Conlang Critic Episode Thirteen: Esperanto

it's here!
/ discord
/ hbmmaster
/ toki-ito-li-pona

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

New thread put up November 25, 2020. That last one's already too long for me to be bothered with it anymore.

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Heh So: why does the fact that Toki Pona is extremely simple mean that it's not a language? You've previously referred to it as a 'game' which I think is derogating it unnecessarily, and which I think is motivated by your desire to advocate for Esperanto instead. But to be honest you don't have to do that kind of thing to argue convincingly that Esperanto would function better as a global auxiliary language than Toki Pona. Toki Pona wasn't created for that purpose, and I'm not sure how Sonia Lang feels about those who want to treat it as if it could be an auxiliary language. But Toki Pona is still a language, because such a thing doesn't have to have a literary tradition, or capacity to communicate all sorts of complex (or even non-simple) things. It just has to be a system of representing meaning by physical forms like speech or writing, complete with shared rules including grammar and vocabulary. Wouldn't it be better to say that Esperanto is just a _better_ language for an IAL purpose than Toki Pona, or various other candidates?

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

@@MatthewMcVeagh Say that in toki pona. Translate your other comments made to me into it. Make sure your translation of words is as intelligible as those you used in English. Go on, prove it's a language.

[@HBMmaster]

@@anthonymccarthy4164 if the proof of something being a "real language" and not a language game is being able to losslessly translate something from english into it, that would imply that pig latin is a real language

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

@@HBMmaster FFS, his comment's not poetry, it's not a bunch of aphorisms from the The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. If the schmuck can't say it in tp conveying the same meaning, it's not a real language. "TP" is actually an apt abbreviation for what it is.

[@HBMmaster]

@@anthonymccarthy4164 therefore, if you could translate it into something without losing any information, that would mean that what you translated into IS a real language, right?

[@scarletstarlet773]

i was like "hey, the phonology isn't that bad" and then i remembered i'm Polish

[@groherzogtummapping867]

Źdźbło

[@Jinado1]

Same here, although I'm Russian (and Swedish)

[@groherzogtummapping867]

@afootineachworld Yeah, it means a blade [of grass], and is pronounced /ʑʥ̑bwɔ/

[@devonoknabo2582]

How do you read that

[@groherzogtummapping867]

@@devonoknabo2582 Well ʑʥ̑bwɔ

[@jayamber4448]

"Esperanto sucks, literally everything about it is awful, I hate it and everyone involved in its creation. Overall, second best interlang so far."

[@anonb4632]

Esperanto has managed to achieve what few of the other conlangs have - a sizeable user community on multiple continents, varied cultural output including decent original literature, and intergenerational transmission. It may not do these as well as organic languages do, but it is in many ways much more important, and is a sales point. Many people have met and fallen in love through Esperanto and raised kids to speak it. Very few conlangs can boast that. People can talk about various linguistic features all they like, but that's only half the battle. What Esperanto loses in terms of vocabulary and phonology, it makes up for in a social and cultural sense.

[@elemenopi9239]

"It has a little something for everyone"

[@IntergalacticPotato]

"This conlang is absolutely awful. That being said, I rate Esperanto 8/10."

[@gwest3644]

I mean, he can't help it if the bar is so low.

[@festerdam4548]

@@gwest3644 If the motto of the show wasn't «The show that gets facts wrong about your favourite conlang!», I'd be gnawing at Misali's knee. I remember I was pretty mad when he put Esperanto above Lojban. XD

[@noctpapilio3429]

You know the conlang is elite when it's on Google Translate

[@noctpapilio3429]

@Alexnader Hamiltun Very - Didn't even notice I typed that

[@daveprice5911]

You know it's elite when it's on duolingo

[@ingwerschorle_]

You know it's elite when it's in Minecraft

[@pedrogonzalez5590]

it's actually eSpeak

[@cheshire1]

@@ingwerschorle_ Like pirate speak.

[@FaustianBargainBin]

okay i actually love making a country name "container for [demonym]" that's hysterical to me for some reason. someday i want to make a conlang based entirely around having the most compound words that I find funny.

[@x-fun3149]

french containment compound

[@4sythdude549]

soooo, Israel would be Jewish container? uh...

[@Anonymous-df8it]

The only country I think that would be accurate for is North Korea. North Korea is (basically) a container for North Koreans but that's it.

[@FaustianBargainBin]

@@4sythdude549 No, it would be Israeli container. There are Jewish people who aren't Israeli.

[@FaustianBargainBin]

@@Anonymous-df8it this comment is so baffling to me. I literally don't understand what you're trying to say. it feels racist but I don't feel confident enough about ascribing any meaning to it to even call it that.

[@speedos]

Spends whole video bashing every aspect of the language extensively. Puts it on the second best spot.

[@fernandobanda5734]

george aka Angrycheese It's almost like you can find lots of flaws in something and still like it. Alternatively, it's almost like being the best or second best at something doesn't necessarily mean being good.

[@zionj104]

yea lol

[@r.pizzamonkey7379]

Second best _interlang_ Not sure that's a huge compliment

[@john3260]

What's the first?

[@toast2125]

@@john3260 Toki Pona

[@gleann_cuilinn]

fun fact zamenhof actually tried to reform the grammar and orthography multiple times but everyone rejected the reforms each time.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

That's because the language became live. It's not so simply to change a living language with a reform.

[@zoushuu]

What kind of reforms?

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

@@zoushuu The most common reforms in Esperanto are currently to make it gender neutral. There's iĉ-ismo - using "iĉ" to mark the masculine gender Ans there is ri-ismo - using of the gender neutral pronoun "ri" Or ĝi-simo - using pronoun "ĝi" (it) as a gender neutral personal. There were also other. Ido language is an exampe of reformed Esperanto.

[@darthszarych5588]

@@amadeosendiulo2137 I would love to see a gender neutral esperanto!

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

@@darthszarych5588 People sstarted to use gender neutral language some time ago, so I think that this is the future of the language. It really isn't that difficult to do like in Spanish or Polish :-)

[@recurse]

Yes, if you did the whole episode in that voice, I would move on pretty damn quick.

[@c-lao]

Stephen DeGrace you did hear or notice that that "voice (someone tell me his name) was beat boxing

[@AndriLindbergs]

Yes, your content and analysis is interesting, but that noise is unattractive. Just the thought that your other videos may have this same noise, makes me refrain from watching, even though I do like the points you raise and find your content attractive.

[@elaxter]

Stick == firmly up ass

[@Mr.Nichan]

I had to check the bar at the bottom to make sure the video wasn't just glitching in a strangely musical way.

[@hummingbirdspark3998]

I would’ve just turned off the volume and put subtitles on

[@nevertoocoldforicecream3381]

"suno doesn't sound like sun" -Conlang Critic 6:58 OH WAIT IN TOKI PONA 'SUNO' MEANS SUN

[@epicstimulus282]

Lt Hershel / Jan Nasa wow

[@MantrTheSpiceGuy]

Suno sounds like Sunne in german

[@halfasleeptypist8823]

@@MantrTheSpiceGuy 'Sonne' not 'Sunne'.

[@alejrandom6592]

lol

[@zacholl1800]

Yeah but toki pona didn't mean to be like romance languages

[@VanegeEsperanto]

I feel like Zamenhof was very conservative, like he wanted to avoid a fatal flaw that would make the language unusable. I think it is understandable, because back then, there was no Esperanto and only "failed" attempts. Esperanto is a proof that many things can work in a conlang. It is a important stepping stone on thinking what is possible for an International Auxiliary Language.

[@DimitarBerberu]

The great success of Esperanto is a proof that it worked, and these 'issues' are minor stylistic options. Let's note that we are now 'thinking in English' and that's why it looks different. Thinking in Esperanto would be fully natural the way it (mostly) is.

[@DingoSaar]

+Vanege Volapük was a "stepping stone", Esperanto is beyond that. I know only four(!) languages with the potential of becoming a LAI, two of them having but some dozens of speakers: * Idiom Neutral * Esperanto * (original) Interlingua-IL, sive Latine sine flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale * Neo Zonal LAs don't count, there is already one used (Bahasa Indonesia) and two in active development (Meźduslovianski/Interslavonic and a Turk language).

[@efishon7102]

Being a constructed language one has to conform to popular views to stick around, I support it's core values but we need to understand that it came from a different time with different opinions and is still changing to stay relevant with this ever changing thing

[@meseretreta3907]

@@efishon7102 3

[@InnoVintage]

Yeah, it's a prototype that people decided worked well enough...

[@Obviary]

8:26 No! You've got it all wrong! Usono actually makes a lot of sense! United States Of NAmerica O

[@zacharyherfkens7902]

No no no, It's: United States Of North Omerica

[@IntergalacticPotato]

United States Of aNerica wOo

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

United Stupid Ogres iN america woO

[@kydehead7955]

I have never heard of a place called "NAmerica" but I see your point.

[@krystiankowalski7335]

United States of Northamerica (“O” added because it’s a noun)

[@hiramcrespo734]

the logic of the accusative was that people tend to use the word order common in their native language and that the accusative allows people to use any word order they like without creating confusion. For instance, in English adjective comes before noun, but in Romance languages it's the other way around. Esperanto allows both.

[@MrMirville]

Accusative without being really necessary makes sentences clearer. In Arabic it also exists without being really necessary (it is not present in dialects) but it makes expression clearer like putting parentheses.

[@wolfthunder2526]

Esperanto doesn't allow both positions... Check PMEG. Now, Esperanto uses Adj-Noun not Noun-Adj. Yet, in some cases it allows Adj-N-Adj.

[@hiramcrespo734]

@@wolfthunder2526 when I learned esperanto there were only sixteen grammar rules and that wasn’t one of them

[@MrMirville]

@@wolfthunder2526 That's a matter of usage : you can put an adjective before or after the noun, though it tends to follow English and also Slavic usage that prefers putting the adjective before the noun when it is short but after when it is a long participle or has complements. La ruĝa pomo but la pomo ruĝanta sub la vespera suno.

