It may be that Esperanto is not perfect, but most of its supposed competitors were published very soon after their creation, unlike Esperanto which Zamenhof had been using and refining for years. This makes that many so-called international languages are worse than the language they claim to improve.

And while Zamenhof was not a linguist, he knew quite a bit about languages and in the end Esperanto is easy to learn and fun to speak. So at least I say he did his work good enough.

mnlg:

erinja:Some time back, there was an active member of this forum who was vehemently against so many aspects of Esperanto. I think he may have settled on Novial or something.

I think you are thinking about J B Rye and his very detailed rant which has been online, as far as I can remember, at least since 1999.

I'm well aware of Mr. Rye, and I have exchanged a polite e-mail or two with him in the past, but this wasn't him. I was referring to the user nw2394, whose name was Nick. He was quite active in the forums a couple years ago, and then dropped off. Many of his complaints about Esperanto were centered around aspects of it that are quite different from English. That is probably why Novial was better suited to him, since it takes its cues from English. You can see some examples of the correspondence with him in this thread. It's hardly the only example, he was really pretty active in the forums for a while.

erinja:You can see some examples of the correspondence with him in this thread.

Heh. Yeah, that was quite a thread. I remember this conversation with Nick very well. The part where he threatens to chisel his side of the argument into my forehead is epic!

Good times.