For / against Esperanto ?

Multiculturalism, diversity of opinions, are essential features of Esperanto.
The world is created as it is, and it's better to understand it in its diversity instead of forcing people to adjust to one model.

(#029) It is silly to think that Esperanto can bring world peace.

Unfortunately. It's only a small step in the right direction. Esperanto was originally motivated by peaceful intentions. In fact it can be used for any purpose. Esperantists were once handled as anarchists plotting against the state and ended up in concentration camps or Gullahs.

(with 500 million citizens in Europe one would need at least 1 Million certified teachers dropping out of nowhere - more than there are even marginally suitable Esperantists worldwide).

Not only would large-scale introduction of Esperanto be hugely expensive, but there are inherent problems with wide adoption of an artificial language and such inherent problems will never disappear regardless of the amount of billions or trillions of euros that any government pours into such project.

Similar objections apply to Latin as well.

The time freed to learn another subject (which could be another language) is an important point. The percentage of people that use that time to learn another language will help linguistic diversity, and will be motivated by different reasons, for example to learn a local minority or sign language, or their family language, or especially the language of a (neighbouring) country that they may wish to move to (EU’s movement of people principle). Aaron Irvine

(#161) English is the recognised international language.

Yet the language has been criticised ever since it first appeared. Most of the criticism was not justified. If you are an English speaker, and start learning Esperanto, you could be dissatisfied with a few words or rules.

Let's say you improve the language by 1%. I can improve the language by 1% as well, but not with the same improvements as yours. Now one has to solve clashes between the two sets of improvements, and generate more problems than one solves. How many languages are there in the world? A few thousand. Then you realise that Z did not do a bad job at all to solve all these clashes in his project. You see why I gave up on my 1% improvement.
When I mastered the language, I even found my improvements insignificant.

Improving Esperanto nowadays, is done like in other languages. If you a are a famous writer, what you write gets a lot of attention. Your example may be followed by many. You want to improve Esperanto? Good : publish in Esperanto!

If you are a language genius, create a new language. It's easy with nowadays technology. And write in it. After a hundred years we'll check whether you succeeded.
Unless you want to look pathetic, leave the task of "improving" the language to those who speak it fluently.

Por speak Europanto tu basta mix parolas from differente linguas. Keine study, keine grammatica, just improviste, und voilà que tu esse perfecte Europanto speakante.
Erodant habe keine grammatica. Better dixit, grammatica habe, aber tu can liberamente und instinctivamente invente.
Aquì tambien, der gutte rezipe esse de mix maxime common grammaticale elementos from differente linguas.

Regular grammar and phonetic simplicity are a given, but specifically what systems are particularly conducive to easy learning and clear understanding?

Whatever language is created, there will be a better one for some group of people.
While people are quite willing to learn a natural language, they are reluctant to spend their time in what they consider a project that can be improved.
The questions is:
What are the objectives of this language?
What should people be capable of doing with this language?
Is it necessary that the language could be used in all circumstances, like Esperanto?
Must the language be mandatory for the whole world or should it be taught only in Europe or in a limited number of states?
What political decision is needed to motivate people to learn the language?

Esperantists are generally of the opinion that the construction of the perfect auxiliary language is impractical.
So they keep using one that works well enough for all purposes, and is allowed to grow with the new needs and techniques.

• First because the language works, and the French look very happy. They like to play with words, but it might have nothing to do with the language.
• Second, because there is a logical explanation for all rules, but it requires some study.
• Third, because there is no creator of the language. Nobody can create a full language!

I fail to understand how this rule or word is used.
What is the best way to say this?
They did not teach me that in school.
I didn't find a satisfactory book on that subject,

Zamenhof declared that no changes could be made to the language; many Esperantists consequently like to claim that this proves that Esperanto was (and still is) perfect and has never needed changes of any sort at all. Ever since then, the desire to reform Esperanto has often been regarded as some sort of heresy, and any attempt to fix even the more obviously broken parts is doomed to failure.

I have never heard anyone claim that the language is perfect.

Zamenhof himself never claimed to be the owner of the language. He wanted to be considered as one of the many users and nothing else. But as the initiator, and the best user at the time, his advice was very valuable. He later published under the pseudonym "Unuel", which means "One among others". There are records of Zamenhof's speeches and by nowadays standards, he would probably not be classified among the best speakers. His Russian accent was recognisable.

During the first Esperanto congress in Boulogne sur mer, August 9, 1905, the language labor group (not Zamenhof) declared that the only valid reference for the language was "La Fundamento" of Zamenhof, in which nobody had the right to change anything. In other words, anybody is able to modify anything, but he can never claim that his language is Esperanto, he has to call it Ido, Novial, E++, Eo-n or whatever.

Esperanto is sometimes lauded for its succinctness, whereby it can express things more economically than most other languages; however, this in practice equates to a greater density of information, with a correspondingly greater likelihood of misunderstanding as a result of mistakes - especially since much of the grammatical information is carried in the unstressed final syllables which mark the parts of speech. The best examples of this are the pronouns and the very similar verb tense endings, which in a properly designed language would be easier to distinguish.

In any case, the claims of succinctness work both ways: la hundo de la viro takes five words and seven syllables to say what Gaelic and English say in three of each: cù an fir, "the man's dog".

Strange to find a statement and it's contradiction in the same remark.
First statement: redundancy. As correctly noted, the -a -o -i -e (and other) suffixes are redundant when the root clearly indicates what it is
For example:
grand' tabl' star' mez del' strat (a big table is standing in the middle of the street = 14 syllables if pronounced without eating a few).
Zamenhof being well aware of this feature and just allowed the elision of -o and the a of the article la (in poems).
So in Esperanto you would say : granda tablo staras meze de la strato (12 syllables).
Try to understand English with just the stressed syllables.
The grammatical suffix is not stressed, but that does not mean it is mute. It is said exactly like any unstressed syllable.

Esperanto has other forms of redundancy lacking in English, most notably noun-adjective agreement, what can be used to be more concise.
About pronouns ending by -i and words ending by -u I answered already.

The failure of Vollapük was largely due to to size of the words. As they were very short, it was necessary to introduce a few more sounds to avoid homonyms. Zamenhof could keep the number of consonants low, because the words in Esperanto are longer.

It is worthwhile noticing that a translation of an English text of some size is shorter than the original.

The main reason for the "evolution" of languages in the past was illiteracy.
Nowadays, cultural languages are changing differently, not that differently from Esperanto.

For instance to a word like "knight" has an history that can be traced back to the middle-ages.

Let´s see how regular, etc. Esperanto will remain after that. Esperanto is spoken only by people who has a certain level of education and after learning it use it only to communicate with similar people. Give Esperanto to the illiterate, to the uneducated masses, to the people of different countries with different backgrounds and cultures, and watch what happens. (Alejandro Carlos)

There are more NEW people learning English, voluntarily, every year in the World than the total number of Esperanto speakers in the World. (Alejandro Carlo).

English is an anarchic, mongrel, dog’s breakfast of a language and would make an absolutely terrible choice. Contrary to the widely-believed myth, the inherent difficulties of English grammar and the multiple meanings of countless words which can only be understood from knowing the context in which they are used make English a hard language for others to learn well. Further, adopting English would require just about everyone else in Europe to learn and accept incorrect meanings for words whose correct meanings they already know from their native languages, because lazy anglophones have perverted the English form of those words by habitually misusing them.

What Europe needs instead is a new Latin, i.e. a neutral language which would be a common second language for people across Europe just as Latin was for educated Europeans during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. No language could fulfil that role better than Esperanto, which brilliantly combines attributes of the Germanic, Latinate and Slavic languages with traits found in many other languages.

(Bill Frampton)

But that’s just the point: it DOESN’T take years! ( Christa H.)

You forget that not so long ago the propaganda told "We recommend English because it's easier than French.

If you look at any of the multilingual instruction sheets that come with the various appliances that we buy, you'll note that only the glyph-based languages take up less space on the paper.