[@MrMirville]

@@wolfthunder2526 La fundamento permesas ambaŭajn ordojn.

[@slamwall9057]

My theory as to why "w" wasn't used is that: In Polish (and German and all other Germanic languages except English) w makes a "v" sound, so Zamenhoff refused to use this character in case it would he misinterpreted as "v". In Polish, the sound is written as ł, but since that was too Polish he went with the weird "u" letter. But he still used "j" even though it could be misinterpreted as the "j" in "jump". This is probably because in Polish "j" makes a "y" sound. That doesn't justify it, as it gives a bias to Polish, but it does explain it.

[@Daan03]

In dutch w is w and v is v

[@thegoodkidboy7726]

@@Daan03 It's funny. In Afrikaans w = v and v = f. How did that happen? EDIT: W

[@Daan03]

The Good Kid Boy I really don’t know, but why would make ‘w=v’ instead of just writing ‘v’

[@marekmichalovic8711]

@@thegoodkidboy7726 It's the same in German

[@theo-pu8eo]

Zamenhof's native language is russian

[@kyle-silver]

Classical Latin has exactly those diphthongs, which is probably where he got them from (which makes sense, looking at how much else he took from the Romance languages)

[@ashtarbalynestjar8000]

Spanish also has exactly those six diphthongs: "aire", "reina", "boina", "muy", "causa", "deuda".

[@HBMmaster]

Spanish ui is /wi/, not /uj/

[@ashtarbalynestjar8000]

Conlang Critic Usually it is ("ruinas", etc.), but "muy" is a special case. It's possibly the only common instance of /uj/ in the language, with other exceptions being some words borrowed from American Indian languages like "cuy", the exclamation "huy", and a few rare words like "suido". "Cuidar" and "fluido" also used to have /uj/ until about a century ago, when /wi/ took hold. That said, some people do pronounce it as /mwi/, in accordance to the usual rules of Spanish orthography.

[@Kleo3392]

Spanish "ui" is definitely [wi] in all cases. To take it for [uj] is simply either a mishearing or a mispronunciation on the speaker's part.

[@Kleo3392]

Latin actually doesn't have [uj] it's pronounced [wi] and [wɪ] as in huius and huic, respectively.

[@12SPASTIC12]

"Hindi doesn't have t͡ʃ." It most definitely does. Here's our letter for it: च. I don't think there's a single dialect of Hindi that lacks this sound. EDIT: So does Urdu, چ. Not sure where you got this misconception from.

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

He covered it this mistake in another video, but hindustani still doesn't have a distinction between /v/ and /w/.

[@12SPASTIC12]

@@yeetyeet-jb6nc Thanks for letting me know. You're certainly right about the /v/ /w/ thing. It was one of the hardest things for me to learn when I left India

[@alexhornsey8129]

I think he meant /ts/

[@LilyTengoku]

@@alexhornsey8129 yeah that is true. In Marathi, /tʃ/ and /ts/ are represented by the same character and are pronounced one or the other pretty unpredictability. In Hindi and Urdu, there is only tʃ, so he's right there.

[@leobitencourt4719]

He also said Portuguese doesn't have it either, and excuse me if I'm getting confused, but I'm pretty sure we make that sound...

[@Mr.KokoPudgeFudge]

3:52 "Now, I usually don't *_C O C K_* about diphthongs," - Jan Misali, 2017

[@qwertyuiop.lkjhgfdsa]

hehehehe pp

[@InnoVintage]

I guess that if Esperanto is equally hard to learn for *everyone* (that speaks a European language), it doesn't bias anyone!

[@connermckay4012]

It's... most popular in China? Yeah it's not the most conservative inventory in the world, but the only *hard* combination to pronounce I've ever encountered is "scsii", which yes, is ridiculous. Honestly I just pronounced it "ssii". Anyway beyond that none of the rest of the consonants are difficult to learn. Making a language that's recognizable and instantaneously accessible to everyone is impossible without returning to caveman speech. It's more important to have a wide array of easy-to-learn sounds.

[@timothymclean]

Except Polish people, who would be more familiar with its phonology, grammar, excessive suffixes, and weird letter/diacritic choices.

[@davinchristino]

Votgil moment

[@lomsahit7367]

@@connermckay4012 "easy to learn sounds" I'm Spanish and it took me 2 weeks to pronounce v correctly, but Esperanto has it so I guess I have to be able to say it easily.

[@GermaphobeMusic]

4:16 Top 10 Rappers Eminem Was Too Afraid to Diss

[@cueiyo6906]

IKR XD

[@SoaringMoon]

There is a weird buzzing in the background. Also fade in for audio was... awkward.

[@sarkycanadian1394]

i know, that was somewhat offputting for me also

[@cerezabay]

I thought the buzzing was from my earbuds and they were broken. God damn

[@epicstimulus282]

It was awesome

[@Flowtail]

The saddest thing in this episode is the lack of everybody’s favorite game show

[@davinchristino]

Yeah, the game show part wasn't yet a part of conlang critic, so instead we get an angry Mitch yelling why esperanto is not compatible with most common languages

[@gavinthecrafter]

POV: You're trying to find the original Anthony McCarthy comment

[@TwentyDaysOfMay]

It's under the Ido video (sorry if you already knew that)

[@multipleSpiders]

english people containment unit

[@ewanherbert3402]

"Esperanto is too eurocentric! It's too difficult to pronounce for Chinese and Japanese people!" ...and then Esperanto was significantly more popular in Asia than in the West.

[@DannyD-lr5yg]

Word order is flexible like in Latin, and I LOVE that. You can communicate so much subtlety by the order you choose, as it communicates the emphasis; but also, flexible word order allows for some really fantastic creative writing.

[@caseygreyson4178]

And poetry/music!

[@benedektoth2646]

You can't, if you don't have clear rules on how to use "free word order". For example Hungarian focus is before the verb whereas Estonian focus is after it. So a Hungarian and an Estonian could use the same Esperanto word order and mean to emphasize completely different things.

[@1994CivicGLi]

Doug Demuro: *”This car is the best I’ve ever reviewed. I’ll give it a 13/50 on the overall score.”* You: *Puts Esperanto in 2nd despite the criticism*

[@lecobra418]

Esperanto is one of the most developped, if not the most developped, conlang so it makes sense to rate it that good, but it stays a highly criticable language.

[@notNajimi]

It’s a quirk of ranking reviewed languages head to head and also not having reviewed very many good conlangs

[@davinchristino]

@@notNajimi Yeah, this tbh.

[@vulpes7079]

Doug is a fucking imbecile lmao. Every time he reviews a Western or Japanese piece of garbage, it's cozy, but when it's a Slavic car, it's the worst thing he's ever seen

[@WhizzKid2012]

Its called the ranking paradox. If everything is crap someone needs to be high.

[@jaime9927]

7:03 Malsanulejo is a word that is commonly used to show people how words can be formed in Esperanto. But "hospitalo" is a word in EO. It wasn't left out.

[@laislyra5512]

this same with "samseksemulo" and "gejo"

[@arvinroidoatienza7082]

And yet crocodile is just krokodilo. Why not?

[@eldattackkrossa9886]

@@arvinroidoatienza7082 malmalkrokodilo

[@arvinroidoatienza7082]

@@eldattackkrossa9886 malmalmalmalkrokodilo

[@WhizzKid2012]

Malsanulejo is like a tribal name of southeast asia

[@TheKacperuss]

I know I'm 3 years too late, but... In his video about Interslavic, Mitch said he doesn't speak any slavic language. I think if he would, he would be even harsher. As a native polish speaker I gotta say; from what I see, Esperanto is almost entirely based on polish. Not only phonology, as he mentioned in the video, but most of its grammar rules, not using 'x' and 'q' among other letters, redundant and misleading diacritics, suffixes on both nouns and adjectives and female words based on male versions (although not that extreme to call mother a 'female father' lel). The only part of it that isn't copied from polish is vocabulary. On a positive note, I'm glad to hear that people try to change Esperanto and address problems like gender-based vocabulary. I believe that, just as natlangs change throughout years of usage, so should conlangs, getting closer and closer to being... well... natural to use. You can't speak pseudocode your whole life, spoken languages, natural or constructed, should constantly evolve to be usable. It really looks like Zamenhof just took polish, covered it up with romanic based vocabulary and said "Wow, what a wonderful new language. I'm sure at least 10 million people would love to speak it as their secondary language". It's too eurocentric to be international, too gender-unfair to work in XXI century and have too much in common with polish for me to like it. 1/10, left my country because I used to live in Zamenhof street.

[@janjaki2741]

'you cant speak pseudocode your whole life' are you challenging me? /j

[@xiyition]

slijmjurk

[@valinorean4816]

wow never seen anybody hating it so much! why? how is it "based on polish"? he knew like 5 langs, it is "based on" yiddish as much - it just has "lowest common denominator" features!

[@user-xo9ig8kc3u]

@@valinorean4816 Not really, like the reviewer says, it's phonology is *not* international, it's vocabulary is just slightly distorted Romance, and it has a ton of uneccesarily complicating features that don't even add additional specificity or meaning. Of course, things like grammatical gender are common (in IE, at least), but of course that's a legacy of the evolution of natural languages, where many formerly useful features are retained, even millennia after they've become redundant, following the evolution of features that supplant their original function. If Esperanto was an 'art-lang', like Tolkien's languages, full of invented entymologies and history, that would be fine, but Esperanto was designed as an international creole, and on that criterion its design *IS* terrible.

