Responding to a critique of Esperanto, part 2

Grammar:
Note: Mr. Eddy's remarks will be in italics during the entirety of this response.

Mr. Eddy says:
The standard propaganda line, reproduced faithfully in [TYE 1], is that "... instead of the usual maze of rules [of grammar and syntax] ... we have only sixteen short rules, which may be written comfortably on one sheet of notepaper". Nobody has ever explained how a language with that little structure could be anything remotely resembling usable; indeed, the other 185 pages of TYE by their very existence clearly demonstrate that there's a great deal more.

[Update: The proof of the pudding again! I'm informed that the plena analiza gramatiko de esperanto is 600 pages long - that's about the same size as Thurneysen's Grammar of Old Irish, a classic work on a notoriously complicated language. Apparently it even has an apology, in its foreword, for its length; even my Latin grammar is only 450 pages long. So much for "one sheet of notepaper"!]

Nobody really believes (or ever has) that those 16 rules are the entirety of Esperanto Grammar. They're more like a barebones outline. Howver, for what it's worth, four of those rules cover the same ground in Esperanto that needs many, many rules in Spanish to cover the same material. E.g. In "A Spanish Grammar for Beginners" by M. A. DeVitis (1915), 4 pages are given to the present tense of verbs. Here's the entirety of the present tense in Esperanto:
"Remove the -i from the infinitive and add -as."
Yeah, that's it. The whole kit and kaboodle. 9 big, bad words.

And as to "the other 185 pages of Teach Yourself Esperanto" one should realize that grammar explanations make up a small percentage of those 185 pages. There are at least two dozen pages of introduction of the language, table of contents, instructions on how to use the book, and pages advertising other volumes of the TY series; more of glossaries (let's be conservative and say 10 pages total) and the index (two pages if I remember correctly...I don't have a copy of the textbook with me). Of the remaining pages, probably 75% of them are made of vocabulary lists, dialogs, reading selections, pictures, and exercises. That leaves about 37 pages for grammar. True that's more than the "one sheet of notebook paper" but hardly 600!

Mr. Eddy further: Here's a short list (it could easily be twice as long) of some things Zamenhof either didn't know or tacitly ignored.
Or maybe he figured that considering his audience (French, Russian, German, Polish, English, and (I suspect) just because he could, Hebrew) he didn't need to touch on these since in the languages of his audience, the rules were similar. (In the following section, each of the 16 rules will be in bold, Mr. Eddy's comment regarding the things Zamenhof "either didn't know or tacitly ignored" are in italics, and my reponse in regular font. )

Rule 1: There is no indefinite ARTICLE [English a, an]; there is only a definite article la, alike for all genders, cases and numbers [English the].
Articles are actually pretty rare in the world's languages; to name but a few, Finnish, Swahili, Japanese, Chinese, and most Slavic languages all do without. Millidge's dictionary claims that "the use of the article is the same as in the other languages", which is complete nonsense since the uses of articles differ from language to language. How many languages say the equivalent of la kvar "the four" when telling the time?

All the Romance languages have them.........in at least 3-4 different forms. German has them also, and in about 12 different forms! Finnish has other (more complex) ways to denote the definite article. The Polynesian languages have them, even! And to answer his last question: At least one: In Spanish you say "They are the four" (with the article in the feminine plural no less!)

Also I'm not going to waste anymore time or bandwidth reiterating how unfair it is to hold someone's words ABOUT Esperanto against the language itself, agreed?

Rule 2: NOUNS have the ending -o. To form the plural, add the ending -j. There are only two cases: nominative and accusative; the latter can be obtained from the nominative by adding the ending -n. The other cases are expressed with the aid of prepositions (genitive by de [English of], dative by al [English to], ablative by per [English by means of] or other prepositions, according to meaning).

