From: evans-ron@CS.YALE.EDU (Ronald Hale-Evans)
Subject: Rick Harrison on Esperanto
Organization: (S)ingularity Magazine
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:47:19 GMT

This message was recently posted to Conlang, the Constructed Languages Mailing
List. To show Rick there are no hard feelings and there is no International
Esperantist Conspiracy bent on censoring his thoughts, I'm posting it to
soc.culture.esperanto, followed in the next message by my reply. Hope this
provokes some discussion.

                             Ron Hale-Evans

******************************************************************************

From: hrick%genesis.uucp@gte.com (Rick Harrison)
To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu
Message-id: <920814.AA11759@genesis.nred.ma.us>
Organization: Genesis Public Access Minix
X-Mailer: W-MAIL 3.63/MINIX (11/05/90)
 
I urge those of you who are interested in planned languages
to save a copy of this essay on your personal computers, as
it seems quite likely that (ahem!) certain factions will try to
suppress it and you are not likely to see it on the net again.
 
 
The Major Defects of Esperanto
==============================
 
0. Introduction
 
This essay is meant to be an antidote to the exaggerations and 
distortions often published by supporters of the artificial language 
Esperanto.  In spite of statements to the contrary in Esperantist 
propaganda, Esperanto _does_ have irregularities and irrational 
features.  Members of close-knit groups such as police departments, 
religious cults, and the Esperanto movement often suffer from an 
extreme reluctance to admit that anything is wrong.  Esperanto
contains some serious design flaws which I will enumerate below.
The Esperanto movement should admit these flaws in a manly and
scientific fashion, and perhaps try to correct them, but many
Esperantists would rather sweep these defects under the rug and 
pretend that they have created a perfect or near-perfect language.
 
Some Esperantists say that anyone who criticizes Esperanto just 
doesn't know enough about it.  They try to deflect valid criticism 
by saying that outsiders often criticise such-and-such a feature of 
the language, but those who know Esperanto think the same feature 
is just wonderful.  That is not true.  In fact, there are many 
Esperantists who want to reform Esperanto in various ways, and
there are many planned language enthusiasts who have turned to other
constructed languages.  Before the more fanatical elements of 
Esperantujo attempt to divert attention from my valid criticisms
by accusing me of negativism or non-objectivity, I want to make it 
clear that I am not writing from a position of ignorance or malice.  
Mi povas legi, skribi kaj paroli Esperante, kaj mi subtenas 
la ideon de internacia helpa lingvo.  Tamen, la movado devas ne 
mensogi al siaj anoj au^ al eksteruloj.  Esperantismo devas ne esti 
kvazau^-religio.  In this light, let's examine some specific aspects 
of Esperanto.
 
 
1. The Strange Letters in the Esperanto Alphabet
 
The alphabet of Esperanto contains six accented letters (c^ g^ h^
j^ s^ u^) which are unique; they are not found in other languages.
The use of unique characters in the alphabet of a proposed 
international auxiliary language is a mistake.  The presence of
these letters makes it much more difficult for people to produce
newsletters, magazines, and books in Esperanto.  In many Esperanto
newsletters, you can see where the editor has had to go over his
"master copy" with an ink pen and draw in the accent marks by hand,
which looks sloppy.  In some computer-produced magazines, you can
see that the accented characters are different from the rest of
the letters in the alphabet; they had to be custom-programmed and
they often have jagged edges or are a different size from the 
surrounding letters.  
 
When Esperanto text is transmitted over computer bulletin boards, 
these accented letters cannot be sent directly, and there is no 
agreement on how to represent them.  Some Esperantists represent "c^"
as "cx", others type "^c" or "c^" while others use "ch" or "c<."
 
The Swiss linguist Frederick Bodmer wrote this about Esperanto: "Its 
aspect is unfamiliar on the printed page.  This is due to its five 
accented consonants, a novelty open to more than one criticism, more 
particularly that such symbols impede recognition of international 
roots and slow down the speed of writing."
 