[@valinorean4816]

@@user-xo9ig8kc3u "Not really, like the reviewer says, it's phonology is not international, it's vocabulary is just slightly distorted Romance" - hold, when you're creating a language you have to make some specific selections for these, and so by definition they will not be universal then? what's... the criticism here? "things like grammatical gender" - Esperanto doesn't have grammatical gender, the question is merely about assymetry of male and female suffixes - it works in Esperanto just like in English in actor/actress, steward/stewardess, etc, and while that didn't raise eyebrows in the 19th century it does now. regardless, there is no redundancy here, it's a political question, like gender neutral pronouns; Esperanto only does what English does with genders! The "unnecessarily complicating features" free up the word order, enabling the speakers whose native languages have different word orders to start speaking Esperanto without being ungrammatical right away. "Esperanto was designed as an international creole, and on that criterion its design IS terrible" - how? and there is a bunch of references about native speakers of Chinese and so on finding Esperanto a tenfold relief in difficulty compared to IE natlangs, say. I think it's just about as good as it can be, and any serious problems in its path to its goal are political.

[@janpensa3631]

5:40 - in an earlier iteration of Esperanto, ŝ, ĉ, ĵ, ĝ were written ś, ć, ź, dź, by the way, like you suggested. But Zamenhof changed this shortly before first publishing his language, to make the spelling of Romance and Germanic words more recognizable. E.g. ĵurnalo is more recognizable as "journal" than źurnalo, and aĝo looks a lot more like "age" than adźo. So this was a very conscious choice. Even if you may not agree with it.

[@eljestLiv]

do you have a source for this?

[@janpensa3631]

@@eljestLiv I believe I wrote that comment mostly based on the Wikipedia page on Proto-Esperanto, which says "The Slavic-style acute diacritics became circumflexes to avoid overt appearances of nationalism, and the new bases of the letters ĵ, ĝ (for former ź, dź) helped preserve the appearance of Romance and Germanic vocabulary." Apparently a lot of Zamenhof's notes on early versions of Esperanto were lost or destroyed by nazis, but enough copies still exist to at least know some things, like how the alphabet in early drafts of Esperanto worked. The Esperanto-language Wikipedia article "Pra-Esperanto" has more of these details, with citations and stuff.

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

I just can't read "źurnalo' and "adźo" properly, cuz'z I'm Polish and they are different sounds for my mind!

[@Tuberex]

@@amadeosendiulo2137 Ziurnalo

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

@@Tuberex Ekzakte. Ho, mi celis diri: Exactly :-)

[@yukkoyuki2540]

For me, as Japanese, Esperanto is easy lang to learn, yes, I can say Indonesian and Mandarin much simpler grammar, but compare to most of language, it's much easier. ALSO, that complex grammar makes Esperanto more swappable, which gives flexibility when you write or say.(e.g. "Mi amas vin", "Amas vin mi", "Vin mi amas", etc.) (like Japanese or Korean) And you may know, Japanese lang has less phonics than major langs around the world, but pronunciation of Esperanto wasn't prob for me. So, I definitely can say Esperanto is easy lang, especially compare to most of natlang. But, still I agree about sexism in Esperanto, I think it should be like this: boy; [child]-[male] girl; [child]-[female] man; [grown-up]-[male] or [person]-[male] woman; [grown-up]-[female] or [person]-[female] Also, a word "they", "ili", should change third person pronoun of male and neutral or "ili" itself.

[@RojPoj]

It was made in a sexist time, bringing together languages that probably had sexist tendencies. There are current efforts to address this.

[@HealyHQ]

@@RojPoj Why have current efforts when Ido fixed this several decades ago?

[@user-ou5zx8wf2h]

In old English "woman" was "wife man" and so was "he", not "she".

[@RAFMnBgaming]

@@user-ou5zx8wf2h wasn't man wereman though? so, man on its own sorta being more neutral back then?

[@ronaldonmg]

@@HealyHQ because most of the hundreds of changes that turn Esperanto into Ido accomplish nothing. If Esperanto is too european, why remove the slavic influence in favour of germanic/romanic? Turo-->turmo, mi-->me, rajtas-->darfas Why twist the meaning of an existing suffix (-ulo) instead of inventing a new one?

[@Czar_Moss]

english container = england I'm dead

[@bugglemagnum6213]

That beat u made with the computer generated voice was actually fire

[@QQ-xr8ky]

6:55 However, "biero" sounds quite like its equivalent in French "bière".

[@cloud__zero]

holy shit the comments are excellent though I recommend putting on a hazmat suit before going down there

[@kencollins1186]

At the time that Zamenhof constructed Esperanto, the letter W was only used in Polish, Wendish, German, Dutch, and English. It was incorporated in the alphabets of languages that adopted the Latin alphabet since then, but It wasn't in the Swedish or Portuguese alphabets until the 21st century. Zamenhof couldn't use it. In European languages (bear in mind that Zamenhof knew about English but didn't speak it, and didn't know Spanish) there is no consensus about the sound of the letter Y. Given Esperanto's phonology, there are more sounds than letters. He could have used diagraphs like Polish (look at what a mess that is!) or diacritics like Czech. He chose diacritics, which is good because digraphs run into problems: (philosophy, upholstery). He started using letters like č but switched to ĉ so that it would be more international by not being partial. The diacrtics became problematical even for him, but there was a point of no return. The phonology is cluttered, however, everyone speaks Esperanto with an accent, which means essentially that no one does. The advantage is that names, place names, and other words, don't have to be distorted beyond recognition to be Esperantized. One problem is that it is not clear whether verbs are inherently transitive or intransitive (this is hard for English-speaking people), and which root is which native part of speech. For example, the root bel- is adjectival and the root kron- is nominal. Esperanto is more successful than any other conlang by far. Whether it is because of or in spite of its flaws would make an interesting debate.

[@bonbonpony]

All of these are good points, and quite similar to mine (see my other comment, the long one). As for the digraphs vs. diacritics: If anyone considers diacritics problematic (e.g. cannot produce them on a keyboard or believes in the superiority of digraphs, as the author of this video), one can use digraphs in Esperanto as well: "cx" instead of "ĉ", "sx" instead of "ŝ" etc. Also I'm glad you mentioned the transitive vs. intransitive problem of Esperanto, that makes your critique much more solid than the author's. Unfortunately, this is not a problem unique to Esperanto. Same with the adjectival vs. nominal roots. It's pretty much just how a particular word originated and which version was first (noun or adjective) and which one has been derived from it later. But I'm not sure how could this problem be solved in a language (either constructed or natural), because there are words or meanings that are purely of the "quality" sort (adjectival), while others are purely nominal (thought there is a tendency for creating new adjectives out of nouns, and nouns seem to be the most basic and common feature of every language, because they basically name things around us). Nevertheless, Esperanto might not be a perfect language, but still I find it much more elegant and organized than any natural language I know of, so even if its flaws it serves its purpose very well.

[@bonbonpony]

BTW any ideas about how the transitive/intransitive problem could be solved in a language? (Either a constructed one, or maybe there is a natural language that solves it already?)

[@sluggo206]

"The diacrtics became problematical even for him". Are you referring to his proposal for some Ido-like reforms? I'm not sure that was his misgivings as much as giving the opponents a chance.

[@sluggo206]

Which language has a distinguishing mark on its transitive or intransitive roots? None that I'm aware of. If you think marking transitivity is a problem, then just don't, like in Lingua Franca Nova were verbs can be used transitively or intransitively without change. Transitivity is inherent in the meaning, and there are multiple kinds of intransitive verbs (look up ergative, unergative, and unaccusative). As to the part of speech, that's why dictionaries have the primary ending: you just learn "bel/a" or "bela" and you know it's natively an adjective. Esperanto's success is primarily because of its age and past activism and infrastructure. Secondarily its agglutinative nature, which is very flexible and expressive, and a refreshing freedom from the rigidity of languages that don't allow arbitrary compounding and changing parts of speech. Thirdly, and more controversially, because the part-of-speech endings make it unambiguous in a way that fixed-word-order languages just can't do -- ambiguities are unavoidable when a word can be a subject, verb, object, or adjective without change. Fourth, at least in the beginning, because it borrowed vocabulary and spelling from several different languages rather than favoring just one.

[@artiomboyko]

​@@bonbonpony hmmmmm, actuallllyyy Japanese isn't consistent and exceptionless about this one, but a lot of tr-intr pairs have a pattern like transitive ends with -eru while intransitive end's with -aru 始める hajimeru (to begin something) - 始まる hajimaru (to begin) 終える oeru (to end something, to finish something) - 終わる owaru (to come to an end, to finish) 止める tomeru (to stop something) - 止まる tomaru (to stop) Maybe we could make three types of verbs, one always intransitive: to see - vid[end1], one for intransitive in a pair: to begin - komenc[end2], one for transitive in pair: to begin (smth) - komenc[end3] (ion)

[@Mr.Nichan]

From Doctor Zamenhof's perspective, probably seemed more international than . is more transparently related to than , as is transparently related to , (despite making a different sound in many many languages, including a few European ones), and makes a /v/ sound in many European languages (which were obviously the only kind of languages he was really thinking about). Admittedly, the choices about and were probably strongly influenced by his desire not to contradict Polish orthography.

[@markandlanguages4124]

Yes, it's worth understanding that Zamenhof had to sell it in the first instance to the people in his region. More than a century later the Esperanto movement has not changed these things, thinking that if they do, all of their existing literature and documentation will be rendered unreadable!

[@ronaldonmg]

As far as I know, the originally was used only in diphtongs and . the little bow was above both letters to indicate that you shouldn't pronounce them separately. The way typewriters were designed meant that you could only put it above one letter. I'm still not sure whether the is hidden in my "english, international" charset somewhere, so I'm using ú instead

[@blueca]

ive been rewatching the series and boy does misali sound like they're secretly being controlled by bees in this

[@testtestesttest2746]

I don't even know esperanto, but 95% of the flaws of esperanto he talks about sound like features to me.