What are "the other cases" referred to in rule 2, how are they used, and why are they important enough to deserve a mention? The usual answers ("the genitive is expressed with de", etc.) betray what seems to have been a nineteenth-century assumption that classical grammar is a constant of nature, rather than a fluid and more or less accidental convention; grammatical case is no more necessary than grammatical gender. The kazo akuzativo is examined in detail later on; and surely there are better plural endings than the unsightly and awkward -j? (See the introduction for where this comes from).

Any other cases that happen to be present the languages of his audience. For the plural, -j isn't any worse than -s or -i/-e, or the other myriad ways of making plurals that don't involve endings (think: man/men), all of which are found in other languages. Pluralizing nouns (and adjectives in the languages that require such) takes up many rules, and much time to learn in all langauges that show plural. And in most, there are the oh-so-familiar-but-hated list(s) of exceptions. In Esperanto there's one rule: Add a -j (pronounced like a 'y'). This applies to all nouns and all adjectives.

Rule 3: ADJECTIVES end in -a. Cases and numbers are as for nouns. The comparative is made with the word pli [English more], the superlative with plej [English most]; for the comparative the conjunction ol [English than] is used.

No less an authority than Zamenhof himself is on record as conceding that agreement between the adjective and noun is unnecessary ("superfluous ballast", in his own words in 1894), and indeed there's no good reason why you should have to say grandaj hundoj "big dogs", la hundoj estas grandaj "the dogs are big", and mi vidas la grandajn hundojn "I see the big dogs".

Well this is a moot point, since Zamenhof made it part of the language. I hope I don't need to point out that even including the rule(s) about agreement, the entire system is still much less complex and complicated and exception-ridden than in other languages.

Rule 4: The basic NUMERALS (not declined) are: unu, du, tri, kvar, kvin, ses, sep, ok, naŭ, dek, cent, mil [English one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, hundred, thousand]. Tens and hundreds are formed by simple juxtaposition of the numerals. To show ordinal numbers we add the adjective ending; for multiples, the suffix -obl; for fractions [actually, reciprocals], -on; for collectives, -op; for divisionals, the word [particle] po. Noun and adverb numerals can also be used.

Point 4a: Note the oddity that the word for "one" has two syllables while the rest have just one;
Please be kidding, Mr. Eddy. As my Yiddish-speaking friends would say: By you this is a problem??

point 4b: and which part of speech do numbers belong to, exactly?

um.........."numbers"? (Yes, Mr. Eddy, I know that's not a part of speech in English but Esperanto isn't English, is it? and before you object, Russian also classifies numbers as a separate part of speech).

Rule 5: Personal PRONOUNS: mi, vi, li, ŝi, ĝi (for an object or animal), si, ni, vi, ili, oni [English I, you, he, she, it, oneself, we, you, they, they-one-people]; the possessive pronouns are formed by addition of the adjective ending. Declension is as for nouns.

point 5: Why is the pronoun system nothing more than a copy of the English one, when something else would surely have been more useful? Why, for example, is there no pronoun meaning "he or she", and why is gender only differentiated in the third person singular?

A copy of the English one? Not really. It could be just as well a "copy" of the Russian one......right down to the "gender only differentiated in the third person singular." Is this really a fault? Oh, and by the way, Esperanto does have a gender neutral pronoun: ri (very little used)

Rule 6: The VERB does not change for person or number. Forms of the verb: present time takes the ending -as; past time, -is; future time, -os; conditional mood, -us; command mood, -u; infinitive mood, -i. Participles (with adjectival or adverbial meaning): present active, -ant; past active, -int; future active, -ont; present passive, -at; past passive, -it; future passive, -ot. All forms of the passive are formed with the aid of the corresponding form of the verb esti [English to be] and the passive participle of the required verb; the preposition with the passive is de [English by].
point 6a: The verbal system may look straightforward, but the grammar doesn't mention that you can form no less than 36 compound tenses with the various tenses of esti "to be" and the participles. This is far too many, and many of them are likely to confuse speakers of (for example) many Asian languages, which manage well enough with something much simpler.

