Talk:Esperanto

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Most Widely Spoken?

I am an intermediate Esperanto speaker, and as such I was interested in the popularity of Interlingua versus Esperanto. I did notice, however, that at the beginning of both articles, they claim to be the most widely spoken "international auxilary language" in the world. Maybe there are some nuances in the specific wording that I'm missing, but it sounds to me like a contradiction, folks. Any help? -ExNoctem 04:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The Interlingua article asserts specifically that Interlingua is the most widely spoken "naturalistic" IAL, not just the most widely spoken IAL. Esperanto seems to be classed as an "a posteriori" IAL according to International auxiliary language. Goulo 16:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Accessibility

This article, in some places, seems too targetted towards linguists and not enough towards a lay person who casually wants to learn more about the language. For example, under phronology, I have no idea what this means: "Esperanto has 5 vowels and 23 consonants, of which two are semivowels. Tone is not used to distinguish meaning of words. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel, unless a final vowel o is elided (which in practice occurs mostly in poetry). For example, familio (family) is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], but famili’ is [fa.mi.ˈli]." Rm999 06:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This article is glowingly positive!

It sure is refreshing to read such a positive article on the hobby-language that is Esperanto. None of that NPOV nonsense for the Esperanto article , no sir! Sure, it avoids NPOV by letter, but not in spirit-- the impressive article breadth and serious treatment of the language implies that Esperanto enjoys formidable international respect and is actually notable as something other than a historical curio and/or cult favorite. I especially like how "criticism" gets allocated to a tiny text ghetto near the end of the article. You can find more in the "Esperanto as an International Language" article, but that's safely isolated from any kid actually searching for/reading an article on Esperanto. They'll have to dig deeper to learn that Esperanto has been anything other than a roaring success.

Thanks to the de facto Esperanto advocacy via article breadth, any significant editing or revision of this text is next to impossible without provoking a ghastly flamestorm. Congratulations to the authors! This article is simply brilliant, albeit disingenuous, and nearly impossible to revise.

Also: editing the talk page = classy. Narrow minded simpletons generally try to assume good faith on the Wikipedia, so it's up to idealists LIKE YOU to make sure that this mistaken attitude dies out. Remember: the talk page is a delicate flower that cannot survive radical literary devices such as sarcasm or satire. Criticism of the parent article has to be *serious*, otherwise someone could anonymously point out that an article needs major rethinking *without* hurting any author's feelings. And that would just be wrong. 69.129.196.12 04:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Still, more references and citations are needed. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 08:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That is how it works in Wikipedia, though. Articles are written by people who are interested in a subject. All you can do is check for notability, verifiability and NPOV. Wikipedia is supposed to be a secondary reference, not a guide to the relative importance of what "matters" in the world. One oughtn't cut down existing big articles on "hobby" topics; instead one should work at writing bigger articles on everything. --Cam 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense on this page

Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting.

Since I have never met anyone who used Esperanto for any of these purposes, I register Strong Doubt. As is obvious to anyone, replacing the word "Esperanto" with the word "English" in the cited sentence would actually make the sentence correct.

Really? Have you ever met anyone who spoke Hausa? Do you contend that Hausa isn't spoke? I've never met... is a pretty lousy argument.--Prosfilaes 14:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

One can go and find speakers of the Hausa language speakers among the Hausa people.

True: the "I've never met anyone" criterion is very weak. However, that Hausa is widely spoken in documentable in places like the CIA World Factbook [1].

On the other hand, the frankly wildly POV-laced statements about the utility and number of speakers in this article strain credulity. How can estimates of the numbers of total speakers and native speakers each be off by an order of magnitude (100 000 vs. 2 000 000, & 200 vs. 2000). Also, that all of two feature films have been produced in Esperanto is not evidence of a broad and deep culture.

For a main article on such a broad subject, the lack of references and POV is embarrasing. MARussellPESE 17:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yiddish says there's three million Yiddish speakers; Jewish Studies at Rutger's says 600,000; that's a half an order of magnitude. For languages whose speakers are spread over the world, it's hard to get a good count of how many people speak the language. Furthermore, for such languages, there's going to be a large range of fluency, and asking people whether they speak a language may get an answer that depends more on politics than actual fluency. Nobody registers native speakers of Esperanto, and given that many of them leave the movement, they are even harder to count than speakers.

