"I feel like Esperanto fails at its goals."
"Esperanto failed its primary goal."
"…convoluted and eurocentric…"
"…extremely eurocentric…"
"…very bad. First of all, it's super eurocentric…"
"Overall, this episode is actually great, because it makes Esperantists angry."
"Sexism is just one of the negative results that come from Esperanto's derivational system."
"Eurocentric, unnecessarily difficult, cringe, xenophobic, homophobic, heteronormative, ableist, &c."
"Here are some reasons why Esperanto is a great language: …thank you for watching!"
"… european zonal auxlangs like Esperanto? Hate that shit!"
[Ranto]
[reddit comment in a post about Ranto]
[different reddit comment on same post]
"Take a bird, perhaps one of our lake swans, pluck it completely, gouge out its eyes, replace its flat beak with a vulture's or an eagle's, graft on to its leg-stumps the feet of a stork, stuff an owl's eyeballs into the sockets (...); now indite your banners, propagate and shout the following words: 'Behold the universal bird', and you will get a slight idea of the icy feeling created in us by that terrible butchery, that most sickening vivisection, increasingly offered to us under the name of Esperanto or universal language."
"I think Esperanto deserves a tier of its own, below Dogwater tier"
"WHY WOULD YOU PUT GENDERS IN A CONLANG DESIGNED TO BE GRAMMATICALLY SIMPLE"—"There is no grammatical gender in Esperanto."—"MY FRIEND LIED TO ME"
"Grammatical Gender: Esperanto: Male-centered origins. Toki Pona: Gender-neutral from the start."
"I hate this language, literally any other language is better than this. Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian German, Greek, Chinese, Russian, literally any language"—"You're absolutely entitled to dislike Esperanto. But if you explain what specifically bothers you about it—its sound, structure, lack of national culture, or something else—we can have a more meaningful discussion."—"stop the cope"
"Long live Latin, then, and down with Esperanto, that hotchpotch stinking of artificiality and hopes betrayed!"
"I love toki pona, and as much as this video made me feel a lot more conflicted about my love for it, im glad this video exists, because a collective project like a language really does need some criticism to grow, theres nothing shameful about being a proponent of an imperfect system if you're willing to acknowledge its flaws and earnestly work to iron them out, that's something that's widely informed my philosophy and politics and I think for that very reason I'd like to make more of an effort to raise points you made and more in the community, and also to learn Esperanto because i've been too surrounded by people that readily discard it entirely because of a video made 8 years ago for a series no longer running by someone whose mind has probably changed somewhat in the time since."
"people using Esperanto today is like using a steam engine for modern day transport. We get it, it's better than a horse, but we have toki pona :3"
"ew, esperanto. (yay, mandarin)"
"Esperanto is slightly better than silence at communicating ideas"—"why? what's wrong"—"Well, if you take sign languages into account. Then silence is better than Esperanto."—"Why? What's wrong?"—"Gotta disagree. It's less productive than a pregnant silence. It's more fragile than a stony silence. It's less expressive than an eloquent silence. It takes a distant bronze medal to a golden silence."—"why?"—"Oh I was mostly just playing with the phrases we have which include the word 'silence'. Esperanto is fine enough. though I've heard that speakers of non-IE …"
"Just stopping by to say that esperanto is awful and the fact that an artlang does a better job of being an IAL is a testament to how far the field of linguistics has come since Zamenhof."
—"This person did not watch the video." [this response to the previous comment is by XenographicPaper]
Ho, miaj karaj estontaj samideanoj, trankviliĝu, trankviliĝu. Kial ĉiuj vi malamu tiel multe tiun ĉi etan ĉarman planlingvon?
[Oh, my dear future like-mindeds, calm down, calm down. Why should you all hate this charming little conlang so much?]
Originally I was gonna make this whole video in Esperanto, before deciding that that would tank watch time and be annoying to caption since I'd have to do it manually, so I did the next best thing: this video has full Esperanto captions. I recommend turning them on even if you don't speak esperanto for, no reason…
Others wrote critiques about my endeavor, even not having read my small brochure and not even trying to understand the matter … Sometimes I even read long articles about my endeavor, where it was visible, that the authors didn't even see my work … Many readers don't have their own judgement, and the most unwise jokes about any kind of topic are for them enough proof that that thing is "laughable" and suitable for nothing.― Dua Libro, L. L. Zamenhof [link to untranslated Esperanto]
From the very first day, Esperanto has faced a lot of negative criticism, some deserved, some not as much, from people who clearly don't know it that well, and people who just copy those guys' opinions. This is nothing new. The latest incarnation of distate towards the language, seems to me to be greatly influenced by JBR's Ranto, which itself influenced Conlang Critic …
Have you seen Jason Rye's "Ranto" webpage on Esperanto? just askingyes I have! it's one of the inspirations for Conlang Critic.
edit: Justin Rye, not Jason
… whose videos about Esperanto and Toki Pona themselves have greatly influenced the "Conglang" community's opinions on both languages. In part because of this, I feel the need to reiterate, even if you've seen my video on the subject, that Toki Pona was never meant to be an international auxiliary language, and I feel it'd be terrible for that. It doesn't matter how simple your phonology or grammar are. A language this small and more importantly this radically vague, is simply not suitable for the demands of general purpose international communication, and I'm not going to explain why again, but in short, even if it's technically possible, there's a difference between it being possible and it being suitable. You could probably hammer in a nail by hitting it with your bare fists really hard, but should you? In my personal view, for an IAL to be good, it needs to clear this basic hurdle above all else, and I think Toki Pona fails.
This shouldn't be upsetting to anyone. Toki Pona's original goals and Esperanto's original goals are completely different. Toki Pona isn't suitable to do what Esperanto does, and Esperanto is not suitable to do what Toki Pona does, just like a hammer is not suitable for eating food, and a spoon is not suitable for building a house.
Alright, with all that out the way, let's get into it.
Alright, so we already know Esperanto is trying to be an international auxiliary language. But what does that actually mean?
↑Today we have a particular idea of what an IAL should look like: easy pronunciation, vocabulary from as many languages as is reasonable across the world, things like that. From this perspective, Esperanto strikes the typical conlang critic as a needlessly complicated Eurocentric mess. But we need to remember that just because Esperanto doesn't align with our notion of what an IAL should be, that doesn't mean it's poorly designed. Interlingua, for example, is even more Eurocentric than Esperanto by virtue of being only Romance, but we must remember when critiquing it that it aims to be understandable without prior study to anyone who already speaks a Romance language, and it does a pretty good job. Thus, we cannot say that it has a bad design outright, despite subjectively being inappropriate as an IAL.
