Altebrilas:
It is not obvious that "train" is only thing-like. It can be mobile-like or place like. Etymologically, it is set-like (cf. vagonaro).

IMO, these are "things" as well.

...this would be unnatural

Just like the table of correlatives and vowel classifiers?

It may not be natural, but it is arguably more efficient.

Well, obviously, I would be asking for trouble if I asked in Esperanto for my door to painted in same colour as post boxes. It might turn out yellow, might turn out red - or some other colour.

If I wanted pillar box red, I would have to specify British postboxes.

But I hardly think that you can go from that to suggesting that I have to accept chaos in derivation if 'trajno' is head-word-listed in the dictionary as 'a train'.

In fact, the head word listing in the dictionary alerts you to thinking of 'trajn' as conveying a thing idea, rather than a quality or action.

This doesn't mean you could not ever say 'mi trajnas' or 'ektrajni' or 'trajnanta', if there happened to be something in the world that Esperanto speakers felt could be reasonably labelled with these words. As far as I am aware they don't - you would be hard-pushed to find examples in a Corpus search.

In the case of fiŝi, this is felt to be a reasonable form for the fiŝkapti meaning. The association of the action with the notion of fiŝo is strong enough (tut-Eŭrope) for this to be acceptable.

If the world were different, the meaning of fiŝi could be different.

I just don't believe that you would have the same level of difficulty in understanding 'la lumo lumis malforte' as you would in understanding 'la planedo planedis rapide' - or, for that matter, that you should think this desirable.

Altebrilas:Sudanglo, I don't believe in the Unicity of the World whose knowledge we have.

A main issue in the language problem is the difference of cultures, which cause people of different countries see the world differently.

What is "natural" for me is not at all natural for other people, unless some authority has the power to impose his own "naturalness", like the king's foot whose length becomes the standard.

That all said - remember that you have more that 50% DNA in common with a fly, despite looking very different.

Ultimately, there are little differences between all humans, it's only that we make the differences look big (Heck, look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam - they're almost the same religion and yet there's so much conflict between them in history). We can choose at will to make those differences look small or larger by trying to communicate from someone else's point of view.

So perhaps looser semantics will actually benefit human kind by allowing us to understand each other better, to be more flexible and thus more adaptable (and less likely to kill each other simply over petty differences) and will help us expand our minds in ways we haven't imagined .

Sorry, I'm a "gxismedola" rationalist and I don't believe looser semantics will at all benefit human kind by allowing them to understand each other better.

Looser semantics means that the semantic of the strongest one will prevail and become the standard. "Liberty" may then mean "the right to choose the way to obey directives of the party". "Democracy" the right to oppress the local minority. It will turn the language into a kind of "Newspeak" like in Orwell's 1984.

A precise language allows easier expression of unusual ideas which will be otherwise lost in the noise. I think Zamenhof has purposely designed it in this way, conscious as he was of these problems.

Maybe you are right - and I'm adressing also Sudanglo - because it eases cooperative communication, like in everyday life. But if you have to argue your point, it's better if you can express yourself in such a way that the other cannot pretend not to understand you.

Altebrilas:Looser semantics means that the semantic of the strongest one will prevail and become the standard.

Is that a problem?

razlem:

Altebrilas:Looser semantics means that the semantic of the strongest one will prevail and become the standard.

Is that a problem?

To see Zamenhof's dream turn into Newspeak, I suppose it is.

It doesn't seem to be a problem in English, Chinese, French, or any other natural language.

English:
get out of bed, get groceries, get it?

Chinese:
Pretty much anything, but look at shi4

French:
foi, fois, foie, mais, mai, mets

Spanish:
creo (creer), creo (crear)

Altebrilas:Sorry, I'm a "gxismedola" rationalist and I don't believe looser semantics will at all benefit human kind by allowing them to understand each other better.

Looser semantics means that the semantic of the strongest one will prevail and become the standard. "Liberty" may then mean "the right to choose the way to obey directives of the party". "Democracy" the right to oppress the local minority. It will turn the language into a kind of "Newspeak" like in Orwell's 1984.

A precise language allows easier expression of unusual ideas which will be otherwise lost in the noise. I think Zamenhof has purposely designed it in this way, conscious as he was of these problems.

Actually, (western) democracy is already acting as a system to oppress minorities, simply because democracy states that the majority is correct Be it Australia, Europe, China, none of those systems are perfect.

And even with precise semantics, some people will always dominate others by shifting the meanings ever so slightly, or completely changing the meanings.

The problem is not that a word has too many ways to be interpreted, but that humans have the ability to assign new meanings to words, or ignore their meanings.

"Dolphin", for example, and "fish", have precise meanings in English, yet there are some people who insist dolphins are fish - wrong, obviously. This is because they don't know enough about the true meaning of the word. In a language with precise semantics, the danger is not words without precise semantics, but, to be blunt, plain stupidity is the true danger.

That's why it's better to foster flexible minds in our youth that can think about issues from multiple sides and come up with a variety of hypotheses, rather than a weak-minded youth who rely on what they believe is the "correct" precise meaning to form their world views.

Thus, it's probably best for languages to be flexible so they can do both - loose semantics when we discuss an issue and want to truly understand it, and then we can switch to more precise semantics when it is convenient.

This is very important when it comes to the issues of "good" and "bad", "right" and "wrong" and "holy" and "evil", but most importantly when dealing with laws, punishment and what humans perceive to be justice. Precise meanings only keep the status quo of previous generations intact, even if it's wrong.

Do, laŭ mi, it is better to raise children so that they must use their brains to generate knowledge by themselves, rather than they grow up to rely on unreliable earsay for their knowledge with no wisdom to know any better, or no flexibility to be considerate* of new information that conflicts with their beliefs.
*(they don't need to learn to believe it, only to evaluate it to see if it's beneficial or not, rather than just outright reject it without thinking).

Altebrilas:

razlem:

Altebrilas:Looser semantics means that the semantic of the strongest one will prevail and become the standard.

Is that a problem?

To see Zamenhof's dream turn into Newspeak, I suppose it is.

Newspeak was intended to have VERY precise meanings, which is the opposite of loose semantics - the idea was that Newspeak would create terms based off of existing ideas of words, and add new meanings to those words, and then solidify the two together, so rather than "good" being "good, positive, correct, righteous", good would eventually mean that if it was related to the government, something was good, and if something was ungood, it was unrelated to the government, and thus bad.

If loose semantics were to prevail in newspeak (we don't know because I don't think orwell ever continued the story long enough for us to find out the impacts), newspeak would be utterly useless as people would be able to understand that even the government is "ungood".

If the populace of 1984 didn't bother being flexible with semantics, then newspeak would be successful, as no one would bother trying to change the meanings of the very words they use to think and dream in.