, like that they have words, a limited sound set and a grammar, seems to me unproven. It's my understanding that the search for Language Universals has proved fruitless, or only produced trivial results.

And as regards 'interlinguistics' what sort of serious subject is that.

razlem:They have a purpose, but so do the 25+ cases in Hungarian.

To be fair (and not really directed at you but the whole convo), those many cases are the equivalents of all the various prepositions and postpositions in other languages, so it's sort of an easier system or would be if the Finno-Ugric languages left as bigger mark as the romance or germanic ones.

Sudanglo:You may think Ceiger that I am unduly scathing in my contempt of linguists. But this thread demonstrates perfectly the problem that I have with them.

Well, it did seem like you were making broad generalisations against them, and that you were stereotyping and oversimplifying what they do. I mean, biological phenomena or cultural manifestations, they're all forms of life which to be studied. That aside, this doesn't seem to be about linguistics anymore.

As for linguistic universals, well, it may seem trivial but it depends what you're planning on using them for. Making super-conlang v5? Well, it can be fun, but hardly the most important reason to be finding this things for. To document the nature of languages and teach people how they work so they can better use them and learn them? Then it's not so trivial after all.

And linking now to the thread about education, I've always believed that EO would be great if used to teach linguistics alongside ones native language. So in the end I think we both more or less agree with each other, although I feel that all information is worth something and can be a powerful tool if used responsibly, and than the more information one has the more of a holistic understanding of something one can have.

But no study of French, Arabic, or Chinese qualifies one for having a superior insight into Esperanto.

Thus, tying into the above comments I made about my fondness for holism, I feel that by knowing a language helps one learn and know more about another one, and so forth. However I agree that there's no reason that knowing another language means that because of that Esperanto need change. That'd be like finding a cat and going "mmm, I like dogs more, so Mr. Cat, I'm going to MUTATE YOU MWAHAHA". I think we should avoid such mutilations of cats- I mean, Esperanto, as do you.

RE Interlinguistics:
Interlinguistics. Essentially, the study of how a lingua franca's speakers interact with each other without sharing the same native language. Thus, how languages like pidigns, creoles, auxiliary languages like Esperanto allow people to interact without a common native language.

I've now suddenly become interested in this field. I wonder if my university has a course on this. I get to fill in some electives AND find a "real world" excuse for Esperanto

Vejktoro:Neet huh

As in this NEET (just joking! )

Trojo:I have heard this complaint before, but I don't think it's a valid criticism. At worst, it's a semantic, rather than grammatical irregularity.

I too have made that complaint before actually, and thanks to some careful explanations from some of the smart chaps here I came to realise that the problem was not the language itself by the way words are put into a dictionary.

Theoretically, Esperanto could be put in a dictionary the same way Proto Indo European often is and have everything in verb-stem form and the definitions apply for the meaning of that root as if it was a verb. But then, no one thinks "Homi" naturally.

It could be better put that "ruĝa" is the adjective form of "ruĝi". For simplicity, we don't translate "ruĝa" as "to do with the act of being red", we just say "red". This might seem a bit abstract at first but all languages are abstract like that, the difference is that normally (and Esperanto too), languages are taught in a natural way so we just take for granted what a word's meaning is.

Anyway, no matter what language, it seems pretty unsolvable. I once tried my hand at conlanging and making all roots naturally nouns, thus all adjectives and verbs are derived from nouns. But it's not easy at all, like, what's the definition of "to dig"? "hole+verbsuffix? spade+verbsuffix? dig+verbsuffix more likely, but in the end the system's just like EO in that it has roots that suit a part of speech better than others.

And then there are languages that don't seem to have any real system at all at whether something's naturally a noun or verb or not, like Indonesian (a very easy and simple language to learn language, in fact see Riau's dialect for an idea).

Anyway, Esperanto seems to have a lingua franca niche. After all, no language is suitable for everything, otherwise dialects and sociolects wouldn't form and we wouldn't have languages evolve

Well, this thread has certainly found legs while I was sleeping!

I'd like to make a few points. One is that linguists really do know more about language than the rest of us. Phonologists, for example, are in a position to make informed statements about Esperanto's phonetic properties, and the accessibility of those properties to people with various L1 backgrounds. At the same time, it's worth remembering that there are accomplished linguists within the Esperanto movement itself. John Wells is a good example.

The "flaws" in Esperanto that have been mentioned so far have been under discussion for a very long time. For example, the matter of the grammatical categories of roots goes way back. It was part of what was behind Ido's "principle of reversibility." The idea was to eliminate the need to remember that a given word is inherently a noun, or adjective, or whatever. Ido accomplished this, but at a cost. The cost is a system of affixes that is considerably more complex than Esperanto's.

Esperanto has certain advantages. The main one is that it has a speaker base large enough to support the creation of a fairly large amount of content in Esperanto. It's important to remember that the vast majority of people who learn languages do so because they are interested in content. Zamenhof was sharp enough to understand this, and he spent a large chunk of his life creating content in Esperanto, mostly in the form of translations. Anyone who sets out to create a new auxlang has to ask whether the purely linguistic advantages of that language are great enough to offset the disadvantage of having little or no content. Indeed, content is one of the reasons why Esperanto cannot overtake English!

And if the idea is to be truly scientific, then the first job is to find out how many people are turned away from Esperanto by its linguistic idiosyncracies. It's no good to assume that the accusative, or the radik-kategorioj, or the phonology, are "too hard. You need to get empirical support for the position.

Since the "freezing" of Esperanto in about 1895 (I think), there have been many, many reformed and spin-off versions of it, some of them quite interesting and sophisticated. Why have none of them made much headway, if any? Rick Harrison made a comment that has stuck in my mind since I first read it: "If the world unexpectedly develops a hunger for an auxlang, it already has a thousand options from which to choose. In marketing terms, the supply of constructed auxiliary languages far exceeds the demand." If I were a linguist interesting in auxlangs, I'd think very carefully about that before adding another to the supply.

Todd