L. L. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, eventually realized that
having these bizarre letters in his alphabet was a mistake, and he
suggested removing them.  This proposal and other ideas for
reform were published in the journal _Esperantisto_ in 1894.  
Unfortunately Zamenhof's reform ideas did not win a clear majority
in the referendum vote and he didn't feel that he had the authority
to impose his ideas by proclamation.  The unique circumflexed
consonants and u-breve of the Esperanto alphabet have remained as
Zamenhof described them: "a grave obstacle to the diffusion of the 
language."
 
 
2. c = ts but x =/= ks
 
One of the many inconsistent features of Esperanto is that the 
letter "c" represents a sound which could be spelled by two other 
letters, "ts," and is therefore superfluous; but the letter "x," 
which _could_ represent the sound of "ks," is not used at all.  Words 
like _eksplodi, eksporti, eksperimento_ would be much more 
recognizable if they were spelled _explodi, exporti, experimento_ 
(as the corresponding words are spelled in many European languages);
when spelled with eks- at the beginning, these words look like they 
contain the Esperanto prefix eks- ("former"), when in fact this
prefix is not present.  On the other hand, having "c" represent 
the sound of "ts" makes words like _cemento_ and _certa_ less 
recognizable when they are spoken aloud, while at the same time 
giving a strange aspect to the written forms of words like _caro_ 
(tsar/czar) and _ceceo_ (tse-tse fly).
 
 
3. Problems with Pronunciation
 
* similar phonemes
 
Some critics have argued that Esperanto contains too many sound-units
(phonemes) that are very similar to each other; for example, the
sounds of c^, j^ and s^ are not very different from one another.  It
has been suggested that it might be difficult to determine which
phoneme had been uttered in a noisy environment, such as a crowded
room or perhaps a radio channel on which the control tower was 
talking to an airplane pilot.  It has also been argued that common 
words with similar meanings have excessively similar sounds, for 
example the personal pronouns _mi,_ _ni_ and _oni,_ _li_ and _ili,_ 
_si,_ _s^i_ and _g^i._  The numbers _ses_ (6) and _sep_ (7) are quite
similar. These similarities could lead to expensive or dangerous 
mistakes.
 
* selection of phonemes
 
Linguists who have studied the idea of designing an international
language _scientifically,_ without being adherents of Esperanto or
any other existing proposal, usually recommend a selection of
phonemes quite different from Esperanto's array of sounds.  Esperanto
contains many sounds which do not exist in a large number of the
world's major languages, and this makes it more difficult for
people to learn to speak Esperanto.  The sounds of the Esperanto
consonants h, h^, j^, and v are simply non-existent in many languages
of the world, and this is also true of the diphthongs ej and uj.
 
* consonant clusters
 
Consonant clusters are another item which makes it hard for some
people to pronounce Esperanto correctly.  The word "scii" 
(transcribed ['stsi.i] in the International Phonetic Alphabet) and 
other offenders such as eksceso [ek'stseso], ekskremento, psiko, 
pterido, and strikta are difficult for some speakers of consonant-
rich languages like English, and even more difficult for people such 
as the Japanese and Fijians who are accustomed to consonant-vowel-
consonant-vowel alternation.  
 
To make matters worse, the sound of "qu-" [kw] is always changed 
to [kv] in Esperanto; the Esperanto word "kvalito" corresponds to 
English "quality" ['kw)liti], Portuguese "qualidade" [kwali'dad3i], 
Italian "qualita`" [kwali'ta], and Spanish "cualidad" [kwali'dad].  
This results in a whole series of Esperanto kv- words which are more 
difficult to pronounce _and_ more difficult to recognize than they 
should be.
 
