Why Esperanto is (no longer) my favorite (Esperanto) Language Learning Forum

Why Esperanto is (no longer) my favorite
Tags: Discouragement from learning \| Esperanto
Language Learning Forum : Esperanto

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Jinx
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Message 9 of 26

29 June 2012 at 9:02pm | IP Logged

Compared to some of the anti-Esperanto stuff I've read, this article isn't all that bad. It's rife with mistakes and generalizations, but it makes quite a few good points as well. I wish the OP had included the source.

That said, I still can't understand why people feel the urge to attack Esperanto with such zeal. It's not hurting you! If you don't like it, I seriously doubt you will have much trouble avoiding it in your life.

Oh, and making this your first post on a language forum? Not very impressive. It would have been taken better from an established member, I dare to say.
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Марк
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Russian Federation
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Message 10 of 26

29 June 2012 at 9:09pm | IP Logged

Jinx wrote:

Compared to some of the anti-Esperanto stuff I've read, this article isn't
all that bad. It's rife with mistakes and generalizations, but it makes quite a few good
points as well. I wish the OP had included the source.

That said, I still can't understand why people feel the urge to attack Esperanto with
such zeal. It's not hurting you! If you don't like it, I seriously doubt you will have
much trouble avoiding it in your life.

Oh, and making this your first post on a language forum? Not very impressive. It would
have been taken better from an established member, I dare to say.

What are those good points?
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jeff_lindqvist
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Message 11 of 26

30 June 2012 at 12:14am | IP Logged

This seems to be the source:
http://miresperanto.narod.ru/konkurentoj/not_my_favourite.ht m
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Wulfgar
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Message 12 of 26

30 June 2012 at 8:37am | IP Logged

Jinx wrote:

Oh, and making this your first post on a language forum? Not very impressive. It would have been
taken better from an established member, I dare to say.

I've been on some forums where people become members solely to defend the language. I'd be surprised if that
hasn't happened here, but I don't know because I'm new.
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Jinx
Triglot
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Germany
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Message 13 of 26

01 July 2012 at 4:44pm | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

Jinx wrote:

Compared to some of the anti-Esperanto stuff I've read, this article isn't all that bad. It's rife with mistakes and generalizations, but it makes quite a few good points as well. I wish the OP had included the source.

That said, I still can't understand why people feel the urge to attack Esperanto with
such zeal. It's not hurting you! If you don't like it, I seriously doubt you will have much trouble avoiding it in your life.

Oh, and making this your first post on a language forum? Not very impressive. It would have been taken better from an established member, I dare to say.

What are those good points?

Oh dear, I think you're opening a can of worms here, but if you'd really like to know, I shall oblige. Here are some of the points that didn't instantly make me scoff and scroll downward. (And these are only from the first third of the article, because I didn't read any further.)

Before I start, let me (hopefully) avoid some drama by reminding everyone that I am a supporter of Esperanto and understand that making any serious reforms to the language at this point would be nothing but counter-productive.

lernanto wrote:

The very fact that it was intended as an auxiliary language, rather than a work of art, militates strongly against it having more than a very few of the features which make the best constructed languages so fascinating.

This is the article's response to the claim that EO is a "naturally euphonious and beautiful" language. The article acknowledges that such a claim "is a matter of aesthetics and personal taste". Personally, I've never found EO to be exceptionally beautiful, and I feel that it doesn't have to be; after all, as the article points out, it's an auxlang, not an artlang. I have no problem with it not being remarkably beautiful (to my ears), but I don't see why people feel the need to fervently argue that it is. Such a subjective matter can never be resolved, so it should just be left off the table when describing EO's benefits.

lernanto wrote:

For example, the plural ending - one of the most important grammatical markers - takes its form not from something internationally recognisable (such as the -s of widespread languages like English, French, Spanish and Portuguese), but the -j from one noun declension of Classical Greek.

Interesting point. Again, it's just a matter of personal preference, but I've always found the -j ending a bit odd, and if it's true that its only source is a single Greek noun declension, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

lernanto wrote:

Language is at most a symptom of cultural antagonism, rather than the actual cause, which is more likely to be a complex mixture of social, racial, religious and historical factors. It is highly doubtful that Esperanto would have prevented the American or Balkan civil wars, or the conflict in Northern Ireland, for example.

That's true. I think most of us Esperanto-fans would admit that our dear father figure was a rather naive idealist. Not that there's anything wrong with that; idealists are the ones who change the world! But let's not exaggerate: convincing everyone on Earth to learn EO would probably improve international relations to a degree, but obviously it wouldn't eradicate war and intercultural strife completely.

lernanto wrote:

Surely Zamenhof would have wanted his language to be as easy to disseminate as possible; but how many printing-presses and keyboards actually feature these letters normally, or did so in 1887? … Some people prefer to indicate all accents with following X's, which is very nearly the least attractive way around a problem which should never have been there in the first place; to prove my point I need only borrow JBR's example, cxirkauxajxojn (in my reformed spelling, tcirkawajoyn). This is a serious handicap; however difficult English may be to spell, it can at least be typed on any unaltered Roman-alphabet keyboard.