From: Rufus Grey:

I used to be of your mindset and see English as the new "language of humanity" in embryo, and believe me global English is something that I myself made a kind of sub-career years ago. I've been involved with overseas English teaching for many years and done international business and consulting for decades, so obviously having English as a widespread international tongue is something of both professional interest and personal longing for me!

Still, after having done this for decades, it's apparent to me especially now that it's never going to happen. In fact, if anything the trend these days is powerfully and rapidly away from global English, much more rapidly than I would have ever expected before.

I've been on every continent but Antarctica, and to my surprise and dismay, in the past 5 years in particular, practical English proficiency has been plummeting not only in countries that have never been Anglophone (such as China and Korea), but even in countries with some connection to the British colonial past (India, Malaysia) or the American one (Philippines).

Some of the more obvious examples are the way, for example, that South Korea and Thailand among other countries, are switching back to emphasizing Mandarin Chinese in their curricula, at the expense of English. Those are just the canaries in the coal mine here-- I've seen the beginnings of this process in other countries in the region and it's starting to spread even outside of East Asia. My own company for example, dealing with import-export licenses, has basically said that anyone who hopes to get even an entry-level position in E/SE Asia now needs to know at least basic Mandarin Chinese. This was unthinkable just a decade ago-- just knowing English would get you a post almost anywhere, since it was expected that this would be the lingua franca.

I've done a lot of business in Malaysia, and over a decade ago, it was just considered standard that anybody and everybody who wanted to do something internationally, would do it in fluent English. That was more or less the measure of a person's quality and the potential of their ideas. No more the case today-- international conferences and business in Malaysia really are more stratified based on language, and Chinese already is making rapid gains as a business language. Not just among ethnic Chinese in Malaysia, among Malay businesspeople as well.

And India-- this was the big shock for me. We always think of India as *the* big Anglophone country in Asia. Well, it's not. I've done a lot of business there, and even in many of the big cities and business centers where English would rule the offices and be the link to the outside world, even in those places Hindi is starting to predominate, everywhere except perhaps for Tamil Nadu and other places in the south.

The top newspapers in India now are all Hindi-language-- English used to dominate print and even broadcast media, let alone books, scholarly pursuits and the first stirrings of the Internet. Now, Hindi is dominating in all categories.

Even in the Philippines, which is probably the most pro-English country in Asia, Tagalog/Filipino is replacing English in almost all media. Furthermore, when you talk to the business-aspiring teenagers about which languages are most important to learn, increasingly they too are gravitating toward Chinese. If not, some lean toward Arabic (considering the millions of Filipino expats in Arab countries) or something like Spanish or German if they want to work in Europe.

Those small "bellwether city-states" such as Hong Kong and Singapore, once within the British Empire, are also tilting away from English. A decade ago, whenever I walked around in the malls and clubs, the kids would all generally be speaking in English with each other. Now, they're speaking Chinese, and e.g. the Singapore schools are starting to emphasize Chinese even more than English now. (Yes, the people in HK would use Cantonese more than Mandarin, but even there Mandarin is making big inroads.)

I know you're writing from Taiwan, a place I love dearly myself, but if anything I've been finding a lot more caution in Taiwan toward English than I did a decade ago as well. Taiwan is still one of the few places in Asia that still really does almost hold English on a pedestal, but to be honest, the picture is diversifying even in Taiwan. Japanese was the language of an international session I was at recently in Taiwan, not English. (And it included many businesspeople from Korea and the Asian mainland, so it wasn't just geard toward the Japanese.) FWIW, for some weird reason, I run into countless mainland Chinese and even a few Taiwanese who speak very good German, occasionally even better than their English!

Outside of Asia, in southern Europe, it can feel like nobody speaks English! In Spain recently, the only English-speakers were British emigres who had migrated to Spain. The Spaniards themselves spoke not a lick. Same in Italy. France was variable but very little English spoken overall. Even in German-speaking Austria and Germany, where the similarity of German gives them a headstart and makes English easy, very few people were really proficient in English. And even in conferences, it wasn't much used, certainly not compared to 10 years ago.

As for why this is happening, I'd venture two guesses. One is the way Chinese has been advancing in such unbelievable leaps and bounds. For various reasons, the geography of China's advance has often been in cities and countries-- such as Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines-- where it is advancing at the expense of English imported by British or American officials.

The second reason is more unpleasant to contemplate, and it's the decline that so many Anglophone countries have been experiencing, with an attendant loss of prestige of English. The USA looks weak right now. Not just morally weak or resented-- militarily, we're stuck in a quagmire in Iraq and with trouble in Afghanistan, whether one supports those wars or not, they haven't exactly been working out for us.

Worst of all though, our countries (especially the UK even more than USA) are deeply trapped in debt, and our economy is hitting the skids, with more debt being taken on to get us out. Whereas China is seen to be making useful products and working its way to prosperity.

This may sound deflating, but the truth is, our perception of English as "the language to unite humanity" is turning out to have been a myth, borne out of a unique and brief stretch in our own recent history that itself was exaggerated. English as a language of high-level proficiency, even at the height of American power a few decades after WWII and after the fall of the USSR, has never broken perhaps 10% of the world population.

I think it could have, had the USA been stronger and not made some of the recent mistakes that are damaging us so much, and had China perhaps remained weaker for a while. I suspect that, had we had more durability and been able to just hold our lead as a dominant superpower-- or, in an alternate history, had the British just stayed out of WWI perhaps and held onto their Empire a couple more decades-- then yes, English might have become a global standard.

But it's just not going to happen now.

The one common thread that I've found throughout practically every country today, whatever their specific reasons for moving away from English, is that they just don't see the USA (and the "Anglosphere" in general) as a world-straddling cultural or political bloc anymore.

They see us as important, but just one of many big players. And many, even outside of Asia (France being a big example), see China as the new world leader, in line I guess with the way China has been such a powerful force for so many centuries before.

So no, unfortunately, English is not going to "bridge the communications gap" throughout the world. Not even close.

The only sort-of solution I see, is cheaper technology with artificial translation. It's already good enough that the best programs really can render text translations to about 99.99% or better accuracy, and speech translations not far behind. But they are extremely expensive and in practical terms, out of reach for most kinds of international communication at this point. Hopefully they'll be getting cheaper soon-- that's the only kind of solution I can see.

11 February, 2008 17:52 ²
Rufus Grey

In some situations, diversity is a good option, in others it is not.
Should people be allowed to drive at will on the left or right side of the road because we want to preserve diversity?
EU needs a common language more than anything else, more than the euro, the EU bank, the army.
It is obvious that one common language would remove a lot of misery.

The prove “ad absurdum” :
Would you recommend the United States to drop English in some states in favour of Spanish, French or German, just because diversity is good.
As stupid as asking them to abandon the dollar.

Yes, a painful decision must be taken sometimes.
Esperanto is the least painful option of all.
A short pain for a very large relieve.

One shall not forbid people to learn English, Spanish, French and German in addition.
But I bet more people would choose some other minor language if they only knew Esperanto enough to socialize..
Is this not a better way to preserve diversity?

(#246) Esperantists need at least their home language as well.

i speaking 5 languages.
i thinking English can open much possibilities if you want being working in a very nice job.
you having nice sallary that why i speaking English, german, italian, arab and baski… that being very nice.
everyone saying i being a very smart person specily las senoritas!!!

Haj!

( Tarquin Farquhar)

I am factual ! My point is that English is not neutral because it is already the language of some nations. This is a fact. My point is that UK and USA are favored by the use of English. This is also a fact. My point is that using Esperanto, a simple language that anyone can easily learn, is more neutral than English. Still a fact.

In that sense, Esperanto is way more neutral than English and that is what is important (but if you want I can admit that it is not 100% neutral, but I thought it was obvious). The lack of neutrality is not caused by the vocabulary, but by the fact that some citizen, because of their birth, are fluent when the others had to make huge effort to speak a poor globish. With Esperanto everyone has to make a small effort (compared to the one needed for English). This is fairness. ( Ŝarl Bodler)

“that has the emotional attractiveness of hexadecimal and offers a lesser cultural attribution than Klingon.”

