Esperanto is also good, but when my partner tried to learn it, they were weirded out by some of it’s quirks, like noun declinations based on whether it’s a subject or object, that seems unecessary.

That sounds interesting. Esperanto has no noun-declinations, it’s an agglutinating language, you don’t bend words (= declination).

But what is barely resembling that what you mention is the two cases of the language, which is nominative and the so called “accusative”. Which is adding -n to words to make them an object, depending on whether the verb of the sentence needs one or not. This case also is not just for objects, but also for directions, for measurements and time. That combination normally confuses the heck out of people.

Which is why there is also an in-joke in the Esperanto community “don’t forget the accusative”, because people forget it or apply it too often.

so the idea of trying to learn one more is daunting, even if Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn.

Even that would people contest. For me it was easier to learn and I think there things in the language, which make it easier to learn. BUT that idea that it’s truly universal “easier” is often criticized and doubted. Which leaves me with a disappointing “maybe” with a slight tilt to “it’s easier”, so “maybe it’s easier?”.

I could barely learn a 3rd language (French) so the idea

If we keep in the idea set of how Esperanto came about, then the idea was to learn two to three languages and be a world citizen afterwards. Two languages, because that would be your mother tongue and Esperanto and for three languages that would be your mother tongue, the language of your region like for cultural heritage reasons and Esperanto to be a world citizen.

I learnt Esperanto after i learnt English in school. It’s my third language and I belong to those who got afterwards more confident, that I could acquire another language by myself. So for some people it’s easier to learn and it brings them then the confidence, that when they find motivation to learn a specific new language, that they could do that.

I myself am still stuck with three languages, because I did not had a strong motivation to learn an additional language. There are too much languages and there are too much conflicting incentives to learn one over another. Wanna understand China? Learn Mandarin! Learn one of the other big languages in the world for financial progress! Then learn Spanish! Be supportive of the deaf community! Then learn one of the many dialects of sign language!

I don’t know if it really is losing mindshare. Toki Pona is really popular among a very loud minority.

On one hand these people just may be learning it, because it’s an interesting conlang, nothing against that. Learn whatever language you like.

Then the loud part of the Toki Pona community learn it partially because they think it’s morally superior to other eurocentric conlangs like Esperanto. And those will eagerly say to you, that Toki Pona is the best language ever. So maybe is the perception that Esperanto is losing mindshare, because of Toki Pona, just a result of working propaganda by that very loud minority.

Esperanto is also in general not a very popular language, as its normally compared to English for its audacity to become a lingua franca. Still, to my knowledge it’s still the largest constructed language community. Toki Pona or other languages need to get to that level of sophistication which Esperanto already aquired during 136 years of its existence.

I honestly did not know there were axe-crazy Esperanto fans online.

Oh, there are always those.

These kind of speakers can be found also offline. It’s funny they are the result on one hand of the fondness to our little language and the reactions towards it by speakers of other languages. Esperanto gets a shitload of bad reputation and the resistance to it then creates such personalities.

In some sense they rightfully act like they act.

Funny that this thread re-appeared during the xz “scandal”. I had a little bit of fun regarding it, when it initially appeared in the f-droid forum.

*NOTE: I’m cutting you some slack on this because you’re discussing with me, and I personally don’t mind this too much. But do not act like this against other users of this community, OK?

Ah now the authority is speaking. As if it was me who started to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Esperanto. By just welcoming the blessed opinions of JBR.

associating them with anti-vaxxers (or Nazi, or puppy killers etc.) out of nowhere.

It’s not out of nowhere, people who use the same tactics in argumentation are grouped together. And even when you don’t like it. Then don’t like the opinion I have about your argumentation style. As you already noted about my style of argumentation.

assuming the intentions of other people. You’re claiming what you cannot reliably know.

When an argument goes in a certain direction, then there is little left of what the person really is intending. Experience counts more than uncertainty.

I’d also like to encourage you [and everyone else in this comm] to be extremely careful with arguments relying on “who” said something or their “credibility”, as in your first paragraph. It’s simply more conductive to analyse what is said than who is said it.

In general I would agree with you there. But in the end let’s face it, the arguments of an architect regarding the construction of buildings weighs more than the arguments of Joe the neighbour regarding house building. In the end you only have logic and “argumentation style” to prove or disprove what you are saying. This in turn means that arguments are forced to follow a certain direction inevitably because of “logic”, which leads to the same conclusions, which leads to echo chambers of people who follow these conclusions.

If for example you approach road design by seeing that all the cars are blocking them, so you by the force of logic you widen the road, the problem still exist, you widen the road more. Based on the experience of people who did research into road construction, infrastructure building you would have known that using trains, bike lanes, smaller roads and more clever design of cities would really solve the problem. Sheer basic logic does not solve shit.

And so it is in attempting with disproving or proving JBR.

adopting a defensive tone and excessive snark.*

Cute, I’m only in normal conditions and this is already considered “excessive snark”. Adopting a defensive tone is what I did, because I think you are spreading FUD about Esperanto.

TL;DR: I still call your claim that Esperanto is poorly designed “nonsense”.

Rational investigation requires criticism, like it or not.

Rational investigation requires criticism, like it or not. Yes it does. But your response and your whole argumentation is not criticism but trolling, just designed to provoke an emotional response which you can then tear down and enjoying while doing it. Like what you did earlier and also on my reply.

As I wrote disproving JBR or making any response to him is like responding to an anti-vaxxer. I don’t have the damn time, nor could all my responses be trusted, because I’m not a linguist, so who cares anyway? Musing all day about the details of where JBR was right and where he talked as an English speaker out of his ass, just to piss off more people – brings what exactly? Those people who already made up their opinions will still stick to them, those who will learn Esperanto anyway will learn it anyway. The damage has already been done, because those who are undecided will not learn it or even consider it a language at all. WELL DONE!