Thus, before we can even start criticizing Esperanto, we need to know what Zamenhof was going for. Here, the Unua Libro and Dua Libro can help us. Here were Zamenhof's goals for Esperanto, straight out of the former:
The principal difficulties to be overcome were:― Unua Libro, L. L. Zamenhof
- To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner.
- To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language is universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is directly a means of international communication. [What he meant by this was that he wanted Esperanto to be regular enough that anyone with a dictionary could "machine translate" it, for lack of a better word. This goal is obsolete with modern translators, but in a sense, it still successed, since there are small communities of Esperanto speakers across the world.]
- To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand.
Well, no IAL has achieved all three, but Esperanto is so far the closest. Esperanto has already achieved two, and the first is the tricky one, because there's a lot of different ideas as to what an easy language should look like, so let's keep reading.
― Unua Libro, L. L. Zamenhof
- I simplified the grammar to the utmost, and while, on the one hand, I carried out my object in the spirit of the existing modern languages, in order to make the study as free from difficulties as possible, on the other hand I did not deprive it of clearness, exactness, and flexibility. My whole grammar can be learned perfectly in one hour. The immense alleviation given to the study of a language, by such a grammar, must be self-evident to everyone.
"One hour"?!
I'm sorry Zamenhof, but that's just not true.
Well, other than that weird claim, this is pretty reasonable.
The grammar should strike a balance: simplified, but at the same time, clear, exact, and flexible.
↑Zamenhof even hoped that someone who doesn't know any Esperanto should be able to understand it by just literal translation into their language.
A laudable goal in a time before machine translation, and one that makes a context-dependent design immediately unsuitable.
And the vocab?
Well, by learning just a few words
—
originally 900, including all the grammatical things, and the prefixes and suffixes
—
someone should be able to form the rest of the words themselves.
Sounds kinda familiar
…
Very well.
Anything else we should know?
Let's check out the Dua Libro.
Huh, what do we have here?
Instead of analysing whether or not I created the lexicon well, and whether or not it could be made even more comprehensible and practical, they say it should be made of Sanskrit roots or words taken as a mix of all the languages of the world. The language would lose a lot from this, by becoming totally incomprehensible, but what would it gain, other than an unnecessarily scholarly exterior? They always forget to ask themselves this.― Dua Libro, L. L. Zamenhof [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Well then, I'll elaborate on this later but let's just say that the language intentionally chooses its lexicon so that it should "comprehensible". Great. So, we have our goals. Let's dive into the language.
I might agree that the phonology might be the weakest point of Esperanto, but it's not that bad. The main complaint is that the phonology is too hard, but Zamenhof never mentioned pronunciation as one of the aspects that should be easy, so perhaps he designed the phonology with something else in mind.
And here's where the thing about a "comprehensible lexicon" already becomes relevant: French, German, English, and Italian were major vocabulary sources for Esperanto. If we interpret "comprehensible" as meaning recognizable, already this justifies having a relatively large phonology with lax rules to make sure these words can be brought in without butchering them too much. Restrictive phonotactics and inventories can severely hurt recognition of words.
So, is this consonant inventory good for preserving the sounds of these languages? Yes! If we look through all these languages, we see that Esperanto has most of their sounds, the most notable exceptions being arguably the /w/ sounds, and the dental fricatives (/θ/ & /ð/) in English. Conversely, we can put together Esperanto's consonant inventory using only sounds from these languages.
↑↑↑There are many cute frauds out there who criticise ↑Esperanto's phonology for basically just being ↑Polish. This is a very superficial comment. It's true that Poles will know how to pronounce more of the sounds in Esperanto right away, compared to speakers of any of the languages I recently mentioned, but Polish has a whole set of affricate distinctions that Esperanto simply doesn't have, and neither set of affricates has the same exact pronounciation as ideal Esperanto.
Now, compare Esperanto's consonant inventory with ↑Italian. Much closer overall match! The only sounds in Esperanto that are missing in Esperanto are /h/ and /x/, and maybe something with /ʒ/, while Esperanto has almost every sound in Italian. The /h/ isn't a particularly bad addition either, since it can be used to /h/elp (⟨helpi⟩) keep certain words recognizable.
So, even if Esperanto's phonology really is just based on a handful of eastern European languages, the situation is not as dire as it first seems. I still think it's a somewhat reasonable inventory for the goal of keeping words from all these languages comprehensible.
Where I do admit the phonology gets kind of Slavic is in certain consonant clusters, particularly ⟨sc⟩ and ⟨kv⟩, with the latter being a bit harmful for recognition in writing. But this doesn't tell the whole story. Most roots in Esperanto aren't this tricky to pronounce. A very large portion of the words are just (C)V(C). There's a reason Esperanto sounds like Spanish, not Polish, to so many people.
There's also the fact that even if someone doesn't nail the pronunciation perfectly, context can often help distinguish. The more precise vocabulary and grammar means that context dependence isn't as much of a problem as in… other conlangs. If a Spanish-speaking Esperantist comes up to in preparation for a pizza party and says …
La li*ero alvenos post malpli ol unu *oro… you'll probably understand that they meant …
The delivery (livero) will arrive in less than an hour (horo)… not …
Freedom (libero) will arrive after less than one chorus (ĥoro)… despite the fact that they're merging the only sounds that tell those words apart. Also, at the time Esperanto was created, most communication in it would have been written, so, arguably, the written language was more important than the spoken one.
Now, I know what you might be thinking: "But aren't a lot of Esperanto words borrowed based on spelling rather than pronunciation? What about those?" Well, we'll talk about those, in the section about …
So, people often like to comment on the diacritics and how much they suck. The way I see it, Esperanto's orthography is an attempt to balance two different conflicting goals: First, there should be a bijection between the sounds and the letters; Second, the choice of letters should not hamper the ability to recognize the words in their written form too much.