Wikipedia lists 40 million speakers of Hausa, 20 times as many Esperanto. And yet the IMDB lists between two and six full length feature films in Hausa, depending on what you count. Do you contend that they don't have a broad and deep culture? Perhaps the fact that low budget for a feature film is a couple million dollars, and that Esperanto speakers are spread out enough that theaters can't justify showing movies targeted at them would be a better explanation for the lack of feature films. The time, money and cultural energy of Esperanto speakers is better spent on books, music, and other materials that are cheaply produced and easily distributed to a widely distributed audience.

You are welcome to provide more references, but I don't agree that just because it's hard to find good information on subjects that that means there's POV.--Prosfilaes 13:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

At let me also note that the count of speakers comes from Ethnologue, which is comprehensive, non-partisan and frequently referenced (see Yiddish and many other languages, which use the Ethnologue numbers.)

Sorry, but none of these comparisons are of use. Noting that WP articles don't jibe with genuine reliable sources make the points in "Criticism of Wikipedia", but does not inform the discussion.

I take exception to your insinuation of any "contentions" on my part about the Hausa culture. West Africa is not a hot-bed of movie production so — of course — there'd be few Hausa-language movies. Neither is that region a center of publishing; but I'd stack up the Hausa story-telling heritage to the best of Esperanto's literature and expect to see it excel Esperanto at every turn — as I would expect of any langage hundreds of years older. MARussellPESE 04:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

None of what comparisons? Yiddish uses the Ethnologue numbers, which is a genuine reliable source.

Your continued comments about Esperanto culture are irrelevant and WP:POV.--Prosfilaes 14:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

What about Klingon? This is from the National Review: "Despite the fact that the linguist Mark Okrand created Klingon only about a decade and half ago, many experts estimate that more people speak Klingon today than Esperanto, which was launched over a century ago. " Jonah Goldberg, March 30, 2001

Haha, that's sheer nonsense! I guess this was published by some tabloid press. No expert in artificial languages would ever claim or even believe that there are more people speaking Klingon than Esperanto. There are several thousands of Esperanto native speakers out there and about 2 million (some say more, some say less) speakers or learners of it. Klingon used to have one native speaker once, and it certainly has quite some speakers. Way more than certain dying aboriginal languages. However, they do not exceed the amount of esperantists. — N-true 09:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Your own comparisons make no points:

• WP's "Yiddish" article to Rutger's Jewish Studies re: number of Yiddish speakers (What does that have to do with Esperanto speakers?)
• WP's "Hausa" articles to WP's "Esperanto" article to the IMDB re: Number of movies (Compares apples to oranges.)

My commments about "Esperanto culture" are on-point when this article itself makes hyperbolic statements about such and offers not only few attributable sources, but few examples. Where are the Esperanto publishing houses? Esperanto journalism? Multi-media? Any of them commercially viable, or are they agencies of Esperanto societies? etc. A library of 25,000 Esperanto books, as stated in this article, seems awfully thin when compared to the 206,000 published last year in the UK alone.

That I disagree with unsupported claims isn't anti-Esperanto POV, it's a lack of tolerance for hyperbole. MARussellPESE 04:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

You asked how the estimates for the numbers of speakers for Esperanto could be so broadly ranging; I pointed out that languages that have speakers broad dispersed and hidden are hard to count, and I pointed out that Yiddish has the same issues.

You claim that number of feature films can be used to estimate Esperanto's culture; I pointed out that many cultures don't produce many feature films.

Wow! The number of books printed in one of the richest countries in the world with 30 times as many people as Esperanto speakers isn't apples and oranges.

You've sat here and attacked Esperanto culture for the number of feature films, for the number of books in the library, etc. That's not a lack of tolerance for hyperbole; that's POV against the concept of Esperanto culture. I don't see anything in the Esperanto culture section of the article that could amount to hyperbole; all of it is easily citable numbers, and numbers that you have attacked for being small.--Prosfilaes 07:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

If they are easily "citable": cite them. Please read the Culture sub-section. It uses expression like:

• "Esperanto is often used …"
• "large corpus of original … as well as translated literature"
• "over 25,000 Esperanto books"
• "over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines"
• "Many Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the world"

The superlatives go on and on, and not a whit of attribution. That, dear, is hyperbole in action.

