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A critique addressed by Ido

I took that bit out as Ido isn't the only IAL that addresses this. I'm an Idist myself but there's no need to add a cheap advertisement in the middle of everything. The main differences that Ido addressed were the diacritical marks, the -n object marker, and word formation. There was no cry of "this language isn't European enough, let's change it."

Oh. I just reverted that. (I don't give a lot of consideration to anonymous edits.) Wasn't meant as an ad for Ido, just that Ido is the only Esperanto reform that ever went anywhere. Change it to Interlingua if you like. My point was that a lot of the criticisms are diametrically opposed, so that it's impossible to satisfy everyone. kwami 23:56, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

Did you now? Now I'm not anonmymous - I'm the largest contributor to the Ido Wiktionary and one of the largest to our Wikipedia. This is the article to reference when comparing the two: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5037/chefaj.html

And you will notice a complete lack of decrying Esperanto for its un-Europeanness. Mithridates 05:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS if you are going to stick with the 'not European enough' line then Ido should be changed to Interlingua, but you can keep the reference to Ido if you reference the diacritical marks, as Ido was the first language reform to address that in 1907.

Oh, sorry if I sounded grumpy when I wrote that. I had just woken up. *^^* Mithridates 06:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure. I'm up too late, so I can relate. (I did puzzle over the "did you now?", but then decided not to worry about it -- I mean, I had just reverted you without bothering to read the talk page!) Let's see, we just had an edit conflict, so you're giving me a chance to make sure I wan't being grumpy ...

My impression from the early Ido documents is that one of the criticisms leveled at Eo was that it was too Slavic and too Germanic. I wouldn't expect anyone to say that today, but it seemed a popular theme around 1910. The 'improvements in clarity' cited at your link tend to replace Slavic semantics with Romance or English semantics - of course, if you're more familiar with the Western languages, their logic will seem clearer. (Shouldn't have said "not European enough". My bad.) As for your link being "the article" to reference, it's a little one-sided, don't you think? Not saying it's wrong, just that I could come up with a similar list of the advantages E has over Ido. (One-to-one orthography, easy-to-learn proforms, better accommodates aspectual distinctions, fewer roots for non-Europeans to memorize, many of the reformed words like skolo and tarda are in Eo too, just nobody cares to use them, yadda yadda yadda.) A good reference article would have both, so the reader could decide for themself. And, of course, propaganda tailored for today's audience will differ from the motivations of the Ido committee.

Anyway, take out the Ido ref if you like. It doesn't matter too much what the exemplar is. kwami 07:32, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

Oh, that article? Yeah, it's completely one-sided and I wouldn't dare try to put it in the article; I just put it in there in case you hadn't seen it before, as it addresses what Idists consider to be the most important of the reforms. I think if they had to choose only a few of the changes they decided on that they would take out the diacritic characters first, then the -n ending, and then the plurals after that. Everything else seems to have been pretty minor to me. Of course, Esperantists of old had to write in the diacriticals by hand after typing out pages on a typewriter and things are a lot easier now with just a simple download.

I'll take another look at the paragraph tonight and make a change; you can tell me what you think of it and I'm sure things will be just fine. ^^ Mithridates 08:12, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I added a bit about the diacritical marks. Pretty much the same as what I wrote in the paragraph above, and I ended it with a remark that the problem has been largely minimized by the downloadable fonts - or should I have said IME or something of the sort? I assume Macs and Linux systems also have their own software for that as well. For me, I downloaded that 'Ek!' button and everything was just fine afterwards. Mithridates 09:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph's fine, but the level of detail is more appropriate for the Espo criticism article. (Like many sections, it had grown to the point of being unwieldy in the main article, and was moved. Otherwise the main article would be a good twenty pages long.) The section here is more of an abstract: 'People don't like A, B, and C, have proposed several reforms, for more, read [this].' I've slowly been expanding the debates on the various criticisms, but haven't gotten to the script yet. Your paragraph would make a good addition. I can move it over later, or you can if you like.

Frankly, I don't see how it matters how you write the language. The accusative, agreement, ubiquitous diphthongs, derivation vs. borrowing, those are substantial issues that actually affect the language. But the orthography? It just seems so superficial to make such a big deal out of it. Just use digraphs - who cares? And whether the grammatical endings are familiar or not - you get used to them so quickly, it's hard for me to see how it matters whether the jussive is -u or -ez (except that -ez will come out as [es] for much of the world...). I need to take a closer look at Ido derivation - I have the feeling that under the surface it's just as arbitrary as Espo. But that's where the meat is. kwami 09:56, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

I'm not sure why they changed it to -ez either. I noticed quite a few romance languages with Wikipedias here that have the -u ending so it's definately not unnatural. It's hard to say - I'm definately grateful to Esperanto for creating the 1.5 - 2 million population that believes in an IAL enough to study a whole new language. I think if the population of Es, Io and Ia were the same that I would choose Interlingua as I like how it looks a bit better, but doing so would invalidate all the effort the Esperantists have put into the movement and that would be a shame. I do think the diacritical marks to be the most important issue though, and the reason is because the vast majority of people are lazy and anything that makes a language less attractive looking, even if it makes sense, can turn people off.

Word derivation: I think the biggest problem Idists had with the -a turning into -o and then back into -a again is that you get a situation where the original -o is a noun, then tne -a is an adjective based on the noun, but then by turning the -a adjective into an -o again you have a noun written the same as the original word but based on the adjective instead, giving it a different meaning.

I remember some minor things as well when they used Esperanto in real life like trying to shout at somebody that they have to turn maldextre instead of dextre, but from a distance it's hard to make out anything but the -extre sound at the end so they changed it to sinistre because otherwise it could cause confusion. Then there were some problems with a lot of the pronouns sounding the same over the phone, especially ni and mi.

But whatever, nothing's perfect. Korean and Japanese don't make any differentiation between the word 'smile' and 'laugh', and I know that if an IAL were to do that they would get laughed out of town, whereas if a cool Asian language does it it's 'deep'. Ha. ^^ 211.58.237.50 14:38, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I just moved your paragraph over to Esperanto as an international language and integrated it into what was there. I also put in a more obvious reference to the alphabet in the main article.

As for the jussive -u, I've wondered whether replacing it had anything to do with it being the one specifically Semitic morpheme in the language. As for sinistre, E has a word live, but no one bothers to use it. Perhaps if enough people get lost they'll start to. Ses - sep bothers me, because context won't disambiguate numerals. However, mi - ni is almost never a problem in actual conversation, because the referent is almost always easily deductable. Over the phone, I'll ask you about "us" and tell you about "me", so it's easy to keep track - which is why you don't need a pronoun at all in a language like Japanese. And if it is confused and someone asks kiu?, it's easy enough to use circumlocutions like vi k mi or nur mi mem. (This is much less of a problem that English he - she with people who pronounce them the same.) As for the suffix -ala, that's available in E now too, although it's almost never required. The only use of it I can think of is varmala for 'thermal'. Traditionally, tho, people just used a different root, like termala. (Is that what you meant? You use the very common suffix -eco to go from noun to adjective and back to noun again.) kwami 00:42, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

Would this picture have any relevance to the article?

I have yet to find a section where this photo could fit, shouldn't there be something about media coverage of Esperanto? Here is the picture: File:Newsweek esperanto.jpg

What do you guys think? Revolución 02:23, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, there's the E in English media article, as well as the E culture articles. Either might be appropriate. But do you have a copyright release? Otherwise this ain't goin' nowhere. kwami 03:17, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

why do we have to be so agitated about copyright? Nobody is claiming this is their work, of course at the bottom of the image you can see it says Newsweek. Revolución 04:52, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If Newsweek doesn't release the copyright, then posting the image could be illegal, just as if you started duplicating their magazine. Wikipedia doesn't want to get into that. I've included images that I've found on the web, where the originating web site said they were free to distribute for educational purposes, and still had to remove them from my articles. The upside to not using proprietary material is that no one will be able to claim they own Wikipedia and sue for ownership. kwami 05:34, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

For crying out loud, it's ONE PAGE from an August 2003 issue from a week in that month. Considering that there are 52 weeks in a year, and that the issue was published almost 2 years ago, I don't think Newsweek will care. Revolución 15:10, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your frustration is understandable, but it does seem to be misdirected. Neither kwami nor Wikipedia are responsible for international copyright law. While my undestanding is that "fair use" does allow some latitude for interpretation in the US, obviously Wikipedia doesn't have the army of lawyers needed to get involved in copyright disputes. -- PhilipR 15:23, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If they really don't care, you might be able to email them & have them release it. kwami 17:41, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

One of the reasons is to allow a quite free use of copies of Wikipedia. We don't want to burden secondary copies with the trouble of ascertain the legality of contents. --Error 22:44, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Why isn't this fair use? We can't read the article, so it's hard to claim it's competing with the original, we use just one page so it's a small part of both Wikipedia and the original.--Prosfilaes 17:41, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Five vowels like Spanish, Swahili and Japanese?

