Talk:Esperantido

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Whoa, kwamikagami... you've doing the non-Esperanto-IALs-are-for-Romance-speakers-only thing here, too. -_-; Almafeta 14:37, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No, not "for Romance speakers only"! I did not say that, and I did not imply it. But it would be irresponsible not to recognize that the main motivation for Ido was that Esperanto wasn't close enough to French, which was taken as the best exemplar of an international language. This is clear in the writings of the original committee members (at least as far as I've read them in secondary sources).

There are two main criticisms of Esperanto's grammar, orthography, and source vocabulary:

One, that they aren't international because they don't represent all the world's languages, and

Two, that they aren't international because they aren't close enough to the world's premier international languages, French/Italian/Romance (depending on the critic).

I don't know anyone who's attempted to fix Esperanto per critique 1, but there are plenty according to critique 2 — almost all the Esperantidos, in fact. Perhaps some of the people involved were merely interested in a purely inter-Romance language per your criticism, but many believed that making Esperanto more Romance would make it more accessible to the people of the world, as so many have studied Romance languages already. Especially back in 1907, when French was the language of international diplomacy. That is, it's a philosophical dispute over how to best approach an interlanguage, not an attempt to restrict access to it. You'll also notice that much of the drive for Ido was with French Esperantists, who naturally saw their language differently than Zamenhof saw it. Much of the vocab change substitutes Romance for German words, with people often saying how silly it is for a certain word to be German, when a perfectly good Romance word is available. "Arbitrary" is a critique that you hear frequently. You could argue about how much of the project was driven by ethnocentrism (a charge also applied to Esperanto, of course, in critique 1), but not that the aim was to sail closer to the Romance languages. Just look at the Pater noster: Romance qua, quale, tale for kiu, kiel, tiel; French -ez for the jussive; cadie for Latin hodiau; omnidiala for cxiutaga; e for Greek kaj; Romance ofensi for German sxuldoj; a for al; Italian ma for Latin sed. All of these changes bring Ido into closer alignment with the Romance languages than Esperanto is, and that's all that I claimed: "Ido ... sought to bring Esperanto into closer alignment with the Romance languages". Any reading of that to mean that Ido was intended "for Romance speakers only" is unsupported. You can add a disclaimer stating something like, "Of course, a Romance grammar and vocabulary doesn't restrict Ido to Romance speakers, but was intended to make it more accessible to the many people who have already studied a Romance language" if you like. I don't see the need for it in this article, but maybe something like that would be appropriate in the Ido or Interlingua articles. You could say the same thing in the Esperanto article, of course (just changing the source languages), but I don't see why we should be so defensive.

Besides the occasional apriori language like Lojban, there are only a few conlangs that aren't in effect "Latinidos". One of these is described by its creator thus: Slovio, is the international simplified Slavic language, as simple as Esperanto but understood by some 400 million people around the world. This makes Slovio one of the most widely understood languages around the world. That is, Slovio is very much like a Slavic Interlingua in its conception. Then there's Tutonish, which is one of the Germanic equivalents. There was even a conlang based on Cherokee. But nearly all stick very close to the Romance languages. You seem to get a bit defensive about that, Almafeta, but I don't mean it to be a criticism, just honesty. This is what the languages are. You'll notice that I also changed the Esperanto article along these lines: when I found it, it had claimed that Esperanto was truly international in the sense of critique 1, when it clearly isn't. Esperanto is a purely European language in its conception. Ido sought to move it into closer agreement with a perceived Romance ideal. We can leave philosophizing over whether either of these are a good thing to the people learning these languages. —kwami 19:46, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

I have always heard from Idists that it was created as a 'fixed' version of Esperanto, not as an "Romanceperanto". And although some of the old roots were changed from Esperanto to be more Romantic, many of the new 'demal'd' roots came from Russian or German.

In addition, a truly Romance-biased conlang would have elements that are found in every Romance language, such as modifying verbs for the subject, adjective-noun agreement, and at least a vestigial nod to Latin's declension system. (In this, except for modifying verbs, basic unmodified Esperanto is actually more romantic than Interlingua.)

I made two other changes. I put headings in (just for organization), and I did a bit of reorganization of different language types. When I could, I put in more information. I also change the reference to Ido being romantic; you can revert it if you want, but I think it's false.

Finally... I presume you speak Esperanto (I didn't see a Babel link on your userinfo page). Would you ask on the Esperanto 'village pump' / Esperantido talk page for English-speaking Esperanto users to help create more information on these Esperantidos? I'd appreciate that.  :) Almafeta 16:10, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Additionally, I don't think that the comparison of those languages is appropriate for this page, but I'm not touching it because I don't know where to move it to. Almafeta 17:21, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure, I'd be happy to ask for help from Vikipedio. Drop me a line on my talk page if you like to remind me. And thanks for the Babel suggestion; I'd completely forgotten about that. As for your changes, I'd like to put Popido back in. It doesn't take much space, and samples are always helpful in illustrating a topic. I originally had the language samples in the article on Esperanto vocabulary, which was an even less appropriate place for them But I think they are appropriate in an article on those very languages.

