An Easy Version of English

You probably know by now that I know and love Esperanto. There is a lot to love about it: the fascinating history with its plot twists, the way I managed to survive my first Esperanto meeting after three weeks of learning, the travels I did with Esperantists all over Europe, and the amazing people that learn Esperanto - quirky, funny, and often able to converse in a dozen languages.

But lately, I have been concerned. Esperanto had a huge boost with the introduction of the Duolingo Esperanto course a few years ago, but as so often, it was picked up for a few moments and then discarded as a useless hobby. English, we are told, is the International Language, and there is no need for something made up.

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Gender Treatment in Nova vs. Esperanto

One of the more political attacks against Esperanto in current times comes from the idea that Esperanto is inherently sexist. Nova is different, although the difference is less political and more due to language simplicity and consistency reasons. The end result is anyway that Nova, unlike Esperanto, is entirely sex-neutral in a way that is easier to learn and comprehend. Continue reading

Nova Stilo: 1. The Alphabet

Nova, the new style for Esperanto, starts out with a change in the way the language is written. As many know, Esperanto uses the Latin alphabet with a set of diacritics (marks on regular letters). Of the 26 ASCII / English letters, Esperanto uses A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V Z, but not Q W X Y. The letters C G H J S come with a diacritic variant, a circumflex or hat : Ĉ Ĝ Ĥ Ĵ Ŝ. In addition, the letter U comes with a variant that has a breve: Ŭ. Continue reading

Nova Stilo: 10. Reflexives

A feature that Esperanto inherited from European languages is the reflexive. If an action is performed on the actor him/her/itself, a special pronoun is used. In English, that pronoun is the personal pronoun plus the ending “-self,” in Esperanto it’s the regular pronoun. The exception in Esperanto is with the third person singular, in which case a special pronoun is used, “si”. Some languages, instead, use a mode of the verb to indicate reflexive use, most notably Latin. In this case, the verb itself indicates the action affects the actor.

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Nova Stilo: 11. Simplification

Esperanto has accumulated some cruft over the years, and Nova wants to make things simpler. While the remainder of the changes is systematic, some of them are piecemeal and require simplification word by word.

There are four main areas in which this simplification occurs:

Simplification of grammatical structures that come from a specific language. For instance, the form "ju pli... des pli..." from German "je mehr... desto mehr..." is simplified. In Nova, you can use either "yu" or "des" in both cases, or leave them both out entirely. "Ju pli mi pensas des pli mi ploras" ("the more I think the more I cry") could be any of "yu pli mi pensas yu pli mi ploras," "des pli mi pensas des pli mi ploras," or even just "pli mi pensas pli mi ploras" in Nova.

Creation of true synonyms of existing words or parts of their meaning, allowing for independent use of new forms with the same range of meaning as old forms (or a subset). An example we already saw is the word "ez," which is a true synonym of "kivoye." A partial synonym is the adjective "maha" in the sense of "great," which is currently covered by "granda" (big).

Simplification of the vocabulary by replacing roots that are not international in nature with word combinations, where possible.

Simplification of sounds that are overly complex, like "monstro" for monster.

Dum jarcento Esperanto amasis kelkajn komplikaĵojn, kiujn Nova volas plisimpligi. La ŝanĝoj viditaj ĝis nun estas sistemaj, sed tiuj ĉi estas disaj kaj bezonas pokazan rigardon.

Temas pri qefe kvar areoy da simpligo:

    Simpligo de gramatikaj strukturoj el un lingo. Ekzemple la formo "ju pli... des pli...", kiu estas germandevena, simpliĝas al "yu pli... yu pli..." au "des pli... des pli...". Se oni preferas, oni eĉ povas ellasi tiujn markilojn entute: "Ju pli mi pensas des pli mi ploras" povus iĝi iun ayn el "yu pli mi pensas yu pli mi ploras," "des pli mi pensas des pli mi ploras," or eĉ nur "pli mi pensas pli mi ploras" en Nova.

    Kreado de veraj sinonimoj por signifo tuta aŭ parta de vorto. Tio povas okazi kaj por belsoneco, kaj por internaciigo, kaj por precizigo. Ekzemplo de unua estas "ez," kion ni jam vidis kiel perfekta, sed pli mallonga sinonimo de "kivoye". Dua estas aldono de signifo "pilko" al la vorto "balo." Oni povas fari tion, ĉar en Nova oni kutime diras "dancosmo" por la malnova signifo de balo. Ekzemplo de tria estas la nova adjektivo "maha" el sanskrito, kiu precizigas la signifon "moŝta" de "granda". (Ekzemple en maha reĝo, maharaĝo.)

    Simpligo de la vortaro per anstataŭigo de radikoj ne internaciaj per vortfarado.

    Simpligo de sonoj tro malfacilaj aŭ kompleksaj, ekz. ĥ aŭ moNSTRo

Dum yarcento Esperanto amasis kelka komplikajoy, kiu Nova volas plisimpligi. Xandjoy vidita djis nun estas sistema, sed hiuy estas disa y bezonas pokaza rigardo.

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Nova Stilo: 12. Uppercase

Does anyone really need capital letters? Of course not, language is readable with or without. Still, it’s odd how alien a language looks like just because it capitalizes differently. Lojban, the logical language, decided to entirely do without capitals and that just looks odd.

At the same time, there are languages like German that make correct capitalization a cornerstone of their grammar. School children all over the world despair at figuring out which of the many conflicting capitalization rules applies.

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Nova Stilo: 2. The Accusative

To distinguish subject and object in a sentence, Esperanto uses the accusative case. The accusative is marked by adding the ending -n to a word (noun, adjective, adverb). Since the word itself indicates its function in a sentence, word order is free. The sentences “mi amas vin,” “vin mi amas,” “mi vin amas,” “amas mi vin,” all mean “I love you.” In fact, stringing the three words “mi,” “vin,” and “amas” in any order always creates a valid sentence that always means “I love you.”

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Nova Stilo: 3. The Article

In the beginning, Esperanto had two articles. The definite article ’la’, which is still with us, and the indefinite article, for which Esperanto borrowed the word for ‘one,’ ‘unu.’ After a while, people started dropping the indefinite article entirely. When it was felt necessary or useful, one would use the word ‘iu,’ which means ‘some.’

That the definite article stayed has good reasons, because it helps identify something as specific instead of generic. Sadly, every language thinks of things that need to be identified slightly differently and we are left with an article whose use is, in practice, relatively random.

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Nova Stilo: 4. The Plural

In Esperanto, substantives and adjectives agree on number and case. “Oni ŝatas grandajn bluajn ĉielojn” - “One likes big blue skies.” This allows moving adjectives from their substantives for poetic effect and makes it easier to see which substantive an adjective belongs to. The downside (as in the sentence above) is a series of words with similar (or identical) endings.

Worse than just a sound issue, though, Esperanto borrows this feature from languages that share it, like German and Russian. Other languages do not have concordance between substantive and adjective. The probably most notable one of these is English, in which adjectives do not inflect at all. Where Esperanto says, “la bela granda kato” and “la belaj grandaj katoj,” English uses “the big beautiful cat” and “the big beautiful cats.”

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Nova Stilo: 5. Gender

For all the wonderful things Esperanto has shown to the world, its handling of gender is a complete mess. This is mostly due to conventions of the 19th Century (when Esperanto was created), but also by the underlying model, which is the German.

In many languages, words themselves have a gender. This gender is not strictly related to function: In German, spoon, fork, and knife are masculine, feminine, and neutral respectively. Esperanto doesn’t have any of that, as doesn’t English, which makes it much easier to learn those two languages.

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