Roch:Oh, it might have not been a matter of beginners, what I noticed is that wikipedias of many languages finally put its foot down to say esperanto is SVO!

The earliest adopters of Esperanto used the subject-verb-object order used by almost all European languages. But thanks to the existence of the accusative and "various inflectional devices", plus the fact that the 16 rules in the Fundamento give little guidance in regards to word order, the French Esperantist Pierre Janton argues "that Esperanto syntax allows Japanese speakers to render 'the dog saw the cat' as 'la hundo la katon vidis' or Arabic speakers to say 'vidis la hundo la katon', just as they would in their own languages."[1]

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Esperanto:_A_Complet...

I'm not sure of the point you are making. The above is a great argument for the flexibility of Esperanto grammar as it is and not an argument against the accusative.

I'm not sure of the point you are making. The above is a great argument for the flexibility of Esperanto grammar as it is and not an argument against the accusative.

The criticism comes later in the webpage, if you follow the link. But it sounds to me like a beginner complaining before they actually understand how Esperanto works. I can't give a good counter argument, because I am not good enough at Esperanto yet.

But what about more complex, real-life sentences with more than one verb? A German speaker might naturally say, for example, "mi volas la kukon manĝi" ("I want the cake to eat"), while an English speaker would prefer "mi volas manĝi la kukon".

As an English speaker I have no trouble with either word order. Is there any reason to prefer one over the other in Esperanto?

Well, my point is that, the svo order, now recognized, makes the accusative un-necessary, unless you want the esperanto to look like any other natural language. (Slavic probably.)


At that point everybody may well feel entitled to make esperanto to look like what they want... any surprize there?

Is it recognised? And is it recognised as the manner of constructing such sentences? Not all users of Esperanto construct sentences in SVO order. Just look at many of the Russian Esperantists in other threads.

Is it recognised? And is it recognised as the manner of constructing such sentences? Not all users of Esperanto construct sentences in SVO order. Just look at many of the Russian Esperantists in other threads.

I agree with Vestitor. Probably most native English speakers use the SVO order, but that does not make it "recognised". Even if most Esperantists use that order it still doesn't make it "recognised". I do know some of the big-wigs from the British Esperanto Association would not agree.

Also I believe Russian uses an accusative form, and has more-or-less the same flexible word order as Esperanto. Maybe if Sergejm reads this, he can confirm that.

I'm not particularly aiming at russian... But the same as the following can now be said of esperanto:

Word order in Slovak is relatively free, since strong inflection enables the identification of grammatical roles (subject, object, predicate, etc.) regardless of word placement. This relatively free word order allows the use of word order to convey topic and emphasis.
[...]
The unmarked order is subject–verb–object.

Examples:

Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is subject–verb–object.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

Tipológicamente hablando, el esperanto es un idioma preposicional y su orden más empleado por omisión es sujeto verbo objeto
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

В последнее время, однако, в словарь эсперанто вошло несколько интернациональных англицизмов, таких как bajto «байт» (но также «bitoko», буквально «бит-восьмёрка»), blogo «блог», defaŭlte «по умолчанию», manaĝero «менеджер» и др.

Recently, however, several international Anglicisms, such as bajto "byte" (but also "bitoko", literally "bit-eight"), blogo "blog", defaŭlte "by default", manaĝero "manager" have entered the Esperanto dictionary and etc.

Vestitor:I say this with trepidation, because I am not a super advanced Esperantist, but being annoyed by the accusative -n is often a sign of a beginner. Wanting to fiddle with the structure of the grammar is also a sign.

I recall a post written by Erinja where she said that when people come to Esperanto they suggest changes in a way they would never suggest if they were learning say German or Spanish. Those two languages are as they are, the national languages of several countries and the learner new to them learns them as they are.

With Esperanto there's this idea that it's fair game for any tin-pot linguist to have a go at meddling with it. Esperanto's main structure is more-or-less fixed. What's there is what you learn when you learn Esperanto. It is not a free-for-all. It may be a gift to the world, but unlike e.g. the Linux kernel you can't go about taking it and making your own 'flavour'.

You're right about me being a beginner. By the way, I use Linux, so I know that it is too different from Esperanto to be compared to it.

Roch:Oh, it might have not been a matter of beginners, what I noticed is that wikipedias of many languages finally put its foot down to say esperanto is SVO!

The earliest adopters of Esperanto used the subject-verb-object order used by almost all European languages. But thanks to the existence of the accusative and "various inflectional devices", plus the fact that the 16 rules in the Fundamento give little guidance in regards to word order, the French Esperantist Pierre Janton argues "that Esperanto syntax allows Japanese speakers to render 'the dog saw the cat' as 'la hundo la katon vidis' or Arabic speakers to say 'vidis la hundo la katon', just as they would in their own languages."[1]

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Esperanto:_A_Complet...

I'm not quite sure if you're saying that Esperanto is or isn't SVO. As you know, the word order is very flexble.

Anyone who wants to have another discussion can help me with a problem I'm having: https://lernu.net/forumo/temo/23753/

Esperanto is SVO by default...
hmm, what was that thread again...

John batis Fred : John is the subject, Fred is the object!