Esperanto has more sounds than there are letters in the latin alphabet. Maybe you can argue that you can represent the affricates by combining ⟨t⟩ with ⟨ŝ⟩ (instead of ⟨ĉ⟩) and ⟨d⟩ with ⟨ĵ⟩ (instead of ⟨ĝ⟩), but then you'd lose the recognizability that those sounds are there to preserve in the first place, and the fact that now you're missing letters doesn't help either, as it requires spellings to change. For a pair of straightforward examples: ⟨ĉirkaŭ⟩ /t∫irkaw/ is taken from Italian/ecclesiastical Latin ⟨circa⟩ /t∫irka/, pronounced very similarly. If we take the phonetic digraph approach (⟨tŝirkaŭ⟩) we end up with less familiar spelling. Or how about ⟨scienco⟩? This word is annoying to pronounce, but the spelling is near-perfectly preserved from English and French. If the letter ⟨c⟩ weren't used (⟨sienso⟩), this would no longer be the case. Alternatively, if we allowed the letter ⟨c⟩ to not match with the pronunciation perfectly (⟨scienco⟩ /sienso/) the bijection between the letters and the pronunciation would be broken.
Using recognisable digraphs like "sh" for ⟨ŝ⟩ would also screw up the correspondance, since you'd have to know when it's /sh/ and when it's pronounced /∫/. This might not be a huge problem, but it's an avoidable one. While the Fundamento does explicitly allow the use of digraphs like these if you're having trouble, there's a reason the diacritics are recommended.
So, is the end result perfect? No, of course not. ↑You could argue that by trying to do both things at once, the orthography ends up being not very good at either thing, and I think that's a fair criticism. But that's not the critique you often hear. The critique you often hear basically boils down to: "I am an english speaker living in a post-ASCII world, and I think diacritics are inherently bad."
Alright, so, what about the way the letters actually look? Well, let's take a look at ⟨ŭ⟩, because this is probably the most picked-on letter in the language. I think it's fine. Among the four languages I mentioned, when Esperanto was created, the ⟨w⟩ was only in two of them, and they both disagreed on how to pronounce it. In English, it's /w/, but in German, it's /v/. On the other hand, everyone agrees on the sound the letter ⟨u⟩ makes. The problem now is that typically when you have two vowels together in esperanto, that indicates a new syllable (⟨au⟩ → /a.u/, ⟨eu⟩ → /e.u/). Adding a diacritic helps clarify that this is a diphthong. And diphthongs are the only time this letter really shows up, by the way, aside from pronunciation guides, goofy interjections, and the name of the letter, so it's not actually that dissimilar to the IPA after all.
"What about ⟨ĵ⟩? Doesn't it make more sense to have it be like a ⟨z⟩?" No, it's also fine. Keeping spellings recognizable was the goal, and this choice is in line with that. Given its purpose, the only problem I see with it is that it isn't used more often. Like, why is ⟨Japano⟩ not ⟨Ĵapano⟩? That would keep the spelling recognizable, while making it sound more like the English ⟨Japan⟩, French ⟨Japon⟩, and even Mandarin ⟨日本⟩ (Pinyin: Rìběn, IPA: /ʐi˥˩bə˨˩˦n/).
"And what about the choice of a circumflex?" Simple: French was the dominant langauge of the time, and ↑many french typewriters could type circumflexes on any letter. So, while you can call this decision dated, you can't call it objectively bad, not to mention that this doesn't even matter in handwriting.
And, sure, you can complain that the orthography was designed for the orthography of the dominant power of the time.
Come on, man! You try to make an international language to foster world peace and international communication, and you immediately concede a huge part of it to colonial France?!― Language Review: Esperanto, Language Simp (This is where my life is at. I'm taking a Language Simp video seriously.)
It's actually hilarious, because a lot of modern operating systems can't even handle these diacritics, which makes everything even more inaccessible.― Language Review: Esperanto, Language Simp
Just like you don't get to complain that the vocabulary is eurocentric …
First of all, it's super eurocentric; most of it's from Romance languages …― Conlang Critic Episode Thirteen: Esperanto, jan Misali (but you probably already knew that.)
On top of that, Esperanto kinda just ignores various words that are pretty international, like 'hospital' …― Conlang Critic Episode Thirteen: Esperanto, jan Misali
Or complain about how the part of speech endings take away variety from the word endings …
Esperanto is oddly happy to sacrifice final vowels, no matter how much they contribute to a word's recognisability. Asia becomes ⟨Azio⟩, coffee/café becomes ⟨kafo⟩, quasi (= “as if”) becomes ⟨kvazaŭ⟩, and so on from alpaca and banana through to yoga and zebra. if only there were fewer word classes to distinguish, maybe some nouns could end in ⟨-A⟩ or ⟨-E⟩… which would also make the rhymes in Esperanto poetry more interesting!― JBR's Ranto #06F
Besides, all the “little words” learners need most help with are left outside the system: ⟨ili⟩ is the pronoun “they” and ⟨maltro⟩ is the adverb “too little”.― JBR's Ranto Appendix O
A few of these words, most obviously ⟨aŭ⟩, are only on the list due to ending in the same letters by coincidence - whatever that means in a designed language. On the other hand the list can also be extended by coinages like ⟨antaŭhieraŭ⟩ = “the day before yesterday”, ⟨kajaŭ⟩ = “and/or”, and ⟨malantaŭ⟩ = “behind”, not to mention the jokey back-formation ⟨graŭ⟩ = “due to”.
Unlike the family of “regular” pronouns that all end in ⟨-I⟩ but nonetheless count as bare roots, Zamenhof didn't cover this one in the Fundamento's sixteen rules. However, he did confirm elsewhere that he thought of the ⟨-AŬ⟩ as an added ending: the roots are really ⟨adi-⟩, ⟨almen-⟩, ⟨amb-⟩, and so forth (though the temporal/spatial preposition ⟨ant⟩- collides awkwardly with the present progressive participle morpheme ⟨-ant⟩). We even have his permission to replace the ending with an apostrophe, if we think ⟨malgr’⟩ sounds more euphonious!― JBR's Ranto Appendix V
The one thing I will admit is that the use of a bowl instead of a circumflex for ⟨ŭ⟩, which I'm told is based on Belarussian, kinda screws up the whole typewriter thing. While I like how it looks and I guess it clarifies that it's not really a different sound, I still admit it was a bit of a bad call.