And reactions then like yours always boils down to the “bad Esperantist”, who reacts pissed off to shitty ideas, shitty opinions thrown around by people who should shut their mouths for good.

minced words to fake some qualitative distinction between “poorly designed” and “not perfect enough” (the diff is quantitative, and arbitrary)

No it’s not. A poorly designed pocket knife for example will hurt you, a not perfect knife is just lacking a feature which you would like, but which does not harm you.

First off. You’re clearly assuming that I’m arguing against Esperanto usage, when I’m mostly talking about its design demerits.

I really tried to not assume that, but the way you argumented, how you twisted my response all lead me to the conclusion that you are argumenting against the usage of Esperanto at all as most people who follow the exact argumentation chain do. Using JBR as valid source would be one point in that chain. Like as I quote some news article of Russia Today to prove that the war of Russia against the Ukraine is right, because Ukraine is full of national socialists.

Justin B. Rye has a full rant on that

When someone starts with Justin B. Rye as an argument, then I stop listening. This pile of junk he put together just to utterly “destroy” a language and its community is something which should not be paid any credibility as if I listen to someone who spends hours and hours of writing up why vaccines are a bad thing. He is an individual who had bad experiences with Esperanto speakers, had the privilege of having time at his hands and seemingly a degree in linguistics (which I can’t verify) to write his “ranto” up. A piece of junk which is solely intended to piss off and frustrates anyone who did look into Esperanto or even dared to learn it and who happens to be able to read English.

He would not be the first or the last linguist who shits on Esperanto full length without any actual facts behind the criticism.

By “poorly designed” I’m conveying “full of sub-optimal decisions that introduce unnecessary complexity and unintended consequences”.

That’s not “poorly designed”, that’s a misnomer for “not perfect enough”. Perfectionism is the enemy of good. And Esperanto is a working language which is in itself more or less consistent. One could argument that its inventor did not want to create the perfect language, but a working one which is the template for the actual language, which he knew would evolve out of it. Today’s Esperanto is already a different one than the one published in 1887.

In special, Esperanto as defined in the 16 rules is full of assumptions on how a language works that boil down to “you should know it, because it works like in European sprachbund languages”.

And? What is that for an argument? It has 16 rules, which are still 16 rules, which are rooted in how other languages do their thing. Then the rest of the booklet which the inventor of the language published was full of exercises to show the implicit rules. It can be argued that the original booklet was a result of brevity and to reduce printing costs, it’s 42 pages damn it. Also some marketing which he used at the time of writing. Still, these rules are useable and give people enough to learn the language.

One could even argue that the 16 rules are not just 16 of the kind, even when reading them they have sub-parts, are longer than just say “-o marks nouns” or something. Criticizing Esperanto because of them is just an act of ill will. “Look ma! They are not just 16 rules … looolz!” no shit Sherlock!

TL;DR: I’m calling the claim “poorly designed” as nonsense and ANY re-iteration of it as trolling or dishonest attempt to derail any rational investigation of Esperanto as a language.

I generally have a problem with it the statement that Esperanto is poorly designed. When considering that it does enough things right. That it uses internationalisms, that it can be sung, that it gives enough expressivity, that it’s mechanical enough to be learnt by it’s grammar, etc.

It always sounds as if Esperanto is Latin with a thousand of exceptions, designed like french with spoken language does not equal the written text of the language, etc.

When in fact the opposite is the case. People then point to one of the current language projects, which are supposedly “better” in one dimension or another. That’s just optimizing to some standard of perfect.

What’s actually kinda interesting is that Esperanto is having a moment like this, while technically you are to use the pronouns Li and Sxi, for he and her, Duolingo has a lot of the use of Si, which is a singular they, and since a lot of esperanto’s modern speakers are duolingo users, a lot of folks are just using si.

I speak Esperanto for 14 years now. And no, “si” is not a singular “they”. That’s a self-referencing pronoun. And if that usage is used for genderless addressing a person then this is simply incorrect usage, because people don’t know how actually the language works. It’s used in sentences like “li lavis sin” vs. “Li lavis lin”. The first one says “he washes himself” and the second says “he washes him”, the first references the person who executes the action to reference and the second says that the action is done on a different person.

If it comes to Esperanto and genderless usage then there ĝi (it) or ri (they). The first one would be more in accordance with the fundament of the language and the second is a new pronoun which is around since at least the 70s.

No need to misuse si.

Every book is not “accessible”, when it’s not even opened and willfully ignored of existing.

There is:

• https://lernu.net
• [https://esperanto12.net/en](Esperanto in 12 days)
• [https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Esperanto-Learn-write-understand/dp/1473669189](Complete Esperanto)
• [https://en.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto](Duolingo Esperanto)

There are languages to which it’s less accessible, but from the bigger ones, it’s quiet accessible.

But if people don’t open their eyes they don’t see the forest in which they are standing.

Esperanto is eurocentric, because it’s international. Because romance languages where made by colonialism of the roman empire. The argument goes of “equality”. Thinking the other way around would be that asiatic languages colonized the world, then Esperanto would be based on asiatic languages.

Esperanto is a pragmatic language, not a “totally neutral” language. If you design a language to be “totally neutral” then parts would be distributed differently. How to chose which vocabulary of languages should be used often?

So using romance languages is a pragmatic solution to this. Through usage words can be added or fall out of use, all that is allowed in Esperanto and which can make the language out of colonialism in the future more egalitarian.

But it’s ignorant to ignore Esperanto at all and morally vilifying it as “eurocentric therefore bad”.