Anybody realize that /u/ doesn't normally occur in the Japanese language? (And when it does, very sporadically, only in certain dialects, and always as an allophone), what in Japanese transliteration is spelled u comes a lot closer to Russian ы. So are we claiming Esperanto contains this Japanese/Russian vowel, the unrounded u?

Oops, that's been corrected before, but has slipped back in. kwami 02:33, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

(Actually, it didn't say it had the vowels of Japanese, just that it had 5 vowels, which is also true of Japanese. Should be clearer.)

Collation

Anon's addition:

(with a rare exception that uzi should be before uxato).

Does it make sense? Is there such a word as ŭato? mikka (t) 30 June 2005 22:22 (UTC)

Ŭato was coined as a transliteration of Watt. However, people weren't happy with it, because it violates Eo phonotactics, and it's now vato. There are a couple other cases where the x-system does not work properly, such as the example of re-uzi (to re-use) vs. reŭmatismo (rheumatism) in the article on Esperanto orthography. I took out the ŭato example because there's been a recurring problem of people writing paragraph after paragraph of how Eo is used on the internet, arguments over which ASCII system is better, etc, and none of this really belongs in a quick summary of the language. (That's what the orthography sub-article is for.) kwami 2005 June 30 23:26 (UTC)

Featured article candidate again?

The article has enjoyed some further improvement, I think, since I took it through peer review back in March. Do y'all want to nominate it for featured article again? What further improvements might be needed? --Jim Henry | Talk 5 July 2005 19:37 (UTC)

Esperanto Template

I would like to propose a template to coordinate all of the Esperanto series of articles. I have put it at Template:Esperanto, and it looks like this:

Any comments, criticisms?

--[[User:JonMoore|—JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 21:01, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

A couple people have objected that 'pronunciation' is not a real article, and should be merged. Also, there's the pros & cons article, Esperanto as an international language, which needs work, but perhaps should be included (probably under a different title). Other than that, looks good. kwami 00:05, 2005 July 15 (UTC)

Zamenhof probably should moved from the title box into the history line. --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 00:53, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Just a thought - what about linking the "Language:" caption to the main Eo article, the way History and Culture are, so that the main "Esperanto" caption is link free? That might fit in a little better with standard Wikipedia formatting, since section headings are not supposed to contain links. kwami 01:21, 2005 July 15 (UTC)

I made all of the above changes, but I think we should leave "Pronunciation" until it is no longer an article. --[[User:JonMoore|—JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 01:27, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

No "Criticisms" link? kwami

Yes, under "Pros and cons". I thought of it after I wrote the post :-) --[[User:JonMoore|—JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 01:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Hm, kinda lost where it is, and 'Criticism' might be a more intelligible title (it sounds like 'pros and cons of grammar' where it is now), but I'm not sure it deserves first billing of all the subarticles, which is where the spelling 'Criticism' would end up. Maybe add 'Criticism' to a forth row, or in the third row, but in the bold font that 'Culture' gets? That is, make it a 4th category, but combine the 3rd and 4th categories in the 3rd row, since they're shorter than the other two? kwami

Ok, how does that look? With this particular template's format, its hard to make a seperate category, without it going on a seperate line. That's not to say we can't alter the format. And of course, as always you are welcome to fiddle with the template :) --[[User:JonMoore|—JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 03:16, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Looks good! kwami

I copied this talk to Template_Talk:Esperanto --[[User:JonMoore|—JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 02:23, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Learning skills

There is experimental evidence that studying Esperanto before another foreign language improves one's ability to learn that language...

...so much so that it takes less time to learn both than it would to learn just the second.

The phrase is a bit suspicious to me. I am well aware that learning the third and subsequent languages takes much less time. However the claim about esperanto is phrased in the way that rises questions, especially the second part.

What was the statistical base discussion of the issue? In particular, how skewing factors were accunted for? Was it a controlled experiment or a poll? For example, it is reasonable to assume that persons who voluntarily start learning esperanto must have certain inclination towards lingustics, while lerning languages at school is often an indiscrimination routine.

Therefore I would insist on the source of this claim. mikka (t) 19:34, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Just follow the links! kwami 20:36, 2005 July 25 (UTC)

Thanks. Sure. Which ones? What's the point of hypertext, if you don't use it in the most critical places? Yes, now that I've read the article top-bottom, I saw the light (and fixed the problem). mikka (t) 00:35, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Putting your refs in the introduction or abstract defeats the whole point of having one, which is to give a quick overview of what the reader will find in the article. kwami 00:41, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

RahXephon

>The anime RahXephon makes use of Esperanto for the acronym of TERRA, which stands for "Tereno Empireo Rapidmova Reakcii Armeo." This can be translated as "Earth Empire Rapid Response Army," though pedants might note that a better Esperanto rendition of this name would be "Rapid-Reaga Armeo de la Tera Imperio".<

The RahXephon/TERRA thing should probably go to the Esperanto in English-language media article. Actually, "tereno empirea" would be "an empyreal terrain", a celestial field; maybe they know what they're doing.  :-D
Pedantically,
--Cam 03:41, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

I aggree. The relevance of this detail is near zero. By the way "Tereno Empireo Rapidmova Reakcii Armeo." isn't Esperanto at all. Titbit 12:27, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I would support the move, too. And I support the extra-pedantic translation that actually uses Esperanto roots. My original thought was just to put grammatically appropriate endings on the novel root-words, but what's the point in being halfway pedantic?--Craigkbryant 13:45, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

But it's not in "English-language media" - it's in Japanese-language media. DenisMoskowitz 13:50, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

Maybe a new article is in order, then, or the English-language one could be expanded to include other media? It just looks weird to have the Blade Trinity and Harry Harrison stuff somewhere else while one garbled phrase stays here. --Cam 14:45, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

We could move Esperanto in English-language media to Esperanto in mainstream media or Esperanto in popular culture of other languages or something along those lines. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:02, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto in non-Esperanto media? Esperanto in other-language media? DenisMoskowitz 15:25, 2005 August 10 (UTC)

Esperanto in non-Esperanto media sounds slightly better than the others to me, but none of them sound really good. With Esperanto in mainstream media it's not clear what "mainstream" is being contrasted with; "other-language media" seems unwieldy, and "media of other languages" even worse. --Jim Henry | Talk 20:47, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Esperanto in English-language media should be moved to a better name that allows for information to be added about Esperanto that's more of an international view, not covering just English-language appearances of Esperanto. I like the title Esperanto in popular culture and Esperanto in mainstream media also. --Revolución (talk) 20:52, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto WikiPortal

I just created a WikiPortal for Esperanto. If anyone is interested in helping to maintain it, please let me know. [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 17:53, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

8 million impossible

I'm going to write this here first before getting into an edit war - the upper limit is suggested as being 8 million but this is impossible regardless of what is written in a FAQ somewhere. Given that:

• Finnish (5.2 million) has 5540 users,
• Norwegian (4.6 million) has 3856 users,
• Hebrew (5.1 million) has 8940 users, and
• Esperanto has 1320 users.

Add that to the fact that Esperanto speakers are more likely than an average person to want to contribute to Wikipedia, and that all the languages above still have more articles than Espo except Hebrew, and lastly that one of the main sites for Esperanto, gxangalo.com, has had a grand total of *zero* new posts to the bulletin board in the past two days, makes this number wildly unrealistic. Personally I think 8 million would be awesome, but I just don't see it. Especially if we are looking to submit this as a featured article again, this number is just going to be shot down. I suggest we modify it to fit the numbers given in some of the other languages where it has been peer reviewed and featured on the front page. 211.202.17.124 22:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Now, I'm going to suggest we agree on an upper limit of 3 million for an estimate. Even the 2 million number often gets attacked quite often for being too large. On the Finnish wiki it estimates around ten million people who have learned an inkling of the language, i.e. people who kind of know that nouns end with -o and some other rules, and perhaps put in a few days of study here and there. The criteria for knowing a language though is level three, where one 'rarely hesitates in offering one's ideas', 'can follow most conversations with no problem though may have some difficulty when one of a group of native speakers of the language' (I'm paraphrasing), IOW a relatively high level of ability. An estimate of 100000 - 8 million IMO is not only unrealistically hopeful, but it also makes it look like we have no real idea as to how many people speak the lanugage. In no other lanugage is the higher estimate *80 times* larger than the lower.211.202.17.124 04:22, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Where does the 3M estimate come from? The 1.6M estimate is often attacked as too large, and I've never seen anything higher. Also, these are not people with native or native-like fluency, unlike the other language estimates. And of course it's true that we do have no idea how many people speak Esperanto. kwami 08:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we should just state that estimates vary wildly and there is no solid data then quote a few estimates from differnt sources. Plugwash 12:35, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, 3 million was the higher number on some of the other language wikipedias, though not all of them. Personally I think the best way to get an accurate estimate now would be to compare a number of languages that aren't used as second languages in other countries (so no English, Russian etc. but rather Norwegian, Hungarian etc), compare that with the registered users on their wikipedias with their respective populations and internet penetration. Then probably double that because an Esperantist is more likely to be an active supporter online than a native speaker that probably doesn't care much about proliferating his/her language. One good thing about the growth of Wikipedia is that this might be able to give us some idea, at least in a relative way. It wouldn't help with trying to guage some of the smaller IALs though because people will often register themselves in a number of Wikipedias without knowing the language and in a smaller Wikipedia that can skew the numbers quite a bit. 211.202.17.124 17:11, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I've mostly heard 2 million, I think that is a good compromise. --Revolución (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