And what Mr. Eddy neglects to mention (to be fair, maybe he's simply unaware of the following fact since he by his own admission doesn't even speak the language) is that those 36 compound tenses are really nothing more elaborate than a "to be + a predicate adjective" type of construction. And besides, probably no more than 4of these "36 tenses" are in general use, anyway.

point 6b: And if subjunctives, future tenses and participles are really necessary, why are there no "subjunctive participles" like vidunta? And is it a subjunctive mood, a conditional tense, or something else?

Who says there aren't? Can you show us a rule that says those constructions are not allowed? (Note to readers: No, he can't, because there isn't one). And it's both.

Rule 7: ADVERBS end in -e; comparison is as for adjectives.
point 7: Dutch and German get along fine without worrying about the distinction between adjectives and adverbs: what else could "love me slow and tender" possibly mean?

I don't mean to sound flip, but so what? Esperanto isn't Dutch or German. For the record, many other languages (like Swahili, if I remember correctly) DO make a distinction.

Point #8 is dealt with below in the section on the accusative case.
Point #9 (that the one-letter-one-sound has been dealt with earlier and has nothing to do with grammar or syntax) is true..........but how is this a criticism??

Rule 10: The ACCENT always falls on the next-to-last syllable [vowel].
Point 10: This rule, which is curiously the same as in Polish, has nothing to do with grammar or syntax either. The rigidity of the stress causes some distortions: why should words like nacio "nation" stress on the I, instead of on the first A as in every other language which contains the word? And do long words have any other secondary stresses?

Yes, it's the same as Polish..........and the first half of the stress rules in Spanish and Occitan. So? And regarding "nacio" the word is NOT stressed on the A in "every other language which contains the word" In the Romance langauges it's on the O. So much for linguistic awareness/honesty on Mr. Eddy's part.......again. Regarding secondary stress, there's no rule one way or another.

Rule and Point 11 is dealt with, as Mr. Eddy does, in the Vocabulary reponse.

Rule 12: When another NEGATIVE word is present, the word NE [English no, not] is omitted.
point 12: This rule is pointless and makes no practical difference to the language: multiple negatives are common in many languages, for example "I don't know nothing" in colloquial English.

Not really pointless: without it, a multiple negative may result and this is not what Zamenhof wanted. Though I suppose he's not going to rise from his grave in Frumasarah fashion if some Spaniard somewhere uses a double negative while speaking Esperanto. And for the record, "I don't know nothing" is not colloquial English; it's bad English.

Rule 13 is dealt with in the "accusative case" section.

Rule 14: Every preposition has a definite and permanent meaning, but if we have to use a preposition and the direct meaning doesn't tell us what preposition we should take, then we use the preposition JE, which has no independent meaning. Instead of je the accusative without a preposition may be used.
point 14:
Counterexample: [TYE 176] provides six meanings for de, and helpfully points out that la amo de Dio "the love of God" is ambiguous: is it "God's love" or "some entity's love of God"? Note too malamikoj de la urbo: is this "enemies of the city" or "enemies from the city"?

Well, "de" indicates origin (which fits with every use of it in the above paragraph, except for "some entity's love of God" which may well be a problem with English), but I'll concede the point anyway; however, as they say: Context, context, context.

Rules 15 and 16 (dealing with adaptation of foreign words to Esperanto's phonology (15) and elision of the final -o or -a for reasons of euphony (16) Well, what can one say? This is as good a place as any to deal with it........even if only partially.

Mr. Eddy's "More General Comments" seem to be of the niggling, or else the "I just don't like the way it looks" type rather than anything constructive. But, hey, that's just me. You can judge for yourself: http://web.archive.org/web/20030811165117/http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/esp.html#grammar scroll down a bit till you see the section heading.