Anyways, now that that's out of the way, let's get into the …
I don't really know what to say about the grammar. Zamenhof wanted to simplify it without sacrificing its clarity, flexibility, or precision, and I think he did a pretty good job. There's only like 17 inflectional suffixes in the whole language (17: -o, -a, -i, -e, -j, -n, -is, -as, -os, -us, -u, -int, -ant, -ont, -it, -at, -ot). And before you say that's still too much, the four part-of-speech endings in particular (4: -o, -a, -i, -e) have no european equivalents to my knowledge, and serve a similar purpose to word order and the li and e particles in Toki Pona: they help clarify the role of a word in the sentence, and narrow down meaning. And these (9: -is, -as, -os, -int, -ant, -ont, -it, -at, -ot) all have the same pattern in the vowels, which helps with memorizing them. So, I guess i'll focus on two common criticisms: the accusative case, and the verb tenses.
Having a fixed word order is kind of the antithesis of flexibility, and word orders vary wildly across languages, so I think wanting to free up word order is a reasonable goal. I know the free word order stuff is kind of a meme, but we must remember that strict word orders are not inherently easier than free word orders, especially for people coming from heavily inflected languages, or with fixed word orders that are significantly different. I, myself, have seen really new Toki Pona speakers forget that adjectives come after nouns in Toki Pona, for example. Having an accusative case lets you pick between SVO, SOV, VSO, whatever. And, yes, in practice, everyone mostly uses SVO, but that doesn't change the fact that flexible word order is more forgiving to beginners, and gives advanced speakers the ability to better fit their words to poetry, or emphasize certain things. ↑Some say you can't have both at the same time, but I disagree.
Thing is, though, if you want to have free adjective order at the same time, you also need adjective agreement with nouns, so you know what's modifying what. Agreement also gives redundancy which can be helpful. There's also the fact that the accusative is used for other things, too, like disambiguating certain things (ex: ⟨Mi manĝu la fiŝon anstataŭ la katon⟩ = "I should eat the fish, instead of [eating] the cat", ⟨Mi manĝu la fiŝon anstataŭ la kato⟩ = "I should eat the fish, instead of the cat [eating it]"), or marking direction (ex: "En la parko" = "In the park", "En la parkon" = "Into the park"), so Esperanto really puts the accusative to work, which is consistent with the goal of a simple yet flexible grammar. Even if these features are actually from Old Sorbian or whatever, and even though none of my other languages have it, I still think it's a nice touch that saves on vocabulary while helping clarity and precision.
"What about the tenses? Some languages don't have tenses. It's bad!" Well, I'm not as much of a linguistics nerd as some people watching this video almost certainly are, so I'll stick to what I know: Assuming my Mandarin isn't absolutely terrible, if I want to say "I will never eat beef," that's "我永远不会吃牛肉" yin: wǒ yǒngyuǎn búhuì chī niúròu). If I want to say "I have never eaten beef," that's "我从来没有吃过牛肉 (Pinyin: wǒ cónglái méiyǒu chīguò niúròu). Do you see the problem? Mandarin might not have tenses, but it compensates with more vocabulary, and one of Esperanto's original goals was to minimize the amount of vocabulary. Contrast with Esperanto's "Mi neniam manĝos bovaĵon" and "Mi neniam manĝis bovaĵon". No change in vocabulary. Notice also that Esperanto lacks a complication both English and Mandarin share, which is aspect. Esperanto doesn't really mess around with aspect too much. There's stuff like compound tenses, but in my experience, they're not super important. While you could say "Mi estas manĝanta sandviĉon" to indicate that you're eating a sandwich in Esperanto, it's normal to just say "Mi manĝas sandviĉon". In English or Spanish ("watcha doin"—"i eat a sandwich"—"???" / "k onda xd"—"yo como un sandwich"—"???"). If you want your language to be precise, and resilient to word-for-word translation, but you don't really have aspect, I think tenses are a reasonable thing to have. And while I do think having tenses on the participles is a bit excessive, they can help with derivation, again cutting down on the number of words you need to learn (ex: prezidinto → former president; prezidanto → current president; prezidonto → president-elect).
Alright, let's move on to the big one:
At long last, the time has come to address some of the biggest issues people have with Esperanto, in order from least to most prevasive.
This is the easiest one to dismiss. It makes sense to use exonyms if you want to maximize recognizability. Some silly billies complain that the country name endings ⟨-io⟩, ⟨-lando⟩, and ⟨-stano⟩ are irregular. Even though you actually get to pick which one you want to use, I still agree this sucks. But in unreformed Esperanto, this isn't a problem. The ⟨-ujo⟩ suffix might be old timey, but it's in the Fundamento, so you can still use it, and ↑some still do!
The other big complaint is that sometimes you have to add ⟨-ano⟩ to a root that refers to the country (ex: Meksiko → Meksikano), while other times you have to add ⟨-ujo⟩ to a word that refers to a person from that country (ex: Ruso → Rusujo). This, too, is a non-issue. Putting aside the fact that it's not random, beacuse of the way Esperanto works, there's nothing stopping you from just remembering all of the country names as if they were one root, adding ⟨-ano⟩ to everything (ex: Rusujo → Rusujano), then backforming from ⟨-ujo⟩ if needed. In fact, if you just want to talk about someone from a particular country, the ⟨-ujano⟩ forms might actually be the better option. For example, Ruso means an ethnic Russian, regardless of where they actually live, while Rusujano can mean a citizen of, or anyone living in Russia, regardless of ethnicity. But hey, don't take my word for it, it's right there in La Fundamento!
rus/o: Member of a slavic people, living principally in Russia. … [rus]landano, [rus]iano, [rus]ujano: someone ruled by Russia, or a citizen of Russia (not necessarily a "ruso"/ethnic Russian)― Plena Ilustria Vortaro: rus/o [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Germans and French who live in Russia are Rusujano, although they are not Ruso.― La Fundamento, Ekzercaro §37 [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Important Remark: Some terms from which -uj country names are formed, like Japano and Franco, are defined in terms of cictizenship rather than ethnicity in Plena Ilustria Vortaro, but that doesn't change the fact that Japanujano and Francujano are valid Esperanto words you can use.
This topic is annoying, so let's make it quick: The choice to have multiple 3rd person pronouns is consistent with the goal of making the language good for literal translation, since they make it easier to tell who's doing what to whom. The choice to make them gendered is in line with what most Indo-European languages and some major non-Indo-European languages (ex: Arabic, Hebrew, and Japanese) do, so it's a decent option if you want the system to be easy for a large amount of people. While I understand why some people think there should be a new gender neutral pronoun, this isn't strictly necessary. There are examples from Zamenhof where ⟨ĝi⟩ is used to refer to a specific person without offense.