We really shouldn't be doing original research or just guessing, we should be looking for sources on both sides and quoting them. do you have any reasonablly reputable sources that give the 2 million estimate? Plugwash 18:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The 2M figure is from World Almanac, which is why everyone quotes it. But it isn't an actual population estimate: It's merely the 1.6M FSI level 3 estimate rounded off to the nearest million. So 2M should be changed to 1.6M wherever we find it. As far as I know, this is the only estimate for the population of Esperanto since the 1920s. The 100k figure comes from a guestimate that there is something 'on the order of' 1k native, 10k native-like, 100k fluent, 1M conversant, and 10M have studied. The UEA site says 'Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions,' but I don't think that's sufficient reason to go over the 1.6M figure. kwami 18:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I edited the demographic info in the sidebar, as follows:

• Changed number of native speakers from 'approx. 2000' to 'approx. 1000-2000', to cover Jukka Lindstedt's estimate of 1000 native speakers.
• Changed 'active speakers' to 'fluent speakers', since 'active' is excessively vague.
• Removed 'depending on criteria', because criteria is not really the issue. That is, it's not as if most people agree about the facts on the ground and are merely whether being able to say 'bonan tagon' is enough to make you an esperantist. In fact, there widely different estimates on how many people can carry on a FS Level 3 conversation, and the same applies to any other criterion of 'esperanta poveso' (or whatever the word is).
• Deleted Colbert's 1.6 million estimate, since it's controversial, and the issue is well covered in the body of the article.

--Chris 01:51, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I changed "growing community of several million speakers" to "perhaps as many as three million speakers" to better reflect estimates given in the rest of the article. For growing, see my comments under Growing Community --Chris 14:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Esperanto and Ido compared

This article has just begun and will likely replace the one on Ido on the Esperanto template. I may have a bit of a bias towards Ido but Esperanto is fine too so it should turn out to be objective. This article is pretty much the same thing as the one comparing Esperanto with Interlingua, though I suspect there will be a lot more history to this one. 211.240.138.197 11:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

• There's also Esperanto and Interlingua compared. --Revolución (talk) 20:47, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

"Indo-european based"

This is simply not accurate because Esperanto has also featured of non-indo-european languages like Hebrew (no indefinite article) --Revolución (talk) 14:27, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

There's no indefinite article in Latin either, but Latin is still Indo-European. --Zundark 15:44, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Is that your reasoning? As Zundark says, the lack of an indefinite article is found in other Indo-European languages. Phonetically, it's got almost the exact same inventory of sounds as Belarussian, with voicing distinctions, and no tonal or aspiration distinctions, which is characteristic of Indo-European languages. The consonant clusters in Esperanto are also larger than most languages (most languages, IIRC, are CV or CVC only), but not as long as in Caucasian languages. The vocabulary is massively Indo-European; in Zamenhof's vocabulary, were there any roots that came directly from non-Indo-European languages? I don't have as solid a understanding of grammar, but the male-female distinction, the use of time and the cases seem to be consistent with Indo-European languages. Agglutinative language says that "Agglutinative languages are not entirely grouped by the family", but does place Esperanto with German and Dutch as an example of a slightly agglutinative language. Historically, Zamenhof knew only Indo-European languages and Hebrew; certainly the distinctive parts of Hebrew, the triconsonantal roots for one, are missing. I can't see and have never heard alleged elsewhere that there is Hebrew influence on Esperanto. --Prosfilaes 18:57, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

And Russian doesn't have any articles, which is why the use of la is optional in Esperanto (though that's not commonly mentioned in English language descriptions). It's thought that the jussive mood (-u), which doesn't really behave like either a subjunctive or an imperative, is from the Hebrew jussive (also -u, at least in one inflection). Other than that, no one has been able to find a Semitic influence in Eo. The vocab, of course, is Romance and Germanic. The phonology is Slavic, minus palatalization, which others would find difficult. The semantics is also Slavic: "Plena Vortaro", for example: plena may be a Romance root, but the meaning is Slavic: you don't say a "full" dictionary to mean a complete dictionary in either Romance or Germanic. The syntax is not only Indo-European, but the European half of that family: There's Slavic aspect, though it's optional, and the rest is common to Romance, Germanic, and/or Slavic. (Germans complain about the adverbs, and Slavs about the article, but they're found elsewhere in Europe.) The only thing that you could claim is non-Indoeuropean is the agglutinative morphology. However, this is merely an artifact of Eo being a constructed language: agglutination is the most efficient form of word formation. English is getting close to being an isolating language, but you wouldn't argue it's not Indoeuropean because of that. Esperanto is completely and thoroughly, not an Indoeuropean language, but a European sprachbund Indoeuropean language, in its conception and development. Although it's not appropriate to say it belongs to the IE family, as it didn't decend genealogically from an IE parent. However, I think it's entirely appropriate to say that it's IE based. Just ask a Chinese or Japanese Esperantist if they think Eo is an "international" language in its form, and they'll reply in the negative. To an outsider, it's clearly European. kwami 00:18, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

P.S. I've had a similar debate about Interlingua. That is clearly a Romance-based language, though its supporters generally argue it's "European". Esperanto is clearly European-based, but its promoters often claim its "universal". These claims are just silly, and are the product of marketing campaigns. They don't belong in an encyclopedia, except as part of a sociological description of the languages. kwami 00:32, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article on agglutinative languages considers Esperanto on the same level as German or Dutch. I don't understand the argument about genealogically descended; would a chimera composed of human and bear DNA no longer be mammalian? --Prosfilaes 11:02, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

In historical linguistics, creoles are not classified as part of a language family, because they're impossible to classify with traditional methods. Instead, they're said to be "English and Melanesian based", etc. I think this is probably also appropriate for conglangs.

There are also doubtlessly chimeras, but this is difficult to demonstrate and the concept has been much abused historically. When a definite "mixed language" is found, it could be classified in both families: Copper Island Aleut (Russian+Aleut), Michif (French+Cree), etc. But Esperanto is not two languages blended together.

Interesting discussion. I live in Korea and lived in Japan for quite some time and after learning both languages and having many discussions with people about the three largest (Espo, Ido, Interlingua) the three really aren't exceptionally easier for them - Interlingua is definately the hardest, relatively, but word order, grammar, everything is backwards and it doesn't stick quite as fast. It actually reminds me of when I took a month to learn basic Turkish, which is also completely phoenetic, grammar is logical and whatnot, plus I had the word order down from K and J. The problem was that the words themselves were completely unfamiliar and it took a lot more effort than I expected to keep a new word in my mind. There really wasn't anything about it that I could attribute to something else I had already learned and so each word took a lot more effort than anything else I had studied before. Well, except K and J but Turkish was just for a bit of fun so there was no big deal in not learning it as much as I had hoped. Espo and the two others are kind of like that for people over here in Asia, but looking at the ridiculous amounts of money they spend on English-language education over here, they would certainly be willing to learn an IAL... if there was any monetary gain in it.

Anyway yeah, there's nothing really non Indo-European about it. The odd loanword from another language here and there doesn't make it any less Indo-European either. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyone that thinks they can construct a truly international language with aspects of absolutely every language family is deluding themself. 211.240.138.198 12:56, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

User from IP 211.240... told: "there's nothing really non Indo-European about it". The point is that it's not lexics (words) that make a language Indo-European or not. It's mostly grammar and genealogy. E. g. I've heard Karelian_language has more than 70% of Russian words in it, but nobody will call it Slavic or Indo-European, for it's still Finno-Ugric. Nor grammar, nor genealogy are Indo-European for Esperanto; I'd say they are "independent". Scholars use term "autonomous" to describe grammar of a conlang like this (in contrast to "naturalistic" grammar of Interlingua IALA and some others). So what I am trying to say: it's absolutely ignorant to write "Indo-European" or "based on Indo-European languages" about Esperanto; the most one could write is "most of Esperanto words are loaned from Indo-European languages" or, in the context of the table, "Constructed language (autonomous grammar, mostly Romanic and Germanic words)" — that's really true and precise. - Slavik IVANOV 01:41, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Correct for the genealogy, which is why it would be wrong to call Eo an IE language. But wrong for grammar. Eo grammar is thoroughly European and Indoeuropean, with the possible exception of a Semitic jussive mood. Compare Eo to Malay, or Iroquois, or Japanese, and its European character is obvious. kwami 06:53, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Actually you could, say, make a Slavic Germanic Romance Greek Turkic Persian Indic Tamil Chinese Austronesian Bantu Semitic Hausa Wolof Manding Akan Yoruba Algonkian Iroquois Athabaskan Inuit Nahua Maya Quechua Tupian-based language, which most people would accept as international, but then everyone would have the problem that you did with Turkish. You might as well play Tolkien and expand on Elvish. At least with Eo as it stands, you have a leg up if you've ever studied a Romance, Germanic, or Slavic language at school - which most of the world's educated population has. However, I think that if Zamenhof had been fluent in a few Asian and African languages, he would have come up with a language far more suited to international communication than Eo is. A few people have tried, but all anyone's done so far is make a mishmash of the vocab while making only superficial concessions in the grammar (such as dropping all inflection), and doing nothing at all about the semantics, which is a major stumbling block in learning a language. kwami 19:40, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

