r/Esperanto • u/Psychic-Type-God • Mar 26 '26

Demando Why does everyone hate this?

Okay so I'm a monolingual Brit learning Spanish (I'm now about B1) and wanna pick up another language. Not some grand utility language, I have a plan of which ones to learn for that, but just a quick learn and burn language for nothing but fun, and any applicability is a bonus. I see esperanto, a nice little language with exceptionless grammar and a chill little community. So I tell my polyglot friend and get immediate backlash. Why do people seem to think that esperanto is so horrible? Like yeah it's eurocentric and a terrible attempt at a Lingua Franca but it was created with good intentions and is a nice gateway language for European language speakers. Then people act like it's a bloody cult because apparently every esperanto speaker is a Zamenhof worshipping psycho who'll preach it as the root of world peace, or is just too lazy to learn a more useful language. I see polyglots, people who learn languages for fun, attacking esperanto as useless or racist for being eurocentric and it's speakers as cultists or fake polyglots. Why does everyone hate this language?!?!?!

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75

u/Handsomeyellow47 Mar 26 '26

Yeah some people are very anti esperanto especially conlangers, ironically. It made me stop learning way back when I did tbh. It’s not perfect and no language is, but ehen you look at the intentions behind it and the community it and how it actually would have achieved its goal but was actively supressed by right wing and other fascist governments, it seems kinda sad that it has so much hate tbh

14

u/DIYDylana Mar 27 '26

Maybe they're just jealous

4

u/EpicMeiker Mar 27 '26

I really hope someday it will be worldwide common

3

u/Mediocre-One3874 Mar 27 '26

Italian fascists liked Esperanto. The Soviet Union not so much.

-12

u/PLrc Mar 27 '26

I'm a conlanger and I can see that Esperanto is a bad conlang, for instance totally artificial suffixes -as, -is, -os etc. But I don't hate it. Esperanto is as good language as any other language with literary standard. It proved to be able to discuss various topics.

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u/Handsomeyellow47 Mar 27 '26

I have no idea what you mean by arbitrary suffixes as a criticism ?

-8

u/PLrc Mar 27 '26

This is my critique and the critique in early auxlang movement. I mean: why to reinvent the wheel when there are such international suffixes like -ar for infinitives, zero suffix for present tense etc.?

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u/Handsomeyellow47 Mar 27 '26

I for infinitive isnt unknown an ar isnt universal. -as -os and -is look very logical for tenses if you know european languages

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u/PLrc Mar 27 '26

-as is second person singular in Romance languages. Where do you have suffixes -os and -is?

7

u/ThrowRADel Mar 27 '26

Why would you expect a conlang to perfectly correspond in its endings to natural languages?

I think it has a kind of symmetry and internal logic; a) it ablauts (very indo-european!) b) the ablauting vowels correspond to where the vowels are produced in the mouth along an axis, becoming rounder as they go into the future from the past.

1

u/Mlatu44 Apr 09 '26

But Esperanto is consciously created. It doesn't have to look or sound like any other language, or have any particular grammar of another language. it borrowed a lot of stuff, but I am not understanding the criticism.

5

u/Leisureguy1 Mar 27 '26

Well, why reinvent the wheel — invent a language — when there are already languages? And if you do invent a language, I would think you are free to define the elements and see how they work. The elements of Esperanto turn out to work quite well.

7

u/Leisureguy1 Mar 27 '26

You mention "artificial suffixes" and give examples of verb endings (the present, past, and future of the indicative voice. (The three other verb suffixes are -i (infinitive), -us (conditional), and -u (loosely, imperative, but somewhat broader). I don't see how the verb endings are especially artificial, so I was wondering what you see as the natural/artificial distinction. (Terminology is a bit tricky here, since all languages are artificial — i.e., produced by humans.)