The Accusative Case:
One use of the accusative that Mr. Eddy fails to mention (again, probably because he isn't aware of it, since (as he readily admits) he doesn't even speak the language) is removing an ambiguity (the existance of which in Esperanto Mr. Eddy seems to have a particular problem with). To whit:
In the English sentence "Faithful or not, he loved her" who is "faithful or not"? "he" or "her"? There are ways to make it clear but not with out adding more words. In esperanto you just put the -n ending on the adjective "faithful" if it's referring to 'her' or leave it off if it refers to 'he." "Fidelan au ne, li amis shin" (Whether she was faithful or not, he loved her.) versus "Fidela au ne, li amis shin" (Whether he was faithful or not, he loved her.) Another (better and a little more humerous than the above) version can be seen here: http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html (scroll all the way down to the end; it's the last section entitled "Desambiguation (sic) with -N"


According to one of my correspondents, who seemed very sure of the point, the accusative case can only replace je; somebody is fibbing somewhere!

Your correspondent is wrong...........as you yourself proved at the end of the next paragraph, Mr. Eddy. Any preposition is replaceable by the accusative case....in theory. In practice, it's rarely done precisely because of your point in the rest of this paragraph (I've only seen it done where there was no other accusative in the sentence):

The confusion between the accusative case and je, which is officially blessed in rule 14, gives rise to a curious ambiguity. A commonly mentioned example of the use of je is veti je chevaloj "to bet on horses", which can also be veti chevalojn. So, since veti monon is correct for "to bet money", veti monon chevalojn is quite reasonably both "to bet money on horses" and "to bet horses on money"!

Rules 8 and 13 of the grammar mean that en la domon "into the house" and en la domo "in the house" differ in the meaning of the preposition, but express this difference by changing the noun. This distinction does not extend to any other types of motion; thus el la domo "out of the house"; and if compound prepositions like de sur "off" (i.e. "from on") are permitted [TYE 50], what's wrong with the entirely unambiguous al en la domo?

Nothing is wrong with "al en la domo" at all! Some people do say this instead of "en la domon." However, I agree; this rule is a direct influence from Zamenhof's European language background but it's easily taken care of as shown above.

Zamenhof's unnamed part of speech

The ending -aw appears on - to the best of my knowledge - a mere 21 words, suggesting that Zamenhof once tried to create a new part of speech of unidentified function but gave up without tidying up the mess. Many of the words are both conjunctions and prepositions (malgraw "despite", antaw "before", anstataw "instead of"), but some are one or the other (aw "or", cirkaw "around"), a few are bona fide adverbs and should thus end in -e (baldaw "soon", apenaw "hardly"), and a couple are neither (adiaw "goodbye", naw "nine").

OK, I'll concede the point. However, what we actually have here (regardless of any alleged failed-part-of-speech-that-left-traces) is simply the word shape of 21 vocabulary items. I do have one correction, though: malgraw, antaw, and anstataw are prepositions. The conjunction function is arrived at by adding 'ol' between the preposition and the clause it's "conjuncting." (Yes, I'm aware that's not a real word; that's why it's in quotation marks.)
OK, two corrections: the -e ending is for derived adverbs. What exactly is the adjective from which "soon" is derived? but you do have a point: "balde" COULD mean "soon" and "balda" would be the adjective version............but, how would it be translated?

The correlatives (the "why, when" words and related ones)

The first thing Mr. Eddy does in this section is take pains to say that they're not mentioned in the grammar. Well, of course not: they're vocabulary.

...45 "correlative" words which are formed by joining together one of 5 prefixes to one of 9 terminations; thus i-o "something", neni-u "nobody", chi-a "all kinds of", ti-el "thus". This is superficially one of Zamenhof's best ideas, and it looks clever enough to have persuaded some Esperantists that it's some sort of an indication of genius; but simple and transparently obvious phrases like de tiu "that one's", tia ejo "that place", and so on would be far better than arbitrary words which have nothing to do with the rest of the language.

And yet Mr. Eddy has to use two of the "arbitrary" words to make those "transparently obvious phrases"...............
In any case, Zamenhof entirely typically contrived to make a mess of it, turning a potential silk purse into yet another sow's ear:
Hmm.........I don't remember "ad hominem against Zamenhof" being part of Mr. Eddy's original reasons for writing this essay.


