Is there anything cool about Esperanto?

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

I agree with most sentiments expressed here. There isn't much to be said about Esperanto. Its irregularities have been well described elsewhere, while there is enough about it on the InterWebz about features.

I have been living with and using the ZBB-cursed language for over 20 years now, and never do I regret learning. It has been useful for my integration in Japan, oddly enough. But that's just a common feature of its speakers, Ezis bless them.

The feature I have always liked about it though is its liberalism when it comes to vocabulary creation. As soon as you have a certain pattern, there's nothing forbidding its generalization over the board. I have, from there, let my imagination and inspiration experiment with various things. There are some obvious, like -ut- and -unt-. But I went down the rabbit hole and created... "novelties".

I hardly use, for instance, "konstitucio". I either use "kunstarigo" for the act itself, or "bazlegxaro" for the fundamental laws and rules of an organization. I prefer "resanigejo" over "malsanulejo" for hospital; the latter sounds more like a sanatorium. I speak of "celvido" and "celauxdo" for watching and listening, rejecting "rigardo" and reserving "auxskulto" for some physician analysis of a patient. I extend the pattern to "celvidauxdo" for watching and listening at the same time, and I even use "cellego" when the action done is reading (with some focus).

So, for me, the possibility of such exploration while still being readily understood is what makes me keep the language.

[Raphael]

Mi vidis Johanaregon Johanumantajn Johane. "I saw a large group of Johanns Johanning around Johannically."

This reminds of my pet idea that the distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives seems to be gradually disappearing in 21st Century English. For instance, someone who doesn't like Donald Trump might say something like "Trump is trumping pretty hard today. The Stupid is strong in him."

[Imralu]

This reminds of my pet idea that the distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives seems to be gradually disappearing in 21st Century English. For instance, someone who doesn't like Donald Trump might say something like "Trump is trumping pretty hard today. The Stupid is strong in him."

That's just zero derivation.

[Salmoneus]

Mi vidis Johanaregon Johanumantajn Johane. "I saw a large group of Johanns Johanning around Johannically."

This reminds of my pet idea that the distinction between nouns, verbs, and adjectives seems to be gradually disappearing in 21st Century English. For instance, someone who doesn't like Donald Trump might say something like "Trump is trumping pretty hard today. The Stupid is strong in him."

As the megacorporation's slogan says, family greatly!

[Birdlang]

I think even though Esperanto is very SAE, I think it still deserves a bit of credit, the orthography is unique with the circumflexes (but ŭ is borrowed from Belarusian Latin alphabet). I might learn it.

[Vijay]

For better or worse, Esperanto is the only conlang I can say anything at all in (besides my own, of course).

[KathTheDragon]

I'm not sure if the circumflexes are a good point. There's being unique and there's being obtuse.

[zompist]

I'm not sure if the circumflexes are a good point. There's being unique and there's being obtuse.

Eh, they're the least of Esperanto's sins. They were great for the typewriter era, since you could just overtype the ^ over the letter.

They became a hassle again in the 1990s, when you had to write atrocities like cxangxi. But they're fine in the Unicode era.

Though like everything else about the language, it's hard not to look at the set and want to fiddle with it. Ĵ, really? Should have been Ž...

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Eh, they're the least of Esperanto's sins. They were great for the typewriter era, since you could just overtype the ^ over the letter.

They became a hassle again in the 1990s, when you had to write atrocities like cxangxi. But they're fine in the Unicode era.

Though like everything else about the language, it's hard not to look at the set and want to fiddle with it. Ĵ, really? Should have been Ž...

I have learned Esperanto during the nineties, and it was only through the Internet, so I actually got used to "spellings" such as sxangxi. Funnily enough, I never found the x-spelling to be an atrocity, so much that I still find it natural to type with x all my Esperanto texts. This must be because I simply got used to it. On the other hand, I absolutely abhor the h-spelling such as shanghi.

As for sins, where's the individual character for /dz/; that one should have existed with the list.

[Kuchigakatai]

I always liked Esperanto's "table of correlatives", an idea which makes so much intuitive sense that I have to remind myself that non-Esperantists don't use the term that way, or the concept— rather, they talk about relative pronouns, interrogatives, and indefinite pronouns.

Zamenhof's use of the term "correlative [pronoun]" comes from Latin/Greek grammar, where such usage is common.

As for the concept of a table of such pronouns, I suspect it's very likely that it comes from 19th-century Latin/Greek grammars as well, but I'd have to examine German or Polish 19th-century Latin/Greek grammars to confirm it (especially those of the later part of the century).