 
4. Flaws in the Vocabulary
 
* variability
 
There are two main ways for new words to be created in Esperanto:
by creating new compounds of already-existing roots and affixes,
or by borrowing a word from another language.  As a result,
there are often two or more words in common usage for a single
concept; this makes the Esperanto vocabulary more variable than
the vocabularies of most other planned languages and many natural
languages.  For example, "cannon" can be expressed as _pafilego_
(shooting-instrument-augmentative) or _kanono;_ "skeleton" can be
_ostaro_ (bone-set) or _skeleto;_ and "false" can be _malvera_
(opposite of true) or _falsa._
 
Sometimes Esperantists are unable to reach a consensus as to what
the word for a given concept should be.  The notion of "a computer"
is being expressed by _komputero,_ _komputilo,_ _komputoro,_
_komputatoro_ and other variants.  This is another way in which
Esperanto suffers from more irregularity than most planned and
natural languages.
 
The Esperanto word for "edit" is _redakti,_ and you might expect the
word for "editor" to be _redaktisto,_ logically formed with the
suffix -ist- which means "one who is identified as a practitioner
of..."  But no, there is a _separate_ root word for "editor":
_redaktoro._  The words for "astronomy" and "astronomer," 
"philosophy" and "philosopher," and other professions display similar
unnecessary irregularities.
 
* cultural bias without recognizability
 
The vast majority of Esperanto root-words in common usage, with the 
exception of the _a_priori_ "correlatives," have been taken from 
English, the "Romance" languages, Germanic languages, and Slavic 
languages.  Esperanto thus suffers from a Euro-centric cultural 
bias in its vocabulary, contrary to its adherents' claims of 
political and cultural neutrality; but the use of words from several 
different languages makes it much harder to correctly guess the 
meaning of a word upon first encounter, and greatly increases the 
number of "false friends" (pseudo-cognates).  For example, _litero_ 
does not mean "a litre," but rather "a letter of the alphabet."  The 
meaning of _birdo_ ("bird") might be guessed by English-speakers; but
_avo,_ which others might expect to mean "bird" (as in Latin _avis,_ 
English _avian,_ etc.) instead means "grandfather."  Thus Esperanto,
like Interlingua, Occidental, and some other planned languages, 
exhibits a degree of cultural bias, but Esperanto -- unlike the 
others -- does not provide the concurrent advantage of a readily 
recognizable vocabulary.  (Admittedly, no particular method of 
vocabulary creation will satisfy all planned language enthusiasts; 
those who prefer a Romance-language vocabulary will never settle for 
an _a_priori_ or many-sourced vocabulary, and vice versa.)
 
* embedded sexism
 
Many critics have pointed out that Esperanto seems to be inherently 
sexist because words referring to persons are assumed to refer to 
males, and words for the female counterparts are formed by adding the
suffix -in-.  For example, _frato_ = "brother" and _fratino_ =
"sister," _patro_ = "father" and _patrino_ = "mother."
 
* other criticisms
 
Most Esperanto adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -e to another 
root-word, e.g. bona = good, bone = well.  There are exceptions to
this, however: the so-called "primary" adverbs which end in -au^,
such as _apenau^_ ("scarcely") and _morgau^_ ("tomorrow").  Having
two different adverb-indicating suffixes is clearly an irregularity.
 
The derivational affixes have been criticized for various reasons.
An uninitiated person would naturally assume that the prefix "mal-"
means "bad," as it does in many international words; in fact it means
"the opposite of."  The prefixes ek- ("sudden") and eks- ("former")
are too similar to one another; consider the possible confusion that
could occur when ek- is attached to a word which begins with "s."
(This sort of thing simply does not occur in planned languages which
have properly designed morphologies.)  The diminutive suffix -et- 
and the augmentative suffix -eg- are also too similar to each other.
 
