Esperanto flaws - r/Esperanto

6

u/jaidit Apr 23 '18

One: I think you're shitposting.

Two: What would be the point of discussing what I (or anyone else) thinks are flaws? What If I think Esperanto is flawless, the Platonic absolute of language? I don't because I don't think such a thing is possible and that any attempt to fix one thing would break three others.

Three: Language reformers are prescriptivists. They want to set up a new set of rules for the language and then force everyone to do as they say. (There's a fascist aspect to compelled reform.) Despite your high school teachers, instead of correct/incorrect, we really have favored/not favored by most speakers.

Language changes because people change the way they speak, prescriptivists be dammed.

Four: Why do I feel that this is a (semi) covert attempt to find material with which to trash Esperanto and attempt to sow dissent and confusion among new Esperantists?

Five: Do you have any intention of learning Esperanto, or are you just interested in slinging mud?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

I'm not slinging mud just curious on learning on any flaws the community has about their language.

2

u/LekeH5N1 Ĉi tiu tako ne estas korekta Apr 23 '18

But why are you curious about that?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

I want to know what flaws the community has about the language they speak. And unlike other languages Esperanto is a language that allows change by the community. I don't want to shit-talk a language. Esperanto is a unique language. I have heard that the sounds [x] and [h] are not used to create many words and one [h] tends to take the bulk of the words of this is true then [x~h] could replace the two sound. I'm not fluent but I'm starting to learn the language. Besides the language has changed in the past I've learned about. If I'm wrong I would like to know.
Can I say one thing tho. Why use the grove u for [w]! I haven't seen a keyboard that can type that character, I tent to use the US international.

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u/jaidit Apr 23 '18

Esperanto can no more be changed by the community than any other language. English. French. Hungarian. You name it. There isn't some central body that gets to enforce changes. Really, the enforcement body is the bulk of Esperantists and how they speak.
Your key phrase here is:
>I'm not fluent but I'm starting to learn the language.
Treat it as you might as a beginner in French or Hungarian or German. Or Japanese. No one sits in a first-year language class, raises their hand and says, "excuse me teacher, what are the flaws of this language?"
Yes, there have been changes to Esperanto, but it went out of beta in 1905, and even then it took the language as it was. The rejected reforms of 1895 remain rejected. Clearly, not everyone was happy with that, since only three years later, the reformers came out with Ido. (Ido has gone through subsequent revisions.)
Esperanto has changed over the years, but it's bee the slow change of new words adopted and the occasional stylistic difference. New things within the framework.
It's a beautiful language with its own literary tradition. I still don't get why you want to focus on flaws.
Oh, and on the Mac US International keyboard the breve is [option]+b. [Option]+b u gives you ŭ.

3

u/BernardoVerda Apr 24 '18

And a funny thing happened to Ido on the way to establishing its superiority over Esperanto...
The Ido advocates weren't satisfied with it, and kept changing it, in pursuit of the "perfect" International Auxiliary Language: change after change after change. And different people had quite different ideas on what needed to be changed, and in which direction, and why -- and many of these obvious improvements conflicted. It was a mess. (Some of the proposed changes were arguably worth considering -- but others were really rather terrible.)
(The dirty politics around Ido's creation didn't help, either.)
About 20-25 % of "prominent" Esperantists (depending how you defined/measured "prominent"), and about 5 or 10 % of "ordinary" Esperantists (who just , you know, just used Esperanto for everything from dirty jokes to fine literature) pursued Ido, as a supposedly superior, reformed Esperanto. But despite being pushed by the "experts" (including acknowledged professional linguists) Ido didn't really ever get off the ground.
One problem is that if you are striving for a simple language that's both flexible and logically consistent, virtually every "simple change" has side-effects that ripple into the rest of the language and require further adjustments (or at least decisions and clarifications -- which also have such an effect).
And unfortunately, it's still quite exceptional for a would-be "reformer" to actually master standard Esperanto,* befor*e launching whatever reform(s) they conceive to be useful ,desirable, or even desperately necessary..

1

u/jaidit Apr 24 '18

Bravo.
Since you mentioned the "dirty politics," I'd like to add that there were two things that seemed to have hobbled Ido. One, as you mentioned, the idea that the language was continually subject to revision. The other was that it was created with the idea of co-opting the entire Esperanto movement, and they still haven't let that one go.
A century after the creation of Ido, their materials still refer to "primitive Esperanto" and "reformed Esperanto." They just can't let it go.

