rusto:
I don't see why a fixed unchangeable core grammar would be a bad thing, honestly. If the grammar functions and allows one to articulate their thoughts with a degree of coherence, why muddle around with it and cause confusion? Esperanto grows and evolves, but to change core concepts would render any attempt to learn it meaningless and fruitless. People would just up and leave.

+1
That article about Ido really uses the most negative wording to describe something positive.

The flexibility (or lack thereof) of the core grammar isn't the issue among critics, it's the grammar itself (declension, modality, etc.). Heck, my language's grammar is even more inflexible than Esperanto

razlem:The flexibility (or lack thereof) of the core grammar isn't the issue among critics, it's the grammar itself (declension, modality, etc.). Heck, my language's grammar is even more inflexible than Esperanto

That's partially true. But you do have some enthusiastic beginners who come along and say "Great language! Now let's change this and that, and make it even better" before they have bothered learning the language.

Of course you will always have people who don't like certain parts of the grammar. Those people are free not to learn Esperanto, or to learn another language instead, or to make up their own language.

razlem:The flexibility (or lack thereof) of the core grammar isn't the issue among critics, it's the grammar itself (declension, modality, etc.). Heck, my language's grammar is even more inflexible than Esperanto

Who cares about Ido? Zamenhoff was right about it when he described it as "mortnaskita". Tests have shown it is at least twice as hard as Esperanto. Rigid, heavy,plodding and unweildy, it might as well be Latin. Only a tiny handful of "true believers" in the ido cause are still around. I think only once in the last 30 years that they have succeeded in getting motre than 20 Idists to attend their "International Congress". The vast majority of people who speak Ido are Esperantists who study it out of historical interest.

erinja:But you do have some enthusiastic beginners who come along and say "Great language! Now let's change this and that, and make it even better" before they have bothered learning the language.

Hehe. I had the idea of an international language way before I knew about Esperanto

JeriUrso:Who cares about Ido?

I wasn't talking about Ido.

JeriUrso:Who cares about Ido?

Ido is a bit of a joke in the Esperanto community but on the whole it is basically ignored. A very few Esperantists may see it as some sort of "threat" to Esperanto, some sort of competitor, but this is probably an impression gained from reading Ido websites, which spend a lot of time explaining why Ido is better than Esperanto. Esperanto websites mostly ignore the existence of Ido.

I feel sorry for Ido, in many ways.

In the past, lernu! and other Esperanto projects have gotten a small amount of funding from an Ido foundation. I guess they didn't have any Ido projects to donate to, or not enough.

JeriUrso:Who cares about Ido? Zamenhoff was right about it when he described it as "mortnaskita". Tests have shown it is at least twice as hard as Esperanto. Rigid, heavy,plodding and unweildy, it might as well be Latin.

Not really, and I would like to see these tests... I'd question them a fair bit even upon seeing them.

Ido itself is not so much different to Esperanto. Rather, the rift is more an emotional one than one about the physical grammar or potential use of either language.

Personally, I view them as good as each other. There's nothing to suggest either is harder or easier, although Ido may be a a tad more naturalistic and simplistic, lending itself to speakers of more isolating languages. Of course, since it's not very well known, COMBINED with the fact that westerners, the largest group of isolating-language speakers, can barely care about EO let alone Esperanto, it's not ever really gonna show up on the radar like Esperanto as far as things are going at the moment.

Ido has its charm too anyway, but it's not really relevent so I'll stop playing the devil's advocate about something from left-field

Only a tiny handful of "true believers" in the ido cause are still around. I think only once in the last 30 years that they have succeeded in getting motre than 20 Idists to attend their "International Congress". The vast majority of people who speak Ido are Esperantists who study it out of historical interest.

I'd rephrase the first bit, i don't think there's ever been a significant amount of Ido speakers ever compared to Esperanto. But that's basically the case, most Idists are essentially ex-Esperantists, although sometimes you do find people who've learnt Ido before Esperanto.

It's not right to say Esperanto is separate from natural languages

But it is right to say that Esperanto is different and if it were to develop as a natural language with all that that implies in the fields of consistency and regularity and idiomatic usage and flexibility, it would lose its principal advantage as a 'lingua franca'.

The issue here is how to present this inherent 'artificiality' to the general public in a positive fashion.

You have only to listen to a foreigner speaking English to realize what an enormous advantage a constructed language has over a natural language. Particularly one like English where the burden of idiomatic usage is massive.

Of course, foreigners will make grammatical mistakes in their use of English, but what really distinguishes their speech and makes them sound ridiculous to a native speaker (apart from the comic accent) is the way they don't express themselves in the way a native speaker would.

In Esperanto we concentrate on expressing our meaning and any well formed sentence with the appropriate meaning is rarely wrong.

But a foreigner who knows that the meaning of 'small' is malgranda and thinks that he can go into a pub and ask for 'two small beers' is due for a shock. And he will sound even more comic, should he request two tiny or little beers.

sudanglo:

Of course, foreigners will make grammatical mistakes in their use of English, but what really distinguishes their speech and makes them sound ridiculous to a native speaker (apart from the comic accent) is the way they don't express themselves in the way a native speaker would.

Well, it's obvious and it holds true to any language. I hope you can imagine how ridiculous it sounds to listen to a foreigner who tries to speak Polish, where the range of possible grammatical mistakes is larger that in English.

But I'd like to make one remark here.
Whenever I read an esperanto text I very often feel like correcting it; I would use another word, I would change the word order, I would correct lots of things, I don't like this or that because it is a clear calque from his native Russian or English.... etc, which never occurs to me when I read English or Spanish produced by their repective native speakers.
Do you (all) have the same feeling when reading Eo?

sudanglo:
But a foreigner who knows that the meaning of 'small' is malgranda and thinks that he can go into a pub and ask for 'two small beers' is due for a shock. And he will sound even more comic, should he request two tiny or little beers.

Just out of curiosity: What is the proper expression in English?

Solulo, yes, I know that feeling. Not only in Esperanto, but in general with every text that I think is written by a non-native speaker of that language. If a native speaker of German uses an uncommon but correct expression, I don’t correct it, but I might when a foreigner does. BTW - citing correctly may less confuse the readers of your message.