Monda vs Esperanto

Monda borrows a lot of good ideas from Esperanto, but it also corrects various problems:

• Gender neutral
• Standard alphabet
• International vocabulary
• Simpler grammar
• Different affixes
• There is no "Bible"

Gender neutral

Monda is a gender-neutral language - Esperanto is not.

This gender bias, in turn, has led to a lot of added complexity in Esperanto. For example:

• In Esperanto many roots are masculine, many are neutral, and a few are feminine. You have to memorize which are which.

• In Esperanto, a masculine root can be made into a plural of both males and females, but it cannot be made neutral: "gepatroj" means parents, but you cannot use "gepatro" to mean one parent. Instead you say "unu el la gepatroj" (one of the parents) or "patro aŭ patrino" (father or mother).

• In Esperanto, gender-neutral roots such as leono "lion" and kelnero "waiter" may be made feminine (leonino "lioness", kelnerino "waitress"), but there is no comparable way to derive the masculine. The most common way to emphasize masculinity is to use the "vir-" prefix for animals ("virleono") and an adjective for humans ("vira kelnero").

Esperanto does not have a gender neutral third person pronoun. As in English, you must say "he or she", but this is considered awkward.

There has been much effort among Esperantists to resolve these issues, such as the addition of new suffixes, new prefixes, changing the meaning of some roots, etc. But these efforts are hampered by the "Esperanto Bible" which inhibits major reforms to the language.

Monda is a true gender neutral language, and that makes the language not only more universal but also simpler and easier to learn.

Standard alphabet

Monda and Esperanto both share the "one letter - one sound" property. But while Monda uses the traditional latin alphabet, Esperanto removes four letters (q, w, x, y) and adds six new letters (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ). Most of these new letters are not found in any alphabet or keyboard.

International vocabulary

Monda's vocabulary comes from more language families than Esperanto. Monda will be more familiar to most users. In particular, Monda borrows more roots from English, recognizing that English is a very widely studied language. In general, Monda has a more familiar vocabulary.

In Monda, the plural is made with "-s", which is familiar to speakers of English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and other languages.

Simpler grammar

Monda has a simpler grammar than Esperanto:

1) Esperanto requires the "-n" ending for the "accusative case", Monda has no endings for grammar cases. Esperanto's word order is more flexible, but Monda's is more consistent:

2) Esperanto requires adjectives (e.g. "big", "pretty", etc) to agree in number and case with the nouns, so an adjective has four possible endings. There is no need for this complication, as English shows.

Different affixes

Affixes are prefixes ("dis-appear"), suffixes ("sing-er") and infixes (uncommon in English, infixes go in the middle of a word).

For the most part, Monda and Esperanto use very similar affixes, but there are a few important differences.

Similarities

• Nouns end in -o. (e.g. "domo" - house).
• Adjectives end in -a. (e.g. "rapida" - quick).
• Derivative adverbs end in -e. (e.g. "rapide" - quickly).
• Infinitive verbs end in -i. (e.g. "dormi" - to sleep).

Differences

• Monda does not denote grammar cases, and articles do not change with case or number (see "Grammar" above).
• In Monda, plurals end with "-s" rather than "-j". This is more familiar to speakers of English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and other languages.
  

  English	Monda	Esperanto
  house	domo	domo
  houses	domos	domoj

• In Esperanto, the prefix "mal-" is a negation ("bela" - beautiful; "malbela" - ugly) but in English the "mal-" prefix has a negative connotation (malutrition, maltreatment). In Monda, as in English, the prefix "dis-" denotes negation:

  English: disappear, dislike, disinfect
  Monda: disaperi, disami, disbela

  The "dis-" prefix is also similar to the Spanish "des-" prefix, also used for negation.

• Verb conjugations are different.
  

  English	Monda	Esperanto
  I write	Mi skriban	Mi skribas
  I wrote	Mi skribin	Mi skribis
  I will write	Mi skribon	Mi skribos
  write! (imperative)	skribez!	skribu!
  If I wrote ... (conditional)	If mi skribuz ...	Se mi skribus ...

There is no "Bible"

In Esperanto there is a Bible: "La Fundamento de Esperanto", written in 1905, which will never change:

This makes it more difficult for Esperanto to grow and evolve.

In Monda, there is no such Bible. It is understood that the language will evolve and change. If the Constitution of the United States could never have been amended, then Americans could not have abolished slavery. Monda advocates believe that the language must be able to change with time.