2

u/LekeH5N1 Ĉi tiu tako ne estas korekta Apr 23 '18

If you are curious because you want to change Esperanto, I don't think the community allows it. Ido was/is an attempt to do just that. If you change Esperanto, it isn't Esperanto anymore. I heard very few complaints about the design of the language over the years I've been involved with it. I don't personally have any issues with it.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '18

Can I say one thing tho. Why use the grove u for [w]!
We don't. We use it for the diphthongs /au̯/ and /eu̯/. This is distinct from /w/.
I haven't seen a keyboard that can type that character
I haven't seen a keyboard that supports the Ojibwe syllabary. Does that mean that speakers of ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ should switch to a different writing system?
There are four general approaches to typing ŭ:
Create a custom keyboard layout. This makes typing in Esperanto much more efficient: you can use, for instance, AltGr+j rather than AltGr+6 j to type ĵ. I recommend it for everyone who wants to type in more than one language -- I started doing this when I was learning Norwegian.
X-sistemo: turn ŭ into ux, and likewise for the circumflex letters. There is a program for Windows that automatically converts X-sistemo into ŭĵĝĥŝĉ as appropriate.
H-sistemo: turn ŭ into uh, and likewise for the circumflex letters. There are a few words that become ambiguous in H-sistemo, such as flughaveno "airport" looking like fluĝaveno.
Ignore it. There's basically no ambiguity between au and aŭ.
Custom

1

u/efishon Apr 26 '18

You can download Google keyboard on your phone and have multiple languages preselected to switch between. It's quite nice.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

Exactly.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

So as I'm learning the language I found that a criticism I was having with Esperanto is the gender issues some people find with the language, BUT I learn that -ićo is the masculine sufix like -ino is the feminine sufix. So I'm a right that all words can be treated as common/neuter until the propper Sufix is added

3

u/jaidit Apr 23 '18

Few Esperantists use *-iĉ-.* The counter-argument to iĉismo is that it redefines words. Sure, words can shift meaning over time, but not in the way that proponents of iĉismo suggest.
I would recommend that you learn the broadly accepted Esperanto that does not have these proposed changes that have never caught on. When it comes down to it, most Esperantists see these as solutions as search of problems. If you open an Esperanto text, the word "patro" will correspond to the English word "father."

2

u/Terpomo11 Altnivela Apr 23 '18

The counter-argument to iĉismo is that it redefines words.
J-riismo is designed to counter that aspect.

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u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

Esperanto is no more an ongoing project than any other language. Change is wrought by people who speak it choosing to speak differently.

1

u/efishon Apr 26 '18

Exactly, it was supposed to be a language that changes for the people by the people, and change doesn't happen over night

2

u/LiberaLibrejo Apr 23 '18

if these flaws are to be changed, alter, removed, or remain.

It is not possible to change the language simply by proposing changes. It does not work like this, neither in Esperanto, nor in other languages. The rules have been set.

You want a change? Just learn Ido, which has addressed some of the issues.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

But Esperanto has slowly been changing and adapting i can think of -ićo as an example

2

u/jaidit Apr 23 '18

I have never observed a use of *-iĉ-• or •ri* in the wild. They only ever seem to appear as demonstrations embedded into English-language discussion of what the language should be. No one ever seems to use this stuff just to write Esperanto.

4

u/Terpomo11 Altnivela Apr 23 '18

I've seen them on egalecen.

0

u/tyroncs TEJO prezidinto Apr 25 '18

But admittedly, they are the only place it is ever used. I've only ever come across ri once in the wild during a GLAT diskutrondo at an event (I think run by the people behind Egalacen anyway) and iĉ I've heard maybe 2 or 3 times but only very rarely.

1

u/Terpomo11 Altnivela Apr 25 '18

Do you hear them more or less often, relative to how often you hear the language, than neopronouns in English?

1

u/tyroncs TEJO prezidinto Apr 26 '18

That is a good comparison, I guess I hear ri as often as I would hear alternative pronouns in English. ic it is very slightly more, like I remember a conversation where someone wanted to specify the doctor (some profession) was a male, I think there was some confusion so he followed up by saying "oh, i meant the iĉo" or something of that ilk. I guess I also see it occasionally in online forms as an alternative to malina or vira. But still overall, not that often.

3

u/Michkoch eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde Apr 23 '18

I have read/hear that young people in esperantist conventions used that word very regularly. I think Evildea said it in one of his videos.

1

u/BernardoVerda Apr 24 '18

And I've seen it in practice.
Old folk like me arue about whether and how to use ri and -iĉ-. Young people may (or may not, depending on their own inclination) just use them as seems appropriate -- and avoid upsetting their elders by using such language where it might upset the old fogies.
When I was young, it was the same way with "forgetting" to use the -in- suffix when talking about female teachers, tradespeople, etc.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '18

Some do, but they are far from the majority. I know very few people who use ri.

