Armand6:Such changes happen very often, actually.

Often? Do tell.

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Armand6:

bryku:Let's get rid of the accusative in English!

A better idea: let's get rid of accusative in Dutch! Oops! They already did... in 1946. Such changes happen very often, actually.

[/quote]Why don't we all learn Dutch instead of Esperanto? The problem of this terrible accusative would be easily solved for all the eternity.

vejktoro:

Armand6:Such changes happen very often, actually.

Often? Do tell.

Losing cases or merging of cases is indeed a common phenomenon in linguistic evolution. Latin had six cases, Spanish e.g. now has three, and those only in the personal pronouns of the third person. Russian has lost almost completely the partitive and locative (which have been merged with other cases). Out of eight cases in proto-indoeuropean most descendants of this language managed to maintain only a few of them. Most Mayan languages are losing the clear distinction between ergative and absolutive.

Yes, those changes do happen very often.

Tempodivalse:

Altebrilas:the only thing that can be changed is the way we consider people who forget accusative: should they be stigmatized, or can we be tolerant?

The correct course of action, surely, would be to help those people remember the accusative, by explaining how and where the accusative is used. There is nothing wrong in inadvertently forgetting an accusative - even proficient speakers do it occasionally.

People omit accusative most of the time not because they don't know its use, but because they are too stressed to pay attention to it. You assume that people always can be helped when communicating, but when communication is used to solve a conflict, for instance, no language help is to be expected. So it is a double punishment for people who don't master perfectly the language - precisely the kind of inferiority Zamenhof tried to avoid when designing the language.

robbkvasnak: So go ahead and write without the accusative. I personally don't care and I will probably not consider your texts very well written and my brain may therefore dismiss them as trivial and unimportant. Good luck!

It is possible to write esperantically correct text without using the accusative:

"Mi ŝatas "Lernu!" (I can add "-n" but it's hard to pronounce)."

"En malriĉaj landoj, iom da riĉuloj envias multe da malriĉuloj, en riĉaj landoj, estas la malo".

More seriously, people translating songs have to cope with rhymes and accusatives : they must find ways to avoid using them at all at the end of the lines. So they have at the same time to get rid of accusatives, while respecting esperanto grammar.

Altebrilas:

robbkvasnak: So go ahead and write without the accusative. I personally don't care and I will probably not consider your texts very well written and my brain may therefore dismiss them as trivial and unimportant. Good luck!

It is possible to write esperantically correct text without using the accusative:

"Mi ŝatas "Lernu!" (I can add "-n" but it's hard to pronounce)."

"En malriĉaj landoj, iom da riĉuloj envias multe da malriĉuloj, en riĉaj landoj, estas la malo".

More seriously, people translating songs have to cope with rhymes and accusatives : they must find ways to avoid using them at all at the end of the lines. So they have at the same time to get rid of accusatives, while respecting esperanto grammar.

Why they have to avoid accusative at the end of the lines? They can do it but without accusative they would be limited to one word order.

michaleo:

Why they have to avoid accusative at the end of the lines? They can do it but without accusative they would be limited to one word order.

Because they have to find another word that is also a) at the accusative form b) with a root whose ending rhymes and c) that root must be different to avoid a too "easy" rhyme that would look like a repetition. It is difficult to fulfill the three conditions at the same time.

One would be limited to one word order only if accusative were forbidden. But my hypothesis was to tolerate omission when using SVO word order, in other words interpreting the sentence that way when there is no accusative.

Armand6:

bryku:Let's get rid of the accusative in English!

A better idea: let's get rid of accusative in Dutch! Oops! They already did... in 1946. Such changes happen very often, actually.

As a matter of fact, no they didn't...ever. I don't know where you picked up this idea, but it's completely false. There were no changes in 1946, the reform was in 1947 and the next one in 1954. In neither of these did the various -n endings disappear.

Dutch is not constructed like Esperanto, so there has never been an accusative -n in the same way. There are words with -n- endings though e.g:

Boek = book : Ik houd van boeken - I love/like books.

And also where the -n isn't always stressed in speech, though always in written form.

There are also many awkward instances (for the learner) of -n endings on certain plural nouns and adjectives and indefinite pronouns, such as eigen, sommigen. Some even thwart native speakers, often because of the constant tinkering with the language over the years which adds changes to forms they have already learned at school.

Vestitor:Some even thwart native speakers, often because of the constant tinkering with the language over the years which adds changes to forms they have already learned at school.

I could be wrong but I think stability is a more desirable attribute of a language, as opposed to accuracy or efficiency.