Esperanto

From KneeQuickie

Esperanto is an auxlang published by Ludvic Lazarus Zamenhof in 1887. Notable features include its use of final vowels to classify words into the various word classes (nouns, verbs, and so forth) and attempts at a rich and highly productive system of word derivation. Today, Esperanto has become one of the most famous conlangs and probably the most successful auxlang.

Contents 1 Phonology 2 Grammar 3 Word building 4 Criticism 5 External links

Phonology

Consonants

	bilabial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
stop	p	t		k
voiced	b	d		g
fricative	f	s	S	x	h
voiced	f	z	Z
affricate		ts	tS
fricative			dZ
nasal	m	n
liquid		r l	j	w

Vowels

	front	central	back
high	i		u
mid	e		o
low		a

/ai au eu oi/

Grammar

In contrast to its more fusional and synthetic progenitors, Esperanto tends toward a mild agglutination, marking nouns for number and case and verbs for tense and mood. Although it has means of forming feminine nouns, Esperanto does not use a system of gender as such since it does not require concordance for gender class.

Esperanto has two cases, nominative and accusative, the first unmarked and the second marked with a final -n. Adding -j, before the case ending if present, produces a plural form. Like many other European languages, Esperanto requires agreement between a noun and its adjectives for number and case, but not for gender.

• Prepositions

Verbs take inflections for tense and mood, but not for person.

• Verb marking

Word building

Criticism

Despite its success, Esperanto has spawned a great deal of criticism from many angles, as evidenced by its low popularity on the ZBB and the many websites critiquing it. Most critiques focus on its viability as a universal language, but some go further and attack it as a conlang.

Undeniably a Euroclone, the language has faced criticism from those who believe it fails to live up to its claims of universality in a diverse world. Many of its features allegedly assume a Western, Indo-European understanding of language, failing to consider the alternatives found in other language families and the needs of speakers outside the West. Similarly, its vocabulary draws almost entirely from European languages such as Russian, German, and Latin, with little influence from other major languages in the world such as Arabic and Chinese.

Many critics have called the case and number agreement of Esperanto needlessly complicated and redundant, noting that languages like English get by fine without any such agreement. This, they argue, only makes the language needlessly redundant and complicated for people unfamiliar with such elements. Some have gone further and opposed mandatory inflections at all in an auxiliary language, noting that all languages have particles, but many have no inflections.

• Orthography

• Sexism

• Boredom

External links

• Learn to Speak Esperanto
• Learn Not To Speak Esperanto
• The Alphabets of Europe
• Ethnologue

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