This is a ridiculous claim. More than a century of use has proven that you can use Esperanto to write poetry and express love. It has as much “emotional attractiveness” as any language. (M.D.)

This refers in particular to the vocabulary, but also applies to the orthography, and to the grammar (which retains many features of the grammars of European languages, although the forms are more regularized). Critics charge that this makes the language Euro-centric. The problem with this is not that it is any harder for non-Europeans than many other languages, but that it detracts from the neutrality which many including Zamenhof recognised as being essential to a world language (see La Espero, fifth stanza).

Although the vocabulary uses the same roots as European source languages, Esperanto's regularised grammatical forms give it some degree of uniqueness. Its shared vocabulary can expedite learning for those who have already studied a European language (even if they can't speak it). Compared to a language with completely unique words, there is no increased difficulty for those who do not speak a European language. Also Esperanto has a large set of affixes, which makes it more similar to Asian languages. (Several Esperanto speakers and linguists also say that this makes the language more flexible and expressive.)

The plural ending - one of the most important grammatical markers - takes its form not from something internationally recognisable (such as the -s of widespread languages like English, French, Spanish and Portuguese), but the -j from one noun declension of Classical Greek.

Proper names come off worst; Edimburgo is just about acceptable, but Mario (yuck) for "Mary" is really not on; and nobody would realistically want to refer to the star Alpha Lyrae as Vego, when it's always been called Vega! Even a name like Asia - recognised the world over and stressed on its first /a/ - has to be mutilated to Azio and stressed on the /i/.

This is a definite proof that Eo is not international.

Word Meaning What it resembles but doesn't mean

fingr-ingo thimble finger ring
fos-ilo spade fossil
for-esto absence forest
ses-ono one sixth season
virgul-ino female virgin female comma (from French "virgule") 

And your point is? Who ever claimed that Esperanto was "internationally recognisable"? (Of course, having a word resembling "finger ring" or "forest" doesn't really reduce international recognisability, because these words were never really internationally recognisable anyway.)
In Esperanto you may create about anything. If it is meaningful or ambiguous depends on your skills. Some people are gifted other aren't.

Very sad indeed. But still we can help.
A translator should always translate to his mother language; so he is bound to miss some subtleties in the source language.
Exception to that rule: one always translates to Esperanto from the mother tongue.

No constructed language could ever do this, unless it was very complicated. Esperanto, in fact, ignores many subtleties of expression found in the natural languages it purports to be able to replace.

[TYE 3] presents a highly questionable argument that, because Esperanto is supposed to sound like Italian, it must be "one of the most beautiful languages on Earth". Any such resemblance, if not imaginary, depends almost entirely on the preference of both languages for words ending in vowels - a preference shared with Finnish, Swahili, Maori, Japanese and Chinese, to name but five.

Despite all the claims of "natural euphony" or words to that effect, what Zamenhof did with Esperanto displays complete ignorance of any considerations of euphony, by any standards except perhaps his own. A book I found [in a second-hand shop] called "Step By Step in Esperanto" remarks that Esperanto sounds terrible if pronounced badly; surely a naturally euphonious language, if such a thing can exist, would not have this problem?

instead, as the vocabulary in particular bears out, it's a composite of several European languages clumsily mixed together with some of Zamenhof's own fetishes, but with little focus or guiding principles. In parts, such as the ridiculous spelling system, it's radical where it should be conservative; in others, such as the overcomplicated grammar, it rather feebly compromises when it should be bold and radical.

Some of Zamenhof's ideas were good ones to begin with, but one result of his lack of proper linguistic knowledge is that - frustratingly - all of them are compromised or botched in ways which would have been so easy to put right, without exception. It's only fair to award him one or two points for trying, but he should also lose them for making so many silly mistakes in the process. Could you be more precise?

1. Was Zamenhof cross-examined to check his knowledge as linguist? Was he as polyglot?
2. What is the relation between being a linguist and designing an elegant lingua franca? Can you produce some example of successes.
3. What is a elegant lingua franca. Some examples?
4. Where are the supporters making you believe Esperanto is an elegant lingua franca? A few mailing address would be welcome. (I am sure you can answer to this one).
5. Develop some clumsy mixtures
6. What were Zamenhof's own fetishes?
7. What are according to you good guiding principles? Are you speaking of the Ido rule of reversibility (I already replied on that) or do you think of some other?
8. What is a ridiculous spelling system and for whom?
9. What is a conservative spelling system? One avoiding accented letters?
10. Is 16 rules an overcomplicated grammar. Would you be satisfied with 14?
11. Examples of compromises in the grammar?
12. Examples of bold and radical grammar rules?

The interest of linguists, as linguists, in universal language was based on an illusion, which linguists had but no longer have. That was the illusion that Esperanto is a language, and it isn’t. Yeah, Esperanto has a couple of hints that people who know language can use based on their own linguistic knowledge to make a language out of it, but nobody can tell you what the rules of Esperanto are. If they could tell you that, they could tell you what the rules of Spanish are, and that turns out to be an extremely hard problem, a hard problem of the sciences, to find out what’s really in the head of a Spanish speaker that enables them to speak and understand and think the way they do.

The sound system is very poorly thought out - at a guess I'd say that Zamenhof [creator of the language] never thought about it at all. He more or less reproduced the sound system of the Slavic languages spoken in his part of Poland. No consideration at all was given to how hard the sounds, or their groupings, would be for non-Europeans.

This would not have happened if the pronunciation were as easy for the English as claimed."
Few people are likely to perceive any difference between pairs of words such as rejri and reiri, or to be able to pronounce frawlo, mejlo and so on according to Zamenhof's instructions without using diphthongs. Even worse, try pronouncing io and ijo differently!

Hungarian, Finnish, Turkish and Arabic are among the many languages which don't allow any more than one consonant at the start of a syllable, while Hawaiian and Swahili - to name but two - don't permit any consonants at the end of a syllable. Even Italian, which is more lenient, is still very careful about which consonant clusters it allows.Esperanto, by contrast, allows up to three consonants at the beginnings of syllables and up to two at the ends, with no sign of any restrictions; think of the problems which monoglot speakers of one of the above languages would have with the five-consonant clusters in words like randstreki or transskribi. So much for not placing any particular linguistic group at a disadvantage.

I had a colleague speaking Dutch complaining about these unpronounceable words.
I said, "you did not see the worst one, try to pronounce ngstschr".
"Are you crazy, nobody can pronounce 7 consonants in any language!"
The word is angstschreeuw. It's Dutch and means literally a cry of fright Dutch pronounce it without any difficulty, but think they can't.

Zamenhof used Romance languages to create Esperanto in an attempt to increase Latin influence, I guess?

Esperanto is objectively better than English. I could give a vast number of examples, but I will just give three, to show what I mean.

1. Esperanto has six participles; English has two. So for the English “falling, fallen”, Esperanto has “falanta, falinta, falonta, falata, falita, falota”, i.e. is has past, present and future participles, active and passive. So “falota arbo” is “a tree which is about to be felled” – English has 8 words, or 27 letters, to Esperanto’s 2 words, or 10 letters. In this instance English needs almost 3 times as many letters to express the same thing as Esperanto, i.e. English is objectively less efficient. That is not an opinion, it is a verifiable fact.
2. All Esperanto parts of speech can be changed to other parts of speech in a regular manner. For instance, in English the adjective corresponding to “uncle” is “avuncular”, to “mother” is “maternal”; to “brother” is “fraternal”, to “fox” is “vulpine”, to “dog” is “canine”. You need to learn each adjective separately from the noun, and many nouns have no corresponding adjective, such as aunt, cousin, hare, turkey. In Esperanto, all nouns, without exception, can be turned into adjectives simply by changing the final -o, with which all nouns end, to -a. So for the above English words, Esperanto has onklo/onkla; patrino/patrina; frato/frata; vulpo/vulpa; hundo/hunda. The Esperanto adjectives corresponding to the English nouns “aunt, cousin, hare, turkey”, WHICH DO NOT EXIST IN English, are “onklino/onklina, kuzo/kuza, leporo/lepora, meleagro/meleagra”.
3. Every adjective, without exception, in Esperanto can be converted into a verb, regularly, e.g. “pura”, clean, gives “purigi”, to clean. In English you can say “to cool” but not “to cold”; “to warm” but not “to hot”. You have exceptions in English, and you have to learn each exception separately, slowly, laboriously, by trial and error. In Esperanto you simply learn the rule, which is universally applicable. So there are many verbs which do not exist in English, “malvarmigi” and “varmigi” cover the two verbs mentioned above, which do not exist in English.