[@arcticflower7223]

They are flawed features.

[@user-yg4en5mv2j]

It's not a bug, it's a feauture

[@KingHalbatorix]

"it just works"

[@yakutyakutson8719]

@@KingHalbatorix it really does, I learnt Esperanto and i had almost non of the problems he talked about, practically the problems are different (i have a few friends who also learnt Esperanto so it's not just me)

[@laislyra5512]

I'm honestly compelled to not see his other videos about conlangs, because if they have the same amount of bias/misinformation, it's not worth it

[@jgr7487]

wow! this was so anglocentric!

[@boivie]

Yes, that's what i thought as well. It should use word order for accusative like we do in English. It should use W like we do in English. Japanese people wouldn't recognise Japanio, if the J isn't pronounced like in English.

[@kakahass8845]

@@boivie I don't think that counts since they will probably learn it as "ジャパン" and hearing "ヤパン" they wouldn't think "ああ日本そっそっか" like when I wrote "ヤパン" full Katakana wasn't even an option but it realized I was trying to write "ジャパン" before I even finished. EDIT: Also nominative-accusative alignment is the most common alignment there is ergative-absolutive is only used in 1/4 of the world's languages.

[@lopipno]

4:11 Oi! Actually, Brazilian Portuguese has [tʃ] a lot of times, although there is one common word in European Portuguese with [tʃ]. And it is: Tchau!

[@DTux5249]

Deletori actually the European dialects pronounce and write it as xau /ʃaʊ/

[@pedrobarbosa1304]

wtf where did you ever see it written as chao? As someone who is a native portuguese never have i in 22 years seen people write chao. Only chau or xau (xau being waaay more common)

[@aleixovaladares9084]

@@DTux5249 Not exactly. Northern European Portuguese dialects actually pronounce [tʃ] in words like chamar and cheio, for example.

[@laislyra5512]

And monte, tia, Tiago, time, te, tchê, tico-tico, cheque-mate, tchuchuca, eu quero tchu eu quero tcha

[@wannabepolymathofesoterica6812]

Alright there's a lot of issues with this video, but your biggest blunder was by far the complaint about the accusative and lack of designated word order. *This is by design.* By indicating the part of speech at the end of the word you allow the speaker to use the word order they're most comfortable with, without compromising intelligibility. The adjective agreement is for clarity. In addition to how any word can be derived from combining smaller roots, and any root or group of roots can be changed into noun, adjective, or adverb form makes it an ideal language for direct translation. Learning to tack on an n to the object is by far easier than retraining yourself to use a completely different word order.

[@frechjo]

Tion mi tre ŝatas. Malfacila ja estas la akuzativo, sed ankaŭ utila kaj liberiga, ĉu ne? :D

[@LMNO837]

@@frechjo Jes; ĉar ĝi al ni donas grandegan liberecon pri la sintakso. Danke al ĝi mem frazo povas havi multajn vort-ordojn sen ĝeni la komprenon :).

[@deepwayne757]

I've heard this line of thought before, but do esperantists native with non-SVO actually habitually speak in their own order? If I'm translating something into Esperanto from Latin, should I put the verb at the end for the purposes of fidelity? To be fair, I can't say I've met many esperantists personally, and certainly someone with a non-SVO native language, but I get the feeling that general Esperanto usage has a standard word order which is the "correct" one

[@LMNO837]

@@deepwayne757 No. Because the accusative case offers a great construction's liberty.

[@patriciamcgeorge2575]

Do? Vi povas uzi je prepozicio - ekzemple je la prepozicio mi uzas cxi tie - "je"

[@anthonyhackett7825]

Everyone: you're wrong, Portuguese does have that sound, in "tchau"! Tchau: is borrowed from another language Tchau: is the only example people can think of Does that really count as being part of Portuguese's phonological inventory? Like sure English has a glottal stop in "Batman" and "uh-oh", but it's not in our phonology.

[@mat9739]

But you can pronounce it ! I'm french and I cannot pronounce the sound "the" properly. It a sound that I've never prononce in my life before learning english.

[@tiagoSS90]

while its true european portguese does not have the [tʃ] sound, brazilian portuguese does have it in an excessive amount. everytime the a T meets an I sound (pronounced like ee in english) the ti actually beacomes a chi. it even happen when the e vowel is reduced into an i at the end of words or randomly in the middle of them. words like "tia" sounds like chia in english, and "monte" sounds like munchy because the e gets reduced to an i. however, considering the creator of esperanto was a polish guy in the 1800, he probabily couldnt care less about brazil, so the point of portuguese not having the [tʃ] sound still makes sense

[@eu_arntz]

@@tiagoSS90 exactly

[@dansaunders1655]

There was such a thing as a batman before Batman

[@cesarviola900]

Actually, in any word that has the sillable "ti" this sound is used, unless in some accents (It is used also with "te", but only when the word ends with it)

[@ThePian0Man88]

Haha it figures that Esperanto phonology only matches with Polish phonology. Note: I'm actually currently learning Polish and love it to bits, so don't think I'm hating. Kocham Polskę. :)

[@bonbonpony]

Is it really as hard to learn as most people say? What did you find the most difficult in it? Polski język nie jest taki trudny, jak go malują :)

[@groherzogtummapping867]

@@bonbonpony Polski naprawdę nie jest taki trudny... Honestly, the hardest thing *by far* is the ortography. For example, we have the "rz" and "ch" which nowadays are no different than "ż" and "h" (they make the [ʒ] and [x] sounds respectively). There's really no reason for their existence today, but they're still here because the made different sounds in Old Polish. And you have to remember when to write them, as you can't write a "ż" down when the [ʒ] can change to [r] (lekaRZ -> lekaRski), whereas if it changes to [z] or [g], it needs to be a "ż". Same goes for "u" and "ó" (though to my knowledge they never really made different sounds) - when the [u] changes to [ɔ], you *have* to put down an "ó" (drOGa -> drÓŻka). There are also a lot of grammatical forms to different words. For example, the Polish word for "two" is "dwa" - but that's only the base form. Used in nominative for neuter or inanimate male nouns ("dwa krzesła" - two chairs; dwa stoły - "two tables"). Intimidating, isn't it? Well, there is also "dwojgu" and "dwóm" (the second one could also be written as "dwom" in some dialects), which can be simplified to "dwójce" (that one derives from "dwójka" which is another word for the number 2). Now, all of them are used in dative and mean the same thing- but the first one is for neuter, the second one for personal male *and* female, and the third for male, female *and* neuter nouns. "Dwa" has *SEVENTEEN* forms. Tak, wcale nie mamy trudnego języka :)

[@tora7770]

ATAHistory EN kiedyś ó wymawiało się bardziej jak o

[@chairsunken731]

4:20 I am a portuguese speaker and I can correct you: Portugues DOES have [tʃ]. Example: tchau

[@allisond.46]

I believe what he meant is that it's not distinguished from {shau/xau}. Sorry I can't type the IPA symbol, by the way.

[@livinghooman8471]

@Léo Pintto Ele provável que pegou uma tabela do IPA qualquer, pq o Tch só apareceu depois de ~1930 e gerou a palatalização em palavras como 'de', já o tchau foi influência italiana

[@jellosapiens7261]

BPr has it and its voiced counterpart as very common allophones of /t/ and /d/

[@allisond.46]

@Léo Pintto Going back to the original question, is there a single consonant in Esperanto that isn't in Portuguese?

[@pixelpix1728]

@@allisond.46 Actually, yes. From least common to most common: Portuguese doesn't have /ts/; /x/ may appear as one of the realizations of our gutteral r but I don't think it's super common, and that also makes it a free variation of /h/, another possible pronunciation of the gutteral r, causing some confusion; The /tʃ/ and the /dʒ/ only appear as allophones of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and in loanwords And the alveolar trill /r/ isn't veeery common anymore (but this one is easy for us to do :P)

[@matej_grega]

9:15 There's a consistent way of knowing which suffix do you use: Polish names for countries lol.

[@L1M.L4M]

0:33 Jan Masali = Faith character

[@Mr.Nichan]

One could argue that the fact that none of the world's most major languages' phonologies is completely compatible with Esperanto makes it more international, because it doesn't favor any particular group too much. That would ignore the fact that Esperanto clearly does favor speakers of some languages over others, but my point is that assuming some major world language has to be completely compatible with an IALs phonology for it to be international is a little bit misguided. As you pointed out, Esperanto is intended to be easy to learn, which makes compatibility desirable, but it would be limiting to be compatible with everyone (though Toki Pona is around the close to that), so being incompatible to favor internationality over ease of learning is a legitimate option. I'm also probably biased by the fact that, to me, learning to distinguish new phonemes, especially ones that are just holes in your native languages phonology, is always infinitely easier than learning vocabulary or getting used to the grammar. Apparently, though, many people learn significant grammar and vocabulary without even acquiring such basic phonological skills as distinguishing all the phonemes of a language, so maybe I'm just weird.

[@davinchristino]

Would you prefer a conlang which gives most people an easier time learning the phonology, or a conlang where it is equally difficult for everyone to learn it?

[@kiwenmanisuno]

@@davinchristino It's not even that hard you're just actually really bad at learning languages lmao

[@lXBlackWolfXl]

Research on l1 acquisition in children shows that they actually pick up case endings before word order, implying that its easier to learn. And it makes sense when you think about it. Tell me, which is easier to decipher: something that's explicitly stated, or something that's indirectly implied. In fact, people who speak languages with case systems find confirgurational languages annoying, because they're used to basically being told specifically that a given noun in a sentence is the direct object rather than it being assumed just because of the word order. And besides, they're used to interpreting an unmarked noun as the subject of a sentence, who seeing an unmarked noun that is actually the direct object is counter-intuitive to them. Also, configurational grammars are vastly more complicated. A book about English or Chinese grammar takes hundreds of pages, and new rules are being discovered all the time. However, a case-marking language doesn't nearly require as many pages, even if you list all the irregularities the language may have (and no, not all case-marking languages are irregular and complicated like Latin, though THAT is harder to learn than configuration it seems).