If "Yiddish" made similar claims with similar absent sources, I'd be as irritated with it as I am with this. MARussellPESE 23:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

What superlatives? I only found one superlative in the whole article, on a quick search for "est", and that merely mentioning that the World Esperanto Organization is the largest Esperanto organization. Given that there's 14 sources linked in the article, I'd say that you're the one engaging in hyperbole.--Prosfilaes 12:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Read the definition: "an exaggerated mode of expression". Each of the above points exaggerates the scope and/or impact of Esperanto — either directly in terms of "Esperanto is often used …" w/o attribution — or indirectly by dropping key comparisons "over 25,000 Esperanto books" (suggesting lots) vs. say the 35 million circulation of the New York Public Library system.

At virtually every turn here, you've misrepresented my position, opened tangential issues, and/or presumed bad-faith. In this last, you've failed to address the point that the section entirely lacks attribution. The sub-articles are just about as bad. Continued discussion appears pointless. MARussellPESE 23:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I did read the definition: superlative says "the superlative of an adjective or adverb is a form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to in a given context." You linked it, so I assumed that's the definition you meant. I don't agree that they exaggerate the scope or impact of Esperanto, though I will admit that "large", "often", and "many" are not terribly clear or useful words. However, the numeric statements are exact and unexaggerated. I don't see any other article spoonfeeding its readers comparisons, and I don't see how to make those comparisons NPOV. Comparing the New York Public Library, a library with holdings in every major language in the world including Esperanto, to a monolingual library isn't fair. Comparing any English library is unfair, as English is one of the world's largest languages. We could compare Hausa libraries, but you've complained every time I brought up Hausa.

Yes, sections of the article lack attribution. Yes, that should be fixed. And?

I don't think you've looked at Yiddish with the same eye that you looked at Esperanto. Try:

• "In the early 20th century, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theater and Yiddish film were booming,"
• "In the United States, the Yiddish language bonded Jews from many countries"
• "Thriving Yiddish theater in New York City and, to a lesser extent,"
• "פארווערטס (forverts - The Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City," (out of how many daily newspapers in NYC?)
• "Hundreds of thousands of young children have been, and are still, taught to translate the texts..." (compared to the millions and millions for English?)

Yiddish, in fact, has the same number of cites as Esperanto, and a section with {{Unreferenced|date=August 2006}}, along with a lot of fact tags. It makes a lot of similar claims without sources, and I can only conclude the reason you're here instead of Talk:Yiddish is your POV.--Prosfilaes 13:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ethnologue and "genuine and reliable"?! Muha... I hope that was ironical. Those are mutually exclusive, every linguist can tell you. Ethnologue's speaker numbers are highly controversion in many parts, which is why they always should be taken with a grain of salt. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is merely it's vast multitude of languages. — N-true 14:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to be ironic. The Ethnologue does an outstanding job of tackling a tremendously difficult task. Of course the figures are hard to get right, as the Ethnologue itself tells you. It also is transparent about where and why the figures are less reliable. You imply a degree of scholarly sloppiness that is unjustified to the point of libel. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is that there is nothing else within an order of magnitude that compiles that much original field linguistics in so usable a form. Would you prefer they simply sit on their results and not make them available? Waitak 17:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, point taken, you're right. I shouldn't be so harsh about it. Ethnologue is one of these things which has many many disadvantages, mistakes, strange views and stuff like that, yet there is nothing better. I also don't know any source for this kind of language information as large and complete as Ethnologue. I just wanted to emphasize that much of its info is at least somewhat controversial and that it's better to cross-check the data. — N-true 18:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The majority of the claims challenged by the OP could be sourced to

• Auld, William. La Fenomeno Esperanto ("The Esperanto Phenomenon"). Rotterdam: Universala Esperanto-Asocio, 1988.

which already appears in the "Further Reading" section. The bit about television would need a more up to date source. That's just off the top of my head -- more up to date and specific sources could be found for the other claims as well. --Jim Henry 23:27, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

ŭ

It should be elaborated somewhere on this page that ŭ is sometimes pronounced like a w. ŭo would be pronounced "wo".

I think I remember when this page said some nonsense that v was pronounced like a w. I was annoyed by that glad to see it gone. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.199.93.88 (talk • contribs).