The idea that Esperanto treats women (virinoj) as a type of man (viroj) makes as much sense as saying that it treats coldness (malvarmeco) as a type of warmth (varmeco).
In any case, the issue people have with the ⟨-in⟩ suffix is now largely irrelevant. Unofficial suffixes and words are used in Esperanto all the time (ex: agnoski → acknowledge, pug → butt, mete → meteor, -iv → -ive, team → team, dosier → computer file, fobio → phobia, -oz → shows illness, etc.), and there is precedent for new suffixes being made official (ex: ⟨-aĉ-⟩, ⟨-end⟩-, ⟨-ism⟩-). Most words and suffixes for people can be used gender neutrally (ex: ⟨-ulo⟩, ⟨-estro⟩, ⟨-ano⟩, ⟨-isto⟩, ⟨-anto⟩, ⟨-into⟩, ⟨-onto⟩, ⟨-ato⟩, ⟨-ito⟩, ⟨-oto⟩, ⟨-ido⟩, infano, homo, amiko, etc.), and the ⟨-iĉ⟩ (masculine marker) suffix doesn't contradict the Fundamento, so you can just use it whenever you want. It doesn't matter.
Some roots in the Fundamento are explicitly defined as male by default (ex: patro, frato, filo, knabo, etc.), but you can use ⟨-iĉ⟩ for them anyways (they would just be synonyms), and there's precedent for Fundamento roots acquiring new meanings (ex: ŝati → to esteem (fundamenta) & to like, malŝati → to neglect (fundamenta) & to dislike, bovo → ox (fundamenta) & any head of cattle). The only thing that would totally, uncontroversially be against the Fundamento woud be saying that you can't use patro for a male parent, but using patro gender neutrally wouldn't do that. Some male roots also already have gender neutral alternatives which can be formed from official roots (ex: viro → plenkreskulo, knabo → infano/junulo, filo → ido, etc.↑ In particular, the root infano is used without the female suffix to refer to a child that is explicitly stated to be female in La Fundamento.), and even if roots like patro get stuck as being male-only, the Fundamento gives explicit permission to coin new roots to replace old ones, so you can just do that (patro → parento, edzo → spozo).
If an authoritative central institution finds that this or that word or rule in our language is too inconvenient, it must not remove or change said form, but it can propose a new form, which it will recommend to use in parallel with the old form. With time, the new form will bit-by-bit push out the old form, which will become archaic, as we see in every natural language. However, being part of the Fundamento, this archaism will never be thrown out, but always pressed in every textbook and dictionary at the same time with the new forms, and this way we'll have the certainty that even in the smallest improvement, the unity of Esperanto will never be broken, and no Esperanto work from even the earliest time will ever lose its value and comprehensibility for future generations.― La Fundamento, Antaûparolo [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Just remember that, as with any other language, you shouldn't expect Esperantists to change the way they currently speak without learning the language yourself, and using those changes yourself.
Finally, the reason Zamenhof originally designed this system the way he did in the first place, is because despite recognizing that a male suffix would be a logical and useful addition, he felt the naturalism of only having a female one with male as default would help make the language easier on acconut of being a more familiar system. While I'm not convinced this would have been such a big problem in practice, I can see where he's coming from. Remember that people at the time made a much bigger deal of specifying gender every time.
[Context: Zamenhof was planning a reform now known as Eo 1894 which would have simplified Esperanto grammar and phonology. In particular, some uncommon consonant distinctions as well as adjective agreement, the definite article, and the mandatory accusative would've been removed. The reform was wildly unpopular and failed dramatically.]― On Reforms in Esperanto [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Example 2: Some friends proposed that we should introduce a separate suffix for nouns that are specifically male, in the same way that we have a suffix for nouns that are specifically female. (Especially convincingly, this was proposed by Mr. Lojko in his last visit to me in Grodno.) Thinking about this proposal, I found that it is not just very logical but also very convenient. Fratiro, for example, would mean specifically a brother, and fratino, a sister, while frato would mean simply a child of the same parents (= either a brother, or a sister); Frati, consequently, would mean gefratoj [siblings], and the prefix ge- could be discarded. Speaking, for instance, about cattle, we could always clearly express whether we're talking about bovoj [cattle], without difference of sex, or bovinoj [cows], or bovo-viroj [bulls] (without needing to repeatedly use the word viro). Some days after some departure of Mr. Lojko, I'd already decided to accept the male suffix into my project. But after further thought, I was stopped from taking this step by the following consideration: Our language must, before everything [else], be the easiest for all nations and, insofar as it is merely possible, contain, in itself, nothing which would be against the custom of the nations and present, for them, a difficulty or foreignness; A male suffix presents, at least at the start (the most important time!) some inconvenience and a source of errors; The absence of a male suffix, as shown by the hitherto practice, doesn't present inconveniences; therefore, the result: in our purely practical affair, the inconvenient theoretical logic must yield to the more convenient, practical customs of the peoples — and the male suffix must not exist.
While I do agree the Eurocentrism is lamentable, there are three reasons I think it's not that significant.
First: recognizability. Remember what the Dua Libro said, about how the language would become completely unrecognizable with words from all over the world. While I'm not 100% sure what he meant by that, I'm going to be charitable, because I do think there's a point to be made.
Suppose that the language was made with words from all over the world in roughly equal proportions, or in proportions that account for which languages have the most speakers. While such a language would, in fact, be a lot more culturally neutral and fair to everyone, it would also ensure that pretty much everyone would have to learn most of the vocabulary. The Europeans would need to learn a ton of Arabic and Chinese words, the Chinese would have to learn a bunch of Hindi and Swahili words, and so on. Such a vocabulary would put everyone at a disadvantage.
So say, instead of wanting to have the fairest distribution of words, you want to have a collection of words that will, quote, "offer no difficulty to a well-educated person." While I do admit that sounds a bit elitist, let's consider the reality of the situation: European languages dominate in Europe, Australia, and the Americas. No question. In Africa, many nations have a European language among their official languages, and many people who speak one. In India, the English language, which has many Romance-derived words, held an important position, and today (correct me if i'm wrong), there's a lot of code-switching in Hindi. Even in China and Japan, European languages had a presence, and today, Japanese has a ton of loanwords from European languages. And these european languages, despite being so spread out, are, at least for now, largely similar enough everywhere that mutual intelligibility isn't an issue. On the other hand, Arabic and Chinese are fragmented among mutually unintelligible dialects. Indonesian, Swahili, and Mandarin were not as widespread as they are now. Indian has a ton of local languages, and adopting Arabic's triconsonantal roots, or Chinese tones and characters, all of which are key parts of maintaining the recognizability of words from these languages, poses a challenge to an alphabetic language with extensive morphology but no infixing.