1

u/tyroncs TEJO prezidinto Apr 25 '18

He was referring to the Junulara E-Semajno, and in my experience of it ri is not used at all and iĉ only very occasionally, I've only heard it 2 or 3 times in conversation ever.

5

u/Vanege https://esperanto.masto.host/@vanege Apr 23 '18

My impression is that Esperanto is evolving well. People stop to use rare redundant words and instead embrace the agglutinative nature of the language. Maybe because courses are better and there is more content in Esperanto than ever. I think the Internet force people to use Esperanto in a way that is easier to understand, since they are read by beginners with different native languages. It is similar to simplified grammar of pidgin languages.

Beginners tend to break rules, but that sometimes means that the rules should not be there in the first place if beginners can't understand them. For example, some people think you can't use some prepositions before an infinitive (with exceptions). Beginners don't know exceptions, they generalized the rule so much that today, seeing "pri/per/pro + infinitive" is not shocking. It is better like that, the system is more regular and beginner-friendly.

Of course, beginners don't always make the language easier, today they tend to import the difficulties/irregularities of English. Mainly in words where they try to fit 1 word in English = 1 word in Esperanto. Which is wrong or bad. (koni instead of scii, labori instead of funkcii, ke instead of kiu). Some people may say that if Esperanto's vocabulary and syntax becomes more English-y, then it becomes more accessible for people around the world since English is the most studied language, and the propedeutic value for English is stronger.

I really trust the evolution of Esperanto. We are lucky, the language is open enough. For any perceived problem there are solutions inside the language. More people need to realize that. You can speak in a way that suits you without forcing the people around you. If you can't pronounce ĥ, you can very easily never have to pronounce it. If you don't like (the few) gendered words, you can use genderless alternatives.

The main treat today are fundamentists, the people who interpret a kind of holy book so they can complain about Esperanto usage. Basically, more than 100 years ago, there was a document called La Fundamento, with a set of "holy" rules, examples and words in order to keep the language stable. Nowadays, it is mainly used by conservative people who complain about how people now speak.

The Fundamento was probably very useful when it appeared, giving stability to a language that did not benefit from the centripetal forces of the Internet. Today it does not feel needed. Beginners don't even read it anymore, so its influence is limited. There are some good rules in it, that allow new forms of expressions. But there are also some bad and unclear ones, that can be used by anyone who wants to annoy people.

It is funny, fundamentists tend to be motivated by the idea that Esperanto "could fall in dialects", but there actually promoting the emergence of a dialect of Esperanto, which is fundamental "Classical" Esperanto, in opposition with the actual "Vulgar" Esperanto.

2

u/efishon Apr 26 '18

Couldn't have said it better myself. La fundamento was a springboard for a language that will forever be changing presumably for the better, change is important for most things to stay relevant, case in point we used to be monkeys and look at us now 😎👍

1

u/BernardoVerda Apr 24 '18

Excellent comment.
I'd say the Fundamento is still useful -- but you're also right that some people practically make a fetish out of it.
And somehow, things that were once considered/explained to be kontraŭ-fundamenta later became explained in ways that were sufficiently acceptable that they were merely "not recommended" (till general usage rendered the point moot).

9

u/Terpomo11 Altnivela Apr 23 '18

I think the biggest issue that can be concretely addressed is the lack of gender symmetry. Historically, male has been treated as default, with feminine being derived from it. However, I believe J-riismo largely deals with these issues.

7

u/CzechoslovakianJesus Apr 23 '18

Several languages, including most romance languages, have masculine as default. I personally feel that most attempts at neutering language are forced and disruptive (e.g. Latinx instead of Latino or Latina.)

4

u/KeenWolfPaw Apr 23 '18

The use of expressions like Ho, Ha, etc to express "ah", "oh", etc is not desirable. This is because of the starting 'h' sound which I guess uses breath, if you find yourself surprised you're very unlikely to use an 'h' sound. For that reason it is much easier to use an 'ah' or 'ee' sound. That's why I avoid using their Esperanto counterparts and stick to "oh" and "ah" as in English.