So Esperanto can express, and far more concisely, everything that English can express. But English has gaps, as is apparent from the above examples. Therefore English cannot express everything which Esperanto can.

Seán Ó Riain

There can be quite of bit of prejudice against Esperanto by the average man in the street. But since his views are not informed, they don't count for much.

I am sure it is also poor in modern terms.

The problem of legal terms is not a problem of vocabulary: it is a problem of different conceptions of the judiciary systems.
It's a head-ache to translate those terms unambiguously from one language to another. Ask professional translators.
The only way to put order in that is to use Esperanto and define a completely new terminology.

Modern terms are better handled in Esperanto than in other languages.
English has a particularly crazy system to build new terms.

If a word is known internationally, it is simply written according to the Esperanto spelling.
You can probably understand words like "sputniko, cunamo, bonsajo, blogo, spamo...".
But stealing is not the only way to build new terms. Using already existing roots and adding a suffix or prefix is the preferred method.

(#120) Esperanto words are more changed in orthography and endings from their etymological cognates than in some auxiliary languages.

This makes some Esperanto words less recognisable without study to those already familiar with the cognates. For example, English quarter, Italian quarto, Interlingua quarto, Esperanto kvarono; also English/French pollution, Interlingua pollution, Esperanto poluado (Esperanto polucio is a false friend meaning "involuntary ejaculation"). This criticism, which seemingly stands opposed to the previous criticism, principally suggests that a language which lacks the neutrality to be a world language, such as Esperanto or Interlingua, could nonetheless function as a regional common language; for this purpose, recognisable cognates offer an advantage. (Recognisable cognates would also be an advantage in a world language, provided that they were drawn from a much larger spread of source languages.)

Ultimately, one may argue that these changes keep Esperanto internally consistent. To illustrate, compare English: two, twenty, one half, one twentieth, four, forty, a quarter, one fortieth with Esperanto: du, dudek, duono, dudekono, kvar, kvardek, kvarono, kvardekono. As a counter-argument to charges that Esperanto has Euro-centric tendencies, one might state that these changes show that Esperanto is not intentionally Euro-centric.

Any ignorant in Russian language knows already from the start 2000 words (coming from absorption into Russian from other European countries).

1. The unstated rule is: the reader (or listener) must have enough information to understand the new created word. He can get that from the context. Writing clearly is more difficult than speaking to somebody in front of you.
2. The second unstated rule is: what is necessary must be present, what is not necessary should be left out. Note that in Ido it's not allowed to leave out what is not necessary. In Esperanto, the context dictates what is necessary or not.

Kronizilo would be a synonym of krono?
Was Esperanto influenced by natural languages that are using a crown and to crown that way.

The main problem of Ido is that it exists only as reaction against the supposed weaknesses of Esperanto. That's at least how the Ido file-leaders are propagandising since a century. They try to find adepts between Esperantists, claiming that Ido is an improved version of Esperanto. They hardly address the rest of the world. No wonder their successes are very limited.
The Idists expected a massive desertion from the Esperantists, but it did not happen, how ever hard they tried. All their arguments were simply ignored, what caused even more frustration against Esperanto.

How are you supposed to know that "having finished the work, he went home" is fininte la laboron, li hejmeniris ? This is another example of cleverness taking precedence over clarity; something like li finis la laboron kaj iris al hejmo is much clearer.

"When in an Esperanto book one stumbles on the word ĝistiamajn and succeeds in making out that it means 'previous' and is a compound of the following elements: ĝis [...] 'until', tiam then, -a adjective ending, -j plural, -n accusative, then one cannot help asking oneself in the face of so much ingenuity if it is really necessary for an auxiliary language to be made up of such utterly arbitrary elements.Why would anyone want to say that for "previous", anyway, when the word-building system allows something like antaŭajn? It isn't pretty, but at least it's reasonably transparent.

English has no trouble combining the ideas of freeze and dry to make "freeze-dried coffee". The French cannot combine congeler and sécher, so for freeze-drying they used a Greek word lyophilisation.

English (and Esperanto) can combine ‘self’ and ‘teach’ to get “self-taught”, but French cannot; again they go to Greek for autodidact. So the francophones introduce the completely unnecessary word aŭtodidakto into Esperanto.

So for just about every idea, which can be expressed using basic Esperanto – and thus understood by someone who has learned the basic roots – there is an extra Greek or Latinate neo-Esperanto word. These words are no trouble for educated francophones, as they have generally be taken straight from French, but they are a nightmare for everyone else.

In Ubuntu, you can type those characters and a lot more, without needing to install anything special. So Z. had a pretty good foresight because he foresaw Ubuntu :-)

No matter what alphabet one devises, it will necessarily contain characters that aren't found in someone else's writing system. The roman alphabet was (and still is) the most widely known, and the few accents added by Esperanto don't pose any serious difficulties. Even in the bygone age of typewriters, one could use simple digraphs for the accented letters (ĉ -> ch, ĝ -> gh, etc.) Besides, we're very fond of our dear "hats". They're beautiful and they give a unique character to the orthography.

This is a serious handicap; however difficult English may be to spell, it can at least be typed on any unaltered Roman alphabet keyboard.⁽¹⁾
Laying aside the fact that these extra letters are just plain ugly⁽²⁾, you have to wonder. Surely Zamenhof would have wanted his language to be as easy to disseminate as possible; but how many printing presses and keyboards actually feature these letters normally, or did so in 1887? (Come to that, when did you last see an Esperanto typewriter?) And from a beginner's point of view, these "new letters which look like the old ones" can only be confusing, slowing people down while reading and writing.⁽³⁾

If you can't see the extra characters here: ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ ŭ, you probably haven't.
With this in mind, the best I can do to represent these extra letters here in HTML, without spattering bitmaps everywhere as some people recommend, is to use Zamenhof's concession that the accents can be represented by a following H, with a plain U in place of the accented U.

While Unicode is widely accepted in countries using the roman alphabet, in English speaking regions, users don't care, and force the rest of the world to use digraphs instead of accented letters.

I had once the next conversation with a American colleague of mine. He asked me:

• Why are you, in French, using all these accented letters. Is it useful? Can't you read a text without accents?
• • Yes. I could. There could be a few ambiguities here and there, but people would be able to guess the correct meaning, most of the time.
• So, why don't you get rid of all these ugly accents?
• • OK, I'll do it and try to convince others as soon as you remove all your accents in English.
• Easy, we don't have any.
• • Really? What do I see above this i or this j?
• This is not an accent! This is a dot!
• • Well then, this is not an accent this is a straight line! (é, ù, è, à)
    
• It's part of the letter anyway. It can't be removed. It would look ugly wıthout thıs dot. Nobody would accept that.
• • Come on. you removed ıt above I and J already, and nobody complaıned. So you want us to remove accents that are meanıngful, and you don't want to get rıd of thıs useless dot?
• It comes from ages ago when people wrote by hand. It was necessary to ease the readıng. Now ıt's too late to remove ıt.
• • You are absolutely rıght!

dis'haki, mis'harmonio, bush'harmoniko, rugh'hautulo, flug'haveno, ghis'hejma, gas'hejti, dis'heligi, kurac'herbo, spic'herbo, ternig'herbo, garagh'herso, etc...

For example: La xoristoy ne catis la xornitcon de la predjeyo kaj detsidis kanti hodiaw en la djardeno. An Esperantist would probably understand this without explanation.