The syntax of Esperanto is definitely modeled on Indo-European languages. The morphology is not so clear-cut; some aspects are modeled on IE (tense, aspect, mood, number, probably case), but others (the invariant roots that compound without any sandhi, the part-of-speech endings) are not IE. It's the latter aspect that people focus on when they argue that Esperanto is not Indo-European. Also, John C. Wells in Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto writes that Esperanto has an agglutinativity index of about 0.999 - more agglutinative than any natural language. See the article on Esperanto grammar in the Esperanto Wikipedia for details on how that agglutinativity index is calculated. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:16, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Really? Did he compare it to Turkish? Let's go check. Anyway, someone has taken the IE part out again so I guess we have another edit war coming. Mithridates 00:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Joseph Greenberg, whose figures Wells cites, calculated an index of agglutinativity of 0.51 for Yakut, a Turkic language which Wells describes as being more agglutinative than Turkish. This was one of two measures he described for typologically classifying languages. For synthesis index figures, see [1] and followup messages. For calculating the agglutinativity index (on which we need an article), see [2]. --Jim Henry | [[User talk:Jim Henry|Talk]] 22:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

"A quantitative approach to the morphological typology of languages". Int. J. American Linguistics 26.3.178-194.

reprinted in:

Keith Denning & Suzanne Kemmer(eds.) On Language: Selected Writings of Joseph H. Greenberg, pp. 3-25.Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Translation request

Hello all! I have an article, SYR3: Invito Al Cielo with some text in Esperanto (song titles) in it for which I would like a translation. I don't know if putting the request here is the proper thing to do, but it seems logical to me. Anyway, I would be grateful if someone knowledgeable in Esperanto could translate these titles for me and post them to my talk page. Thanks a lot! --Netvor | T | C 16:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks for the speedy response go out to User:Jim Henry, User:JonMoore, User:Minur and User:Zundark. Problem solved! --Netvor | T | C 20:35, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Phonology

ŭ is not in contemplementary distribution with v, since v can also be syllable-final (e.g. lavmasxino). So I removed the sentence stating this. Marcoscramer 19:14, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

After me removing the statement about contemplementary distribution, Kwamikagami put it back in, with my point being mentioned in the article in a relativised form.

Now it is commonly accepted that Esperanto has 28 phonemes, and the only theory I have heared that called this into doubt is the one claiming that each of ĉ and ĝ represents two phonemes. But never have I heared about v and ŭ being the same phoneme. So my suspition is that Kwamikagami uses Wikipedia for his primary research.

Until he can prove that there are already other books/articles presenting his views, we should not have them in the Wikipedia. And even then, they should only be presented as an alternative view to the commonly acepted view that Esperanto has 28 phonemes (and then we should also mention the alternative view about ĉ and ĝ; and since that would all be quite a lot of stuff, we should maybe move these lternative theories to Esperanto phonology and only present the standard view here).

At any rate, there are also examples which aren't just "close to minimal pairs", but which are minimal pairs, e.g. laŭskribe and lavskribe (even if the second one has a rather odd meaning, and would probably never be used, it still is a perfectly correct Esperanto word). With a bit more thought, one can probably find an example with more meaningful words. Marcoscramer 12:02, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact that there aren't any monomorphemic minimal pairs is significant, but I can see leaving this out of the basic Eo article. However, we should mention that Eo has two semivowel offglides, not one. The plural j is analogous to ŭ, and that is how Kalocsay & Waringhien analyse it. Haven't had access to my K&W for a while, and I'll add in the cases of regressive assimilation that they and Z recognized as well. kwami 18:50, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Kwami you are incorrect, ŭ is a consonant it is pronounced like "w". But when it comes in a dipthong it is pronounced differently. [3] [4] --Revolución (talk) 21:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

ŭ always comes in a dipthong (apart from onomatopea and a few obsolete words), so your what you say is quite meaningless. The confusion lies in the way the same phone gets represented as two different phonemes in English ([w] and [ʊ̯]). Read semivowel for an explanation. In Esperanto, there is just one phoneme corresponding to these. Marcoscramer 23:10, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Revolución, the first ref. is a naive explanation for English speakers, and English w is a reasonable approximation. (The second source is not reliable; some of the Omniglot descriptions are atrocious.) However, Esperanto was designed for people who do not distinguish [v] from [w], like the Russians, Poles, and Germans, not just for the English and French who do. Saying that [v] and [w] are separate consonants misrepresents the situation. Kalocsay & Waringhien, in their Plena analiza gramatiko, describe j as being sometimes a consonant (in ja, je, jo, ju) and sometimes a non-syllabic vowel (in aj, ej, oj, uj). Ŭ they describe as being a non-syllabic vowel, not a consonant:

La Esperantaj sonoj, kiel ĉe ĉiu alia lingvo, konsistas el vokaloj (a, e, i, o, u) kaj konsonantoj [...]. Krome ekzistas la duonvokalo ŭ, prononcata simple kiel mallonga u. Ĉiu vokalo, sola, aŭ kun la apudaj konsonantoj, formas unu silabon. La duonvokalo ŭ neniam formas apartan silabon kaj tial povas troviĝi nur post vokalo: aŭ, eŭ, oŭ; malofte antaŭ vokalo: ŭa (zamenhofa imito de infanetploro); ŭo (la nomo de la litero); ŭaks (z-a onomatopeo) (*).

Esperanto sounds, as in every other language, consists of vowels and consonants. In addition there is the semivowel ŭ, pronounced simply like a short u. The semivowel ŭ never forms a separate syllable and therefore can only be found after a vowel: aŭ, eŭ, oŭ; rarely before a vowel: ŭa (a Zamenhofian imitation of a baby's cry); ŭo (the name of the letter); ŭaks (Zamenhofian onomatopoeia) (*).

[Note that onomatopoeia often violates a language's phonological rules. English, for example, has clicks, and syllabic ss, sh, zz, but only in onomatopoeia.]

(*) Teorie oni povas distingi kvar duonvokalojn:

1. i-sonon kaj u-sonon troviĝantajn post alia vokalo kaj formantajn kun tiu unu silabon. [...] La diferenco inter tiu i-sono kaj la j-konsonanto estas tre subtila, tial ankaŭ ne estas necese havi por ĝi apartan literon; en E-o oni signas ĝin per simpla j. Fonetike eble oni povus distingi ĝin per y: homoj [homoy], plej [pley]. La u-sonon oni signas per ŭ: baldaŭ, aŭdi.

2. i- kaj u-sonon troviĝantan antaŭ vokalo kaj post konsonanto kaj aŭdiĝantajn dum la malfermiĝo de la buŝo. En Esp-o ili ekzistas nur, kiam en la poezio la ritmo mallongigas ordinaran i kaj u: kormilionoj [kormilyonoy], buduaro [budŭaro].

Krome ekzistas la konsonanta j (vortkomence, aŭ inter du vokaloj (jen, foje). Al ĝi respondus la vortkomenca ŭ (fonetike: w), estigata preskaŭ ne per la voĉkordoj, sed per la lipoj. Sed ĝin oni trovas nur en kelkaj proponitaj vortoj (waĉi, wato).

(*) Theoretically one can distinguish four semivowels:

1. An [i] sound and a [u] sound found after another vowel and forming with it a syllable. [...] The difference between this [i] sound and the [j] consonant is very subtle, so that it isn't even necessary to have a separate letter for it; in Eo one transcribes it with a simple <j>. Phonetically perhaps one could distinguish it by <ĭ>: homoj [homoĭ], plej [pleĭ]. The [u] sound is transcribed by <ŭ>: baldaŭ, aŭdi.

2. An [i] and a [u] sound found before a vowel and after a consonant and heard during the opening of the mouth. In Eo they exist only when in poetry the rhythm shortens an ordinary [i] and [u]: kormilionoj [kormilĭonoĭ], buduaro [budŭaro].

In addition there is the consonant <j> (at the beginning of a word, or between two vowels (jen, foje). To this corresponds the word-initial <ŭ> (phonetically [w]), made hardly with the vocal cords, but instead with the lips. But it is found only in a few proposed words (waĉi, wato).

kwami 01:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

The Plena Analiza Gramatiko was first published in 1935, with its fifth edition in 1985. Thus it is not completely up to date with grammatical debates about Esperanto. The similarly complete description of Esperanto grammar Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko is much more up to date, and in it you can read that there are 23 consonants (of which two are semivowels) and five vowels (http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/skribo_elparolo/elparolo/bazaj_reguloj.html#i-nol). I think that because PMEG is much more up to date than PAG, it should rather serve as a reference in case of disagreement. It is also clear that on this issue, PMEG expresses the much more accepted view, while PAG expresses a view that many Esperanto experts would disagree with.