There's no prefix for "this", so you have to put chi before "that" to get the horribly contrived chi ti-. Yet the important word "now", which should thus be the awkward chi tiam, is actually the entirely arbitrary nun.
Horribly contrived? Whatever. The ti- series is for "demonstratives"....would Mr. Eddy rather Esperanto work like French and have the same word mean both "that" AND "this"? (Actually it sometimes does: tie kaj tie would translate "here and there"). I suppose if Zamenhof had made the ti- series mean "this" and used, e.g. "lu," to denote "that," Mr. Eddy would have complained just as loudly.....which makes me wonder just why he is doing his complaining............(more on this question at the end). Damned if we do, damned if we don't it seems.

The system of grammatical endings insisted upon in the grammar is, for no obvious reason, completely ignored; for example the adverbial ending is now -el (ki-el "how?"), while -e (ki-e "where?") signifies place.
Is expressing place not an adverbial semantic footprint? -e can't signify ALL adverbial footprints; why, that would be so ambiguous! (he complains more about Esperanto's "ambiguities" later on, so the natural question here is why is he complaining about a device that removes ambiguity??)

Possession is indicated by -es; thus ki-es "whose" is distinct in form from de "of" (used with nouns) and -a (used with pronouns). That's three different, non-interchangeable, ways of expressing the same grammatical relation - precisely the sort of difficulty Esperanto is supposed to have eliminated!
Yeah: 'de' is used with NOUNS, -a with PRONOUNS (this one is debatable: what other meaning would the adjectival form of a personal pronoun have if not the possessive??), and -es with the CORRELATIVES. Three different parts of speech, three (or maybe just two) different methods.
For the record, though, I do tend to wish for a separate genitive case. *"vires hundo" (the man's dog) would be more concise than "la hundo de la viro" 2 words as opposed to 5, 4 syllables as opposed to 7.....as Mr. Eddy pointed out ealier in his critique.


The rather pointless distinction between the endings -u and -o doesn't apply elsewhere.
Pointless? Hmm......and without such a distinction would Mr. Eddy then have complained about the lack of a difference between "who" and "what"?? Again, it seems we can't please Mr. Eddy no matter what we do.

It would be nice to differentiate question words from relative pronouns, rather than lumping them together under k- and creating ambiguity in sentences like mi diris al la homo kiu parlis "I told the man, who spoke (?)".
Why? I doubt anyone is going to confuse the two uses: context, context, context. But, I'll concede: he does have a point; however, I feel compelled to point out two things: 1. Russian also uses one word for both meanings (kotory: "which (one)?" and also the relative pronoun). 2. the relative clause can be taken care of by using a participle construction (Mi diris al la parolinta viro; "I told the having-spoken man" or the way we usually say it "I told the man who spoke.)

Are the correlatives which end in consonants immune from inflection? Are you, for example, really supposed to say mi havas neniomn for "I have none"?
No, we aren't. For what it's worth, the accusative ending required on direct object nouns and pronouns (not correlatives) is to preclude ambiguity as to who/what is doing an action to whom/what.......... the lack of the 'n' on 'mi' means that it is the subject so what else could 'neniom' be but the object?

Some strange words result from inflecting certain correlatives, such as iujn, neniejn; and of course, you have to say kiuj estas ili, with plural correlative, for "who are they?".

Strange? They don't seem strange to me......or other esperantists, I'm sure. Oh, and Spanish says "Quienes (that's plural) son ellos?" for what it's worth.

Bizarrely, you need to use the correlatives in comparisons of equality: mi estas tiel inteligenta kiel vi "I am as intelligent as you", rather than something analogous to mi estas pli inteligenta ol vi "I am more intelligent than you", which would surely be clearer and more obvious.

Bizarre? Not unless you think Spanish is bizarre (Yeah, Spanish does the same thing: tan inteligente como usted....the bolded words are the Spanish equivalent of the Esperanto correlatives).

Next up: Vocabulary.