Anybody remembers that story of the guy who bought a second hand typing machine, that was just unable to type the letter q. But he didn't care as he wrote in Esperanto. Later, other letters failed one by one, but he replaced them with others. It is surprising how many letters can fail and you are still able to understand the story as it goes on.

Who needs an accusative case? Who needs plural marking? Who needs adjectival agreement in number and case?
Who really needs verbal tenses? If the time when something happens is important, why not use adverbs?

If a natural language uses a simple grammatical structure to express something, then this structure has proven to be valid and is a possible candidate for the constructed language.
For instance: English proves there is no need to have the verb vary according to the person (I can, you can, he can (or may, must etc... There is no such example in French, Polish, etc...).
If the English language was allowed to evolve naturally, the added -s in "he walks" would surely disappear. Many foreigners forget it. The past tense is almost always regular in English. Esperanto generalises this to all tenses without exception. What the majority of the languages is doing is not relevant for the grammatical structures, it is relevant only for the new words.

Zamenhof's failed to consider this important subject properly.

These provide plenty of opportunities for ambiguity or unnecessarily fine subtleties of meaning, and there are aspects of the grammar which Esperantists disagree over.

and thus one of the most heavily .criticised It seems to exist principally as a concession to classical grammar (and thus to boost Zamenhof's credibility with nineteenth century academics?), but the language would be far better off without it. It's supposed to free up word order which according to apologists is important for poetry and literature; but surely basic ease of communication, without having to worry about the finer points of grammar, matters more? Distinct accusative inflections have disappeared from many languages in the past; even in German, only masculine singular nouns have them; and neither the Chinese poets nor Shakespeare had any problems without them

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.

since the verb is intransitive (i.e. taking no object) in the first sentence and transitive in the second. Instead, since the root brul- is intransitive, you have to make it transitive by adding the suffix -ig-, regardless of the fact that the very presence of an object - marked, moreover, with the mandatory accusative suffix - is doing just the same: mi bruligas la domon.

What is the difference between blanki, blankiĝi and blankigi?

even though it isn't followed consistently; for example, numbers and prepositions have no consistent endings, while pronouns take the same termination as verb infinitives, and the correlatives have a system all of their own.

To name but a few, Finnish, Swahili, Japanese, Chinese, and most Slavic languages all do without.

("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".

The cardinal numerals do not change their forms for the different cases. They are: unu (1), du (2), tri (3), kvar (4), kvin (5), ses (6), sep (7), ok (8), naŭ (9), dek (10), cent (100), mil (1000). The tens and hundreds are formed by simple junction of the numerals, e. g. 533 = kvin'cent tri'dek tri. Ordinals are formed by adding the adjectival a to the cardinals, e. g. unu'a, „first”; du'a, „second”, etc. Multiplicatives (as „threefold”, „fourfold”, etc.) add obl, e. g. tri'obl'a, „threefold”. Fractionals add on, as du'on'o, „a half”; kvar'on'o, „a quarter”. Collective numerals add op, as kvar'op'e, „four together”. Distributive prefix po, e. g., po kvin, „five apiece”. Adverbials take e, e. g., unu'e, „firstly”, etc.

This is because Zamenhof never made up his mind whether or not numbers should be nouns, adjectives or something else.

miliono = 10⁶
miliardo= 10⁹
duiliono=biliono=10¹²
triiliono=triliono=10¹⁸
kvariliono=kvadriliono=10²⁴
kviniliono=kintiliono=10³⁰
etc...until dekiliono=10⁶⁰. If you need more use a notation like dek al sepdek du=10⁷².
dumilliardo= 10¹⁵
trimilliardo=10²¹
kvarmiliardo=10²⁷
etc... until dekmiliardo=10⁶³

This is far too many.

The verb does not change its form for numbers or persons, e. g. mi far'as, „I do”; la patr'o far'as, „the father does”; ili far'as, „they do”.
Forms of the Verb:

The present tense ends in as, e. g. mi far'as, „I do”.
The past tense ends in is, e. g. li far'is, „he did”.
The future tense ends in os, e. g. ili far'os, „they will do”.
The subjunctive mood ends in us, e. g. ŝi far'us, „she may do”.
The imperative mood ends in u, e. g. ni far'u, „let us do”.
The infinitive mood ends in i, e. g. fari, „to do”.

There are two forms of the participle in the international language, the changeable or adjectival, and the unchangeable or adverbial.

The present participle active ends in ant, e. g. far'ant'a, „he who is doing”; far'ant'e, „doing”.
The past participle active ends in int, e. g. far'int'a, „he who has done”; far'int'e, „having done”.
The future participle active ends in ont, e. g. far'ont'a, „he who will do”; far'ont'e, „about to do”.
The present participle passive ends in at, e. g. far'at'e, „being done”.
The past participle passive ends in it, e. g. far'it'a, „that which has been done”; far'it'e, „having been done”.
The future participle passive ends in ot, e. g. far'ot'a, „that which will be done”; far'ot'e, „about to be done”.

All forms of the passive are rendered by the respective forms of the verb est (to be) and the participle passive of the required verb; the preposition used is de, „by”. E. g. ŝi est'as am'at'a de ĉiu'j, „she is loved by every one”.

estas ŝtelata: is being stolen
estas ŝtelita: has been stolen and still is.
estis ŝtelata : was stolen at that moment I am speaking about
estis ŝtelita : had been stolen at that time (but may be it was found back now)

Adverbs are formed by adding e to the root. The degrees of comparison are the same as in adjectives, e. g., mi'a frat'o kant'as pli bon'e ol mi, „my brother sings better than I”.

The underlying assumption - inspired by Esperanto's predecessor Volapük, as Zamenhof openly admitted - is that every word ever spoken in every language can be converted to an unambiguous and unique combination of "roots", which express basic meanings, and "affixes", which modify them; and by keeping the number of roots to a minimum, the memory-load is kept down, and a careful choice of affixes compensates by adding expressive power to the system. However, neither Zamenhof nor Volapük's creator appreciated that meaning - like grammar - is in practice fluid and largely unpredictable, and unsuitable for shoehorning into such a rigid system. The English words "silly" and "villain", for example, once respectively meant "happy" and "farm worker".

What you say after looks largely correct. However read about elasticity of words.
Note also that words were allowed to evolve unpredictably when there was no writing, no dictionaries, no grammar books, no education.

Tell me when -s will disappear in he speaks (as it already did in he can, he must, he may)?

It's debatable whether it is possible to choose a universally useful set of affixes on purely objective grounds; Zamenhof's affixes are idiosyncratic and all questionable in one way or another. Moreover, a logical system of derivational suffixing is only really possible with verbs; most of Esperanto's affixes, by contrast, are principally nominal.

Everything is debatable and questionable or could be more or less logical. The fact that Esperanto works, proves that this type of discussion is sterile.

This kind of reasoning is comparable to the following:

Boats made of wood can float, because wood floats.
Boats made of zinc cannot float, because zinc sinks.

A communication on the auxlang mailing list to a learner a while ago gave it away: "Don't learn the roots, learn the words". The proof of the pudding, as they say...

such as a male gulino (by analogy with virbovo "bull"), or a hermaphrodite gulo. It's actually formed from the adjective virga "unspoiled" - which is also used of, for example, unploughed fields.

"Astronomy" is thus astronomio - a form reasonably obvious to everybody - and not the rather ugly Esperanto compound stelscienco,

(#180) Esperantists all agree that Esperanto should be made the official language of the European Union . . . Don't they?

In September 1920, the first debate on Esperanto took place at the League of Nations General Assembly. Members voted on whether Esperanto should be introduced worldwide as a school subject.
Ten delegates (among which India, China, South-Africa) accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. He considered Esperanto as a threat for the "de facto" international language then: French.
The text is of course in French:

La Société Des Nations, constatant les difficultés linguistiques qui entravent les rapports directs entre les peuples, et la nécessité urgente d’écarter cette barrière afin d’aider à une bonne compréhension entre les nations; suit avec intérêt les essais d’enseignement officiel de la langue internationale espéranto menés dans les écoles publiques de quelques états, membres de la Société Des Nations; espère que cet enseignement se généralisera dans le monde entier, afin que les enfants de tous pays sachent dès maintenant au moins deux langues, leur langue maternelle et un moyen facile de communication internationale; demande au Secrétaire Général de préparer, pour la prochaine assemblée, un rapport détaillé sur les résultats atteints en ce domaine.