 
5. The Muddled Morphology
 
The term "morphology" refers to the ways in which root-words are
created and combined with other root-words and various affixes.
In constructed languages which have carefully-designed morphologies, 
there is no chance of a word appearing to contain an affix 
when it does not in fact contain that affix; there is no chance 
of a single root-word looking and sounding exactly like a combination 
of two other root-words; and there are no irregularities in the 
derivations (e.g. conversion of a noun to an adjective or verb and
vice versa).  Unfortunately, Esperanto does _not_ have a well-planned 
morphology, and all of the possible irregularities mentioned above
are abundant.

* is that an affix or part of a root?
 
Here are a few examples of Esperanto root-words which give the false
impression that they contain affixes.  The suffix -an- refers to a 
member of a group or an inhabitant of a place; _fonto_ means 
"spring" or "source" but _fontano_ means "fountain" rather than
"spring-dweller" as you might expect.  _Kabo_ means "a cape" or 
"headlands" but _kabano_ means "hut, shack" rather than the
expected "cape-resident."     
 
An _-ero_ is a particle of something, e.g. _pan-o_ = "bread" and 
_pan-er-o_ = "crumb."  The root _suk-o_ meaning "juice, sap" plus 
_-er-_ produces _suk-er-o_ ("a drop of sap") which sounds identical 
to _suker-o_ (meaning "sugar").  
 
The suffix _-ul-_ refers to a person characterized by the quality 
mentioned, e.g. _junulo_ = "a young man."  However, _okulo_ usually 
means "eye," not "a person characterized by eight" as one could 
expect; _regi_ means "to govern" but _regulo_ means "a rule or 
regulation;"  _formo_ = "form, shape" but _formulo_ = "formula."
 
* unpredictable derivations
 
In English (and many other "natural" languages), most verbs can 
either be transitive or intransitive, depending on context.  For 
example, "boil" is intransitive in "The water will boil" but 
transitive in "I will boil some eggs."  Unfortunately, Esperanto
verbs are not so flexible.  Some root-words are inherently
transitive, and to use them intransitively you must insert the
affix -ig^-, for example _s^ang^i_ and _s^ang^ig^i._  Other
root-words are inherently instransitive, and must add -ig- to
operate transitively, e.g. _droni_ and _dronigi._  Still other
root-words are inherently nouns or adjectives, and to serve as
verbs must add either -ig^i or -igi.  Every student of Esperanto
must (consciously or unconsciously) memorize the status of each
root-word; this increases the burden of learning compared to
many natural languages (or compared to constructed languages
with properly-designed morphologies).
 
If you scrutinize the vocabulary even more closely, you will
find more variable or unpredictable features.  _Marteli_ means
"to hammer" and _s^oveli_ means "to shovel."  The word for
"a shovel" is _s^ovelilo,_ containing the affix -il- which
denotes "an implement or tool," but the word for "a hammer" is
_martelo_ (no need for the -il- affix).  A gerund-like word
referring to an act of shovelling is _s^ovelo,_ but to get a
similar meaning for "hammering" you must add the affix -ad-
and create _martelado._  This irregularity arises from the
status of the root-words involved; _martel/o_ is substantive,
referring to a tool, whereas _s^ovel/i_ is verbal, referring
to the action of shovelling.
 
* compounds isomorphic to non-compounds
 
We have already seen that some Esperanto roots give the false
impression that they contain affixes.  Another flaw in the
design of the language is that some single root-words look
exactly like possible compound words.  Admittedly, this does
not cause confusion as often as it might, because context clues
normally make it possible for fluent Esperantists to figure out
which meaning is intended.  However, this sort of booby-trap
can be a problem for new students, and for computers.  (The
often alluded-to Dutch computer project which used Esperanto as
a pivot language in automated translation used a _modified_
version of Esperanto and relied heavily on help from human
operators.)
 
Thus the word _cirkulero_ can be a compound meaning "a spoon used 
for wax" (_ciro_ + _kulero_) or can be a single-root noun meaning
"a circular (an advertisement)."  _Astronomo_ appears to be a
compound meaning "the name of a heavenly body" (_astro_ + _nomo_) 
when in fact it is a single-root noun meaning "an astronomer."  
Only context can tell us whether _komparo_ is a compound meaning 
"comma-pair" or a single word meaning "comparison."
 