Given all this, it makes sense that if you want as many at least well-educated people as possible from as many countries as possible to recognize as much of the vocabulary as possible, having a predominantly European lexicon makes practical sense. And yes, I know the only reason things were and still are this way is because of colonialism, and that colonialism is bad, but from a purely pragmatic viewpoint it'd be silly to not try to take advantage of the situation.
Second, familiarity isn't always helpful. For example, the word kontroli might look, to an English speaker, like it should mean "control", but it actually means "to check", from French. The word "hazarda" might look, to an English speaker, like it should mean "hazardous", but it actually means "random", also from French. Esperanto has many false friends like this, most infamously the ⟨mal-⟩ suffix. For another example, a Spanish speaker or an English speaker might accidentally use "por" where they should be using "pro". Someone who is unfamiliar with Europeans is less likely to be fooled by these surface-level similarities.
Finally, and this is my favorite one, Esperanto does compensate for its Eurocentrism. It just doesn't do this in the way most people think it should. These days we have the idea that conlangs with European words should compensate by also including words from all over the place. Esperanto instead chooses to compensate through its word-building system. Let me put it this way: Imagine an IAL based on Mandarin that still has tones and Chinese characters. Such an IAL would undoubtedly be a lot harder for Europeans than for East Asians. However, I think you'd still have to admit that such a language would be a heck of a lot easier than Mandarin if instead of having to remember separate words for "improve", "strengthen", "shrink", and "increase", there was a straightforward rule for turning the words for "good", "strong", "small", and "many" into those words, that could be applied to any adjective, even if the end result doesn't have a one-word equivalent in Mandarin, and if the whole lexicon was built around this idea. This is what Esperanto does. (bona → plibonigi, forta → plifortigi, eta → plietigi, multa → plimultigi)
I think most critics of Esperanto, and even many Esperantists, don't fully grasp just how important and powerful the word-building system in Esperanto is. It is one of the two central things that, in my view, makes the langauge special, and still worth learning.
Gerda Malaperis author Claude Piron recognized that ↑the central idea of Esperanto is that it is a collection of morphemes which can be freely rearranged according to certain rules to determine meaning but otherwise without restriction or alteration. (ex: Mi iros al la urbo per biciklo = Mi biciklos urben "I will cycle to the city" & Li ludas gitaron kun fervoro = Li fervore gitaras "He fervently plays the guitar".) This is no accident. Zamenhof makes it clear that this is a central aspect of the language in the Unua Libro that's meant to be used whenever possible, and it's showcased in La Fundamento.
― Unua Libro, L. L. Zamenhof
- I established rules for the formation of new words, and at the same time, reduced to avery small compass the list of words absolutely necessary to be learned, without, however, depriving the language of the means of becoming a rich one. On the contrary, thanks to the possibility of forming from one rootword any number of compounds, expressive of every conceivable shade of idea, I made it the richest of the rich amongst modern tongues, This I accomplished by the introduction of numerous prefixes and suffixes, by whose aid the student is enabled to create new words for himself, without the necessity of having previously to learn them, e.g.
- The prefix mal denotes the direct opposite of any idea. If, for instance, we know the word for "good", bona, we can immediately form that for "bad", malbona, and hence the necessity of a special word for "bad" is obviated. In like manner, alta "high" "tall", malalta "low" "short"; estimi "to respect", malestimi "to despise", etc. Consequently, if one has learned this single word mal, he is relieved of learning a long string of words such as "hard" (premising that he knows "soft"), "cold", "old", "dirty", "distant", "darkness", "shame", "to hate", etc., etc.
- The suffix in marks the feminine gender, and thus if we know the word "brother", frato, we can form "sister", fratino: so also, "father", patro; "mother", patrino. By this device words like "grandmother", "bride", "girl", "hen", "cow", etc., are done away with.
- The suffix il indicates an instrument for a given purpose, e.g., tranĉi, "to cut", tranĉilo, "a knife"; so words like "comb", "axe", "bell", etc., are rendered unnecessary.
Sano, sana, sane, sani, sanu, saniga, saneco, sanilo, sanigi, saniĝi, sanejo, sanisto, sanulo, malsano, malsana, malsane, malsani, malsanulo, malsaniga, malsaniĝi, malsaneta, malsanema, malsanulejo, malsanulisto, malsanero, malsaneraro, sanigebla, sanigisto, sanigilo, resanigi, resaniĝanto, sanigilejo, sanigejo, malsanemulo, sanilaro, malsanaro, malsanulido, nesana, malsanado, sanulaĵo, malsaneco, malsanemeco, saniginda, sanilujo, sanigilujo, remalsano, remalsaniĝo, malsanulino, sanigista, sanigilista, sanilista, malsanulista k.t.p.― La Fundamento, Ekzercaro §42
And it needs to be emphasized that this isn't a theoretical thing, these words are actually used in practice, and as long as you don't get too crazy, they're easily understood by people. Here are a few examples of words I've actually seen or used that I managed to understand or communicate with perfectly fine:
| Word | Gloss | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| sen'fin'ec'on'o | without + end + property + 1/x + NOUN | infinitesimal |
| loĝ'ant'ar'o | reside + ACT PARTICIPLE + collection + NOUN | population |
| for'ig'end'a | distant + cause + must + ADJ | … that must be removed |
| dis'kon'ig'i | scatter + know* + cause + VERB INF | to share (knowledge) |
| pli'bon'ec'o | more + good + property + NOUN | superiority |
| sen'ord'iĝ'i | without + order + become + VERB | to become chaotic, disordered |
| re'en'esper'ant'uj'iĝ'i | again + in + hope + ACT PARTICIPLE + container + become + VERB | to become part of the Esperanto community again (yes, I really saw someone else use this word, and I actually understood it immediately despite not having seen it before) |
| sen'klar'ig'a | without + clear + cause + ADJ | … without explanation/clarification |
| mal'labor'em'a | OPPOSITE + work + tendency + ADJ | lazy |