Why were those "detailed reports" never published?

Le traité de Versailles mettait fin à la Première Guerre mondiale. Il fut signé, le 28 juin 1919, dans la galerie des Glaces du château de Versailles, entre l’Allemagne, d’une part, et les Alliés, d’autre part.

Le traité de Versailles a été rédigé en français et en anglais, les deux versions faisant également autorité. Le texte portait le titre Conditions de paix - Conditions of Peace. C’était la première fois depuis le traité de Rastatt de 1714 (qui mettait fin à la guerre de Succession d’Espagne) que le français n’était plus la seule langue officielle de la diplomatie occidentale.

Il semble que le représentant de la France, Georges Clémenceau, ait accepté que l’anglais devienne à côté du français la langue de travail de la Conférence de paix. En raison de sa connaissance de l’anglais — il avait épousé une Américaine et séjourné aux États-Unis — Clémenceau avait accédé à la demande de David Lloyd George (Grande-Bretagne) et Thomas Woodrow Wilson (États-Unis); le représentant de l'Italie, Vittorio Orlando, a dû être d'accord. Paradoxalement, le Sénat des États-Unis refusera en novembre 1919 de ratifier le traité de Versailles, mais le statut de la langue anglaise venait néanmoins d'être reconnu au plan international. Par la suite, l’anglais supplantera progressivement le français dans la plupart des documents juridiques internationaux.

pac/o (peace), paci cannot mean to pacify because if it did, out of it you could derive paco that would mean pacification. The same word paco cannot mean both peace and pacification.
You can build a word like pacigi (pacify) and from it derive pacigo (pacification)
Paciĝi (to make one's peace with) paciĝo (reconciliation )
paci (be at peace)
paciganto (peace keeper)

krono (crown),
kroni cannot mean to crown because if it did the derive word krono would mean coronation, and kronilo would be a crown

Well in Esperanto kroni (tr) means to crown and kronado would mean coronation. kronilo would be a tool use to put a crown on a head, some sort of crown holder, a crown-horn (shoe-horn for crowns).
Compare with tamburo (drum), tamburi (to drum), tamburilo (drum-stick).

So here Esperanto is apparently influenced by natural languages that are using a crown and to crown that way.
Why didn't Esperanto adopt the same solution as Ido, and use kronizi instead of kroni and kronizo instead of kronado. Kronizilo would be a synonym of krono?

1. Tool: to act by means of a -o

martelo (hammer)	marteli (to hammer)
broso (brush)	brosi (to brush)
butono (button)	butoni (to button)
forko (fork)	forki (to fork)
peniko (paint- brush)	peniki (to pint)
sabro (saber)	sabri
vipo (whip)	vipi (to whip)
ankro (anchor)	ankri (to anchor)
skurĝo (strap)	skurĝi (to strap)
tamburo (drum)	tamburi
trumpeto (trumpet)	trumpeti
najlo (nail)	najli
kateno (chain)	kateni
ŝraŭbo (screw)	ŝraŭbi

2. to use as an instrument

auto (car)	auti (to drive)
boato (boat)	boati (to navigate)
velo (sail)	veli (to sail)
bombo (bomb)	bombi (to bomb)

3. Part of the body: to act by means of a -o

fingro (finger)	fingri (to use the finger)
korno (horn)	korni (to butt)
dento (tooth)	denti (to bite)
genuo (knee)	genui (to kneel)
frunto (forehead)	frunti (to front)
ŝultro (shoulder)	ŝultri (to shrug one's shoulders)
dorso (back)	dorsi (to back)
beko (beak)	beki (to peck)

4. Another object than a tool or a part of the body: to provide sth/sb with -o

krono (crown)	kroni (to crown)
formo (form)	formi (to form)
diplomo (diploma)	diplomi (to grant a diploma)
plumo (feather)	plumi (to feather) - note French would be surprised here
vundo (wound)	vundi (to wound)
gudro (tar)	gudri (to tar)
truo (hole)	trui (to hole)
adreso (address)	adresi (to address)
doto (dowry)	doti (to dower)
elektro (electricity)	elektri (to electrify)
fero (iron)	feri (to shoe)
oro (gold)	ori (to guild)
stano (tin)	stani (to put a coat of tin)
makulo (stain)	makuli (to stain)
nomo (name)	nomi (to name)
salo (salt)	sali (to salt)
selo (saddle)	seli (to saddle)
vesto (clothe)	vesti (to clothe)
veneno (poison)	veneni (to poison)
digo (dam)	digi (to build a dam)
ŝtono (stone)	ŝtoni (to provide sth with stones)
fundamento (foundation)	fundamenti (to build foundations)
kupro (copper)	kupri (to cove with copper)

5. to act with the characteristic of a -o

bordo (board)	bordi (to board)
pendolo (pendulum)	pendoli (to swing)
flamo (flame)	flami (to flame)
nesto (nest)	nesti (to make a nest)
limo (limit)	limi (to limit)
ordo (arrangement)	ordi (to arrange)
regulo (rule)	reguli (to regulate)
publiko (public)	publiki (to publish)
hejmo (home)	hejmi ( to feel at home)
nombro (number)	nombri (to number)
kongreso (congress)	kongresi (congregate)
silabo (syllable)	silabi (to spell)
poemo (poem)	poemi (to tell a poem)
vorto (word)	vorti (to word)
fabriko (fabric)	fabriki (to produce)
mieno (mien)	mieni (to look ...)
formo (form)	formi (to form)

6. to produce

sumo (sum)	sumi (to sum)
floro (flower)	flori (to flower)
ĝermo (germ)	ĝermi (germinate)
signo (sign)	signi (to sign)
fumo (smoke)	fumi (to smoke)
ondo (wave)	ondi (to produce waves)
radio (radio)	radii (to radio)
sango (blood)	sangi (to bleed)
streko (streak)	streki (to strike out)

7. to act, to be like a -o

estro (master)	estri (to master)
trolo (troll)	troli (act like a troll)
abituriento (bachelor)	abiturienti (act like a bachelor)
mentoro (mentor)	mentori (to counsel)
tajloro (tailor)	tajlori (to make cloths)
gasto (guest)	gasti (to board)
reĝo (king)	reĝi (to reign)
patro (father)	patri (to act like a father)
mastro (master)	mastri (to master)
amiko (friend)	amiki (to act like a friend)
Cezaro (Caesar)	cezari (to act like Caesar)
dando (dandy)	dandi (to behave like a dandy)
ĉefo (boss)	ĉefi (to boss)
majstro (maestro)	majstri (to conduct)
tirano (tyrant)	tirani (to tyrannise)
frazisto (speech-writer)	frazisti (to write a speech)
saĝo (wise)	saĝi (to act wisely)
profeto (prophet)	profeti (to prophesy)
ĉarlatano (charlatan)	ĉarlatani (to tell stories)
aktoro (actor)	aktori (to act)
ĝeneralo (general)	ĝenerali (to give orders like a general)

1. adjectives of action: -a -> - i: to act -ly.

aktiva (active)	aktivi (to work, to act actively)
atenta (attentive)	atenti (to listen, to act attentively)
avida (greedy)	avidi (to desire, to act greedily)
ĉarma (charming)	ĉarmi (to act charmingly)
diligenta (toilsome)	diligenti (to work, to act diligently)
fervora ( zealous, passionate)	fervori ( to work zealously) + to act ...
kulpa ( guilty)	kulpi ( to act wrongly)
lama ( lame )	lami ( to walk lame)
laŭta ( loud )	laŭti ( to ring, to speak loudly)
prudenta ( prudent )	prudenti ( to think prudently)
rapida ( fast)	rapidi ( to walk rapidly)
sagaca ( sagacious)	sagaci ( to act sagaciously)
saĝa ( wise)	saĝi ( to think wisely)
solena ( solemn)	soleni ( to celebrate solemnly)
sovaĝa ( wild)	sovaĝi ( to act wildly)
sprita ( witty)	spriti ( to speak wittily)
utila ( useful)	utili ( to work usefully)