Here we come to one of the most impractical aspects of Esperanto. Personally, I love weird accents and having the excuse to write in a completely unique way, but I understand that most people probably don't share this geeky interest of mine, and would prefer something simple and direct. The fact is that most people have to do some sort of mild keyboard modification before they can type EO accurately, and that's just silly. As the article points out, replacing the accents with an "x" or "h" only makes things more awkward – not least because it supplies another opportunity for Esperantists to split into two opposing camps.

lernanto wrote:

Indeed, the presence of both H and HH is one of the worst features of the consonant system.

Yup. A letter used as rarely as ĥ (or as it's written here: HH) could surely be avoided completely, especially considering that it's one of EO's more complicated sounds to pronounce.

lernanto wrote:

...some words with the same pronunciations can be spelt in two different ways...

See the examples the article provides: "arĉata/artŝata" etc. We are rather reaching the point of nit-picking here, but it's still an observation worth making, especially in the face of arguments that "EO is spelled exactly how it sounds".

lernanto wrote:

A possible reform...

As I mentioned above, I realize that introducing any more reforms to EO would be counter-productive and divisive at this point, considering that it works quite well in its current incarnation. However, the reformed orthography described in the section "A possible reform" isn't half bad.

lernanto wrote:

Counterexample: [TYE 176] provides six meanings for de, and helpfully points out that la amo de Dio "the love of God" is ambiguous: is it "God's love" or "some entity's love of God"? Note too malamikoj de la urbo: is this "enemies of the city" or "enemies from the city"?

Again, good point. The preposition "de" (meaning "of" or "from") is already rather ambiguous in several natural languages. It would have been nice to avoid this ambiguity in a conlang.

lernanto wrote:

It's supposed to free up word-order, which according to apologists is important for poetry and literature; but surely basic ease of communication, without having to worry about the finer points of grammar, matters more?

I have no problem with the accusative myself, possibly because I very much enjoy creative, playful, poetic usage of language, but I also understand that in practice it merely presents another small hurdle for potential learners, and in face of this difficulty, the importance of the flexibility it lends the language diminishes somewhat.

lernanto wrote:

Rules 8 and 13 of the grammar mean that en la domon "into the house" and en la domo "in the house" differ in the meaning of the preposition, but express this difference by changing the noun. This distinction does not extend to any other types of motion; thus el la domo "out of the house"; and if compound prepositions like de sur "off" (i.e. "from on") are permitted [TYE 50], what's wrong with al en la domo?

I had never considered this question myself, but it's thought-provoking, and I can see where the author's coming from, even if I rather enjoy the simple elegance of "en la domo" versus "en la domon" myself.

lernanto wrote:

The correlatives...

Several of the article's comments here are also not to be instantly dismissed.

---
To recap: I am not supporting an attack on Esperanto, but rather demonstrating the points in which this article impressed me. There were plenty more which were silly generalizations or merely straight-up falsehoods, but I won't start listing those or we'll be here all day. ;)
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hrhenry
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Message 14 of 26

01 July 2012 at 4:55pm | IP Logged

Jinx wrote:

lernanto wrote:

For example, the plural ending - one of the most important grammatical
markers - takes its form not from something internationally recognisable (such as the -
s of widespread languages like English, French, Spanish and Portuguese), but the -j
from one noun declension of Classical Greek.

Interesting point. Again, it's just a matter of personal preference, but I've always
found the -j ending a bit odd, and if it's true that its only source is a single Greek
noun declension, that doesn't make a lot of sense.

I suspect that Latin may have, in fact, been an influence.

During this last 6 week challenge, I studied Piedmontese, which makes fairly extensive
use of this particular construction (for example, singular "the horse" is "ël caval"
and plural is "ij cavaj"). I found that interesting for a romance language, and I'm
quite sure that Greek didn't play a part in its development.

R.
==

Edited by hrhenry on 01 July 2012 at 5:03pm
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Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
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Speaks: Russian*

Message 15 of 26

01 July 2012 at 4:57pm | IP Logged

Jinx, Thank you for your long answer.
"Yup. A letter used as rarely as ĥ (or as it's written here: HH) could surely be
avoided completely, especially considering that it's one of EO's more complicated
sounds to pronounce."
I've taken a brief Esperanto course recently. There was a group of five students. I was
the only one who did not replace h with hx and could hear the difference between those
two sounds.
When the teacher decided to correct a student, the student could not even understand
what was wrong when he pronounced hxoro instead of horo, for example.
It took me several years of studying English before I started hearing the difference
between [x] and [h], and managed to pronounce [h].
So, it is difficult for English speakers, but not for all. For Russians it is h which
is difficult.

Edited by Марк on 01 July 2012 at 4:59pm
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jeff_lindqvist
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Message 16 of 26

01 July 2012 at 8:54pm | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

So, it is difficult for English speakers, but not for all. For Russians it is h which is difficult.

And that's another example of how one can't create a language that everybody will find easy to learn.

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