The international auxiliary language Esperanto has been mostly stable since its creation, especially as compared to other constructed languages. This is due to the Declaration of Boulogne in 1905, which made the early works of Zamenhof binding; most attempts to change the language have been therefore seen as distinct language projects (so-called Esperantidos), and for the most part the Esperanto community has ignored them. The main change in the language has been a great expansion of the vocabulary, largely driven by translations of technical jargon, which is explicitly allowed for by Boulogne. However, there have been more subtle changes to syntax and semantics as the majority of Esperanto authors shifted from native speakers of Slavic and German to other languages, such as French and English. This article considers some of the purposeful changes to the language since Boulogne.
There has been considerable debate over whether technical terminology should be taken from international usage by adopting new roots into Esperanto, or whether, in cases where the need can be met through traditional Esperanto word formation, that is the better way to go. To a large extent this is a cultural debate: Europeans who are already familiar with such "international" vocabulary often favor adopting such terms, whereas Asians who may not be familiar with them often favor replacing them. One example is the word for "computer". Early proposals for the word "computer" included Esperanto: komputero and Esperanto: komputoro, but they were eventually replaced by the internal creation Esperanto: komputilo, from the verb Esperanto: komputi "to compute" plus the suffix Esperanto: -ilo "instrument".[1]
There has been some criticism of using the prefix Esperanto: mal- to create the antonyms of common adjectives, such as Esperanto: mallonga "short" from Esperanto: longa "long", or Esperanto: malmultekosta "inexpensive" from Esperanto: multekosta "expensive". Several dozen neologisms have been coined for these antonyms (in these cases Esperanto: kurta "short" and Esperanto: ĉipa "cheap"), often for purposes of poetry, but few have met with much acceptance. One of the few that have been is Esperanto: dura "hard", as the original word Esperanto: malmola, from Esperanto: mola "soft", is argued to sound too soft to mean "hard". In one case an antonymic suffix has been proposed, a laudatory Esperanto: -el-, which would contrast with pejorative Esperanto: -aĉ-: Esperanto: skribo "writing", Esperanto: skribaĉo "scrawl, scribbling", Esperanto: skribelo "calligraphy". Unlike Esperanto: aĉa, it is problematic to use the suffix Esperanto: -el- as a word in its own right, due to an existing preposition and prefix Esperanto: el.
The most visible change in Esperanto phonology has been the near-loss of the sound Esperanto: [[ĥ]]. For example, the German-derived word Esperanto: ĥino "Chinese" has been replaced by an Italian/English Esperanto: ĉino. In most other cases, Esperanto: ĥ has been replaced with Esperanto: k, as in Esperanto: kemio for Esperanto: ĥemio "chemistry"; the only words which commonly retain it are Esperanto: ĉeĥo "Czech", Esperanto: eĥo "echo", and Esperanto: ĥoro (or Esperanto: koruso) "chorus", though it continues to be used in the transcription of foreign names.
Changes in phonotactics, which was never laid out explicitly by Zamenhof, have been introduced along with new vocabulary and especially foreign names. One of these is the extension of Esperanto: ŭ, which originally was only found as a vowel in the diphthongs Esperanto: aŭ and Esperanto: eŭ, to a consonantal use analogous to English Esperanto: w, which Zamenhof had universally replaced with Esperanto: v. However, Slavs and Germans, among others, have difficulty distinguishing Esperanto: v and consonantal Esperanto: ŭ, and in most neologisms, consonantal Esperanto: ŭ has been replaced with Esperanto: v, as it has in Esperanto: ŭato → Esperanto: vato "watt". In proper names, such as Esperanto: Ŭakajama ~ Esperanto: Vakajama "Wakayama", there is more variation. Similarly, new Esperanto: ŭ diphthongs such as Esperanto: oŭ have not gotten far; the English word "bowl" was adopted as Esperanto: bovlo, not Esperanto: *boŭlo.
Another debated change has been the introduction of geminate consonants. In traditional Esperanto, double consonants may occur across morpheme boundaries, as in Esperanto: mallonga (Esperanto: mal-longa) "short", but are not found within roots. Most words introduced with double letters (including Esperanto: tĉ and Esperanto: dĝ) have since been modified, for example Esperanto: Buddo → Esperanto: Budao "Buddha". Perhaps the most common root to retain a double consonant is Esperanto: finno "Finn", which is a near homonym with Esperanto: fino "end". Although Esperanto: suomo has been introduced as a replacement, this has not been used for compounds such as Esperanto: finno-ugra "Finno-Ugric".[2] There is considerable debate whether departing from the international forms of such words is desirable.