[@sumwon6973]

That's an interesting point but Esperanto is primarily learned as a l2 not l1. For English speakers at least (probably the most important group of speakers to please if you want an ial to succeed) learning non-configurationality is much harder than a new word order.

[@nadeen6968]

@@sumwon6973 but would us trying to memories something like object subject verb word order be easier than adding suffixes? even if osv is uncommon that's not my point

[@federicovolpe3389]

lXBlackWolfXl at least for me the hard thing about Latin is conjugating verbs (memorizing all the conjugations and using the right mood and tense). The case system is one of the easiest parts tbh.

[@federicovolpe3389]

The compound word in Esperanto are just easier to learn. For me it was easier to learn a word (sano) and then form the word for hospital adding suffixes that are identical for every noun that learning a entire new word.

[@jcxkzhgco3050]

Esperanto succeeded more than any other conlang. Respect

[@RyanTosh]

Only really because it's the oldest, though

[@damienthonk1506]

@@RyanTosh there are quite a few older ones, actually.

[@connermckay4012]

@@RyanTosh Not really, it succeeded in part because of it's age, but conlanging is not a modern thing. It's been around for a while.

[@dimanyak373]

Spanish is technically a conlang, so it's not really the oldest

[@ronaldonmg]

it spread more, yes. Partly because Zamenhof allowed natural evolution rather than keeping all strings in his own hands, partly because nobody designed something significantly better. As long as there are no dozens of millions of speakers of Esperanto as proof that people want a neutral worldlanguage, why would anyone capable waste their time on designing something better?

[@alessiomuccio2795]

4:29 Im a native italian speaker. Since i was a kid, i've wondered why italian doesn't have a ĵ. It's really easy to pronounce, because it would sound like the g equivalent of the italian version of the ŝ (written with sc+i or e). Sure, italian doesnt have it, but i dont complain about its presence in esperanto. Instead i'm really happy of it. What's difficult to me is the ĥ instead.

[@joseantoniomorenoluna9971]

I'm native Spanish speaker. Spanish doesn't have ŝ, ĝ, h and ĵ, but it's easy to pronounce them because now we have a lot of influence from English, and ĵ is easy because the argentinian accent has that sound (sound that Mexican Spanish doesn't have).

[@fanaticofmetal]

@@joseantoniomorenoluna9971 The Argentinian accent also has ŝ

[@francescot5012]

It does exist, actually. But only in central regions such as Toscana and Lazio.

[@alessiomuccio2795]

@@francescot5012 i mean, there also is the widely used word "garage", but it's not by default in standard italian

[@azwolf1215]

Spanish does have the "h" sound but just in latinamerica

[@fernandobanda5734]

Animalius12 Wolf Yes, but never x and h as different phonemes.

[@user-mm5xp7wm3g]

Actually, only the caribeans have the h sound

[@iosusito5683]

Maybe allophonic with /x/ in some places when speaking lazy, but nothing consistent

[@Catmomila]

@@iosusito5683 /h/ also exists in rioplatense spanish (and other argentine dialects) as an allophone of /s/.

[@ronaldonmg]

@@fernandobanda5734 Juan, José and Javier eat huevos in Jerez ? J and H are different from eachother ( I don't speak spanish)

[@crbgo9854]

this ZAZA got me speaking esperanto

[@tompatterson1548]

Learning german and decided to turn german subtitles on, and »müssten die Leute ›Männin‹ statt ›Frau‹ sagen" is really funny. Props to whoever translated this!

[@ronaldonmg]

Yeah, it's not like English does anything like that now is it? You wouldn't call a female hero heroine, right

[@tompatterson1548]

@@ronaldonmg Yeah, it's different for stuff like the generic term for person.

[@inkognitongue765]

Lustigerweise ist das im Deutschen bei anderen Wörtern ja ziemlich verbreitet: Polizist -> Polizistin Schüler -> Schülerin Also die Idee, das Geschlecht bei Wörtern anzeigen zu müssen und das durch Ableitung des männlichen, aber auch allgemeinen Begriffes zu machen, ist bei Esperanto nichts besonderes. Das heißt natürlich nicht, dass da keine Reform angemessen sei!

[@kakahass8845]

Please explain this to me.

[@tompatterson1548]

@@kakahass8845 people have to say “männin” for “frau”. In German, “Frau” means woman, and “-in” is the feminine suffix, so basically “maness”

[@Petr.Fedosov]

6:10 It depends on your native languages. My native language is Russian, and for me fixed word order is difficult.

[@tablasechstitu1122]

0:11: Wow, that's some great music!

[@shoofle]

i haven't watched many conlanging videos so i'm glad you made one talking about esperanto! so i can learn more!!!

[@troyrowe7670]

I actually like Esperanto. And where he was saying that inflecting the adjectives for the same case and number as the nouns, that s exactly what Latin does. And many romance languages inflect the adjectives for the same gender and number as the nouns. Esperanto grammar is actually pretty simple to me. It makes sense and I really enjoy the language. I eve call myself fluent in Esperanto

[@angelding-cq1ip]

Esperanto grammar is pretty Eurocentric. Have a look at Mandarin or Austronesian grammar with no concept of number or case

[@donmeles7711]

Usono is because USN - Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Nordameriko. And when you spell these initials in Esperanto you get U So No. Usono.

[@gabrielsoto1693]

like in Spanish it's called EEUU. as a Spanish speaker, I got the logic right away.

[@hollowhoagie6441]

Petition to rename the word for the US in esperanto to "Jejnkiko" or something

[@donmeles7711]

@@hollowhoagie6441 Esperanto ne havas y-on xD

[@hollowhoagie6441]

@@donmeles7711 oh yeah. "Jejnkiko"

[@marekmichalovic8711]

In Czech and Slovak USA would be "SŠA" (Spojené štáty Americké), but noone uses that

[@RafaelSantos-zr6ez]

I'm Portuguese speaker and in my dialect we have the /ʧ/ phoneme

[@carlossoto9511]

In which word? I thought it was only an allophone of /t/ before front vowels.

[@RafaelSantos-zr6ez]

Well, in the name of my on city is pronounced with it in the "te" wich becomes a /ʧi/

[@RafaelSantos-zr6ez]

The word in question is "Horizonte" (skyline)

[@carlossoto9511]

Yes. in that case it's actually just an allophone, so it's /ti/, but it's pronounced [ʧi] (The underlying phoneme is /t/, but it's palatalized before /i/). I suggest you read about the difference between phones and phonemes if you haven't already; it really helped me in conlanging (and besides it's very interesting)

[@danielqueirozdasilvacosta1503]

Carlos Soto No, it also appears in the word "tchau" ("tch"), and people from Rio Grande do sul sometimes say "tche!" at the end of sentences (it's an interjection, I'm not sure what it means). I'm not sure if this "tch" sound (sorry, I can't type the proper IPA symbol now) can be considered a phoneme or if it's just an allophone (I can't remember any minimum pair now) but, anyway, I always could notice the difference between sx and cx (I also can't type Esperanto characters now), I never had to learn it.

[@Liggliluff]

There's the neologism infix ‐iĉ‐ for masculine, that we could start using for Esperanto. So "knabo" is just a young person, "knabiĉo" is a boy and "knabino" is a girl. Make the ‐iĉ‐ infix more popular and remove this male-defaultness that Espernato has.

[@casual_ice_consumer4148]

Also, it matches Panjo -ino Pacxjo -icxo

[@amadeosendiulo2137]

I use that way when I can. Mostly when talking to people that I know that know it :-)

[@mekh233]

Nepo nepino nePIĈO... But i think that objectives starting with "ne" does not have to exist because it can be confusing. Ps Piĉo is (unofficial?) bad word in Esperanto meaning "count without o" Nepo=nephew

[@ronaldonmg]

Yes, more people shopuld join the riismo-movement, it is called after the word "ri", used as genderless pronoun for the third person singular. @Casual_Ice_Consumer : yes, that's where it came from. @Механикус Продакшн : nepo=grandchild , nephew=nevo

[@mekh233]

@@ronaldonmg MDR ahah nun mi scias, tiam mi estis komencanto (nun ankaŭ sed parolas pli bone)

[@richetherapperinductionsol9155]

I really feel like most of the critic in this video is not from an objective point of view. This is critic from an english-speaking standpoint. The accusative case is very simple if you're from country who uses a language with and accusative case alike grammar it's really simple to learn

[@bonbonpony]

Even English distinguishes the accusative case for _some_ words. E.g. the personal pronouns: "he" vs. "him", "she" vs. 'her" etc. It's just that it's not a language-wide feature, and it's quite miserable, because it introduces unnecessary ambiguities sometimes, which have to be overcame by using other grammatical constructs (like the passive voice for example).

[@DingoSaar]

@Bon Bon: You find (almost) all of the eight "basic" cases in any language (because you have to have a way to communicate eg. going from a place (Ablative) or addressing someone (Vokative). A "vanished" case means it is now communicated prepositionally. MOST English-speakers have problems that Levi Eliezer Samenhof (L Zamenhof) took the "Latin Accusative", ie. the Accusative in Esperanto includes the Allative: "Ĉu mi sekvas lin en la urbon? Ĉu mi sekvas lin en la urbo?" ("Gerda Malaperis", Easy Reader by Claude Piron) "Do I follow him INTO the city? Do I follow him INSIDE the city?"

