🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <user-230193130936@hf-mac16.uio.no> user@computer.uio.no (PC Jorgensen) writes:
>I've never learned much Esperanto myself, but wasn't/isn't one of the
>points of the syntax that you could, to some extent, construct sentences
>according to the rules of your native language (Germanic/Slavic/Baltic
>users can put the
>adjective before the noun, and Romance speakers the noun first)?

I believe I read this myself somewhere.  Barmy idea; the effect would be an
immediate fracturing of the language into syntactic dialects, and many amusing
opportunities for confusion.  I would maintain, however, that Esperanto is
nowhere near this forgiving.  In effect Zamenhof defined Esperanto syntax
ostensively, by writing books in it, and present-day Esperantists can,
like speakers of natural languages, model their syntax on that of fluent
speakers and writers of the language.

>And secondly, apart from the literature written in Esperanto, isn't the 
>syntax one can find in both written (letters, for instance) and spoken
>Esperanto very straightforward (for IE speakers, that is)? (as determined
>by the context and the nature of the situations where people who speak/know
>Esperanto actually use it?)

Mmm, define "straightforward."  

Do you consider English syntax (as seen e.g. in letters) straightforward?