See also: Gender reform in Esperanto. Esperanto morphology has been extended by new suffixes, but outside of international technical terminology few of these are in wide use. Two have been accepted as official: The suffix Esperanto: -io used to derive the names of countries and states, such as Esperanto: Meksikio "Mexico" vs. Esperanto: Meksiko "Edomex" vs. Esperanto: Meksikurbo "Mexico City" and Esperanto: Vaŝintonio "Washington state" vs. Esperanto: Vaŝintono "Washington DC". Many Esperantists also use Esperanto: -io in place of Esperanto: -ujo, the original suffix for countries named after their inhabitants, so that Esperanto: Anglio "England" is found alongside the more traditional Esperanto: Anglujo. The other official addition is a suffix Esperanto: -enda indicating that something must be done (Esperanto: pagenda "payable (by)"); this was originally introduced as part of the Ido reform. A few other Ido suffixes have entered the language, especially in poetry, and are widely recognized, such as Esperanto: -oza "full of", as in Esperanto: poroza "porous".[3]
The perceived clash between several national Romance languages, such as Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, which use the final vowels Romance languages: -o and Romance languages: -a to mark gender, and Esperanto, which uses them to mark parts of speech, has led to a change in some women's names which end in Romance languages: -a in those languages. This has had less effect on names which parallel Esperanto usage, such as Esperanto: Jozefino "Josephine" (from Esperanto: Jozefo "Joseph"), but is now predominant in some sources in names such as Esperanto: Johana ~ Esperanto: Johanino "Joanna" and Esperanto: Mario ~ Esperanto: Maria ~ Esperanto: Mariino "Maria".
Another gender-related change has been a gradual reduction of the number of inherently masculine words. Originally all members of a profession, such as Esperanto: dentisto "a dentist", all people defined by a characteristic, such as Esperanto: junulo "a youth" and Esperanto: Kristano "a Christian", all ethnicities, such as Esperanto: anglo "an Englishman", and all verbal participles used for humans, such as Esperanto: kuranto "a runner", were masculine unless specifically made feminine with the suffix Esperanto: -ino; currently only some twenty words, mostly kinship terms, remain masculine.
A more radical change has been to purposefully eliminate gender from the remaining masculine roots such as Esperanto: patro "father" which are not essentially masculine by the introduction of a masculine suffix to parallel feminine Esperanto: -ino. The most common proposal is Esperanto: -iĉo, which is widely recognized.[4] A parallel change is the introduction of a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun to cover "s/he", but there was little agreement as to what this should be until finally most people settled on Esperanto: [[ri (pronoun)|ri]].
An early debate in Esperanto syntax was whether phrases such as "he was born" should use the present participle Esperanto: -at- (Esperanto: naskata for "born"), preferred by native speakers of Germanic and Slavic languages, or the past participle Esperanto: -it- (Esperanto: naskita), preferred by native speakers of Romance languages.[5] The debate partially centered on whether the essential difference between the suffixes was one of tense or aspect, but primarily followed the conventions of speakers' native languages. Eventually a work-around using the inchoative suffix Esperanto: -iĝ- as a mediopassive became common as a way to avoid the debate entirely.
More recently, stative verbs have been increasingly used instead of copula-plus-adjective phrasing, following some poetic usage, so that one now frequently hears Esperanto: li sanas for Esperanto: li estas sana "he is well". This may have been inspired by Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese which treat adjectival concepts as essentially verbal. There was resistance especially in the case of participles Esperanto: (li falantas "he is falling", Esperanto: li falantis "he was falling", Esperanto: li falintas "he has fallen", Esperanto: li falintis "he had fallen", etc.), which many Europeans found overly complex. Although still minority usage, the debate over such forms has largely subsided.
A few new prepositions have been introduced by removing the part-of-speech ending from existing roots. The most common of these is Esperanto: far "by", an abbreviation of Esperanto: fare de "done by". The phrase Esperanto: fare de helps avoid sometimes ambiguous readings of the preposition Esperanto: de "of, from, by". Another neologism is Esperanto: cit from the verb Esperanto: citi "to quote", and used to introduce quotations. (Sometimes Esperanto: je or Esperanto: na (below) is seen instead.)
An occasional difficulty in Esperanto is using the accusative with noun phrases which do not readily accept the accusative suffix Esperanto: -n, such as correlatives like Esperanto: ties "that one's", quotations, or phrases which already include an accusative suffix, such as Esperanto: provoj savontaj ĝi'''n''' "attempts to save it", Esperanto: forpelado hundo'''n''' "driving away the dog". Traditionally, the preposition Esperanto: de has been used in the latter situation, but this is highly ambiguous: Esperanto: forpeladon de hundo could mean the dog was driven away (accusative case), something was driven away by the dog, or something was driven away from the dog. An accusative preposition Esperanto: na has been proposed and is widely recognized. However, the existing indefinite preposition Esperanto: je might be used just as well: Esperanto: forpeladon na hundo, Esperanto: je hundo.
Conditional participles Esperanto: -unt-, Esperanto: -ut- have been created by analogy with the past, present, and future participles Esperanto: -int-, Esperanto: -it-; Esperanto: -ant-, Esperanto: -at-; Esperanto: -ont-, Esperanto: -ot-, by extending vowel equivalences of the verb tenses Esperanto: -is, Esperanto: -as, Esperanto: -os to the conditional mood Esperanto: -us. For example, Esperanto: la reĝunto is "the man who would be king"; a Esperanto: hakuta arbo is "a tree that would be chopped down" (if it weren't spiked, etc.). However, while these forms are readily recognized, they are uncommon. Similarly, a nonce active participle with gnomic tense has been created by analogy with existing pairs of noun and verb such as Esperanto: prezidento "president" and Esperanto: prezidi "to preside", and the resulting participles Esperanto: prezidanto "one who is (currently) presiding", etc. There is no passive equivalent apart from the inchoative suffix Esperanto: -iĝi mentioned above.