[@bonbonpony]

Well, I might be a bit biased, because I have 7 cases in my native language (though one of them, the vocative, is not used that frequently). And I know some languages that have even more. But I studied enough languages to know that there's always some construct to communicate the same idea as cases, either directly or indirectly through prepositions or other constructs. And even the inflectional ending for the cases in many languages originally were prepositions that merged with other words with time. I understand that people that don't have much of that tricky feature in their (isolating) languages may have problems with understanding the idea, because they don't have anything in their experience that they could refer to. But I think it's a matter of how these concepts are taught to them (and they are usually taught very badly, because teachers just refer to their knowledge about the cases and cannot explain it to people who don't understand what they're talking about :q ). For the accusative in Esperanto, I would go with showing English speakers the examples where the accusative is used in their language: "I" vs. "me", "he" vs. "him" etc. Knowing the difference between the subject and direct object helps a lot in this case. The genitive can be explained with the "Saxon possessive" 's. But I would have to think on how to explain other uses of accusative, or other cases.

[@oh_tassos]

i have 4 cases in my language (historically 5, the 5th is understood just not used) (one of those 4 is the vocative, aka a rarely used case). the other 3 are like the bare minimum: nominative; genitive; accusative

[@bluegreenmagenta]

why should an "objective" point of view have to come from the perspective of a language with case distinctions? Billions of people natively speak languages that don't inflect nouns for case (Chinese languages, English, Spanish) and using SVO with no case markers would avoid the issue entirely, so there's no point in adding it to a language that's supposed to be "easy for native speakers of any language to learn." Either way, there's definitely no excuse for case agreement concord on adjectives, which Zamenhof himself agreed was a mistake.

[@ronaldonmg]

Esperanto's main problem is that its "akademio" barely fixes any problems, and its members aren't elected by ordinary users. Esperanto wasn't "designed to be sexist". Zamenhof simply worked with what he had: English has "hero" vs "heroin", Dutch has "leeuw" vs "leeuwin", "vriend" vs "vriendin" and a bunch of others, German has many more. Zamenhof merely made it universal so we don't have to learn separate words like sow, bitch, ewe, etc. A male suffix "iĉo" was proposed in (or before) 1984 but in 2015 the akademio declared that it would wait for "the natural evolution of the language" to justify official acknowledgement. The pronouns "ri" and "sli" are being used to some extent, to indicate third person singular without suggesting a sexe

[@Windows-dt4ob]

0:18 ESPERANTO (remix)

[@zionj104]

"Five of these consonants appear in less than a third of all languages" *Proceeds to list four*

[@atruv2089]

"third of all languages" means 1 out of 3 languages, not 3 languages

[@zionj104]

@@atruv2089 Four consonants.

[@DimitarBerberu]

Don't try to create one for English. It will take months to explain all the illogical exceptions.

[@KrisPBacon69]

It's CONLANG critic. English is not a conlang.

[@DimitarBerberu]

Esperanto is a Planned language vs Ad-hoc. Does EN have immunity against critics? The point was that the above Esperanto issues are mostly stylistic. It's the most successful planned language (~>3mn). How much can you critic that outcome?

[@KrisPBacon69]

I wasn't saying that english is immune against critics. I was saying that this channel is called "CONLANG critic" and english is NOT a conlang.

[@DimitarBerberu]

OK, thanks. I was criticising the 'Conlang critic' for over criticising the Most Successful Planned Language with indirect sarcasm.

[@KrisPBacon69]

I agree, he over criticised it. All the other conlangs that he criticised, he seemed to have hated less, even though he didn't (he ranked esperanto #2)

[@rapn21]

Hey thanks for making the video and mentioning me in the introduction (even if you did mispel my name). Unfortunately there's a lot of errors and mistakes in your video. Here's my thoughts: * The introduction made my ears bleed, never do that again! * Why do you call Zamenhof "L Lejzer Z"? * The sound quality isn't great, there was a buzzing sound and sometimes you spoke very quickly and mashed words together. * You complain that Esperanto doesn't have certain sounds from some languages and vice versa. Yeah, because Esperanto is a combination of languages, it's not similar to just one. * "You can use the word order instead of the accusative" - but what word order? Does a neutral word order exist? * Are plurals for adjectives really that much of a problem or is it just because English doesn't have them? French has them, so if Zamenhof ignored that then French people would probably complain * "Suno doesn't sound like sun" - Er what? Yes it does. Even when you prounounced them, they sounded the same, did you not notice? * "Esperantoignores international words like hospital" - Actually hospitalo is an Esperanto word * The word for woMAN comes from man. feMALE comes from male. This is true of English, Esperanto and lots of other languages. * "Esperanto is sexist". No, just no * "You must learn a completely new name of where you live" Wrong. The vast majority of the time, the name is the same. I'm from Irlando (Ireland) but I live in Francio (France). You cherry picked the few exceptions. * For country suffixes it's almost always -io. It's not the clearest system, but you wildly exaggerate the problems. -stano is not a suffix, that's incorrect.

[@HBMmaster]

*nice *his middle name is Lejzer and we cannot let people forget that *my old mic broke :( *but like my point was that it's different from all of those major languages *SOV is the most common, so that works, but a lot of the most common languages use SVO. either one really *but like a lot of major languages DON'T have them *[ˈsu.no] and [sɐ̃n] sound pretty different to me *yeah but that's a newer addition and wasn't part of the original design *just because natural languages do sexism doesn't mean that it's good for constructed languages *but it is though? *sure, some European countries get endonyms in Esperanto, but most countries don't *true; the actual suffix is -(i)stan. Uzbekoj live in Uzbekistano; Afganoj live in Afganistano.

[@rapn21]

"but like my point was that it's different from all of those major languages" Different languages are different, I don't see that as a major problem. "SOV is the most common, so that works, but a lot of the most common languages use SVO. either one really" But then people will complain that it gives certain languages an advantage and isn't actually neutral. "but like a lot of major languages DON'T have them" Learning a new language comes with lots of new experiences. That's not unique to Esperanto. Spanish has sounds that English doesn't have, is that a flaw of Spanish? If you expect a new language to be the same as your native language, you're gonna have a bad time. "yeah but that's a newer addition and wasn't part of the original design" Because Esperanto (like other languages) has developed and changed over time. Adding new words isn't a flaw. "just because natural languages do sexism doesn't mean that it's good for constructed languages" But is it really sexism? Is nearly every European language sexist? "true; the actual suffix is -(i)stan. Uzbekoj live in Uzbekistano; Afganoj live in Afganistano." Wrong again. The word for Afghanistan is Afganio, Uzbekistan is Uzbekio. In fact, none of the Central Asian countries names end in -istano, their names are Kazaĥio, Turkmenio, Taĝikio and Kirgizio. The only country I could find that ends with -stan is Pakistano, but one example doesn't count as a root ending.

[@DimitarBerberu]

Lejzer looks like lazy Ingliŝ (equivalent for EN) transliteration of Łazarz which is Lazar-o. In Wiki Name discrepancy it states English Lazar-us. So, simple (Slavic) name would be Lazar (+localised suffix)

[@DingoSaar]

+Robert Nielsen actually, -io is unofficial; and I DO prefer "-ujo" for ALL incorporated states, and "-ano" for ALL nationals - "Irlando" was at Samenhof''s time, but it gained statehood and became "Irlandujo", you went from "irlanda grandbritanano" to "irlandano". Yes, "Irlando" is no autonym (that would be "Eiro" or something like that); but everyone knows what's meant. To reach unambiguity, IMO all ekster-sufiksoj should be eliminated (making "Germana" into "Germuja" for the German state, "germa" for the cultural region or language). Stano is in PMEG (-istan, actually) as ekster-sufikso for Afghanistán, Pakistán, Turkestán... - It would make a good neologism for "super-provincial incorporated body", which is about its original meaning in Farsi (Pl. stanha). In "Unua Libro" ("Dr Esperanto's International Language"), the Vortaro was a large peace of thin paper, also available separately; in the English translations it wass made into a multi-page part. You were supposed to use only the 900-950 radicals in there and include the "vortaro" in letters to non-Esperantists. Unfortunately, this design goal was neglected by the UEA after Samenhof's death. These radicals, plus terminology from the "Jarlibnroj" (see STEB) still are a good "basic set" to use for communication (I write my thesis bilingually in them). For that, however, the radicals have to be limited. Can there be a "box of Germans"? No. Can there be a "Fruit tree of matches"? no. "-uj-" does not mean "container of", but equally "fruit tree/bush of" or "n-ic nation / nation of n-anoj". That those concepts are similar (where something grows or is held) leads to the correct meaning of the three. (An "apple-box" is a "apple-ish fruit box".)

[@nelsonnicholson6175]

man used to refer to any person in general. there was wifmann (wife-person) and werman (man with werner, may or may not be accurate wordlore-wise)

[@indjev99]

"It isn't very easy to learn." Are you kidding me. Sure, it is not the easiest possible language, but it is one of the easiest conlangs and definitely easier than any natlang.

[@flowerman581]

indjev99 not for many asian languages which don't do plurals or time based tenses

[@eylon1967]

honestly. as hebrew speaker. a lot of natural languges are easier for me than esperanto. i'm sure the same is true for arabic, swahilli speakers.

[@newq]

Currently learning Chinese. It's easy as hell and I've studied a shit-ton of languages with no luck. I'm a week in and I'm already thinking in Chinese. The tones really aren't that hard and the writing system is at least logical even though it's complex. In my own subjective experience, Chinese is easier than Esperanto.

[@JoeKotroczo]

Nick Warren reallly? Well thats really good for you. Are you learning simpliified? Are you learning pinyin or chacters?

[@newq]

TBH, maybe I got ahead of myself with the characters statement because I've only just scratched the surface there, but so far, I'm really intrigued. Otherwise, Pinyin is legit. Seriously, the language is not that complicated. I suppose the shit with classifiers is a little clunky. That's nitpicking, though.

[@KyrieFortune]

The fact that the consonants in Esperanto are taken from a language that is notoriously hard to learn and yet is still the most known and spoken conlang kind defeats all the critics about weird complex consonants getting in the way of actually learning the language, doesn't it.

