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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Serpent
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Message 17 of 26

02 July 2012 at 12:43am | IP Logged

Ironically, these sounds got merged even in Zamenhof's native Polish.
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Jinx
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Message 18 of 26

02 July 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged

hrhenry wrote:

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.
==

That's very interesting. And it would certainly make a more solid argument for using that plural if it had been present in some form in both Latin and Greek. (I find your examples of Piedmontese almost dangerously intriguing... must restrain myself from looking for study materials!)

Марк wrote:

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.

Very good point! The letter "h" itself is not easy for everyone to pronounce. I have French friends who have almost perfect English but still can't say "h" for the life of them. As Jeff points out, it's a perfect example of the necessary "unfairness" of any constructed language.

Edited by Jinx on 02 July 2012 at 11:57am
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hrhenry
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Message 19 of 26

02 July 2012 at 2:36pm | IP Logged

Jinx wrote:

(I find your examples of Piedmontese almost dangerously intriguing... must
restrain myself from looking for study materials!)

I'll gladly pass on any materials I've found, should you be interested. Initially, I was
disappointed with what I found online, but as time went on, I found lots. And there's a
small but very active and vocal online community.

R.
==
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Pisces
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Message 20 of 26

07 July 2012 at 9:39am | IP Logged

Jinx wrote:

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.

Both first and second declension nouns in Greek end their plurals in -ai or -oi (and there are only 3 declensions in Greek). Also first declension Latin nouns end in -ae, which is sort of similar. But why does it need a source to make sense? It's simple. Otherwise it would be like saying -s is the only sensible way of making a plural.

What is attractive about -j is that it works regularly for adjectives and nouns in the nom. and acc. with the accusative ending -n (which is a very sensible accusative ending, if you're going to have an accusative).

It's true that Esperanto has a lot of difficult consonant combinations. I think Zamenhof must have tried too hard to reconcile 2 different goals: 1. to preserve the spelling or the appearance of the loans words, 2. to have a logical ("phonetic") spelling system.

So you get a root like 'sci-' which resembles "science"/"sciens" in English, French, Latin, so the spelling is instantly recognizable, but according to the rules of Esperanto spelling it has to be pronounced "stsi". It would have been better to use "skio" or "cio" or just "sio".

This also explains partly why there are so many accented consonants - so a word like "gxeneralo" can preserve both its appearance and its pronunciation, while having a consistent spelling.

I'm sure Zamenhof would not have used accented consonants if he could have known that the visceral reaction of English speakers to them is "Oh look! funny letters, that's really weird!" - Well, I don't really like them myself, and I do think it's funny he didn't think more about how hard it would have been to type the language on typewriters.

The only thing I really don't like about Esperanto is the feminine words like "virino" and "patrino". It's just so ridiculous to take the Latin word for "man", add an Italian diminutive suffix to it and say it means "woman".
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Марк
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Message 21 of 26

07 July 2012 at 9:57am | IP Logged

It is not very easy to pronounce ojn and ajn either. But I was told by my teacher one can
pronounce a palatalized n instead. on', an'. What do you think?
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Iversen
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Message 22 of 26

08 July 2012 at 6:40pm | IP Logged

Pisces wrote:

The only thing I really don't like about Esperanto is the feminine words like "virino" and "patrino". It's just so ridiculous to take the Latin word for "man", add an Italian diminutive suffix to it and say it means "woman".

It has been proposed to solve this problem with a couple of minor alterations: a neutral 3. person pronoun ri and an infix iĉ to indicate maleness. I say minor alterations because they can be introduced 'dropwise'. Of course there will be conservative Esperantists who will refuse such changes, but they are wellmotivated, and I wouldn't hesitate to use for instance 'ri'.
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remush
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Message 23 of 26

08 July 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged

lernanto wrote:

This critique was written by a linguist who pretty thoroughly demolished the myths that are commonly spread about Esperanto.

See rebuttal at http://www.remush.be/rebuttal/index.html.
This is an attempt to moderate some extreme pretensions, in favor of or against the language, but chiefly against.

This page was inspired by Geoff Allan Eddy's article: <http://www.cix.co.uk/%7Emorven/lang/esp.html>: Why Esperanto is not my favourite Artificial Language.

At the time (was it 20 years ago?), I wrote to Geoff to have him correct some obvious flaws in his first version. He wrote me back that he would not answer any objection unless ALL his arguments against Esperanto were rebutted.
I won't blame anybody to quit reading long before the end. Instead, I recommend Piron's article.

Geoff collected a number of criticisms from various other sources. He removed his page, due to the "unfair attacks he had to suffer from some fanatics". His page is archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20030811165117/www.cix.co.uk/~mor ven/lang/esp.html

The same sort of arguments appear at http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto. Claude Piron partly responded to that at http:/ / claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm .

I am still wondering why people would spend so much time learning a language not to speak it.
I suspect that they have the pretension to be able to do what nobody can do alone, without a large community of speakers: create a better language than Esperanto, or even more pathetic, to create the perfect language for all...

I am more interested in a study explaining why Esperanto became a language that many of its speakers cherish more that their mother language. I partly find answers in other Piron's articles.

Translation in Polish is available at

http://edu.i-lo.tarnow.pl/esp/util/porkontrau/index.php

Edited by remush on 10 July 2012 at 11:31pm
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Medulin
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Message 24 of 26

09 July 2012 at 8:56am | IP Logged

If you want to learn a Slavic-Romanic hybrid, choose Romanian instead.
Both Romanian and Esperanto sound similar, but Romanian is more useful.

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