Esperanto is also good, but when my partner tried to learn it, they were weirded out by some of it’s quirks, like noun declinations based on whether it’s a subject or object, that seems unecessary.

That sounds interesting. Esperanto has no noun-declinations, it’s an agglutinating language, you don’t bend words (= declination).

But what is barely resembling that what you mention is the two cases of the language, which is nominative and the so called “accusative”. Which is adding -n to words to make them an object, depending on whether the verb of the sentence needs one or not. This case also is not just for objects, but also for directions, for measurements and time. That combination normally confuses the heck out of people.

Which is why there is also an in-joke in the Esperanto community “don’t forget the accusative”, because people forget it or apply it too often.

so the idea of trying to learn one more is daunting, even if Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn.

Even that would people contest. For me it was easier to learn and I think there things in the language, which make it easier to learn. BUT that idea that it’s truly universal “easier” is often criticized and doubted. Which leaves me with a disappointing “maybe” with a slight tilt to “it’s easier”, so “maybe it’s easier?”.

I could barely learn a 3rd language (French) so the idea

If we keep in the idea set of how Esperanto came about, then the idea was to learn two to three languages and be a world citizen afterwards. Two languages, because that would be your mother tongue and Esperanto and for three languages that would be your mother tongue, the language of your region like for cultural heritage reasons and Esperanto to be a world citizen.

I learnt Esperanto after i learnt English in school. It’s my third language and I belong to those who got afterwards more confident, that I could acquire another language by myself. So for some people it’s easier to learn and it brings them then the confidence, that when they find motivation to learn a specific new language, that they could do that.

I myself am still stuck with three languages, because I did not had a strong motivation to learn an additional language. There are too much languages and there are too much conflicting incentives to learn one over another. Wanna understand China? Learn Mandarin! Learn one of the other big languages in the world for financial progress! Then learn Spanish! Be supportive of the deaf community! Then learn one of the many dialects of sign language!

I don’t know if it really is losing mindshare. Toki Pona is really popular among a very loud minority.

On one hand these people just may be learning it, because it’s an interesting conlang, nothing against that. Learn whatever language you like.

Then the loud part of the Toki Pona community learn it partially because they think it’s morally superior to other eurocentric conlangs like Esperanto. And those will eagerly say to you, that Toki Pona is the best language ever. So maybe is the perception that Esperanto is losing mindshare, because of Toki Pona, just a result of working propaganda by that very loud minority.

Esperanto is also in general not a very popular language, as its normally compared to English for its audacity to become a lingua franca. Still, to my knowledge it’s still the largest constructed language community. Toki Pona or other languages need to get to that level of sophistication which Esperanto already aquired during 136 years of its existence.

I honestly did not know there were axe-crazy Esperanto fans online.

Oh, there are always those.

These kind of speakers can be found also offline. It’s funny they are the result on one hand of the fondness to our little language and the reactions towards it by speakers of other languages. Esperanto gets a shitload of bad reputation and the resistance to it then creates such personalities.

In some sense they rightfully act like they act.

Funny that this thread re-appeared during the xz “scandal”. I had a little bit of fun regarding it, when it initially appeared in the f-droid forum.

What’s actually kinda interesting is that Esperanto is having a moment like this, while technically you are to use the pronouns Li and Sxi, for he and her, Duolingo has a lot of the use of Si, which is a singular they, and since a lot of esperanto’s modern speakers are duolingo users, a lot of folks are just using si.

I speak Esperanto for 14 years now. And no, “si” is not a singular “they”. That’s a self-referencing pronoun. And if that usage is used for genderless addressing a person then this is simply incorrect usage, because people don’t know how actually the language works. It’s used in sentences like “li lavis sin” vs. “Li lavis lin”. The first one says “he washes himself” and the second says “he washes him”, the first references the person who executes the action to reference and the second says that the action is done on a different person.

If it comes to Esperanto and genderless usage then there ĝi (it) or ri (they). The first one would be more in accordance with the fundament of the language and the second is a new pronoun which is around since at least the 70s.

No need to misuse si.