[@davinchristino]

I really think its old age is what brought it popularity.

[@cueiyo6906]

4:12 was so fun and satisfying to listen to 🤣

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

OK, here's the new thread I'm starting on July 21 2020.

[@HBMmaster]

once again the offer still stands to move this discussion to somewhere other than youtube. it would be so much more convenient than it currently is. anyway, I've been busy making my video about regular polyhedra so I'm not completely caught up in where the thread left off last time. last I checked it was still mostly about eurocentrism? really, I'd rather get more into how the way you view language is completely different from the way the broader conlang community views it, since that's the more interesting disagreement and most other things we disagree on stem from that. we could also talk about other stuff though. have you seen my video about hangman? it's been doing remarkably well. I'm very proud of it.

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

@@HBMmaster I tried it, a. I didn't find it easier to navigate, b. people were no more interested in the real than in play-time fantasy and "let's pretend". From now on I don't bother discussing this with people who haven't bothered to learn a constructed language. I mean a real one. What's the point of comparing a real one to one that will never be made? You should read Henry James short story The Madonna Of The Future, all about the never-ending never starting quest for perfection. He more or less predicted this phenomenon.

[@HBMmaster]

now, that's an interesting distinction. I've heard you call some conlangs not real before, but saying they "never will be made"? I think that's a new one. care to elaborate?

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

@@HBMmaster That's not true, I've said it about toki pona. And as to the ones that never will be made,all over your comment threads I've seen people talk about their dreams for linguistic perfection which they have not so much as chosen a "perfect" set of phonemes for, one of the dumber ones was one in which the silly boy said he was thinking of using the Shavian alphabet for. Any of the "perfect" "reformed" versions of existing conlangs, the never ending non-stater of Ido and, to a lesser extent, Novial have histories comprising such as yet to be brought to term false pregnancies. I jokingly said I was going to come up with one of something like 17 phonemes and a vocabulary of fifty-seven words, or something like that, which I would then insist everyone call a "language" and acknowledge it had "proved" itself to be superior to toki pona on the same bases that people here claim TP is superior to the one and only conlang that has come even close to success. Hey, why don't you tell me a list of the 17 most universally used phonemes - your first criterion of such superiority - so I can make that claim without impinging on your thing.

[@HBMmaster]

it's funny that you'd suggest 17 as an impractically low number of phonemes, given that toki pona only has 14. and besides, there's several natural languages with small inventories. are you familiar with the polynesian languages? you'd probably like them. they're spoken by people who use them in their lives, which to my knowledge is the only thing you care about.

[@jankisi338]

the it is inconsistent is because esperanto has diverged from the esperanto that dr.lazier spoke. it is basically a natural language with constructed origins now

[@sel9981]

My English teacher once asked me if I tried to learn a fictional language I told him "Yeah, I tried to learn Esperanto"

[@Zwerggoldhamster]

I am no Esperanto speaker, I have only done a two-hour-course one afternoon once and read a little bit on Wikipedia, but I feel like some of your critisism isn't fair. Yes, it is a Europecentric language, but I find the phonology not that hard (i am european, tho). Also, the accusative marker -n doesn't seem too complicated to me, all natural languages have an accusative (well, technically ergative languages don't, but whatever...same difference), so it should be easy even for someone, who in their native language doesn't mark the accusative, to learn that. As other people have pointed out, adding an affix to make something male female (hey, as english does) is not what I would have chosen in a conlang, but it's nothing uncommon in natural languages. Especially with the orthography I felt like you were looking at the language from a very Englishcentric point of view.

[@purple_purpur7379]

May I ask where the accusatives are in English? And Dutch, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish? Apart from pronouns, these languages absolutely do not have an accusative.

[@thesuomi8550]

@Sapien and that's why esperanto shouldn't need to mark it either

[@cutecommie]

@@thesuomi8550 The point of accusative case markings is free word order.

[@aleixovaladares9084]

@@purple_purpur7379 But I think pronouns are enough to learn to use the accusative -n. My native languages are Spanish and Galician and it is very easy to recognize the direct object if you pronominalize everything. For example, "Vin o can" (I saw the dog) becomes "Vino" (I saw it), the O in "Vino" being the direct object, masculine singular pronoun. In Esperanto, "Mi vidis la hundon", "Mi vidis ĝin".

[@orthohawk1026]

@@purple_purpur7379 English: me, thee, him, her, us, them, whom. Spanish: me, te, lo, la, nos, os, los, las; a+noun (when it's a person). French, Italian and Portuguese similar, I'm guesstimating. I don't speak Swedish. Russian: masc/neut: -a (for animate nouns); fem: -u, masc/neut adj: -ogo; menya, tebya, ego, nas, vas, ix.

[@gabrielrangel956]

Portuguese has all of those diphthongs, although not necessarily all varieties have them.

[@MrSkribanto]

As in many languages, Esperanto has its inconsistencies, for instance, the -n suffix is used to sign the direct object of a verb, but in sentences like: "Leginte la libron, li iris vespermanĝi ." the accusative -n is generally used after an adverb, Nevertheless, Esperanto is easy to be learned.

[@user-ou5zx8wf2h]

"Leginte" is not adverb, it is adverbial participle, so it is form of verb

[@MrSkribanto]

@@user-ou5zx8wf2h well that answers my question, спасибо!

[@noname4422]

@@MrSkribanto It’s both really. It means “having read”, so it modifies the main verb of the sentence, but it’s also a verb with its own object. “Having read the book, he went to eat dinner.”

[@bernardkung7306]

Trying to squeeze Esperanto grammar into the boxes of European languages is just as misguided as the effort to somehow* squeeze English grammar into the boxes of Latin. * (Yes, I split the infinitive -- point made?)

[@materialknight]

For anyone watching: This video has quite a lot of (possibly unintentional) inaccuracies (as you may verify by reading the corrections made in the other comments). My two non-mentioned-yet-by-anyone cents are: 1. The circumflex is NOT considered punctuation, its part of the letter itself, and thus, it doesn't need to have a separate meaning. 2. The letter "o" at the end is NOT part of the suffixes, it is the Nominative Case (a marker to indicate that the word is a noun); thus, "-ej-", "-uj-", "-in-", "-an-" are suffixes, but "ejo", "ujo", "ino" and "ano" are NOT; they are nouns ("place", "container", "female" and "member", respectively). 3. The suffix "-in-" simplifies a lot the topic of family (the only topic where it really is mandatory besides the distinction between man-woman and boy-girl), and is optional for occupations and everything else (e.g.: the word "instruisto" by itself has no gender, it just means "teacher", but if for some reason you need to clarify it's a female teacher, you can say "instruistino"). 4. "Left" is written "maldekstra", not "maldektra", and if you want, you can say "liva" instead. By the way, the cluster "sc" is much easier to pronounce if, before saying it, you put your mouth in the position required for the next vowel (e.g.: to say "scii, scio or sciuro", put your mouth in the position to make the "i" before starting the word). 5. The countries work like this: Originally, "-uj-" (the suffix for containers) was used for the names of non-american countries (bc the name of the people determined the name of their country, so the "francoj" (frech) lived in "francujo" (container of the frech people), but nowadays, for various reasons, we prefer "-i-" instead of "-uj-"; so "francujo", today is "francio" (but you can use any form you want). In America (the continent) is the other way around: the name of the country determines the name of the people, and bc of that, the name of the inhabitants is the one needing a suffix this time ("-an-", the suffix of members ["ano" is "member" *¡laughs in spanish!*]), thus: "El Salvador" is "Salvadoro" and its demonym is "Salvadorano". 6. "Stano" literally means "tin" (yes, the element, the metal); it doesn't have anything to do with countries. EDIT: Improved explanations.

[@mathgeniuszach]

I decided I wanted to try to make a conlang which was an auxlang on the side, had 1 sound per letter, and was more compact than English (mostly so I could teach it to my friends and give them really good callouts with limited syllables). After doing research on each of the most popular languages, I ended up with 12 constanants and 5 vowels. It's really fun trying to fit everything neatly into the space! Afterwards I watched this video and immediately questioned half the decisions in this conlang lol

[@Elwislipknot]

Actually, portuguese has the "tch" sound (as the "c" in italian "ciao"), it's in one of our most used words, "tchau", that means "bye"

[@rykloog9578]

How often to Portuguese speakers say bye to each other for it to be one of the most used words? I know that I say buy 10 - 20 times a day (maybe less) (as student). Maybe Portuguese people say buy as a part of speech. I'll have to ask my Portuguese friend.

[@Elwislipknot]

@@rykloog9578 oh, not really if you do think about it, your friend will confirm, it was more of a figure of speech

[@rykloog9578]

@@Elwislipknot lol, sorry i was being a bit facetious

[@GJunioTube]

If you think about the 1000 most used words, I guess "tchau" will be there. Many words aren't used mone then once a week.

[@manueloribe9153]

0:10 It is not “Hoper” it is “The one who hopes”. Do your reaserch before doing your videos. Unsubscribing now.

[@inari.28]

OOF

[@CatieKejti]

@Lucky Joestar unfortunately, yes, a lot are, speaking as an Esperanto speaker

[@squirtlett7369]

@Lucky Joestar he is joking, I am a *hoper* that you know that

[@MiMiBrokenbourgh]

@@christydavidpallanivel1708 r/whooosh

[@arklypurple99]

i know like wow i cant believe someone would do this and no even reserch fully

[@cloverfemmoo]

heard a joke once. man goes to doctor. says he's spent five years of his life struggling with letting go. says the people he talks to worry and ask if he's okay, and he just reflexively brushes them off and lies that he's great, been laughing nonstop and never bored. says he's desperate for a distraction, to move on. doctor says: "treatment is simple. clown commenter jan Antoni returned to the comment section tonight. go and read his puppetmaster schtick, that should pick you right up." man bursts into tears. says: "but doctor... i AM jan Antoni"

[@jan_kala]

Also, just because a language doesn't have a sound doesn't mean those people can't say a sound. I can go to any languages phonology, then point to a sound and a corresponding language without that sound.