The letter ŭ is always pronounced like English w. The poster who said v was pronounced like w was probably thinking of Latin. SimpsonDG 23:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Writing system

I'd like to remove this statement regarding the alphabet:

A recent convention is to use the digraph "tx" for "ĉ", "q" for "ĝ", "y" for "ĵ", "x" for "ŝ", "w" for "ŭ" and double "h" for "ĥ"

I've been a speaker of Esperanto for over 30 years, and I've never heard of this. I suspect that if Esperanto were ever actually written using this "convention", it would be utterly unreadable to the vast majority of Esperantists. It wud bi kaynd ov layk saing txat inglix rayting kan bi txanjd layk txis.

SimpsonDG 13:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

they use it at lernu.net for some of their lessons. here's where they explain it: [2]. --fanturmandos 15:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything on that page that's not the normal x-method.--Prosfilaes 15:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I also only see the x-method there; no mention of this bizarre "tx q y x w hh" business. SimpsonDG 02:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

1000 native

I really diasgree with this, I don't think that there are any "native" speakers of Esperanto, only those who can speak it fluently

Shalom93 12:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there really are some native speakers; I've heard a couple of them. Occasionally a man and woman will meet through Esperanto and get married, having only Esperanto as their common language. Their children then grow up having Esperanto as their native language, since that's the language spoken at home. - SimpsonDG 12:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've personally met some 20 native Esperanto speakers. In the whole world there certainly are at least about a thousand. Ethonolgue mentions "200-2000", but certainly its lower bound is a bit out of date, since the number of native Esperantists has been increasing in recent years. Marcoscramer 22:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Two of my friends have spawned such creatures. One of them estimates the total to be something under a thousand. Internet discussion lists dedicated to them only have a couple hundred members, he says.

Only a couple hundred members? I would think that the majority of people, even today, would not be found on such a list, and certainly the George Soross of the world, who are not active Esperantists, would not be on such lists. If most of the people on those lists are native Esperantists or actively involved in raising a native Esperantist, I would expect the number to be quite a bit higher than a thousand.--Prosfilaes 14:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Khomeini

An IP poster added unsourced information about Khomeini and Esperanto recently. I can't find evidence of an Esperanto translation of the Qur'an originating in Iran. Has anyone heard about this? --Cam 17:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Vowel system comparison

"Esperanto has the five "pure" vowels characteristic of the Romance languages like Spanish."

-- What other Romance languages besides Spanish and Italian have the same five-vowel system as Esperanto? French, Portugese and IIRC Catalan all have more vowels than that... is it valid to make this a generalization about Romance languages? Aren't there some non-IE languages with essentially the same 5-vowel system we could mention here? An earlier version of the article mentioned Swahili in this context, and I've seen Japanese mentioned elsewhere in a similar context, though it actually has a couple of voiceless vowels and an unrounded /u/ that make it a less than exact fit. --Jim Henry 23:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

World congresses

This statement appears in the article:

"Since then world congresses have been held on five continents every year except during the two World Wars, and have been attended by up to 6000 people (typically 2000-3000)."

Taken literally, the sentence states that there are five "world congresses" per year, one on each continent. Can that be correct? Seems unlikely.

• Nope, you're quite right; I've corrected the sentence. --Kwekubo 22:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Demographic information?

Is there any source for demographic information for Esperanto speakers? Not just the total number but age / gender breakdown, rankings by nationality, etc.? For example, I often come across references which indicate that they are an aging population. Is there any way to back this up officially, or are we reduced to staring at group photographs?

use of esperanto

Some objections to the opening paragraph's bit about use of esperanto: -World travel, what does this mean? Do they host esperanto language tours of Paris? Are there airlines using esperanto to communicate with their customers? -Correspondence, this one I buy, esperanto pen pals, yeah? -cultural exchange, is this the same as correspondence? -conventions, does this refer to esperanto conventions? or does it refer to conventions on other things with esperanto being used to communicate with an international crowd? if not, couldn't you just as well say klingon was used for conventions? -literature, this one makes sense too -language instruction, i probably buy this, because i'm sure theres certain languages or audiences with which this is a practical option. -television youve cited Internacia Televido -radio broadcasting. there's already a [citation needed] marker

so whats the deal with all those? could someone just quick explain that to me? or put up some more citation needed markers?