could the vocabulary of E-o be made more international, so that the 'distance' from Esperanto to the minds of all communities be more comparable, and thus the 'linguistic handshake' be more of a reality?

That wouldn't make things any easier, even for those Japanese gentlemen; it would at best be a symbolic gesture in the direction of political correctness. Not that there's anything wrong with symbolic gestures of political correctness, I'm just saying I think that that effort could be better spent doing something actually useful.

Here's why I don't think a more international vocabulary would be any easier. Let's say you decide to create a new IAL with a fully international vocabulary. It's possible to make a more-or-less complete language with 5000 words, and there are at least 5000 languages in the world, so to be perfectly fair, and to avoid giving the impression that we are discriminating against linguistic minorities, we have one word in our IAL from each world language. Surely the problems this would cause are obvious: one, everyone starts out knowing only one or two words of the language, so nothing has really been accomplished as far as making the language seem familiar to everyone; two, not all words are created equal, so the language from which comes the word for "heaven" gets to feel more special than the language from which comes the word for "fecal matter"; three, there are other features of a language besides vocabulary -- whose grammar system do we use? whose sound inventory? whose writing system? whatever you decide you'll be called a racist anyway -- and four, no one could add any new words for technological inventions or slang terms and so on in the future, because it would give one language a disproportionate share of the vocabulary.

(Proportional representation of the world's languages in the vocabulary of an IAL wouldn't work because you would have to totally re-do the language every time the world's demographics shift, and plus people will complain that that isn't really fair either anyway.)

Esperanto has a mostly Western European vocabulary, but its structure is not really Western European. Word-creation and other aspects will feel familiar to many speakers of Asian or African languages even if the words aren't familiar. And some of the words will in fact likely be familiar anyway, like telefono.

And if it makes you feel any better, some Esperanto words do come indirectly from non-European sources: admiralo and alĝebro (from Arabic), uragano and maizo (from Native American languages, sorry don't know which ones off-hand), the -u "imperative" ending (supposedly from Ancient Hebrew), etc.

trojo:

could the vocabulary of E-o be made more international..

That wouldn't make things any easier, even for those Japanese gentlemen; it would at best be a symbolic gesture in the direction of political correctness..

My idea was (theoretically) not to alter the structure of the language but to have a stock of roots such that the number of connections to people's minds in different communities would be distributed more equitably. The selection of roots in loglan for example, which might be suitable as a starting point would mean that an 'Esperanto' that used its roots would have a large number of roots that Far Easterners could connect to. This would make it certainly easier to learn for Japanese. The roots that Japanese, Tamil and Turkish have in common would be ripe candidates for use in such a stock.

So I don't agree that this is an exercise in political correctness. I did say that it wouldn't be easy, but the greater difficulty of Esperanto for non-Europeans is not an imaginary problem, and it does make a linguistic handshake more difficult.

Miland:The roots that Japanese, Tamil and Turkish have in common would be ripe candidates for use in such a stock.

I doubt that they have many words in common…

But I agree: I do not really like finding so much French words in Esperanto.

I think that another issue is the useless neologisms (often Greek words) that can be expressed with a compound word.

For instance, miokardio is recognizable by a Westerner, but not by an Easterner. Kormuskolo is easier for everybody. (I don’t know whether this is a good example though, this word doesn’t seem to be common.) Even a word like geologio can be terscienco.

I posted a thread about a similar problem (illogical derivations).

webgovernor:I generally agree with you, but I'm still going to learn the language to the fullest before I pass a final judgment.

Maybe I too will enjoy the imperfections... we shall see.

You raise an interesting point and one which I too was bothered by. I have spent many years "dabbling" with constructed languages (CONLANG) both for gaming purposes and for fun. But I always felt Esperanto's orthography was too awkward and strange looking. Then it dawned on me that although I appreciated "ARTLANGS" (artistic language creations) more, Esperanto is, despite it's awkward look, a totally functional, easy tool to use. Quenya (from Tolkien) looks beautiful, even in Latin script, but it's no more an auxiliary language than Finnish or Estonian, or Welsh (and of course it was never intended to be).

The debate about "liking" how Esperanto works, feels and looks, is moot. It's there, it's done, it's complete. If you want a tool that fits the job, use it. If you want eye candy, then put energy into other languages.

@Ironchef, I, personally, am not looking for Eye-candy. The IALs that I've evaluated do not include artlangs, they include Lojban, Ido, and Interlingua. Esperanto is my favorite due to the community size and learning tools available. Esperanto is also proven to be effective, (Ido is inherently as well), but Ido has terrible learning tools.

I do not think that Esperanto's lack of an Eastern vocabulary is much of an issue, especially since, as an English speaker, many of EO's vocabulary is still somewhat foreign.

geologio can be terscienco

I agree with this comment, there needs to be more logically derived words, but at the same time, since the roots exist, I will probably just call it by the name that I feel is more logical, as my comments will still be understood.

Miland:The selection of roots in loglan for example, which might be suitable as a starting point would mean that an 'Esperanto' that used its roots would have a large number of roots that Far Easterners could connect to.