Therefore I think that we should leave it the way I put it now, and only mention possible disagreements in the article on Esperanto phonology. Marcoscramer 16:54, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

complicate things how?

Hi Revolución,

As for "(mostly Indo-European based)", I don't see any reason for including weasel words. Esperanto is based on IE languages. That's pretty straightforward. It's been argued that the volitive may be based on Semitic, but that's not clear. A few roots like edzo can't be traced, but that's the case in any language. And it has foreign borrowings, like any other language (and the borrowings are mostly shared with other IE languages, by the way). Oh, and it doesn't include all the details of the IE languages, just a select few. That's it. Saying it's "mostly" IE based is like saying that French is "mostly" a Romance language, because it might have Gaulish influence, or Spanish is "mostly" Romance because it has Moorish influence. What's the point? The table is for the basic classification, and further details belong in the article.

BTW, I've had the same argument at Interlingua, and have been called an Esperanto propagandist for my efforts. There the claim was that IL was a pan-European language. When I insisted it was Romance based, some would concede that it's "mostly" Romance based. No, IL is Romance based, and Eo is IE based. That captures the essence of the languages. kwami 19:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Easy to pronounce

I find Esperanto very Easy tom pronounce, but I wish to learn the language more. --Z.Spy 04:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

About External Links: Criticism

This page is loaded with comments, so I'm not sure anybody will find this, but I'd like to discuss the removal, moving, or inserting notes about these links. In my opinion, the only one worthy of actually having as a link is "Is Esperanto's Vocabulary Bloated?". Not that I agree 100%, but it's still valid, which is more than I can say for the other two.

First is "Learn Not to Speak Esperanto". Well if you look on Mr. Rye's home page, he has pages about another constructed language. In my opinion, this puts him down with the Ido and Interlingua propagandists whose pages have been denied (above) for being too biased. If anything, Mr. Rye is worse for not being completely honest about his motives.

Second is "Why Esperanto Suppresses Language Diversity" which I have two problems with:

1. Culver has had a long history of hostility toward everything Esperanto. He strikes me as the suicide bomber of the Esperanto-phobic anglophone imperialists (willing to harm himself to destroy his target from within); indeed, Libera Folio reports that some have called him a spy.
2. Shouldn't this go in Esperanto culture instead of Esperanto language. After all, it's an article about the exclusionary nature of certain Esperantists, which is no fault of the language.

I suggest removal or at least, move Culver's article and insert a note and maybe a link to a rebuttal in Rye's.

Thoughts?--67.142.130.11 08:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

"Long hostility" toward Esperanto? What nonsense. I spent most of the last several years attending every congress possible, gave up a year's worth of decent salary in volunteering at the central office of UEA, and had most of social life in the movement (thus losing most of my friends when I stopped travelling among E-ists). I only gave up last winter after realizing it is not normal to be constantly scolded for showing interest in the native languages of my peers and hearing thousands of times "ne krokodilu" when I wanted to appreciate the diversity of languages brought to the average international congress. Thinking that I had some long plan to do Esperanto in is ludicrous, although I suppose I might be flattered by someone giving me so much credit. And calling me an "imperialist" is entirely off the mark, for it's clear that I left Esperanto because I was sick of not hearing more national languages--as I say in my article, Esperanto creates a monolingual hegemony just as badly as English--and because nowadays living in Cluj I speak Romanian (and occasionally Hungarian) just as much as I do my native tongue. That said, do what you want with the link to my article here. I didn't put it up (just noticed from the referrer logs that I'm getting some visitors from Wikipedia) and I get more hits from Google searches than from here anyway. CRCulver 02:50, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Just a comment about your mentioned reason for abandoning Esperanto: If you were really trying to practice other national language than English at the congresses, then technically no one should have said "Ne krokodilu", but, if anything, "Ne aligatoru" (aligatori=to speak a language other than Esperanto or your mother tongue in Esperantujo). I am not denying that people probably said "Ne krokodilu", but you could have put them right! Anyway, Aligatorado is much more accepted at Esperanto congresses than Krokodilado. At the IJS they even organise every year a special "Aligatorejo" to encourage it. Marcoscramer 22:06, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

If the IJS "Aligatorejo" is like the IS one (I don't remember such a thing from my IJS experience), then it isn't a legitimate way to encourage language appreciation, but rather a mere game meant to challenge and confuse the participants. And yes, many Esperantists know that "aligatori" is the proper term, but the bulk of killjoy passers-by shouted "ne krokodilu" whenever I was attempting to have a private conversation with a friend in their own native language. I heard from not a few Esperantists that "Esperanto estu la sola lingvo en internacia komunikado", so to say that practising national languages is accepted is very off the mark. CRCulver 22:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

It seems that you've been too focused on the jokes about your krokodilado/aligatorado. I've never excepted such jokes for serious and I've always used local languages, if I liked to and if I could. It's really always such a joy to see all those native speakers of most different languages! - Slavik IVANOV 01:01, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

A critic will likely be opposed to what he criticizes, so I don't see what's wrong with that. But it might be more appropriate to move Culver's link to the culture article. (I'd have to read it again, which I don't care to do at the moment.)

I have to agree about Rye. It's not that he has an outside agenda. But much of what he claims is factually wrong, and much of the rest is misleading. I'd have no problem with a rabidly anti-Esperanto tract pushing a competing project if it were accurate, but Rye's isn't. kwami 10:07, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

My biggest complaint about Culver's article is that it is an article on language diversity that mentions, besides Esperanto, English and Italian, two languages that are among the lingual aggressors. It never mentions Azeri, or Delaware, or any other language that is being actively threatened.--Prosfilaes 22:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The links are clearly labeled as criticism. Hopefully this Wiki article is thorough enough that readers will be able to judge whether the critiques are valid or not, if they choose to visit them. I am an Esperantist and Culver's arguments don't really make sense to me. But I am also a (novice) Wikipedian. Culver is arguably a "notable" critic of Esperanto, which leads the Wikipedian in me to think maybe he ought to get a mention or a link somewhere. --Cam 07:44, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with them because there are only three, and they are way below the other links as well. To be honest I read a few of those links back in April when I was considering learning Esperanto and decided to learn Ido first instead. However, I would recommend the same thing for the page on Ido or Interlingua as well, and especially if this article aspires to be featured on the front page some day, it would make sense to keep a few links from the other side as well. The other thing the links are good for is to show how vehement some opposition to Esperanto can be. That's often surprising for people who have just started to check and see what Esperanto is all about, but it's a really good indicator of the mood in the conlang community. Mithridates 14:55, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Auxlang community more than conlang community. --Prosfilaes 19:33, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Mithridates 00:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Native speakers

Is there a number for the amount of native speakers of Esperanto. That is those who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language. Furthermore, what is the state of the Esperanto they produce, is it "standard" Esperanto or do they do odd things with it (i.e. like going from a Pidgin to a Creole)? Thanks - FrancisTyers 12:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Native Esperanto speakers — Timwi 13:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Meaing

Might be nice to work in the meaning somewhere: wikt:Esperanto#Etymology. ¦ Reisio 05:39, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Suggestion for rewording sentence in intro

I wrote what I think is a better sentence; you decide:

"Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is a large body of evidence that suggests learning Esperanto is useful preparation for learning other languages (see Propaedeutic value of Esperanto)."

The current wording says "there is evidence that..." which makes it appear, on some underlying level, as if the evidence is not concrete- yet, reading the article on Propaedeutic value of Esperanto leave little room for doubt. There is little to none when it comes to legitimate arguments against this claim, so I think making that a little more clear in this language would be a right ambition.

Also, I am not intimately familiar with stylistic guidelines, but I would prefer to redirect straight to the "propaedeutic value" page, but failing that, at least to the section on propaedeutic value on this page. As of now, it is pointing to "Esperanto and education" (or something) section on this page.

Opine, please. Lackinglatin 12:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Hitler reference

Under the criticism section is a quote by Hitler about how Jews want everyone to learn a single language, like Esperanto, so that Jews can more easily take over the world. As thrilling as that logic might be to someone, that is indeed not a valid criticism of the language. You could use this logic for any single language, and instead I read here that this one set out to not replace other ethnic languages. So I removed the quote from Mein Kampf someone had inserted into this article. I noticed it did not appear in the criticisms article so it must not really carry favor. Right?! Abisai 02:16, 13 June 2006

This is a tough one. On the one hand, I find it repugnant to include the Hitler quote. On the other hand, it is an historically interesting fact that Hitler was aware of Esperanto to the point of including a reference to it in Mein Kampf. Waitak 07:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Abisai that that quote had no place in this article. We might include it in History of the Esperanto language, where it is already being alluded to. Marcoscramer 00:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Ok HOLD ON. Iv'e read Mien Kampf (I'm not racist, it's just a good look into hitlers mind) I don't remember him saying much about the Jews and esperanto and what he did say wasn't exactly what I would call Vailid Criticism, it's also kind of rare when he talks about jews and esperanto... to tell you, the book isn't about the Jews... it's about him, his life, and scociety's shortcomings. he mentions the jews alot less than people give him credit for. but yeah, In the book, I wouldn't have put that there...