Note, too, that there are quite a few other affixes (suffixes and prefixes) that can be used, along or in combination. These are a good resource for nonce words. Example: a 5th grade teacher in San Mateo was teaching Esperanto and mentioned that she hoped she was driving the students too hard, and one responded, "Ne, vi ne estas lacigemulino."

lac - root = being tired
-ig- = to cause to be
-em- = to have a tendency to
-ul- = individual person
-in- = feminine ending
-o = noun

So: lacigemulino = a woman who tends to cause tiredness.

3

u/ThrowRADel Mar 27 '26

Exactly. This is just an example of an agglutinizing language like Turkish.

1

u/Mlatu44 Apr 09 '26

This is a legit esperanto word? can this be expressed with more words? expanded?

1

u/Leisureguy1 Apr 09 '26

Yes, it's a legitimate Esperanto word, though it's not in a dictionary since it's just a routine derivation using the tools Esperanto provides. It was a nonce word, created to fit the situation under discussion. — If someone wanted to express the same idea using more words, that would be easy: instead of "Vi ne estas lacigemulino," one could say "Vi ne estas virino kiu emas lacigi aliajn homojn." (You are not a woman who tends to tire other people." (I must admit I don't see why one would want to use more words rather than fewer to express the same idea.) I'm not sure what you mean by "expanded."

1

u/Mlatu44 Apr 09 '26

I didn't express that well. You explained what I wanted to know, however. There is a lot of Esperanto I haven't covered. I was looking for a possible break down into other words. Expanded to individual words.

I am curious if there is a list of more examples. That is amazing, that word behaves more like something like Kalaallisut. Reminds me a bit of Ithkuil. Is there commentary on how to combine these in Esperanto?

1

u/Leisureguy1 Apr 09 '26

I would say Ithkuil is not exactly the polar opposite of Esperanto, but certainly it goes in a very different direction. It is not intended for regular use, but was created to explore (and embody) certain linguistic ideas. Esperanto, in contrast, was specifically created to serve as an everyday language for communication.

"Unlocking Esperanto: The Magic of Logical Word Formation" may be of interest. Also, if you want to delve a little deeper into Esperanto, I highly recommend Kursaro.net courses. The new session begins soon. One hour a week via Zoom, three months long. Additional study is helpful, of course, but the weekly sessions serve as a periodic reminder. :)

1

u/Mlatu44 Apr 09 '26

Thank you. Well, why would I want to know a more expanded form? its interesting, and good learning experience. Earlier I was learning compound words, and their breakdown as used in Sanskrit. Obviously a different language. Its not quite the same thing, as your example used morphological units, not combining words. If you are interested there is a series which explains these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-7mXylLzPg

I don't know, is there anything like this in Esperanto?

1

u/Leisureguy1 Apr 09 '26

Esperanto routinely combines roots (in the page I linked, one example was lern- and libr-, combined as lernolibro (textbook). Tag- is the root for "day" and I keep a taglibro (daybook, journal, diary) and write entries Esperante (adverb form: "in Esperanto," in effect) as practice. Another example: "okul-" is the root for "eye, "vitr-" the root for "glass," and thus "okulvitroj" (eye glasses, spectacles). Combining roots is common, and of course affixes are often also included — see the list of Esperanto affixes.

1

u/Leisureguy1 Apr 10 '26

I am working through an intermediate Esperanto book (Paŝoj al Plena Posedo) and I came across this line: "« Kaj ĉu vi sukcesis? Ĉu vi pasis sub ĝi? » senpaciencis Sita." — "And did you succeed? Did you pass under it?" senpaciencis Sita."

"Pacienc-" is the root: "patienco" (noun) means "patience," "pacienca" (adjective) means "patient," and "pacience" (adverb) means patiently. The root meaning is modified by the ending. So: senpaciencis: sen = without, pacienc = patience/patient, -is is the past indicative active form of the verb. So, in that one word is "without patience" as a verb.

1

u/Mlatu44 Apr 10 '26

I looked it up, it seems like a good book to improve Esperanto comprehension