[@skyworm8006]

No shit. I recently learnt some sounds that I could previously not pronounce. The point is the sounds are just taken directly from Polish and aren't very common, which is contradictory to making an international language. The the best option would be to select the most common phonemes out of all languages (maybe not including languages below like 10-15 million speakers). That would be best when making a interlang, not this.

[@HBMmaster]

CHALLENGE: find a language with more than sixty million speakers that isn't compatible with Toki Pona's phonology

[@jan_kala]

Conlang Critic done! Arabic

[@HBMmaster]

very close! however, Toki Pona's phonology is lax enough that all of its phonemes sill can be mapped to Arabic without breaking any phonological rules: p /f~b/ t /t/ k /k/ m /m/ n /n/ s /s/ w /w/ l /l/ j /j/ i /i/ u /u/ e /aj/ o /aw/ a /a/

[@jan_kala]

Conlang Critic nope! Arabic only has three vowels and toki pona has 5

[@brettanial]

I have been a rather avid Esperantist for five years now, and this is the first time I've actually ran into real legitimate criticism with its core concepts. Now I am sad.

[@MajoroTom]

mi esperas, ke vi ne haltis lerni ĝin :)

[@levitheentity4000]

3:58 Portuguese has all of these "Pai" meaning "father" "Mau" meaning "evil" or "bad" "Gostei" meaning "I liked" "Eu" meaning "I" "Oi" meaning "hi" "Fui" meaning "I went"

[@ThatOnePerson_Gab]

Mau has 2 different ways of saying it (Atleast here in Brazil.): Mal and Mau. Mal is an adverb, antonym of bem (good). Mau is an adjective, antonym of bom (also good.) Examples: Ele é uma pessoa *bom* . Isto é alguma coisa do *bem* .

[@OrdepCubik]

To critic a lenguaje you must study before, Esperanto is so easy to study, I'm from Spain and is easier understand Esperanto than english. "Suno not sound how "sun"" jajajjajaja is talks reads is same that speak, likes Spanish.

[@lomsahit7367]

Yeah but like, Spanish and the romance languages aren't the only in the world. A person that speaks an Asian language wouldn't be able to understand the words like you do.

[@OrdepCubik]

@@lomsahit7367 But much easier than English for the Asian language. that's why it's a better choice as an international language.

[@missingfaktor]

Hindi and Urdu both have /tʃ/. It's written as च and چ respectively.

[@hiimemily]

"'suno' doesn't sound like 'sun!'" haha yeah that's weird, anyway what's it called in toki pona

[@orthohawk1026]

well, it doesn't sound like "sol" or "haul" or "sunce" or "ilios" either

[@Mr.Nichan]

About plurals and the accusative case, and their use on adjectives as well as nouns: They do make it harder to learn, and their transparently designed to mimic European languages, but their still incredibly easy to learn, and redundancy isn't a bad thing.

[@Evelyn-ee5jw]

the "you know like in Vötgil" at 07:48 is so funny

[@Girvid]

Hindi does not have ch? The ch sound (ĉ in Esperanto) is one of the most used consonants in Hindi, written as च. चल chal, कच्चा kacchā, पचता pachtā, नाच nāch, चरित्र charitra, चखना chakhnā,etc.

[@KyrieFortune]

every time i read the comments, there's something new that Conlang Critic got wrong and it's beautiful to see this mess of a video being slowly reduced to pieces

[@maiku20]

The smaller you make the phonology, the longer words will have to be on average and the harder it will be to recognizably transliterate names of people, countries, etc. from the languages of the world. You seem to prioritize ease of pronunciation over every other consideration, but there are other concerns in the mix too.

[@HBMmaster]

fair enough, but you'd be surprised how much you can get away with as far as phonological approximations go!

[@IAmostSeeTheWorld]

Japanese is a clear example of how words can be almost unrecognizable after putting them through the small inventiry of phonemes.

[@sluggo206]

And Hawaiian. A small number of phonemes doesn't make words especially longer: the length is more because of rules against consonant clusters. But a small number of phonemes lead to more homonym clashes, which cause their own problems.

[@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046]

Toki Pona - Words are usually 1 - 2 syllables, sometimes 3 or 4, how many phonemes does it have?

[@thewanderingmistnull2451]

@@palatasikuntheyoutubecomme2046 The number of phonemes is just the number of consonants + the number of vowels, so count them up.

[@aetherel]

There is a reason why some country names in Esperanto are derived from the names of their inhabitants, whereas some are the other way around. It's explained by Duolingo: > Esperanto has a two-part system for naming countries and their inhabitants. This two-part system developed early in the history of Esperanto, and was based on the idea of a division of the world into "Old World" and "New World". The assumption was that the "Old World" countries took their names from the people who lived there. In contrast, "New World" countries consisted mainly of immigrants and their descendants, so their inhabitants were named after the countries they lived in. So, for some "Old World" countries, mainly in Europe and Asia, the Esperanto root form gives the name of the inhabitant, and the name of the country is formed from it. For other "New World" countries,mainly in the Americas, Africa and Oceania, the Esperanto root form gives the name of the country, and the name of the inhabitant is formed from it. source: duome.eu/tips/en/eo -- ctrl-f for "country names" "Usono" for the US also makes plenty of sense -- it's similar enough to be easy to remember, and it's possibly derived from an older abbreviation for the US, "USONA"/"Usona" ("United States of North America"). See, for instance: en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Usona#English. Additionally, if you're really bent on having a direct translation, there's (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Usono#Esperanto) "Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Ameriko" (lit. "United States of America") or "Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj Amerikaj" (lit. "United American States"). What would one have the US be called anyway? No self-respecting IAL should settle for referring to the country of the USA as "America" (or something similar), and the name of the country "the United States" is unlike many others in that it is made up of commonly used words which have meanings in their own right, which means that the name might be literally translated into the IAL (as above), and that doesn't make for recognizability either -- a US national with little knowledge of Spanish might have a hard time recognizing "EEUU" as referring to "los Estados Unidos", i.e., the United States, and even worse with IALs which don't share those roots. "Usono" is short, easy to remember, and better than many alternatives.

[@Kelly_C]

ive seen ppl on the internet use USAmerican no idea how thats pronounced though

[@aetherel]

@@Kelly_C U-S-American (like the abbreviation US plus the word American), I'd think. Personally I would prefer that to "American" in terms of clarity, but aesthetically "Usonian" looks better. I'm going to try to call myself "usonano", though.

[@Kelly_C]

@@aetherel why wouldn't it be usanian or usian or usanano or whatever though

[@aetherel]

@@Kelly_C USian seems legit but doesn't sound as nice as Usonian in my view. USAnian also makes sense but looks weird. Usanano is wrong because in Esperanto the name of the country is Usono, not Usano, and the name of an inhabitant is derived from Usono + ano = Usonano rather than Usano + ano = Usanano.

[@AB-Prince]

in latin, right is dexter, and left is sinister, do in a sense left IS right but bad

[@tompatterson1548]

I figured out why esperanto has /sts/, /eu/, and things like that. It’s so that it can loan words from latin and greek, and have the writing of stuff from them match up with the spelling in other languages.

[@davinchristino]

But literally no one speaks latin and greek today

[@tompatterson1548]

@@davinchristino but their words have been influential in international scientific vocabulary.

[@ronaldonmg]

As far as I remember my latin-classes, Latin has neither sts nor eú

[@tompatterson1548]

@@ronaldonmg probably wanted to keep the . Latin always represents /sk/. Eu is in eurus (east wind).

[@olganesterowicz]

Yes, I agree that Esperanto has the Polish phonology, because I'm Polish myself! The Polish language is known for a lot of tongue twisters like "W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" - try to pronounce that, eh?

[@canter1ter]

v shzhebeszhynie hzh- fuck this

[@davidrubino8316]

I think during the time Esperanto was made in the 18-someaughts, the French was the lingua franca. I am also willing to bet the W wasn't used because it's pronounces as /v/ in Polish.

[@paketbaand1523]

You're welcome for the german subtitles. I had to do that before KZbin removes the feature. PS: Did you call him Dr. Lejzer all the time because it sounds like Laser?

[@chernobogroach6359]

yeah, i am well aware of the fact that this video is three years old, but here's a correction: even polish isn't compatible with esperanto's inventory, 'cause there's no /h/ in polish, as it has merged with /x/ a long time ago. the chart that you're showing in the video doesn't have /h/ either. cheers.

[@agiotasulista1738]

4:21 Actually,portuguese does have t͡ʃ,at least the varietys spoken in brazil,in some dialects,it's just on the sylable "ti" and derivates,but in other dialects,it's a thing on it's own,mine has it in some words,both in formal and informal speech

[@cherryappleproductions5822]

Esperanto is actually supported by the UN, it’s not recognized as an official language but the UN is supporting it as an international language

[@SL-wt8fm]

Falacy of authority

[@vulpes7079]

Good for them, still won't make it good

[@element1192]

How to type Esperanto's special letters on Windows while still having all the standard ones available: 1. Go to your language settings and add Esperanto 2. Click Esperanto, then click Options, then click Add A Keyboard 3. Find "Canadian Multilingual Standard" 4. Switch your active keyboard by pressing Alt+Shift 5. You can now type Esperanto letters! ĥĉĵĝŝ can all be typed by pressing what is normally the leftbracket [ key (^ on CMS layout), which corresponds to the circumflex, then press h c j g or s. To type ŭ, you have to press rightctrl+shift+backslash(à on CMS layout), which and then u. Typing the breve diacritic can be a pain, so reallocating a different key for ŭ may be a better decision