As for Ido being more Romance than Eo, I think it's prett clear it is. I just scanned through part of an Ido glossary, and nearly every root was Romance. True, Ido isn't a 'naturalistic' language like Interlingua, but I never claimed that. Much of the motivation was to bring Ido closer into alignment with "Western European norms". Much of the literature says that means "French and English", but I fail to see the similarites to English, except for the Romance portion of its vocabulary. Instead it looks like much of the German and some of the English vocabulary was replaced by French and Italian words. Also, the verbal system is markedly more Romance. Much of the Committees complaint was that Eo was "too German" and "too Slavic". What does that leave us? Romance. True, Ido only adopted a few of the irrationalities of the Romance languages, but since it was an attempt to simplify and fix the irrationalities of Eo, it would be as odd for it to reintroduce verbal agreement as it would be to reintroduce a six-case declensional system! "Brought into closer alignment with Romance" doesn't imply following every idiosyncracy of the Romance languages. How about "brought into closer alignment with Western European expectations of the French, English, & Italian languages"? I'll also try to say a little more about the proposed improvements. kwami 18:30, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

PS. The Ido committee was not a group of former Esperantists. Couturat couldn't even write a simple letter in the language: all his correspondance with Zamenhof was in French! Although I'd also make substantial changes to Eo given the chance, some of them similar to the Ido reforms (like eliminating adjectival agreement and the distinction between jx and gx), it's hard to take such a man seriously. His approach seems to have been "I came, I saw, and it wasn't simplified French, so I fixed it". Most of the proposed changes to Eo that beginners come up with are ethnocentric like that. Riism, for example, is a product of native English speakers. Suggestions to eliminate the distinction between adjectives and adverbs come from native German speakers. Etc. Anyway, the most public proponent of Ido was himself never an Esperantist. kwami 18:41, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

I took out the Popido reference because we already had a Esperantido comparision section (I may be adding the Pater Noster in Sen:espera next), and it's in history if (and probably when) we start a Popido article. I'll also be editing the article for 'needless links' (links which show up within a few paragraphs of each other).

As to Ido, saying "bringing it into alliance with the Western European languages" may be better; unlike projects like Romanova, I don't see much attempt to give Occitan, Romanian, Sicilian, etc., any immediate usability. By the way, on Ido, you seem to be referring to its past while I'm referring to its present; I don't think either of us has the full story.

Incidentally, I'd be interesting in discussing/debating Esperanto's merits with you sometime, and hearing how you would modify Esperanto. We'd need a new talk page or to take it to e-mail for that, though. Almafeta 19:31, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Also, regarding an Esperanto reform that doesn't represent all the world's languages: There was actually an Esperanto reform that tried to address that. It attempted to create a langauge where 90% of the world would know one of the control languages. Unfortunately, I don't know its name, and it has generated the same level of interest as most esperantidos. Almafeta 19:31, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

That would certainly be worth mentioning. I haven't come across it on the Vikipedio Esperantido pages. BTW, Popido was intended to be a "substandard" dialect, like you'd come across in A Clockwork Orange. That wasn't a value judgement on my part. kwami 19:50, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

As for modifying Esperanto, I think the most important thing is to greatly reduce its bloated vocabulary. Most of the proposed reforms come from a European background and aren't nearly as important to people not raised with Western European languages. A more systematic vocabulary would be less familiar to Europeans, but a "naturalistic" vocabulary is a real killer for the Asian Esperantists I've known. (It's not a problem with African Esperantists, at least south of the Sahara, because for the most part they're already schooled in English or a Romance language.) I would introduce an indicative suffix that does not indicate tense, perhaps -es, so that tense would be no more obligatory than aspect is in current Esperanto. (This is another difficulty in parts of Asia.) Also, I like the Italian plural, but am not sure how to extend it systematically, and would only use adjectival plurals when modifying more than one noun, or not at all. And I think that perhaps the plural should be optional in nouns. (That's not such a difficulty in Asia, however.) I'd keep an obligatory accusative to allow the word order to be truly free (i.e., pragmatic), but would use je or a dedicated preposition instead of the -n case suffix. (However, the -n is great for indicating direction, and very easy to use.) I'd use the masculine prefix and, of the non-specialized masculine words, I would keep only viro masculine (opposite femo), and would make li epicene and create a new masculine pronoun. I'd also reduce the number of phonemic contrasts to get back to the basic Latin alphabet: c ("ch") for both c and ĉ, x ("sh") for ŝ and maybe sc, j for both ĝ and ĵ, etc. Plus some minor word replacements and disambiguations. But the common desire for eliminating the correlative system, or the mal- prefix, and many other proposed reforms, seems to be very Eurocentric, and disappear as soon as someone learns the language, and I have no problem with them. I think that covers the basics. I take it you'd prefer a much more "naturalistic" language? kwami 20:27, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

As for wanting a much more 'naturalistic' language... hehe. When it comes to conlangs, I've already found the one that suits my wants in a IAL; I moved from Esperanto, to Ido, to Occidental, to finally Interlingua. However, when we're talking about making Esperanto the best language it can be, we're talking about something else entirely... something like this, maybe? Almafeta 19:06, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. Reminds me very much of proto-Esperanto, which treated pronouns as grammatical nouns, used -s for the plural, etc. But I don't think it's as different from Eo as you might think. I'll comment on the talk page. kwami 22:11, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

[edit] Just to note

It's strange to see 'Main article: Esperanto' at the top of the article. ALthough I guess it works; I never created this page intending to be part of the Esperanto discussion; I created it because I found Esperantidos to be more interesting than Esperanto, and worthy of more discussion than their predecessor. Almafeta 16:01, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

No reason why we can't just say "See also Esperanto". kwami 18:41, 2005 August 29 (UTC)

[edit] Bonjang

I don't know why this is mentioned. Bonjang is a completely unrelated language, as far as I can tell. How can it be at all an Esperantido, if it didn't evolve or was designed, in any discernible manner, from Esperanto? Neither the roots (from *kat to yotang) nor the grammar show any relation.

The website link doesn't mention Esperanto once.

It is a very pretty language though.

Atomsprengja 01:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Both the official site and Langmaker say it is influenced by Eo, though.Cameron Nedland 22:12, 11 October 2006 (UTC)