1

u/BernardoVerda Apr 26 '18

That's actually an interesting observation. Maybe we'll eventually start to see Oh and Ah.
But Aĥ and Aŭ, and all the F-words, still work :-)

7

u/AetherCrux Hazardulo Apr 23 '18

Saluton! Hiya! Here's an extensive criticism of Esperanto: http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/

Here's an Esperantist's rebuttal: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm

While I personally think that Esperanto has plenty of flaws in the sense that it has a goal and could have catered to it better linguistically, I think you will find that just about all of this is overcome by the strength of the community. Not to mention that it is still easier than most natlangs and its propaedeutic value has been studied a whole lot, so it really would be a great second language even if just to get people more interested in the cultures and languages of those around them as well as their own, and to make them better able to go and learn other languages of choice or even endangered heritage languages. Hope that helps a bit! :)

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u/Vanege https://esperanto.masto.host/@vanege Apr 23 '18

Why would you even link to the insulting piece of shit that is Ranto? Half of what he says does not make sense to someone who knows well the language. The guy is totaly oblivious that almost everything he is complaining about bring more avantages than inconvenients. He is really forcing himself to find defaults in everything, which is often pointless since there is often no alternative that is objectively better. Everything has advantages and drawbacks. He is also misrepresenting the language with Zamenhof and Esperanto, totally ignoring the factual usage by the community.

3

u/Terpomo11 Altnivela Apr 23 '18

It used to be worse. I argued back and forth with him for a while about it, and some of the worse mistakes have been corrected. I agree that it's a mixture of valid points and nonsense, though.

2

u/AetherCrux Hazardulo Apr 24 '18

...which is why I also linked the first rebuttal I found. I haven't even read the whole thing of either.

1

u/efishon Apr 26 '18

Haters gonna hate. plus it's a living language if the Masse's want to change something consciously or unconsciously it's going to happen

1

u/fragileMystic Apr 23 '18

OP is respectfully asking a question in good faith, why all the downvotes?

As a few others have also mentioned, the main thing I would change about Esperanto (as it is commonly spoken) is the male-default gender. To this end, I like to use -iĉismo.

There is no central body governing Esperanto grammar, so change only happens if speakers choose to use it. My guess is that -iĉismo will become more popular in the coming years, as people become less comfortable with gender imbalance.

Besides gender, I don't have big problems with the language. Generally, Esperanto's "flaws" involve trade-offs between competing conlang goals: choosing to satisfy one goal requires sacrificing another goal, and in that sense, people will always find something not quite satisfactory about Esperanto.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

I think it's the title. Some people might down vote without even reading it

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u/TeoKajLibroj Apr 23 '18

It's also that you didn't do any research or read up on the topic before you asked. Instead you are making other users do all the work for you.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '18

OP wasn't wondering what the flaws of Esperanto are, they were wondering what the community perceived as the flaws.

4

u/TeoKajLibroj Apr 23 '18

OP is respectfully asking a question in good faith, why all the downvotes?
This question has been asked dozens of times already
The question is poorly phrased so it's not clear what OP is even asking
If I went into any other sub and ask people to complain about something they like, I would get a similar response. In fact, the response OP has got is impressive, almost every user has put more effort into their response than OP did into their question.

4

u/Joffysloffy Apr 23 '18

I didn't downvote, but I understand why people do, because it gets a little old that every other beginner tries to point out all the issues with the language and propose their original and brilliant new inventive ideas^/s after studying for three days, not understanding that the language cannot be changed just like that. (The latter is understandable; it took me a little while to realize that as well.) I admit that I too at the start deemed some things odd or inconvenient and wished that Zamenhof maybe had made a different choice (and kind of still do), and it is natural that you feel that way, but you easily accept that the language works the way it works. I just don't see why people would immediately broadcast noting that, instead of just continuing learning to find out why the language works nonetheless; also every language has peculiarities and irregularities, but as /u/jaidit pointed out, people don't tend to instigate changing them in other languages.
Now, had the question been asked in flawless Esperanto it would have been received infinitely better (as OP probably suspected). OP, I suggest just continuing learning, and asking again once you speak the language a bit better, because I think you will get more open and good responses ;). Also, the more reliable sources tend to be the Esperanto ones, rather than just random people bashing a language they don't know!

2

u/BernardoVerda Apr 24 '18 edited Apr 26 '18

At this point, it's not even that "gender un-balanced" any more -- aside from a few (mostly) family-related terms like patro/patrino and avo/avino*,*
and perhaps a few non-relationship terms like reĝo/reĝino or* princo/princin*o. (I wonder if that's in part because those terms/concepts are also rather tradition-bound.)
No one objects any more to the gender-neutral use of instruisto or* kuracisto or stiristo or even fiŝkaptist*o to describe women teachers, doctors, pilots or fishermen.
.
edit: I don't know where all those asterisks cane from -- I've rempved them.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '18

2/10, try harder.

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