English is an unstable language.

It is proverbial that to be successful, you have to work. However, you can sharpen this by referring it to the dictionary. In English, we say, “Success comes before work only in the dictionary.” How brilliant! How sharp! In Esperanto, the dictionary order agrees with the proverb, so we would say, “Work comes before success, even in the dictionary.” [“Laboro venas antaŭ sukceso eĉ en la vortaro.”] How brilliant! How sharp!

This of course immediately raises the question as to which languages match the English pattern (regarding this proverb), and which match the Esperanto pattern. Let’s call those that match the English pattern “unstable” (“nestabila”) and call those that match the Esperanto pattern “stable” (“stabila”). Sooooo, is, say, French unstable, or stable? Yours truly hasn’t the faintest. Ditto of course for German, Russian, and so on. This looks like a nice little project that Esperantists throughout the whole world could contribute to: Report whether your language is unstable or stable. Perhaps a separate Yahoo! Group could be formed to collect the results.

Regards,
Mike Jones
Beijing
2.Feb.2011