| si'n'mort'ig'o | REFLEXIVE PRONOUN + ACC + death + cause + NOUN | Consider using this word next time you want to avoid demonitization (suicide) |
| land'nom'far'il'o | country + name + make + tool + NOUN | Tool for making country names |
| sur'ter'iĝ'o | on + earth + become + NOUN | landing (of an airplane, for example) |
| ali'seks'em'ul'o | other + sex + tendency + person + NOUN | heterosexual person |
| antaŭ'vort'er'o | before + word + piece + NOUN | prefix (this one should really be more common) |
| sci'vol'em'o | know(ledge) + want + tendency + NOUN | curiosity |
| reg'ist'ar'o | rule + professional + collection + NOUN | government |
| sam'ide'an'o | same + idea + member + NOUN | "believer of the same idea" (Esperantists often use this corny term when talking about each other. We are not a cult, I swear.) |
| mal'sandviĉ'iĝ'i | OPPOSITE + sandwich + become + VERB INF | to become a shape that is no longer a sandwich [LIT: unsandwichify] (Apparently this one was attested as used by an actually native speaker) |
| Word | Gloss | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| pardon'ind'iĝ'o | forgive + worthy + become + NOUN | the act of becoming worthy of forgiveness |
| pli'feliĉ'ig'ist'o | more + happy + cause + professional + NOUN | someone who professionally makes others happier (this word is used by Claude Piron to describe non-medically his job as a psychiatrist) |
| uz'end'ig'i | use + must + cause + VERB INF | to cause something to be necessary to use. |
| dis'mal'manĝ'eg'ig'il'o | scattered + OPPOSITE + eat + AUGMENTATIVE + cause + tool + NOUN | tool that causes severe shitting and/or puking all over the place |
| Word | Gloss | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Mi'a'opini'e, | my + ADJ + opinion + ADVERB | In my opinion, |
| tut'esper'ant'uj'a | whole + hope + ACT PARTICIPLE + container + ADJ | … in the whole Esperanto community |
| kun'met'a&jcric;'em'iĝ'o | with + place + POSESSING + tendency + VERB INF | a development of a tendency towards compound words |
| re'lern'ind'ig'us | again + learn + worthy + cause + VERB COND | … would make … worth learning again. |
| Esper'ant'o'n | hope + ACT PARTICIPLE + NOUN + ACC | Esperanto. |
Alternatively, it might be time to consider that Esperanto isn't as Romance or even as European as you thought, and that you've been judging a book by its cover this whole time. ↑And yes, this system does have flaws, and after more than a hundred years of use, some things have lexicalized in ways that don't always make perfect sense, which I accept, but the flexibility means that circumlocuting around those flaws isn't very hard at all (ex: fiareĝido → fia reĝido / ido de fiereĝo).
So, I rest my case. However, as much as I like the word building system, its existence is also the main motivator for my single biggest criticism of the language. Remember how I said earlier that Europeans might be fooled by Esperanto's European facade? Well, it seems like because of that, many Esperantists don't seem to realize what kind of language they're speaking.
You probably thought this video would be all positive. How I wish it were so.
So, the single biggest problem I see in Esperanto is not something inherent to the language's design, nor is it any single person's fault, it's something that's accumulated little-by-little over the language's more-than-a-century-long history: the addition of new roots that undermine the language's word-building system! There are two kinds of these roots: the first are new roots for concepts that could be, at worst, calqued instead (ex. isomorphism → izomorfio, not samformilo; homomorphism → homomorfio, not similformilo; automorphism → aŭtomorfio, not memsamformilo; endomorphism → endomorfio, not memsimilformilo. perhapse a suffix other than ilo would be more appropriate, but the problem with calquing these isn't a lack of options); the second are roots, not always new, which happen to look exactly like a compound word in esperanto that has a completely unrelated meaning (ex: kukurbo → kuk'urb'o "caketown" or pumpkin; konkludo → konk'lud'o "conch-game" or conclusion; diamanto → di'am'ant'o "lover of God" or diamond; lavenda → lav'end'a "needs to be washed" or lavender; brulumo → bru'lum'o "noise-light" or infection). Now the latter kind are somewhat inevitable with so many words, and they can open the door to fun puns. And the former kind? Completely pointless!
↑The Vikipedio page for infinitesimals lists, alongside the delightful home-grown word sen'fin'ec'on'o, the word infinitezim'o. Why?! Senfinecono can't reasonably be referring to anything else. It's literally a calque of "infinitesimal". This word is longer. It confuses both non-Europeans and Europeans who don't already know what the thing is. What's the point?
Esperanto has official roots for "temperature" (temperaturo) and "thermometer" (termometro). Seriously? Temperature is a number that tells you the amount of warmth (varm'ec'nombr'o). It's right there, and it's less syllables. A thermometer is a tool for counting it (varm'ec'nombr'il'o). What are you doing?
Airplanes. Flying vehicles, folks (flug'vetur'il'o). Why'd you add a new root for it (aeroplan'o)? Why'd you add two new roots for it (aviad'il'o)?! They don't even use the latter to save on syllables!
Train. Vagon'ar'o. We already had a word. We don't need another (trajn'o). Locomotive. The wagon at the front that moves all the others. Ĉef'vagon'o? No, lokomotiv'o, yeaaah, real nice and long. And don't even get me started on the sciency words. Kardiolog'o. Heart doctor! Kor'kurac'ist'o! Same number of syllables! Psikologi'o. Mind science! Mens'o'scienc'o! Same number of syllables! Astronomi'o. Star science! Stel'o'scienc'o! Same number of syllables!
How about this: Poet'o, Poezi'o, Poem'o. Make up your mind (poeto → poem'ist'o, poezio → poem'verk'ad'o)!
Anarĥi'ism'o. Order without rulers, huh? Sen'estr'ism'o!
Well, at least the words for Zoology, democracy, pneumonia, and etymology are just "animal science" (best'o'scienc'o), "rule of the people" (popol'reg'o), "lung inflammation" (pulm'o'bru'lum'o), and "word origin" (vort'deven'o). ↑↑↑↑Ah, god damnit.
When Esperantists propagandize to the public, they say: "Esperanto grammar is very simple, and there are few words. Having learned the words rapida, diligenta, nova, you can easily form the words malrapida, maldiligenta, malnova, with the Esperanto word building system."― Esperanta Trompisto, Solis [link to untranslated Esperanto]
"How scientific Esperanto is!" Says the non-Esperantist in admiration of Esperanto in their heart.