After a quick search in a couple grammars conveniently available on Google Books, I found that Raphael Kühner's Elementargrammatik der lateinischen Sprache mit eingereihten lateinischen und deutschen Übersetzungsaufgaben und einer Sammlung lateinischer Lesestücke nebst den dazu gehörigen Wörterverzeichnissen, published in 1844 (i.e. 15 years before Zamenhof was born), contains a small table of correlatives meant as an example ("z. B.", zum Beispiel) of what can be done with those pronouns (page 35).

A more thorough search in later grammars (or even in Kühner's own unabridged grammar, which is sadly not on Google Books yet EDIT: I found an edition from 1878 on Archive.org and it turned out to be more of a collection of commentaries on Latin grammar) could reveal a table of the Esperanto kind.

[Moose-tache]

I've never understood the notion that an auxlang will be more difficult to learn if it has phonemes or clusters unfamiliar to the learner. Since when have you ever struggled to learn a language because it was hard to pronounce? If you can't pronounce zdravstvuyte right, then just say it wrong. You've still learned it's meaning and usage, and everyone is going to understand what you're trying to say. Does Johnathon Ross not actually understand English just because he can't say it correctly to save his life?

Also, I'm sure the table of correlatives, although maybe not by that name, has been invented independently many, many, many times. I remember as a teenager feeling like a genius for coming up with the exact same idea, only to discover it in Zamenhof.

[zompist]

Thanks for finding that, Ser, that's pretty neat!

[Imralu]

Does Johnathon Ross not actually understand English just because he can't say it correctly to save his life?

Um, isn't he a native speaker???

[Frislander]

Does Johnathon Ross not actually understand English just because he can't say it correctly to save his life?

Not only is he a native speaker, he speaks using an accent which is distinctively regional and quite characteristic of a certain section of Britain/British society. The change [ɹ] > [ʋ] is actually quite common in London and the Southeast, and has become quite well-established there, and everything else about his speech is typical urban London, right down to the Cockney diphthong shift, though I guess this accent probably doesn't get much exposure outside the UK. The rest of us think it sounds kind of stupid, though that's partly tied up in my case with my general reflexive northern disdain for people from the Home Counties, but I won't deny he's speaking English.

Stop being so prescriptivist damnit!

[Kuchigakatai]

Also, I'm sure the table of correlatives, although maybe not by that name, has been invented independently many, many, many times. I remember as a teenager feeling like a genius for coming up with the exact same idea, only to discover it in Zamenhof.

Maybe it has been discovered many times, but it is very rarely used outside of the Latin/Greek/Esperanto grammatical tradition. I have never come across a Spanish grammar that makes the connection between quién/todos/alguien/nadie, qué/todo/algo/nada, cuándo/siempre/---/nunca, etc.

[alice]

Though like everything else about the language, it's hard not to look at the set and want to fiddle with it.

Admittedly this is a problem with any auxlang - everyone who sees it thinks he or she could do it better.

[zompist]

Though like everything else about the language, it's hard not to look at the set and want to fiddle with it.

Admittedly this is a problem with any auxlang - everyone who sees it thinks he or she could do it better.

Everybody thinks they can make an auxlang, sure, but not all auxlangs invite remaking that particular one. E.g., Solresol or Volapük are too idiosyncratic to remake; while Interlingua is, I think, pretty good as it is.

[masako]

On the contrary, the fact that loads of people will happily learn Esperanto, despite almost no benefit from doing so, simply shows that your assumptions about how linguistically broken it is were false.

I sorta feel bad that no else has responded to you yet, Sal. Here, I'll have a go at it.
His assertions that Esperanto is 'linguistically broken' are correct, and have been noted by scores of actual and amateur linguists.

If it were broken, you would not be able to use it.

If birds have wings, they must be able to fly? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

You most likely have some inkling that when he says "broken" he is both using an ideolect, and being hyperbolic to make a point. You most likely know full well that he is alluding to the numerous ways which Zamenhof tried to give Esperanto features that appealed to a wider audience, and inadvertently made it a grammatical/lexical behemoth.

Sal, you needn't be contrarian just for the sake of it...at least not the majority of the time. Please.

EDIT: My response to the OP's question. No. Without equivocation. Just no.

[Linguoboy]

I've never understood the notion that an auxlang will be more difficult to learn if it has phonemes or clusters unfamiliar to the learner. Since when have you ever struggled to learn a language because it was hard to pronounce?

Since I've tried to learn Chinese. I've literally been studying it for over thirty years and can hardly say an intelligible sentence. Words in isolation aren't that difficult, but putting it all together with proper intonation and tone sandhi...it feels like I've got a mouthful of molasses and it's only due to the unfailing patience of my interlocutors that anyone understands me.