In practice, the roots of Loglan are so different-sounding (and different-looking when written) than the Chinese, Hindi, etc, originals, that they are probably mostly unrecognizable by a native speaker of those languages. Also, Loglan's roots are based on the eight most commonly spoken languages as of 1959. Is that really "fair" to linguistic minorities? Loglan was an interesting idea, but in the final analysis, Loglan doesn't really have much for an East Asian to connect to.

Esperanto, on the other hand, does have something for East Asians, etc, to connect to: its simple and logical structure, which is similar in some ways to certain eastern languages. To me that seems like a much bigger deal than a few vocabulary words.

Moreover, Esperanto seems to have actually gotten some traction in China and other places outside of North America and Western Europe whereas Loglan and Lojban definitely have not. If the Chinese prefer Esperanto, who are we to say no, Loglan (or whatever) is better for you?

And really, the only truly fair way to do roots would be to have a completely a priori language. FIRST, come up with a sound inventory and a set of phonological constraints based on an in-depth survey of the most common patterns in languages world-wide, then come up with a list of permitted syllables based on that, and then assign the meanings of words randomly with a computer. Simple, fair, no one discriminated against. Of course, this isn't an "improved Esperanto", and is in fact starting over fresh, but like I said earlier, starting over with a new IAL would be easier than reforming Esperanto.

webgovernor:

geologio can be terscienco

I agree with this comment, there needs to be more logically derived words, but at the same time, since the roots exist, I will probably just call it by the name that I feel is more logical, as my comments will still be understood.

There are other Earth sciences besides geology. Agricultural sciences (and yes there's a lot of science that goes into farming these days) could be considered "Earth science", but agricultural science is obviously a lot different from geology.

There are other examples of what you mean, I know, but in many cases a derived word may still have too broad of a meaning, and a more narrowly-defined neologism may be useful. So geologio is a specific type of terscienco, universitato is a specific type of altlernejo, etc.

I know not every root in Esperanto is strictly necessary, but most are at least somewhat useful in certain cases.

I myself prefer to use derived words wherever possible, but on the other hand there are many who are inclined to push in the other direction, such as those who are opposed to the -in derived words (e.g. patrino, princino), those who are opposed to the mal- derived words (e.g. maldekstra, malvera, malseka, malproksima), and I'm sure there are others. The only fair compromise between these various camps of would-be reformers is to leave Esperanto the way it is.

trojo: Loglan doesn't really have much for an East Asian to connect to..

I was talking about the simple structure of Esperanto plus the roots provided by Loglan as a starting point, and then refined to make the selection of roots still more equitable. That would have a lot more to connect to for a Japanese than Esperanto because he would have recognisable roots there which would be a foothold. Incidentally, have you met Japanese or Chinese Esperantists who have talked about the difficulty or ease of Esperanto? (I don't mean Chinese or Japanese Americans).

Miland:I was talking about the simple structure of Esperanto plus the roots provided by Loglan as a starting point, and then refined to make the selection of roots still more equitable. That would have a lot more to connect to for a Japanese than Esperanto because he would have recognisable roots there which would be a foothold.

Maybe, but it wouldn't help a speaker of Hausa or Quechua or Vietnamese or Thai or Sango, all of which are unrelated to the eight most widely-spoken languages of the world. Since Loglan's roots are not really "equitable" either, why bother?

On a side note, speakers of those languages are more likely to recognize roots from English (or even French) than from Japanese or Hindi anyway, because of TV and pop culture and whatnot.

Incidentally, have you met Japanese or Chinese Esperantists who have talked about the difficulty or ease of Esperanto? (I don't mean Chinese or Japanese Americans).

Not really, keeping in mind that there are no Esperanto conferences in my geographic area, and I'm too lazy/busy to travel to attend one.

A few years back though I did hear a group of Vietnamese folks talking (in Esperanto) about how great Esperanto was on Radio 3ZZZ. Also mainland China has regular hour-long radio broadcasts in Esperanto. And there's a religious group in Japan that has made Esperanto its official liturgical language.

So if the intent is to have an IAL that can catch on in Asia, then we've already got one: Esperanto.

webgovernor:

Mutusen:geologio can be terscienco

I agree with this comment, there needs to be more logically derived words, but at the same time, since the roots exist, I will probably just call it by the name that I feel is more logical, as my comments will still be understood.

We must not forget that geologists are now studying processes occuring on other planets as well. I know most universities now have an "Earth Sciences" department instead of a "Geology" department, and it's easy to figure out how they basically mean the same thing when you go back to the etymology, but I think having the original roots hidden behind the word (as with "geologio") might be better than making up a word like "terscienco". Mind you, most geologists will only work on Earth's data in their whole career, a huge proportion of our geological knowledge comes from the Earth and most of our understanding of what's happening elsewhere also comes from our terrestrial experience...

So 50-50, I guess... Everybody is welcome to use whichever one they prefer.

(Should we not use PT -posttajpo- instead of PS -postskribo- to add an extra bit of something after we're done typing a post?)

(What is a pencil used for, again??? I'm sure I used to know!)