Edmund Grimley-Evans <Edmund.Grimley-Evans /c`e/ CL.CAM.AC.UK> replies  to Bruce Gilson's criticism of Esperanto's stability and praise of  Ido's instability:  ege > Contrariwise, as I said, Zamenhof's intransigence is  responsible for the fragmentation of the IL movement today. <  How do you measure the fragmentation of the IL movement? (If you  were to look at what proportion of literature written in planned  languages is written in just one of those languages [Esperanto, of  course! --kc] then you might come to the conclusion that the IL  movement is less fragmented today than it has been at any other  time in history.)  ege > Why did the idists then go on changing their language  afterwards? <  brg > Easy. Even 1907 Ido isn't perfect. Unlike Zamenhof, Couturat  didn't think you could carve a language in stone and assume it  could be fixed forever. <  Zamenhof didn't think the language could be fixed forever; he just  thought the basic grammar, function-morphemes, etc shouldn't be  tampered with - particularly not by people who don't actually  speak and use the language.  As far as tampering with the basic grammar is concerned  Esperantists mostly treat Esperanto in the same way as they treat  their native language - and sometimes Esperanto is their native  language. Idists seems to treat their language as some kind of  formal standard to be constantly discussed, and the discussions  don't even have to be in Ido.  It may be fun talking about ways of reforming Esperanto, but it's  about as likely to have any effect as talking about ways of  reforming English. How could Esperanto-speaking families in  Hungary, Cuba and Canada modify their language use according to  the whims of some committee that discusses reform proposals while  speaking English or French? I don't think that it is possible for  a language to be a formally discussed and modified standard and at  the same time to have literature and real practical use.  Esperantists go for the real applications, which makes Esperanto  very boring for conlangers who are more interested in discussing  grammar than doing the sort of things Esperantists get up to at  the IS ...  Sorry; I have to go now. An Esperanto speaker from Germany is  visiting us and the Cambridge student Esperanto group are meeting  to eat doughnuts then show him round the colleges in about 10  minutes time ...  Edmundo