Dejuismaster 18:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Esperanto is sexist?

Under the critismes section is a statement that it is sexist? Anyone care to explain why it's not vandalism? Frenchman113 18:23, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Are you asking about sexism or racism? Esperanto is considered sexist because words are by default considered male and must be modified to be female. The partial neutering of the base word doesn't help; a convention of dentists would have dentistoj present, but may have dentistinoj as speakers.--Prosfilaes 21:07, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Check the article Gender-neutral language. And by the way, is it me, or was the criticism section bigger before? (I guess some biased Esperanto fanatics reduced it to make their conlang look more shiny) - 81.15.146.91 23:26, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

No, actually, it was expanded as a separate article. Currently under Esperanto as an international language, but there's been talk of splitting it yet again to be able to devote more space to criticism of the language per se. kwami 00:26, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I personally rarely use the -in- suffix, I do not see it as necessary. I would use "dentisto" for both male and female dentists and this is the normal rules of Esperanto. The -in- suffix is only there if you want to be specific. Only in words where gender distinction is necessary (patro, patrino) will you see the -o ending used to indicate someone male. --Revolución (talk) 02:31, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

That's a big "only". Some of the most basic words in Esperanto - patro, viro, frato, knabo - are male unless the -in suffix is added, and this is a real problem if you have a goal of expanding the acceptance of Esperanto.--RLent 15:33, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

If you use the -in- suffix to be specific, how do you talk about male foo?

With the prefixoid "vir-", e.g. "virdentisto". --Jim Henry 16:19, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

It's the same ambigious mess in Esperanto as it is in English, if not worse. And there is such a criticism, and it's fairly common, whether you agree with it or not.--Prosfilaes 06:29, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

I see two problems with the inclusion of this criticism in its current phrasing in the article...

• • 1.) Many natural languages, such as Spanish, follow the same or a similar pattern; English as well as Spanish tends historically to default to male form with the pronouns, when gender is unknown or meant to be non-specific - in English especially, this is sometimes labeled "sexist", although since "they" in the singular is supposedly ungrammatical (even though it's increasingly frequent in coloquial English), and "it" (the only "grammatically correct" neuter pronoun in English) would be considered insulting as "it" is generally used only with non-human creatures or inanimate objects... I don't know how you'd get around that while still working within the rules of English, unless you went to using "he or she", which can get cumbersome (I write, which is why it concerns me at all. I do use a "they" as a singular, though, to get around it. Stuff the official grammar rules, it makes sense). In any case, therefore, since that pattern follows or closely paralells those found in several natural languages, how the language itself can be considered sexist, I'm not entirely sure. Would it not be the people who use it, or particular usages, as opposed to the language itself?

The language itself can indeed be considered sexist. Since men and women (viroj kaj virinoj) constitute people (viroj), the idea that vir- and -in- constitute sex-equality is severely chauvanist. A bovo is cow, but a virbovo (person-cow) is somehow more masculine? Being female is not a subclass of being male, despite thousands of years of oppression based on this idea. Languages can be, and in most cases are sexist. --Oren 20:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

This post is full of factual mistakes: "Viroj" doesn't mean "people" but just "men". "Bovo" doesn't mean "cow" as in female cow, but is sexually neutral (like "cattle"). "Virbovo" is hence not literally "person-cow", but rather "man-cattle". Marcoscramer 10:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Furthermore, the addition of the particle -in- is referred to as making the feminine to be a subclass. The term subclass is quite simply interpretive. One might just as unreasonably say that being female is some extra quality that is superior, and that male is the ambiguous case, rendering Esperanto a sexist language in favor of women. Indeed, a linguistic critique of sexism needs to do more than assume sexism and search for evidence. It has to demostrate that the language carries a natural bias that deprecates women. In most cases, there are cultural biases applied to language, but it's hard to nail down an actual linguistic bias.

Having said this, I wouldn't mind a system whereby vir was the root, but not male, virinoj was feminie, and vironoj was explicitly male. I think such a thing, as well as adding a epicene third-person pronoun in addition to male, female, and neuter would be quite helpful, but the main issues are not linguistic, but cultural. Language is a facet of culture, and it evolves with culture. Critique of a language is a valid means of cultural change, but if it's overly fanatic, it'll alienate the very community whose views need changing. --Christian Edward Gruber 13:25, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually singular they is quite old and well-established in English. --Jim Henry 23:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

• • 2.)At current, I see absolutely no citation for this view within that section. If it is "fairly common", why is there no link to such a criticism in that section? Such a potentially inflammatory remark about a language certainly could use one to keep it truly NPOV, in my opinion.

Runa27 07:53, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

So what if many languages do the same thing? Many languages have a complex set of cases and grammatical genders, but I wouldn't let that absolve Esperanto if it had the same complexities. As it is, Esperanto is horribly worse than English, with every occupation having both male and female forms.

Every person-word having optional male and female forms, the unmarked form of most words being unmarked for gender... see Revolución's comments of 4 December, above. --Jim Henry 23:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

From "Teach Yourself Esperanto", "Sxi estas mia plej bela amikino. She is my most beautiful friend. Li estas mia plej bona amiko. He is my best friend." There's absolutely no discussion of it being optional, and those sentences are examples of plej, not -in. I don't know whether those translations are correct, or if it should be "She is my most beautiful female friend." -in is listed in the table of suffixes and prefixes in the back, but not vir-. That was updated in 1987, so if it's a new thing, it's a very new thing. It's simply not true that this is the way the language is presented or probably even used in many cases.--Prosfilaes 00:14, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

amiko is a special case, perhaps. It's not inherently masculine like patro, filo, edzo and a handful of other words. But for whatever reason, speakers seem to use -in to mark it explicitly feminine more often than with other potentially gender-neutral words like the profession terms form with -ist. See the table I've added at the end of this section. --Jim Henry 16:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

There's absolutely no citation for this view because it's one word in a completely uncited section. Try looking at the links below the article with criticism, such as [5]. --Prosfilaes 19:03, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

But, yes; Esperanto has been criticized as sexist, however weak the grounds of this criticism, & mentioning such criticism is not out of place in the article. --Jim Henry 23:58, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Statistics for use of in with various person-words

Google hits for each word plus kaj: --Jim Henry 16:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

amiko 132,000
amikino 18,300

verkisto 78,300 [6]
verkistino 886 [7]

instruisto 63,000
instruistino 15,100

kuracisto 32,200
kuracistino 318

dentisto 703
dentistino 24
 (many of these 24 hits are in discussions of gender-neutral language!)

fripono ("scoundrel")  690
friponino  33

"Instruistino" for some reason is marked more often than the other profession terms I checked, or than amikino. I only checked one non-ist person word.

Not to mention:

malĉastulino ("slut")   298
malĉastulo ("male slut") 97

How's that for sexist? :-) --CJGB (Chris) 20:49, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Critics to Criticism

It seems an edit war has begun. Anonymous user, what is your justification for the placement of a link to a two-paragraph weblog post to this Wikipedia article? I do not think it is appropriate. -- Cam 02:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I've deleted both the link and the link it's a response to. The original screed has little more reason to be here than the weblog post that responds to it.--Prosfilaes 03:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

OK by me. -- Cam 04:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm not crazy about letting Anonymous User veto the link to first article, which struck me as fairly substantial (well, OK, a screed, but a thousand times more substantial than Mike Fox's rejoinder). --Chris 06:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't see why we need to link to a non-notable screed. It's not of a factual nature, it's heavily controversial, and it's not notable in and of itself at all.--Prosfilaes 07:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

population estimates

Okay, I think I've found the ref to the 8M figure that keeps cropping up as the number of speakers of Esperanto: Grolier International 1980: "Approximately 8,000,000 people throughout the world speak Esperanto". Mario Pei in 1969 (Wanted: a World Language) said 10M. Of course, this hinges on what we mean by able to speak; I'm not recommending these figures, just documenting where they come from. kwami 06:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC) [8] says: Population 200 to 2,000 (1996).
Region Speakers in about 115 countries, used most widely in central and eastern Europe, China and other countries in eastern Asia, certain areas of South America, and southwest Asia.
Alternate names La Lingvo Internacia
Classification Artificial language
Language use 2,000,000 second-language speakers (1999 WA). All ages.
Language development Bible: 1900–1910.
This is most trustworthy information source I could find about the no. of E-o speakers. I am really curious where the "100 000" estimate comes from.

Estimating the amount of Esperanto speakers is about as reliable as estimating the amount of people who can play chess. Of course you can count those who play in the big leagues. You might also be able to count those organised in clubs, though there you'd already have the problem of finding all the clubs (including those not part of head organisations) and getting them to collaborate. But actually there are a lot of people who learned chess from a book, a website or an acquaintance and these are just impossible to count or even estimate, particularly if you're talking internationally.

Vocabulary

"Vocabulary from Romance and Germanic sources". Hmm, anybody care to guess where the word kaj comes from? --Revolución (talk) 02:53, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Put it in the article. The infobox doesn't need a complete rundown of where every word in the language came from. It's a tool designed to give a quick run down of the major points, not exacting detail. --Prosfilaes 03:15, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

It's Greek, as are one or two other basic words like pri, and the nominal declension. That info is in the Eo vocab article, where there's a list of all languages directly contributing to the original vocab. kwami 20:55, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

It comes from greek "Και" [anon.]