2. adjectives describing a behavior: -a -> -i: to behave -ly
   

afabla ( affable)	afabli ( to behave affably)
avara ( greedy)	avari (to behave ...)
bona ( good)	boni ( ... )
malbona ( bad)	malboni ( ... )
brava ( brave)	bravi ( ... )
ĉasta ( chaste)	ĉasti ( ... )
malĉasta ( debauched)	malĉasti ( ... )
fidela ( faithful)	fideli ( ... )
fiera ( proud)	fieri ( ... )
firma ( steady)	firmi ( ... )
freneza ( mad)	frenezi ( ... )
frivola ( frivolous)	frivoli ( ... )
furioza ( furious)	furiozi ( ... )
ĝentila ( polite, civil)	ĝentili ( ... )
humila ( humble)	humili ( ... )
indiferenta ( indifferent)	indiferenti ( ... )
intima ( intimate)	intimi ( ... )
kruda ( raw)	krudi ( ... )
kruela ( cruel)	krueli ( ... )
modesta ( modest)	modesti ( ... )
muta ( mute)	muti ( ... )
naiva ( naïve)	naivi ( ... )
nobla ( noble)	nobli ( ... )
obstina ( obstinate)	obstini ( ... )
pacienca ( patient)	pacieni ( ... )
rigida ( rigid)	rigidi ( ... )
ruza ( sly)	ruzi ( ... )
serioza ( serious)	seriozi ( ... )
severa ( severe)	severi ( ... )
sincera ( sincere)	sinceri ( ... )
surda ( deaf)	surdi ( ... )
vanta ( conceited)	vanti ( ... )

3. adjectives of state: -a -> -i: to be in a state of -ness

ebria ( drunk)	ebrii ( to be drunk)
feliĉa ( happy)	feliĉi ( to be...)
gaja ( merry)	gaji ( ... )
kvieta ( quiet)	kvieti ( ... )
laca ( tired)	laci ( ... )
preta ( ready)	preti ( ... )
sana ( healthy)	sani ( ... )
malsana ( sick)	malsani ( ... )
sata ( sated)	sati ( ... )
malsata ( hungry, starving)	malsati ( ... )
sobra ( abstemious)	sobri ( ... )

4. adjectives that cannot be classified in the three previous groups: -a -> -i : to be -a

egala ( equal)	egali ( to equal)
fremda ( foreign)	fremdi ( to be ...)
grava ( important)	gravi ( ... )
ĝusta (right, exact)	ĝiusti ( ... )
identa ( identical)	identi ( ... )
justa ( fair, just, righteous)	justi ( ... )
kara ( dear)	kari ( ... )
konforma ( conformable)	konformi ( to conform)
nepra ( ineluctable, without fail)	nepri ( ... )
plena ( full)	pleni ( ... )
prava ( right)	pravi ( to be right )
malprava ( incorrect)	malpravi ( ... )
propra ( proper, one's own)	propri ( ... )
sama ( identical, same)	sami ( ... )
simila ( similar)	simili ( ... )
sufiĉa ( sufficient)	sufiĉi ( to suffice)
valida ( valid)	validi ( to be valid)
vana ( vain, futile, useless)	vani ( ... )

5. adjectives that can be used as auxiliary verbs

ebla ( possible)	ebli (to be possible to..)
ema ( inclined to)	emi (to have a tendency to)
inda ( worthy of)	indi ( ... )
inklina ( inclined to)	inklini ( ... )
kapabla ( capable of)	kapabli ( ... )
necesa ( necessary)	necesi ( ... )
kuraĝa ( courageous)	kuraĝi ( to dare )
sufiĉa ( sufficient)	sufiĉi ( to suffice )

6. adjectives showing a quality, that can't be normally be expressed with a verb. To use with parsimony.

agrabla ( agreeable)	Kiom agrablis tiu gusto al mia lango!
akra ( sharp)
alta ( high)
antikva ( ancient, antique)
bela ( beautiful)
densa ( dens)
dika ( big)
dolĉa ( sweet)
ebena ( plane, even)
glata ( smooth, glossy)
granda ( tall)	Post eliro al la flankstrato antaŭ ni grandegis la katedralo.
juna ( jung)
kripla ( crippled)
pala ( pale)
plata ( flat)
varma ( warm)
blanka ( white)
flava ( yellow)
griza ( gray)
nigra ( black)	Rigardu, io nigras en la angulo.
ruĝa ( red)
blua ( blue)	La ĉielo bluas al ili kiel belega promeso

1. preposition+i= to be -a

antaŭ ( before)	antaŭi ( to be before )
apud (beside)	apudi (to be near)
ĉirkaŭ (around)	ĉirkaŭi ( to surround)
kontraŭ (against)	kontraŭi (to oppose)
laŭ (along)	laŭi (to go along)
super (above)	superi (to surpass)
anstataŭ (instead)	anstataŭi (take the place of)
per (by means of)	peri (to act as an agent)

1. interjection+i= to act, to function by means of, (seldom : to be -a)

jes ( yes)	jesi ( to act by yes )
ne (no)	nei (to deny)
audiaŭ (farewell)	audiaŭi
vivu	vivui
bis (one more time!)	bisi
hura	hurai
fi (shame!)	fii (to be a shame)

1. Abstraction with -a quality (-o), a concrete object (-aĵo), a quality (-eco), a person with this quality (-ulo)

bela (beautiful)

belo (the beauty, a beauty, a nice thing)

iri (to go)	iro (going)
konstrui (to build)	konstruo (konstruado=building, konstruaĵo=building)
ami (to love)	amo (love)
pensi (to think)	penso (thought)
kulturi (to cultivate)	kulturo (culture)

antaŭ (before)	antaŭo (antaŭaĵo=the front), autaŭo (antaŭeco= priority)
ĉirkaŭ	ĉirkaŭo (ĉikaŭaĵo=surroundings)
sub	subo (subaĵo)
ekster	ekstero (eksteraĵo)
kun	kuno (kuneco)
sen	seno (seneco)
super	supero (supereco)

mal	malo
eks	ekso (ekseco)
dis	diso (diseco)
for	foro (foreco)
kial	kialo
kiel	kielo

The converted adjective ŝtona could mean any of "stony", "made of stone", "made of stones", "like stone", or possibly something else again. .

ŝtona means :

1. consisting of stone(s) : ŝtona statuo, ŝtona muro,
2. figuratively: comparable to a stone: ŝtona koro, ŝtona dormo (sleep as a stone)

• by adding a suffix: ŝtona, ŝtonaĵo, ŝtonego, ŝtoneto, ŝtonigi, ŝtoniĝi, ŝtonumi, ŝtoni

Yes they are.
You can say mi havas nenion or mi havas neniom (In most context, the difference between the two is insignificant).

inflections:

ia ian iaj iajn
ial
iam
ie, ien
iel
ies
io ion ioj iojn
iom
iu iun iuj iujn

+ ĉ- t- k- nen-

Malantaŭ is a better word for "after" if you follow the principles of vocabulary-building like you're supposed to.

Indeed, the official word for "cannon" (paf-il-ego "big shooting tool") is often rejected in favor of the more precise kanono.

for example the adverbial ending is now -el (ki-el "how?"), while -e (ki-e "where?") signifies place.

Refer to the principal of reversibility of Ido handled elsewhere.
The rule works in one direction. To make an adverb from a root, add -e.

That's three different, non-interchangeable, ways of expressing the same grammatical relation - precisely the sort of difficulty Esperanto is supposed to have eliminated!

Three ways, my goodness! Isn't that redundant?
kies = de kiu
mia = de mi
Would you prefer kmiesjn librojn vi legis (which of my books did you read) instead of the usual: kiujn librojn de mi (kiujn librojn miajn) vi legis?
Unfortunately k- has not been promoted to a root yet.
Perhaps in another hundred years, it will. I explained how you could speed up the process elsewhere.
For the moment : ies, ties, kies, nenies, ĉies are all roots.
Not so for t- k- nen- ĉ-

iu, io are roots.