 
6. Glitches in the Grammar
 
The grammar of Esperanto has some features which are undesirable
in an international auxiliary language.  The most frequently
criticized feature is the inflectional ending -n, which must be added
to every noun that serves as the direct object of a verb and to every
adjective which describes such a noun.  Apart from personal pronouns,
flexion to indicate the direct object does not occur in most of the
world's languages; it is absent from the various dialects of Chinese
(nearly 1 billion speakers), English (440 million speakers), Spanish,
French, Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian, and many others.  The
accusative inflection of nouns and the requirement that adjectives
change to reflect the number and case of the nouns which they modify
both increase the difficulty of learning Esperanto for most people
and provide little benefit in return.  
 
Even worse, Esperanto sometimes uses the accusative _idiomatically,_
e.g. _la duan fojon,_ _tagon post tago._  Numerals and certain
idiomatic expressions are exempted from the supposedly necessary
accustaive ending, e.g. _multe da sablo,_ _kiom da homoj._
Amazingly, some intransitive verbs can take an object having the
accusative ending -n, for example _li venis Londonon_ and _mi
alvenos hejmon._  Even _adverbs_ can take the accusative ending -n,
but only those adverbs which end with -e (not those ending in -au^).
 
Of the major world languages that use a definite article (e.g.
English "the" and Spanish "el, la"), most also have an indefinite
article (e.g. English "a" and Spanish "una").  Esperanto has only
a definite article, _la,_ and non-use of the article imparts an
indefinite sense to a noun.  It could be argued that a language
truly suitable for use a world language should have no articles
at all, or should make their use optional.  The definite article is 
used frequently but conveys little information; why should a language
carry such "excess baggage"?  Articles are absent from major world 
languages such as Chinese and Russian; correct use of the article is
is notoriously difficult for students of a language to learn when
their native tongue does not use articles.  (I have plenty of
correspondence from Chinese and Russian Esperantists illustrating
how difficult this is for them.)  English-language Esperanto
textbooks gloss over this problem by saying that Esperanto uses
the definite article in much the same way as English, when in fact
the rules that govern the use of the article in both languages,
if spelled out in detail, would be quite complicated and full of 
exceptions.
 
The grammar of Esperanto contains many other flaws of lesser
importance.  For example, the use of the adverb in phrases such as 
_danci estas facile_ (literally 'to dance is easily') is idiomatic 
and illogical.  These little irrationalities are too numerous to
list in a short essay such as this.
 
 
7. Semantics
 
It is generally agreed that, in a planned language, each root-word
should have only one form (i.e. there should be no allomorphy) and
only one meaning (i.e. there should be no polysemy).  Fortunately
Esperanto has avoided allomorphy (although this irrational feature
does exist in some poorly-designed constructed languages, e.g.
Loglan and Lojban).  Unfortunately, Esperanto does have its share
of polysemy, for example: _artikolo_ can mean "a grammatical article
(such as the English word 'the')" or "a newspaper article;" _antau^_
can mean "in front of" or "prior to;" _de_ can mean "owned by" or
"done by" or "from." 
 
 
8. The Milieu
 
* a language used as a religion
 
The behavior of the more fervent Esperantists may be sufficient 
argument for prefering any language other than Esperanto as the 
global auxiliary tongue.
 
Zamenhof eventually acknowledged some of the defects mentioned
above, such as the unique letters in the alphabet, the illogical
assumption that nouns referring to persons are inherently male,
and the accusative inflection -- and he advocated fixing these
flaws.  Before the 1887 publication of Esperanto, Zamenhof had 
drafted a slightly different constructed language, and after 
experimenting with it for a while, he removed some of its obvious 
flaws and created Esperanto.  Therefore it should not be surprising 
that he would also want to remove any flaws that became evident after
people had experimented with Esperanto, and he did want to do so.
Unfortuantely, Esperanto attracted (and continues to attract) a
number of people who treat it more as a religion than as a means of
communication.  These _fervoruloj_ view the initial version of
Esperanto as a sacred scripture, and anyone who questions its
sanctity is regarded as a heretic.  They have invented various
rationalizations to explain away the fact that Zamenhof himself
was one such heretic, just as modern religionists invent various
excuses to disregard scientific evidence of evolution.
 