Population ... again

[9] says: Population 200 to 2,000 (1996). Region Speakers in about 115 countries, used most widely in central and eastern Europe, China and other countries in eastern Asia, certain areas of South America, and southwest Asia. Alternate names La Lingvo Internacia Classification Artificial language Language use 2,000,000 second-language speakers (1999 WA). All ages. Language development Bible: 1900–1910. This is most trustworthy information source I could find about the no. of E-o speakers. I am really curious where the "100 000" estimate comes from. Gebeleizis.

I took it from Jukko Lindstedt, a Finnish linguist and expert on denaska Esperantists. He's probably also the original source of the figure of 1000 native speakers.--Chris 20:55, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Check the earlier discussion on this. Ethnologue has never estimated the Esperanto population. They merely repeat the WA figure. WA has never estimated the Eo pop either; they use the 1.6M estimate, and round off to the nearest million. However, others who have tried to replicate the 1.6M figure have only been able to find a fraction of the expected number of speakers. The UEA itself estimates that there are at least tens of thousands and "may be" several hundred thousand speakers. Because of this, it is irresponsible to report 2M figure as if it we had any confidence in it. I'm reverting to the range of figures, which is more honest. If you have any primary sources that support a specific figure, please share it with us. Ethnologue isn't particularly "trustworthy", it's just more complete than anything else. kwami 22:12, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

In Rochester, NY, USA, I know 20 people fluent in Esperanto ina 1 million people area. With a round approximation of 300 million in USA, it gives us 6000 people. For 6.5 billion Earth population we'd have about 130 000 people. But we should not forget that in USA only 9% of the population can speak a foreign language while in Europe over 50% can. Esperanto is notably little spoken in the USA, so I'd consider the number at least 20 times higher myself. If I'd go for the data in my native village where 3 people out of 500 speak the lannguage, we get about 40 million speakers (which is, of course, an exageration the other way). Another way to check it out is the Orkut community: from 12 million people using it there are at least 2000 who speak Esperanto (based on the forums). By this statistics we get 1.1 million people speaking Esperanto. So, how can I accept an estimate as low as 100 000 based on NO PROOFS? So, unless you can find me a more detailed study and more credible source than Ethnonogue, I'll have no choice but to keep correcting the no. of speakers to the 2 million value. Gebeleizis

Please read the Demography section of the Esperanto article. The fact is, estimates of 1.6 or 2 million are controversial. The sidebar should not suggest a consensus on the issue. --Chris 02:16, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I have calculations showing well over 3 million speakers. So, we either put 150 000 - 3 million or we leave it at 2 million. UEA does not represent everything connected with Esperanto. Also, the authors cited in the demographic section are from 1986 and 1989. In 16 years with a lot of internet acces is feasible that the no. of speakers is signifficantly higher in 2006. As I said, I'd estimate it at about 3 million but for the moment have only approximate studies. So, as I've shown you two exampls of estimates from particular to general, please show me a simillar one that contradicts the values I've displayed. Gebeleizis

We're still waiting for your evidence for the 3M figure. kwami 03:14, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not deprecating your calculations; but the point is not to do original research, but to cite the work of qualified authorities. Culbert's and the Ethnologue's 1.6m/2m figure counts; so does Lindstedt's 100K (which I will try to reference in the next few days). In terms of which figure is the most credible, my personal belief is that fluent Eo speakers number no more than few hundred thousand. Why? I'll give you my top 3 reasons, though I could come up with more.

• The best-ever census of Eo speakers was Dieterle's 1927 survey which estimated 127,000 club members. If we guesstimate that this meant 100K fluent speakers, then Culbert & Co. are projecting a 16-fold increase by the early 1990s, or an average growth rate of about 4 percent per year. Trouble is, none of the hard evidence we have points to those kinds of growth rates. Attendence for the last 10 UKs (1996-2005) was only about 40 percent higher than for the first 10 UKs (1905-1914). Rates of book publication and anecdotal evidence about press runs show a similar pattern (lots of growth in the last 10 years, of course, but that's because of on-demand publishing, most likely).

• Documented Esperanto activities appear to involve only about 100K persons a year. Now, while it's certainly possible to be a fluent Eo speaker and never go to Eo clubs or conventions etc., it can't be terribly common for people to become fluent speakers and remain fluent for years without taking part in some organized activity. We;re not talking about people who go through the Teach Yourself Esperanto course and then read a bit of Eo on the internet. The Foreign Service Level 3 standard of fluency used by Culbert is fairly exacting.

• Calculations like yours make the error of projecting limited samples onto the world population. While it's undoubtedly true that Eo is stronger in Europe than in the US, you can't make the same assumption about Latin America, Africa, India, and much of Asia. (The question of Eo usage in China deserves a detailed discussion on its own.) A large portion of the world's population is shut out of intellectual activities like Esperanto by poverty and lack of education. Affinity groups like Orkut don't have the same characteristics as the global community. Their members are self-selected to have more interests, more leisure, and be more engaged in community-building than some poor guy carting around a load of bricks in Dakha. Sikosek's surveys in Cologne and elsewhere are relevant here.

I'm not saying this proves a low pop. figure, but I do think it gives enough credibility to figures like Lindstedt's that they are worth including. Just providing a 1.6m or 2m figure gives a false sense of consensus on this issue.--Chris 12:44, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The truth is that in South America, Korea and some parts of China Esperanto is on the rise. Also in Africa. About a language: I don't know how many languages do you speak. I am fluent in seven (including Esperanto). What I can say is that, once you speak a language well enough, you will not forget it for the rest of your life. One does not have to practice all the time a language in order to stay fluent in it. I haven't spoken Esperanto for a no. of years and when I found other people speaking it I didn't have to relearn the language. US is almost for sure one of the countries with a low no. of Esperanto speakers. And I think there are more than the 6000. I guess the only way to "convince" you is to get data from every single country, as the 100 000 no. is obviously a grose underestimation (I also do not see any proofs of it, so why should I believe it?). From 1927 the Earth population increased about 4 times. And even if we take only 40% increase, as the congress attendance, we obtain 177,800 people, almost twice as much as the 100,000 estimate. And all the data points the Esperanto speaking population did not decrease. The 3 million no. came from a calculation where I counted on alexa.com the no. of pages conencted with keyword "Esperanto" and compared them with the keyword for other national languages (French, Romanian, German, etc). As the official no. of speakers for those languages was known, I could get a correlation factor. The tendency was for that factor to be lower for languages with many speakers. The best approximation gave me around 3 million speakers. And if someone would have tried to find me in Rochester NY as an Esperanto speaker one year ago (also my cousin, who speaks it, too), would have failed as nothing showed it publicly. So, in your opinion I guess I simply don't exist because someone can't "find" me. Very scientific way to draw conclusions, indeed...

Gebeleizis

I do not mean to be rude, Gebeleizis, but I would expect a little more academic rigor from a student of physics. How can you ask for "proofs" for an estimated number of speakers, when we don't even have proofs for physics? It's very possible, for example, even likely, that pages about conlangs are heavily represented on the internet compared to pages about national languages. There may be many pages in Romanian, but the number of pages about Romanian would presumably correlate with the number of students of Romanian (probably a rather small figure) rather than with the number of native speakers. If the student effect is tenfold, just a guess, then your 3M guestimate becomes 300k. By your approach for Eo, we might think that Klingon has a substantial base of speakers, when there are probably no more than a few dozen who have any proficiency at all. And hypotheticals about whether someone would have found you in an imaginary study you set up as a strawman aren't convincing either. 100k as a low-end figure may be a bit low, but it's one of the few estimates we have.

I have no other choice than start writting emails to every organisation of every country and try to get official numbers. You complain of my approach, but the other "proofs" are even weaker than mine, with the low estimates. It will take me some time to get a comprehensive list of Esperanto speakers, though. I think my studies were decently good for the sparse data available. Now I'm beginning to be curious: how is the no. of English speakers estimated? Or of other languages? So, if you don't like my proofs, why should I accept your "proofs". What's better about them, honestly? General peoples' opinion? Why don't we do the same for the laws of physics? Just let's vote for the law of gravity or for the Relativity Theory. It's really a shame to read the lines above: "How can you ask for "proofs" for an estimated number of speakers, when we don't even have proofs for physics?", this really shows me you also have no proofs for the other numbers of Esperanto speakers and just want to put there the general people opinion (and missconception). So, maybe at least we should add: "It is generally believed, with no solid proofs, that ****** people speak Esperanto".

What in the world are you talking about? Of course there is no proof. You are not going to find any proof. There is no proof of GR either, as you would know if you were really a physicist. (Forgive my doubts, but if you don't understand that proof has no place in science, let alone in statistics, I have to wonder.)

It is not "generally believed" that there are 2×10^5~6 speakers; those are just the estimates we have. And no, we're not going to add "with no solid proofs" to the article, any more than we would to every other estimate in the encyclopedia. It's completely obvious that it's an estimate.