The verb does not change its form for numbers or persons, e. g. mi far'as, „I do”; la patr'o far'as, „the father does”; ili far'as, „they do”.
Forms of the Verb:

The present tense ends in as, e. g. mi far'as, „I do”.
The past tense ends in is, e. g. li far'is, „he did”.
The future tense ends in os, e. g. ili far'os, „they will do”.
The subjunctive mood ends in us, e. g. ŝi far'us, „she may do”.
The imperative mood ends in u, e. g. ni far'u, „let us do”.
The infinitive mood ends in i, e. g. fari, „to do”.

There are two forms of the participle in the international language, the changeable or adjectival, and the unchangeable or adverbial.

The present participle active ends in ant, e. g. far'ant'a, „he who is doing”; far'ant'e, „doing”.
The past participle active ends in int, e. g. far'int'a, „he who has done”; far'int'e, „having done”.
The future participle active ends in ont, e. g. far'ont'a, „he who will do”; far'ont'e, „about to do”.
The present participle passive ends in at, e. g. far'at'e, „being done”.
The past participle passive ends in it, e. g. far'it'a, „that which has been done”; far'it'e, „having been done”.
The future participle passive ends in ot, e. g. far'ot'a, „that which will be done”; far'ot'e, „about to be done”.

All forms of the passive are rendered by the respective forms of the verb est (to be) and the participle passive of the required verb; the preposition used is de, „by”. E. g. ŝi est'as am'at'a de ĉiu'j, „she is loved by every one”.

Most prepositions can actually govern the accusative case, too; see rule 13. Esperanto is burdened with far too many prepositions, many of which also do the work of conjunctions and adverbs, and I've never seen a definitive list of them all.

All prepositions govern the nominative case.

Every word is to be read exactly as written, there are no silent letters.

Difino de gramatiko: scienco pri la lingvaj reguloj. Tuto de la reguloj, kiujn oni devas observi por ĝuste paroli aŭ skribi difinitan lingvon.

A conference speaker said : "In the languages I know most use the double negation to say the affirmative. But, like in mathematics, you will never find one that uses double affirmation to say the negative." Then somebody in the audience said: "yeah yeah !? "

(for example, ar-o is "collection"). All the books I've read quite clearly make the distinction, however, and I feel obliged to defer to them. Yet the distinction is actually meaningless in practice, and Zamenhof's hybrid system would thus be better replaced by a single set of properly recognisable roots.

-ar/ suffix EX : arbaro (wood), arbarego( forest), ŝtuparo (stairs), ŝafaro (= grego), luparo (=herdo), abelaro (=esameno), adresaro (address-book)
aro: collection; aro da arboj.
It is recommended to translate stem+suffix by one word (if it exists in the target language)
so arbaro is a wood, but aro da arboj is a collection of trees.

arigi: to collect,
subaro: subset
superaro: superset

• mis- "wrongly".
• fi- and -aĉ-, two derogatory affixes; but there are no affixes with the opposite meanings. Why?
• eks- "former, ex-".
• ek- "sudden or momentary"; this is easily confused with eks- when applied to roots which begin with s-. This has a place as a verbal aspect marker, but as such it would be better as a suffix.
• -ing- "holder for one object", which has no relation to teni "to hold".
• re- reproduces the ambiguity of its Latin source, which means both "again" and "back", creating words with two different, sometimes almost opposite, meanings: re-skribi "to reply" or "to rewrite"; re-iri "to return" or "go again".

• mis/a : wrong
• aĉ/a : disagreeable
  
• fi/a : deserving no esteem
• eks/a : former, ex
• ek/i (ntr) : to start some action.
• ing/o : holder
• re/e : again

aĉ/ suf

what's wrong with la vetero estas varma? And why (same page) should the idiomatic estas varme al mi be more usual than mi estas varma for "I am warm"?

estas varme!
varmas!
varma la vetero!

varmas al mi
varmas min

mi varmas
mi estas varma
estas varma mi
estas mi varma!

If so, this implies that certain combinations of grammatical category and case are equivalent, which is sure to screw up some other parts of the grammar somewhere.

This is what happens when you combine ungrammatical idioms with mechanistic principles.

word meaning source
boato  boat English (gains two syllables)
birdo  bird English (sounds more like "beard")
soifo  thirst French (sounds completely different)
ohmo  ohm German surname (the H has never been pronounced)
komenci  to begin French (gains a /t/)

None. This phrase is incorrect. There may only be one complement with -n. Je may be omitted when there is no ambiguity. The rule to follow is: use the means to be understood.

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?

There is nothing wrong with al en la domo.

You seem to have problems with the -n grammatical ending.
You'd understand rule 13 better if it's rephrased as:

al en word, al sur word, al any-preposition word

can be replaced by

en wordn, sur wordn, any-prep wordn.

This way of speaking is very common.

Yet the important word "now", which should thus be the awkward ĉi tiam, is actually the entirely arbitrary nun.

La ĉi supra rimarko estas erara (the here above remark is erroneous).
Ĉi rimarko estas erara (This remark is erroneous).
La ĉi remarko estas erara.
La remarko-ĉi estas erara.
Tiu ĉi remarko estas erara.
So you have plenty of solutions if you don't like : ĉi tiu remarko estas erara, it doesn't change much to the meaning.

nun (German)
nun (Greek)
nunc (Latin)
now (English)
nu (Dutch, Swedish)
nú (Islandish)
nunai (Lituanian)
nu (Vollapük)

in sentences like Ĉu mi diris al la homo kiu parolis (Did I tell the man, who spoke or Did I tell the man: who spoke?)"

Yes it would, as it probably would in English as well.

It's easy to remove the ambiguity in Esperanto:

Ĉu al la homo mi diris : kiu parolis ? Al la homo ĉu mi diris: kiu parolis?
Al la homo kiu parolis, ĉu mi diris?

Many of the words are both conjunctions and prepositions, but some are one or the other, a few are bona fide adverbs and should thus end in e, and a couple are neither.

almenaŭ (at least, no less than)
ambaŭ (both)
ankaŭ (also)
ankoraŭ (still, moreover, furthermore)
apenaŭ (hardly)
preskaŭ (almost)
anstataŭ (instead of)
ĉirkaŭ (around)
laŭ (along)
kvazaŭ (as if)
malgraŭ (despite)

aŭ (or)

antaŭ (before)
baldaŭ (soon)
morgaŭ (tomorrow)
hieraŭ (yesterday)
hodiaŭ (today)

adiaŭ (good-bye)

naŭ (nine)

Eble mankas kelkaj kiel graŭ?...

The augmentative -eg- and its opposite -et- reduce many possible degrees of size to just three. Thus the triplet vento, vent-eto, vent-ego "wind, breeze, gale" replaces the entire Beaufort Scale, and arb-eto (from arbo "tree") turns out to be "small tree, shrub", requiring the desparate-looking contrivance arb-et-ajho for "bush". Note also the typically idiomatic derivation rid-eti "to smile" from ridi "to laugh", which is clearly a lame attempt to keep the number of roots down; it would better mean "to chuckle".

eta, derived from the suffix, seems to be a synonym for malgranda "small" - but if it isn't, as many sources imply, why is the distinction necessary? Is mal-eta the same as ega? Can you use -et-eg-a and -eg-et-a to make finer distinctions of size? Together with the vagaries of derivation and conversion, these suffixes provide further scope for ambiguities: if rugh-eta (derived from an adjective) is reasonably "reddish", then shtoneta (derived from a noun) is equally reasonably both "a bit like a stone" (shton-eta) and "like a pebble" (shtonet-a).

And, for a language with supposedly high ideals and no grammatical genders, there's no excuse for the excusively feminine suffix -in-, which requires "woman" to be vir-ino "a female man" (not, strangely, the more neutral homino "female human"); the hypothetical converse, fem-ula for "man", is equally absurd.