Non-Esperantists believe the words of the Esperantists, and start learning this "scientific" language. After some time, however, the teacher changes their advice. "Malrapida, maldiligenta, malnova, are too long, so we will no longer use those words. We'll instead use the shorter forms lanta, pigra, olda."
"Esperantist deceiever!" insults the listener in their heart.
It's a miserable state of affairs. Whenever I go onto Esperanto Wikipedia and see this sort of thing, I'm reminded of this anecdote by Claude Piron:
In a sense, it turned out to be complete: I could, in it, express any thing. The set of roots at my disposal was limited. But the possibilities to combine, which the structure of the language provided to me, was so vast that I never had to try hard to find a solution to every expression problem … I fell in love with it so much that it became the language most used in my thinking … After some time, one of my brothers learned the language, and, since circumstances separated us for a year, it became, then, our means of communication. It acted for us as a secret language. Perfectly suitable. And so, when I was 15, from two coincidences which detailing would be too tedious, I got to know the Esperanto movement. I was extremely happy to find out that my brother and I were not alone, that other people also admired Zamenhof's amazing work, and actively used it.― La Bona Lingvo, Claude Piron [link to untranslated Esperanto]
Alas! The first meeting was catastrophic. I fell from the highest heights. From the wounds (the trauma, if you prefer jargon) that I experienced then, I never recovered. These french speakers didn't speak too fluently, many even almost stuttered, from poor control of the language, and they used, with terrible last-syllable accentuation, all kinds of words that — to my impression — they simply took from other languages, mainly from French, masking the foreignness with Esperanto [word] endings.
Maybe it's happened to you, that in an old city, you really liked a town square, because it was lovingly and artistically arranged, long ago, by the most talented people. And here you are, returning after a long break in another country, looking forward to seeing it again and … Everything is messed up. The harmony of the place was beaten to death: gone are the old lindens that ornamented it and gave it a pleasent scent, now stands a modern tall building which screws up the whole vibe, someone took away the antique fountain to make space for the cars, in a word, one ruined, in many ways, something dearest to your heart. Sacrilege!, you say to yourself, bitterly.
That is the feeling I had, meeting my first Esperantists. They ruined something which was sacred. They weren't aware of the beauty. Of the fertility of the genius [word creation] system, they had no idea. And the language they complicated so much for themselves that they couldn't use it fluently. I felt myself betrayed.
But, simultaniously I learned that Esperanto was used worldwide. Yes, even in Japan and China, even in Eastern Europe, even in South America. To stay solitarily with my rich, fluent, but lexically basic language would be stupid. For my contacts, I therefore resignedly accepted (somewhat) to change my language. Soon, I corresponded with esperantists from various countries, i.a. boys from East Asia, the same age as me, with whom I interchanged the most interesting letters. And here's the second surprise: their letters, although not totally following the norms grammatically, were in the same language that I, alone or with my brother, practiced for three years! We could touch every topic, and perfectly understand eachother. We exchanged jokes and poems, and for this we didn't need thick dictionaries. I rediscovered, with pleasure, the language of good, which I loved so much …
The good news, however, is that this is my only major problem with the language, and not all hope is lost. It only exists in one direction: I can choose to use the simpler roots and compound words anyways, and it's likely that everyone will understand me. However, this doesn't change the fact that to read the language, you need to learn these roots anyway. So the damage, though not unfixable, is already largely done.
So, I didn't learn Esperanto because I wanted to help it become the international language. While I wouldn't actively opposite it becoming the world's second language, I don't think it's worth the effort to actively try to make it so. The concept of an IAL is kinda doomed from the beginning in my opinion, and the whole discussion of whether or not Esperanto would be good is a purely intellectual one. The fact of the matter is that most likely no IAL will succeed, and I feel that Esperanto will keep the title of the one that got the closest.
The thing that made me originally interested in the language was something else. Back in 2017, I (for evil reasons) independently had the idea to make up my own language, so I decided to look up the concept online to see if anyone had tried it already. It didn't take long for me to eventually run into Esperanto. I immediately found the concept appealing. While the idea of an IAL did seem pretty cool to me, and I appreciated the word-building system then, by far the biggest thing that caught my interest is that this language, invented by an irrelevant eye doctor in a dump in 19th century Poland, ended up being considered by the League of Nations, surviving persecution under the Soviets, Nazis, and others, and becoming a fully fledged language with a presence on Google Translate, more wikipedia articles than Greek or Hindi, and an enduring community that includes about a thousand native speakers. Those are the two things that attract me to Esperanto: its word-building system and its history. No other conlang has a history like Esperanto's, and no other conlang will have a history like Esperanto's anytime soon. From this perspective, the diacritics, the eurocentric vocabulary, whatever — these are not flaws. They are a record of the time when the language was created that has survived until today. It is for this reason that other IAL projects, be they romlangs like Interlingua or Lingua Franca Nova, modern auxlangs like Lingua de Planeta, Mini, Kokanu, and Globasa, or esperantidos like Ido, simply do not appeal to me. Even if they copy the agglutination or correlatives, they're still ultimately just copying the original, while still lacking the history, uniqueness, and large userbase that makes Esperanto so much more lively in my eyes. Most auxlangs which tend to be considered "better than Esperanto" make similar decisions about phonology or grammar, and as a result, they all end up kinda looking the same: boring.
So, here's my call to action for you: if you like the idea of a language where you can make more complicated concepts out of simpler ones, but want that to be something that works with you, not against you, and you feel that other languages don't let you do this in a way that feels comfortable, and you feel that conlangs with a history behind them, fictional or real, are more interesting than random IALs that appeared on Reddit two months ago, Try Esperanto. Perhaps you'll like it more than you initially thought! Or perhaps you'll think that it really does suck and you don't care, and that's fine too: at least you'll have come to your own conclusions.
As for the annoying situation with too many roots? Well, I've been working on a minimal set of roots for personal use, largely modelled off the Academy of Esperanto's own set of basic official roots, but with a number of things cut away, which others who are interested in keeping the number of roots they use low will be welcome to use for themselves as a reference or as learning material. (… once I finish it, that is.) Link to that here.
All that in mind, I'd say I like Esperanto more than I like Toki Pona, making it the best interlang reviewed so far. Ĝis la revido, samideanoj! Ĉiam antaŭen.