Write to all the Eo organizations you like; if they had the data you want, someone would have already compiled it. People have been trying to compile it for a century! kwami 23:11, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

About physics you are 100% wrong. GRT HAS BEEN prooved experimentally. If you don't know that, then I'm really dissapointed by the people supervising Wikipedia. Or now you're going to start teaching me even my own profession? I'm building right now a neutron detector for the most powerful laser experiment in the USA. And I am open for a discussion on any field of physics. I think you should be a bit more modest thinking about what you know in fields where specialists work. And I suggest you should learn to respect the people who know more about you on certain fields. So, don't try to give me physics lessons, you'll only look ridiculous. About Esperanto, I'll come back when I have more data (or if I can get more data). Is this encyclopedia really a place for people with no manners? Anyway, I have more important things to do than to prove that the Earth is not flat. Or to show to some kind of "smart butt" the limits of his knowledge. Don't expect me to go and check back in a few hours your "smart" reply. I'll come back when I have more data about the no. of Esperanto speakers. Gebeleizis

Maybe it's a language problem. Nothing is proven in physics, or any science, only demonstrated with varying degrees of certainty. That's why GRT is called a theory. Only mathematics involves proof. The cognates or translations in other languages of the English word 'prove' might not be subject to such a limited definition. kwami 00:34, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Estimates run from 10,000 all the way up to 40,000,000.Cameron Nedland 21:46, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

If you're citing Don Harlow's page, he points those numbers out as completely unreasonable. An encyclopedia is not the place to point out what probably amount to uninformed guesses, unless those uniformed guesses are important (used by a president, or something.)--Prosfilaes 03:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, alright. I just thot those #s were intresting.Cameron Nedland 15:15, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Learning Esperanto

The article claims:

There is evidence that learning Esperanto before another foreign language improves one's ability to learn that language — so much so that it takes less time to learn both than it would to learn just the second.

Do you have a citation? I would contend that this might be true for a lot of the european languages but not for chinese, hindi, urdu, bantu languages......etc, etc,...

Yes, there's a ref. just after your quote. And if you follow the link where it says, for more details see..., you'll find a bunch more. (In fact there have been criticisms that there were too many.) You're right, most of the studies involve European languages, but one Australian study involved an Asian language. My own experience leads me to believe that that study is credible and that the benefit works for "exotic" languages as well as "average European" ones. kwami 05:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I remember looking at that Australian study a couple of years ago. I got the impression that the propedeutic effect was stronger for Romance and/or Western languages, but it did exist for Asian ones (Japanese and Indonesian if I remember correctly). There was another study that showed a stronger effect for Italian than Hungarian. No surprise.--Chris 12:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

I looked at that Australian study again (called EKPAROLI), and frankly it set off my bullshit alarm. Students who had studied Esperanto in primary school were better at learning languages in high school than those who'd studied other foreign languages. However, the language they had most frequently studied in primary school was Japanese - a language that (according to other data in the report) was generally loathed by the children and taught by extremely underqualified staff. So the positive effect shown for Esperanto may be better explained as a negative effect of low-quality instruction in Japanese. The fact the author didn't bother to break out the figures by language background (just classing students as having Esperanto or non-Esperanto) suggests sloppiness or deliberate fudging.--Chris 23:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

How can I learn Esperanto?Cameron Nedland 21:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a list of online resources part way down the external links section of the article, or you can try the ELNA learner's site here. Looks like there's a club in Kansas City, MO. If you prefer books, I personally like Butler's Step By Step in Esperanto (US$16), but there's other stuff around. kwami 01:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. Kansas City is only a couple hours from hours from where I live. I gotta check that out sometime. Once again thanx alot!Cameron Nedland 15:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

How to estimate population

This is the best way: take the online population of smaller languages that aren't studied as a foreign language by all that many people, such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Icelandic, etc. Looking at the internet penetration in a country compared to the population gives a mostly accurate count of the # of people that use that language on the internet. After that, take a few dozen phrases that don't appear in guidebooks or simple language courses (so no 'how are you' but rather 'the one that built it', 'not so much as', 'I wasn't that thirsty', etc). Search for the number of occurrences by language and compare that to Esperanto. After estimating the online population it should be pretty easy to guess the real population. Esperanto would have a much higher percentage of online users than other languages, probably over 90%. Ido, Interlingua and others would probably be around 99% (I've seen a very few that are old and don't use the internet). It might be said that since Esperanto is almost never used as a maternal language that people wouldn't be able to write as much as they would in their own language, but at the same time people are often eager to go out of their way to use the language just to support it, so I think that would even out. Estimating the population in this way would be a project that would take a number of people and it should include proponents of other IALs as well to give it more legitimacy, and a number of people that can make sure that phrases chosen are appropriate (ie, nothing that could turn up in a search as another language). The Esperanto phrases should also be without chapeloj, because then you have to search with the h-system and x-system as well. Better to have '...ne havas katojn' than '...ne havas pagxojn'. The first one gives zero results, by the way. Turn it into 'ne havas katon' and you get three. I suggest a wiki be created on pbwiki.com if a project like this is to be started up. Mithridates 01:23, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Original research, and no way to verify the results. It wouldn't even tell us the comparative internet presence of various languages, because we have no way of ensuring that the phrases used for the different languages have similar frequencies in those languages. kwami 02:26, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't be for Wikipedia. I just want to know the answers myself. It wouldn't be all that hard if a few people from each maternal language were present to give advice and to verify whether a phrase is normally used or not. Languages like Korean wouldn't work because of the varying levels of politeness that would throw off the numbers, but with a large enough sample with enough languages it would be possible to get a more accurate picture than what we have now. Simple enough phrases like "I don't like", "If I could", "I don't think so" and so on would be most appropriate. Mithridates 03:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I do not believe it is our job to estitmate the population, that is I think, origonal research.

I believe it is our job to cite some sources. It seems that the sources contradict. Ok. We report that.

Is it more complicated then that?Sethie 03:40, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

The study Mithridates proposed could be done and the results published on the Conlang Wikicity; then we could cite the results here -- as one more estimate in addition to the three we already have (Culbert, Lindstedt, Sikosek). But I think that similar rough studies have already been done by just using a group of words which are collectively unique to Esperanto (e.g. "la + kaj"). --Jim Henry 17:49, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

That would circumvent the origonal research rule by the letter of the law, but not the spirit... what is wrong with just using the sources we have? Sethie 17:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with using numbers that we already have but I have a feeling that a lot of people are quite curious and just want to know, whether for wikipedia or not. Mithridates 23:57, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Place several ads for well-paying jobs where you must speak Esperanto "looking for new CEO necessity : he must speak Esperanto..." you'll find 2 000 000 speakers in a couple months. Until then, I would be surprised if there were over 10 000 who were fluent Stettlerj 20:26, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Deleted link

I've deleted the link to Esperanto Discussion. I visited the site, which consists of a newly minted form, with only a single article in it from the forum admin. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article until it's proven itself by attracting a community. Waitak 13:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems Esperantio.com already has several members on its forum. It is a free site, well intentioned and in the true spirit of Esperanto. I do not see the harm in allowing it to be here, unless someone has a vested interest in the other forum that is listed.

This forum has three members. It keeps on getting re-added after being deleted, which just shows bad manners. The relevant guideline is WP:EL — this is cearly not a useful or necessary link, seeing as there seem to be other fora. Consensus seems to be against linking to it. — Gareth Hughes 20:04, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

It had no members at all when I first deleted it. Good to see that it's beginning to attract some, but this still doesn't merit inclusion here. Waitak 08:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

We have run into this problem before, for example on the politically relatated sections. It is desirable to have alternate fora and not promote merely one to the exclusion of all others. It may be someone thinks their particular forum should be shown on Wikipedia to the exclusion of all others. My vote is let Esperantio.com stay. It provides an alternative to the single forum listed, and is good for the Esperanto community.

If it were a major forum, it might be worth keeping. What's good for the Esperanto community is irrelevant to what should go into this article; that's WP:NPOV. As it is, Wikipedia is not a collection of weblinks, and this doesn't satisify any criteria I can imagine for adding a link to it. It doesn't have historical importance, it's not currently a useful resource, it's not well-known, etc.--Prosfilaes 19:24, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

One problem with Wikipedia is people stake out their turf and patrol it to keep competing sites out of the links. You can justify this in a number of ways, but the reality is still the same. Nowhere is this more painful than in the Esperanto section, Esperanto having been created in a spirit of goodwill and sharing. As usual, a good thing becomes subverted to personal interests.

And using it for free advertising... — Gareth Hughes 17:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Pen pal service

I don't want to advertise the Esperanto Pen Pal Service by giving it a section of its own on this very high-profile article. I think it's more in line with the AfD discussion to reduce it to an external link, so I'll do that now. If anyone wants to write some prose on the general phenomenon of pen pal services in Esperanto, that would be a lot better. Melchoir 23:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Link bronken?

Is the "Esperantido (Esperanto-inspired projects)" link broken in the criticism section?

No. Marcoscramer 22:20, 20 May 2006 (UTC)