This fanatical inability to acknowledge and correct the glaring
defects of Esperanto makes fervent Esperantists look like crackpots
in the eyes of linguists, academicians, political and business 
leaders, and ordinary people.  There is a danger that this well-
deserved stigma will also taint those who are _seriously_ trying to 
design and promote planned languages which are _actually_ suitable 
for use as world inter-languages.  For this reason, I believe that
all serious interlinguists should begin challenging and discrediting
the unwarranted claims of fervent Esperantists, rather than letting
the fanatics run wild and perhaps create a climate in which no
planned language can be taken seriously.
 
* questionable claims
 
Unfortuantely, Esperantists are in the habit of publishing
recruitment brochures and other propaganda full of false or unproved
claims.  The oft-heard claim that Esperanto only has 15 rules of 
grammar can easily be seen for the lie that it is simply by
glancing at a book such as _Step by Step in Esperanto,_ which
elucidates hundreds of grammatical guidelines.  The claim that
Esperanto is totally regular and consistent has been de-bunked
by this essay and others (e.g. Yushmanov's _Hundert Grundfehler
des Esperanto) [100 Defects of Esperanto]).  
 
The claim that almost all words are readily recognizable is 
questionable in light of the _a_priori_ correlatives and words
which have been severely distorted during adoption; for examples
of the latter, consider Esperanto's _bubalo, lernejo, limo,
nacio_ compared to Ido's _bufalo, skolo, limito, naciono,_ or
compare Esperanto's _g^emelo, buroo, kurbo_ to Interglossa's _gemini,
bureau, curvo._  Despite claims to the contrary, Esperanto offers
neither the recognizability of a well-designed _a_posteriori_
language nor the grammatical regularity of a well-designed
_a_priori_ language.
 
The claim that there are 2 million or more Esperanto speakers in
the world is also highly questionable.  It is unlikely that there
are many fluent Esperantists in the world who are not members of
some Esperanto club, but the number of organized Esperantists
(members of the Universala Esperanto-Asocio and affiliated groups)
is only about 110,000.  Even this figure is suspect, as organizations
involved in crusades and "lost causes" have a tendency to exaggerate
their membership numbers for public consumption.
 
The argument that one should support Esperanto rather than another
planned language simply because Esperanto has more followers is
specious.  At one time, slavery had more supporters than the
anti-slavery movement, and it may have seemed that nothing could
be done about it.  But a handful of brave people started the ball
rolling, and slavery has now been abolished in most civilized
nations.  Likewise, a handful of compulsive truth-tellers could
make it clear to Esperantists that they must either correct the
glaring defects in their language or get out of the way and yield
the floor to serious interlinguists.  The evolutionary situation is 
clear: Esperanto must either CHANGE OR BECOME EXTINCT.
 
 
*********************************************************************
 
For more information:
 
A newsletter devoted to the reform of Esperanto is: 
_Nova Provo_
Bajonetstraat 78
NL-3014 ZL Rotterdam
Netherlands
 
A newsletter devoted to all aspects of constructed languages is:
_Journal of Planned Languages_
Box 54-7014
Orlando FL 32854
USA
 
This article is in the public domain and may be reproduced freely.
 
* fin *





-- 
I don't want to die!  Existence is one of my strong points!
Ronald Hale-Evans... evans-ron@cs.yale.edu, evans@brandeis.bitnet
                     tinfoil@world.std.com, GEnie: R.HALE-EVANS
Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto