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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

The note on the Utah convict sounds like mere advocacy (learn Esperanto and get letters). What is the status of the 30,000 titles that the British Esperantists 'have' (yes, I know the verb is hopelessly vague in English, and that the Esperanto must be MUCH more exact)? 30,000 EVER published, or 30,000 currently in print? A side issue is that I'd like to know what Foreign Service level 1 is if level 3 is communication is that above the level of grunted greetings (which must be level 2?). Is level 1 WISHING you could grunt greetings, much like my ability at spoken German? --MichaelTinkler

Points well taken. My comment about the Utah inmate was indeed advocacy and has been deleted (personally I could care less about having Esperanto pen pals, but some like them). There are 30,000 books in the library in the British Esperanto Association alone. For the record, havi is the word for "to have" in Esperanto and it actually has the same vagueness as English.  :) The foreign service levels are somewhat defined in the government document at http://oig.state.gov/pdf/7sp005.pdf. It appears that level 0 is wishing you could grunt greetings, and level 1 is actually being able to grunt greetings (as is also my ability at spoken German). Thank you for your comments. --ChuckSmith

Could somebody please give a reference for the study mentioned in the entry that it pays off (or at least is no hinderance) to learn Esperanto as the first language. -- HJH

See Chuck Smith/Pedagogical evidence for Esperanto.

Because Esperanto is so well known

Is Esperanto really so well known? I only heard about it a year ago when I was 21 researching a paper on Machine Language Acquisition. I would say only about a quarter of the people in the United States have even heard of it. --Chuck Smith

Good point. Perhaps a better way of putting it is to say that Esperanto is by far the most well known of the artificial (auxiliary) languages. -- Egern

What does everyone think about breaking this article into Esperanto language and Esperanto culture like the other languages are set up? I think this article is large enough to warrant this split. --Chuck Smith

Yes. Yes, indeed.--Node 22:01, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Can't the other Esperanto pages go as sub-pages of this one? - Mark Ryan

I think they would go better as seperate pages because LMS wants to get rid of subpages altogether soon. --Chuck Smith

Yes, they shouldn't be subpages. But they shouldn't be uppercase either, so I've renamed them. --Zundark 2002 Jan 12

To 12.234.138.157: removing references to the Esperanto version of the wikipedia and moving the links to criticism pages to be before the supportive pages is pretty childish. If you really want to show how poor Esperanto is, may I suggest you start up a Wikipedia project in your favored language and try to surpass it in honest usage? There are stub sites ready to go for Interlingua and Volapük at the least, and I'm sure Jimbo would be happy to set up wikis for any languages that don't have 2-letter codes. Brion VIBBER, Monday, April 29, 2002

I don't know about the spirit being Hebrew; my impression has always been that the spirit has been that of the prestige language of the area Esperanto was first extensively used; namely, Poland -- and German. It should be also noted that canonical modern Esperanto style is not primarily Zamenhof's, but Kazimierz Bein's ("Kabe", who to my knowledge was Gentile).

I took out the phrase about the spirit of the language being Hebrew because Enrique Ellemberg (a fluent Esperantist from Argentina) and I also agree. I also removed the part about the ease of use being luck because Zamenhof spent many years testing the language to see which parts worked and which didn't. Also, that would be more appropriate on the L. L. Zamenhof page. Enrique's comments are as follows: --ChuckSmith
"its heart and spirit (its logic) is Hebrew."
Cxu tio certas? En la pagxo la vorto "Hebrew" estas ligo, kaj pro tio havas enfazon. Mi pensas ke la ideo de "Hebrew"-a lingvo povas malallogi interesitojn. Ankaux mi scias ke iu foje Zamenhof pensis pri lingvo por judoj, sed finfine li faris lingvon por la mondo, ne nur por la judoj. La judoj ne akceptis liajn ideojn.
"Zamenhof was not a professional linguist, but rather an ophthalmologist"
Zamenhof studadis lingvistikon kaj lingvojn, de sia volo, dum multaj jaroj. Zamenhof studis medicinon nur cxar la patro trudis gxin. La lingvon Esperanton Zamenhof pretigis multaj jaroj antaux ol esti oftalmologo. La oftalmologo ne kreis Esperanton. La studento de lingvoj kreis Esperanton.
"extremely regular and easy to learn (due in large part to luck..."
LUCK ???!!! Zamenhof laboris multege da jaroj en sia lingvo, provante cxion per tradukoj, kaj refarante cxion kio ne funkciis. Nenio estis "luck", bonsxanco, en la vivo de Zamenhof.
Could be. There have been hundreds of language projects over the centuries with pretty much the same aims as E-o, both before and after. It just happened that LLZ was the language author who hit the target. Maybe the "lucky" part was that he did it at the right time: just when international travel was becoming established and fashionable. --Tiffer 20:56, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Language points

I'm removing the "some claim" from (some claim that its syntax is more like Asian languages) unless I can see any evidence against this. See Esperanto: A Western Language? by former UN translator, Claude Piron.

Yes, Chuck, I've read that article. (I love Piron's articles -- I started on an English translation of his Confession d'un fou européen some time ago which I'll have to finish one of these days!) BUT... he doesn't say anything there about syntax! He does show similarities in word formation (part of morphology) -- usually building from invariable parts rather than the variable inflections and oddly or unrelated word families we see in Indo-European. However, there are quite a few decidedly un-Asian but IE-like things in Esperanto's syntax: required plural markers, required noun-adjective agreement in number and case, required tense markers (on verbs) and aspect markers (on participles), prepositions, relative clauses... I'm willing to believe that someone claims there are greater similarities to Asian languages in syntax, but I'm not aware of such claims and I wouldn't believe them without seeing any evidence. Brion VIBBER, Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Character of E-o

I'd like to see more references to Esperanto's supposed similarity to Asian languages. The analysis in the Claude Piron article mentioned above is deeply flawed, linguistically. Piron likens Esperanto to Chinese! The problems with that are:

  1. Chinese is not at all polysynthetic; it is the canonical example of an isolating language
  2. Piron's real basis for comparison is their regularity. But Chinese is regular because of its lack of inflection; Esperanto is regular because the inflection system has no exceptions.
  3. I'm not fully qualified to judge on this point, but he seems to be using the word word a bit loosely. The strings of Chinese morphemes he cites are AFAICT phrases, not words.
  4. The similarity of ordering among the morphemes doesn't rise much beyond the threshold of coincidence.

Overall, Esperanto is closer to a fusional language than to an agglutinative language. The test for agglutination, as mentioned above, includes that morphemes are concatenated without change. But this can be explained in the case of Esperanto by the intentional effort to keep the language fully regular; there are other tests which suggest properties of a synthetic language.

The main argument is another test for agglutination: that each element of meaning be expressed in a separate morpheme. Esperanto follows the model of other European languages, with a small number of morphemes coding a large number of meanings: -as conveys verbal function, present tense, declarative mood; -o encodes status as a noun, subjective mood, singular number; etc. Another argument is the general similarity to Latin or German, which are considered canonical fusional languages.

The verb endings can be analyzed further: -s indicates verbishness, -t- indicates participleness [cannot stand on its own, must be followed by additional endings to make adjective, noun, or yes even verb forms], -n- is a passive->active converter for participles; -a- is present, -i- past, -o- future, -u- potential. -u- participles are not "official", but do appear in usage. The -i infinitive and the -u volative mood act a little differently from everything else; infinitive is noun-like but not exactly, and volative has a default subject [second person] and can't be used in participles. --Brion

I note some confusion on this point, for example in the Esperanto FAQ, part 9, which sets up a dichotomy between "'Western' root-based thinking and 'Eastern' agglutinative thinking", and claims that Esperanto is a "good compromise" between the two. It's not clear what's meant here; for example, some of the most highly agglutinating languages out there are Mohawk, Innuit and Basque.

The distinctions "agglutinative" and "synthetic" lie along a continuum, so this is not a cut-and-dried issue, but I'd like to capture the most accurate characterization here, especially with regard to relation or non-relation to Asian languages. The comment in the article is, even if correct, much too vague: the Asian language with the most speakers by far is in fact not agglutinative at all (and yet is the only Asian language mentioned in Piron's article). Can we have some pointers into the literature comparing Esperanto to Japanese? --Len

How about this:
As far as [modifiers coming before the modified word], European languages behave in different ways. For an adjectival modifier, the basic principle in French is [noun + epithet], while in English it's [epithet + noun], unless it's a subclause, including relative clauses; then the order is always [noun + epithet]. Japanese and Chinese stand out for their regularity. "The fact that he's a liar" is "[he's a liar]-ish fact". To formulate; in the European languages: SN -> NP, in Japanese and Chinese: SN -> P N, where SN = naming sintagm [??"sintagmo noma"??], P = clause, N = name or noun.
Esperantologists' hobby horse about the agglutinative nature of Asian languages and Esperanto means absolutely nothing here. There is absolutely no such fact that Esperanto is more easily learnable for Asians because of its agglutinative nature. Esperanto is durch und durch a European language.
YAMASAKI Seikô, Enkonduko en la Japanan; Chapecó-SC, Brazil: Fonto, 2000. pp 22-23; my translation. --Brion 21:06 Dec 20, 2002 (UTC)

Claude Piron doesn't have time to respond to the comments made in this thread on his comparison of Esperanto with Chinese, but he told me that his comparison is with actual Chinese (i.e. the language used by Han people both in China and in the Chinese diaspora), not with the image of Chinese found in many linguistics textbooks and encyclopedias. He sent me an article he wrote in French on the remarkable difference between the real language and the features constantly ascribed to it in books on general or comparative linguistics.

I have posted this article and you can read it at http://www.esperanto.net/info/CHINOIS.rtf.

In this article, he demonstrates by linguistic analysis of Chinese material, comparison with other languages and the use of various tests where you are mistaken if you adhere to the conventional opinion according to which

  • there is no distinction between word and morpheme in Chinese,
  • Chinese words don't belong to a grammatical category and can readily switch from one to the other,
  • the substantive, adjective, verbal or adverbial function of a Chinese word depends on its place in the sentence,
  • Chinese morphemes are autonomous units not susceptible to agglutination, and
  • Chinese is a language without affixes and endings.

He also presents a few hypotheses on the psychological causes of this distortion of reality which are traditionally repeated among linguists, and of which even people who have studied some Chinese appear not to be aware. People often stick to a preconceived opinion that has been transmitted to them by authorites rather than to reality, to such an extent that they don't see the facts that contradict that opinion.

--Chuck SMITH

I can't read French alas, but I highly suspect that Piron's demonstration is based only on eyeballing existing corpora, which will likely only use "typical" Chinese language constructs. But, to exercise all the nooks and crannies of Chinese grammar -- which is the main point anyway -- there's no substitute for face-to-face contact with a native Chinese speaker! Chinese being my mother tongue, I can safely say that for one thing, many so-called "affixes" (e.g. "men5" for plural) are really clitics, and can apply over phrasal constructs such as conjunctions. So there... -- tk1@despammed.com
Well, as you can see from the biography of Claude Piron, he was a UN translator for Chinese, so I think he must know Chinese pretty well. I've just printed out his essay and I'll try to read it sometime during the next week... --Chuck SMITH 12:37, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Thanks for the response. Incidentally, Edwin Pulleybank in "Outline of Classic Chinese Grammar" argues that Chinese is really a bit of an inflecting language, and classical Chinese much more so: inflection is done by modifying the consonants and tone contour within a single syllable (= character). Now that's confusing... -- tk1@despammed.com

I removed the phrase "Esperanto advocates" because even some linguists who don't speak Esperanto show that morphemes make languages easier to learn, plus that phrase is very biased. --Chuck SMITH

Fair enough. I just hate seeing the phrase 'Some say'. It's better (I believe) to attribute beliefs. Would it be fair to say "Esperanto advocates and many linguists say..." ? cprompt

Well, if you have to put something there then use "Esperanto speakers" and not "Esperanto advocates".  :-) --Chuck SMITH

Living Language

Well I disagree with you there, as I think the English idiom is well established.

Well, I know in practice I've responded both ways before in English and have been misunderstood, so I always clarify myself completely. Whether in theory one way is right or not, that could be different. I generally take languages by what I find in practice rather than what's in the textbooks. --Chuck SMITH

But anyway, I have since found out what is recommended in Esperanto. Excerpt from Plena Ilustrita Vortaro:

"II...Rim. 2 Respondante al nea demando, kies neadon oni volas konfirmi, kelkaj popoloj, precipe okcident-eŭropaj, uzas ne, dum aliaj, precipe orientaj, uzas jes: li diris: ĉu vi ne scias, kio tio estas? Mi diris: ne, mia Sinjoro....Male: ĉu ŝi edziniĝis? demandis Marta. -- Jes, iele tio fariĝis, ke ŝi ne edziniĝis(Z). Same, responde al nea demando, kies malpravon oni volas aserti, la unuaj uzas jes (aŭ jes ja), la aliaj ne:...La sola rimedo eviti miskomprenon, almenaŭ en la konversacio, estus ripeti la pridemanditan verbon: ĉu li ne venos? -- Li venos (aŭ) Li ne venos."
Responding to a negative question, whose negativity one wans to confirm, some peoples, mainly western European, use no, while others, mainly eastern, use yes <...snip...> The only way to avoid misunderstanding, at least in conversation, is to repeat the asked-about verb: "Won't he come?" -- "He will come (or) He won't come".

I have every sympathy with this honest acknowledgment in PIV that if speakers of very different native languages are to communicate effectively then there is more to learn than everyone simply saying and understanding things the way that comes most naturally to them.

I agree. That's why I always clarify myself after my response even as I do in English, especially when I'm communicating with someone who is not a native English speaker... somehow I now realize that we've left the discussion about the article and just started chatting... perhaps we should delete some comments here that aren't directly related to the article, eh? --Chuck SMITH

Insisting on promoting Esperanto in a way which looks easiest (in this case for English speakers), rather than admitting that not everything will ideally suit everybody, can be at the expense of speakers of other languages. The word ŝati is a case in point: because people have insisted on misusing it just in order to create a way of saying "I like" which is easy for them, an ambiguity has now arisen for everybody else when ŝati is used these days, as to whether it is being used in its true sense of "esteem highly" or is simply being used to mean "to like".

--Trainspotter 17:07 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I always understood ŝati and plaĉi to mean the same thing, but used in a different word order. As far as the "misuse" of the language goes, languages evolve naturally and no one can control a living language, so if a meaning changes over time then that happens. The same happened in English with the word gay... --Chuck SMITH

Pri la paragrafo: "However, modern Esperanto usage may in fact depart from that originally described in the Fundamento. The translation given for "I like this one", in the phrases below offers a significant example."

La vortigo "may depart" ne bone priskribas la problemon. La ekzemplo pri ŝati/plaĉi; laŭ mi, ne taŭgas.

Ĉu mi ne povas diri : "mi ŝatas ĉi tiun veston, kaj ankaŭ tiu plaĉas al mi; sed mi preferas la jenan."

Mi proponas forviŝi tiun paragrafon, kaj krei apartan paĝon pri la problemo de lingvo evoluado. Mi trovis bonan klarigon en la tezo de François LO JACOMO : "liberté ou autorité dans l'évolution de l'espéranto' . paĝo 135 : Faute et évolution.

parta traduko :

Se mi uzas la vorton "kara" laŭ la senco "multekosta", mi sekvas la tradician normon, tiel kiel atestas la vortaroj (inter kiuj PIV). Sed mi ne konformiĝas al la nuna uzo kiu limigas tiun terminon al la unua senco. -- Raymond Gerard

The role of the Fundamento de Esperanto ("Basis of Esperanto", a work containing the sixteen rules of grammar, a "universal dictionary" and a collection of exercises) was laid out in the "Declaration of the Essence of Esperantism" at the first World Congress (Boulogne, 1905):

La sola unu fojon por ĉiam deviga por ĉiuj esperantistoj fundamento de la lingvo Esperanto estas la verketo "Fundamento de Esperanto", en kiu neniu havas la rajton fari ŝanĝon.
The only, once and for all time compulsory for all Esperantists, basis of the language Esperanto is the little work "Basis of Esperanto", in which nobody has the right to make a change. (translation, emphasis mine)

Extract from the "universal dictionary" (and hence from the Fundamento):

ŝat' estimer | esteem | viel halten, grossen Werth legen | дорожить | cenić, oceniać, szacować.

But you say that "no one can control a living language, so if a meaning changes over time then that happens". If it is the considered view of the Esperanto movement to oppose parts of the Boulogne declaration, e.g. if the Fundamento is not to be considered unendingly binding, then that should be made explicitly clear, because otherwise people will naturally assume that the declaration retains the endorsement of the movement.

Unless you can point out any obvious flaw in the above logic, please could you:

  • EITHER: revert the edit to ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi
  • OR: state clearly that you do not fully support the Boulogne declaration, and give some indication whether this is a minority or majority view within the movement

Thanks.

The meaning of gay in English has changed because it is a living language which nobody can control.

--Trainspotter 14:08 11 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Regulating additions to E-o

Is there any commity that regulates new vocab into esperanto, how is it being kept up to date? (please expand in the page)

The Akademio de Esperanto is the body that declares words official, though it tends to follow longstanding existing usage.

for example, who decides what will be the vocalisation for the '@' (Commercial_at in esp?

"@" is commonly read as "ĉe" ('chay'), at least in e-mail addresses and the like. --Brion 04:01, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would give the pronunciation as 'cheh' rather than 'chay' - which suggests a diphthong in English as used in Britain. (I'm never sure how a particular anglicised representation of E-o pronunciation will be interpreted in different English-speaking countries.) No Esperanto vowel should be pronounced as a diphthong. --Tiffer 20:56, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The commat is pronounced as the situation merits, as in other languages: in e-mail addresses, the use of "ĉe" (at) is used; if it is used to mean "at the rate of", the corresponding word "po" is used; etc. -- Kwekubo 22:48, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In one study, a group of high school students studied Esperanto for one year...

A pet peeve of mine in popular writing is the tendency to use phrases such as "studies show" without citing the studies that show this. In this case, the reference is to one particular study, with some details mentioned. What is the study? -- Stephen Gilbert 01:45 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)
Williams, N. (1965) 'A language teaching experiment', Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26-28. (I have not read the study myself. Reference snatched from [1], which page I just found via google.) --Brion 07:01 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

The recent Wikification of the alphabet breaks down on letters not present in English. Please remedy. --cprompt

In view of above comments re the rather limited success in establishing similarities between Esperanto and non-European languages, the comment that "Esperanto has proven to be a good deal easier to learn as a second language than any national language" seems far too sweeping. Unless evidence can be provided that it is generally applicable outside the context of European languages, the assumption must surely be that there are many pairs of non-European languages X,Y for which Y is easier for speakers of X than Esperanto is. I am about to edit that comment to limit its scope to speakers of European languages. --Trainspotter 20:50 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Likewise, removing reference to agglutination / Asian languages. Again, the above discussion seems not to support this assertion but somehow it has remained in the text. (To support assertion, would need to show not only that Asian languages have some agglutination, but that E-o agglutination is *more* similar to that in Asian langs than to that in say German.) --Trainspotter 21:01 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have strengthened the statement "Esperanto vocabulary is based mainly on European source languages" to "Esperanto vocabulary is based almost exclusively on European source languages". Take for example the Esperanto text of La Espero. I could not find a single word which did not seem to be from a European root. There may be a few words in the language from non-European languages, but if so, then they are so rare as to be curiosities. --Trainspotter 16:52 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I've corrected and made more consistent the pronunciation models given in the "Examples" section - altering some of them back to what they were before an edit on 26 July. The anonymous contributor then added a useful explanation at the beginning, but at the same time put in the words "dole", "cone" and "tone" as guides to some of the syllables.

It may be that in parts of the US (and perhaps in northern England) these words do indicate the correct pronunciation of the Esperanto "o"; but in southern England they certainly don't - they imply a rather ugly dipthong all too common as a mispronunciation among English-speaking beginners (and some long-standing E-ists!) --Tiffer 21:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Criticism and Responses

The recent changes to the Criticism section make the Responses to Criticism require updating. Could someone please do this? I am not yet fluent in Esperanto, and I am no expert linguist. :-) --cprompt 13:26 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Why do they need updating? --Chuck SMITH 16:08 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How can there even be criticisms of a language? Can we also put up criticisms of English, Spanish, Catalan, Frisian... ? Isn't this a bit offensive to speakers of that language? Especially to those of us who speak it as our primary language? --Chuck SMITH 11:37 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chuck, the criticisms are not meant to be to the existance or usage of the language, but to its viability as an intauxlang. If Frisian or Spanish or Catalan or English were "created" for this purpose, then perhaps we would add similar sections to their articles.--Node 22:01, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it seems a bit petty. Especially now that we have "criticisms" and "responses to criticisms." Is this a encyclopedia or a debate forum? user:J.J.

Well, the fact that Esperanto is "new" to most people means that they need a reason to accept it. Besides that, Esperanto's goal is to be an international language. The criticisms are whether it is ideal for that purpose. English and Spain strive to be nothing more than the languages spoken in England and Spain. Perhaps these criticisms should be moved to a new article. It could be referenced by Esperanto as "Esperanto is sometimes Criticisms of Esperanto|criticized as not being an ideal international language." In any case, the criticisms kind of made it look like Esperanto was too flawed to be taken seriously. It's a bit more neutral with both sides presented, I think. As Chuck and I were talking about another time, maybe the English article should have criticisms. --cprompt 19:02 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

La titolo "kritikoj" estis iom miskomprenata. La teksto origine temis ne pri kritikoj de Esperanto en si mem, sed pri la eblaj maladvantaĝoj uzante ĝin kiel internacian lingvon. Poste oni aldonis titolon "kritikoj", kiu ŝajne kompreniĝis havi pli ampleksan signifon ol intencitan (kvankam la artikola teksto - laŭ mi - sufiĉe klare montris pri kio temis). Do mi lastatempe ŝanĝis tiun titolon, por ke iom pli klariĝu la afero, kaj ankaŭ por ke la parolantoj ne sentu sian lingvon entute kritikata...
--Trainspotter 10:42 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Translation of above: The title "criticisms" was a bit misunderstood. The text originally was not about criticisms of Esperanto itself, but about the possible disadvantages of using it as an international language. Afterwards, someone added the title "criticisms", which seems to have been understood as having a broader meaning than intended (even though the article itself seemed to show what it was about). So, I've recently changed that title to be a bit more clear so that the speakers would not feel their language to be criticized throughout...

This is the English Wikipedia, please leave comments in English (unless of course you can't write well in English), but you can quote something in Esperanto if you feel that is needed. --Chuck SMITH

There are so-called "criticisms" about any conlang, or, for that matter, any real language. Klingon only has about 3500 words in its total vocabulary (there's no word, for instance, for striped). Most pronouns in English distinguish three cases (nominative "I", accusative "me", genitive "my"), but some distinguish a different three, although some are archaisms (nominative/accusative "what", locative "where", ablative "whence" and allative "whither"). Ubykh uses concrete situations to describe many abstractions (I love you is verbalised as I see you well), and has 83 consonants but just two vowels. French has a highly irregular spelling system (there are only two phonemes in the word gars "guy", but four in the word mars "March"). The fact that I speak all the above languages puts paid to the possibility of my ethnocentrism. In other words, it doesn't matter what the irregularities are, but whether the language is usable, and Esperanto certainly is that. - psendall

I still think the whole part of criticisms and their responses don't belong in the article on Esperanto. Perhaps we could move them to Esperanto as an international language, but it feels like we're leaving the realm of an encyclopedia here... --Chuck SMITH

I think to be honest that it has largely arisen out of an article which started out conveying an overall tone of how wonderful Esperanto is. Hence the criticisms were added (hey, if we're going to have advocacy it'd better be both sides of the argument). Hence of course also the responses to criticisms. Hence eventually the creation of titled sections once the amount of text warranted it.
If it can be pared down to an article without the criticisms/responses then fine. They could be moved to a separate encyclopedia entry, or if more appropriate just a talk page.
But please bear in mind that if the pared down article which you (or others) create appears to promote Esperanto then it should be no great surprise if the criticisms are back soon also. For example, beware of simply moving the section about criticism and responses, without considering the tone of the text which remains.
(Incidentally, on a minor point, I am reverting the translation of "I like this one" to what I previously wrote. You have written what really means "I highly esteem that one" (notwithstanding neologisms); if it looks cumbersome to an English-speaking person to say "this one is pleasing to me", bear in mind that to a Spanish-speaking person it corresponds exactly to éste me gusta.)
--Trainspotter 14:30 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

On the last point, you are correct that the correct translation of éste me gusta is indeed Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi, but it is not as commonly used as Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun. In any case, we're translating "I like this one" and not "éste me gusta." You'll see that google gives 1830 results for sxatas and 1050 results for placxas. Indeed both phrases are grammatically correct, but ŝatas is used more often and thus should be the translation we provide here. --Chuck SMITH 15:32 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But is this just a bias of English-speaking Esperantists? I had the impression that ŝatas was used more by English speakers, just because it fitted the same pattern as the English verb "to like", but I'm not sure, as I'm rather out of touch, to be honest... -- Oliver P. 15:48 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Chuck -- Well, I'll leave your translation in place, as you feel strongly enough to reinstate it and I'm not going to get into a pointless edit war. But if your point stands about there being one correct Esperanto translation of "I like this one" and a different correct Esperanto translation of "éste me gusta", despite the fact that the English and Spanish phrases mean the same and are the usual translations of each other, then a textbook in English should list a different Esperanto phrase from a textbook in Spanish for expressing the same concept. This kind of thing would tend to produce effective dialects of Esperanto depending which other language people use to learn it... (Seems that Oliver P's reference to "English-speaking Esperantists" rather corroborates this.)
--Trainspotter 16:17 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Not really - I did say I wasn't sure. That probably means I'm wrong. ;) -- Oliver P. 17:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Indeed, textbooks do indeed have plaĉas. The majority of the people I speak to in Esperanto aren't native English speakers and I don't hear plaĉas very much or not nearly as much as ŝatas and Esperanto has been my primary language for the past year (half a year travelling and now working for TEJO, the World Esperanto Youth Organisation). I think this is because it's faster and shorter to use ŝatas so the language naturally evolved in that direction. As I stated, both expressions are acceptable, but I think it's better to list in Wikipedia the one more commonly used.
As far as dialects go, the flexibility of Esperanto (which in the article is only said that Esperantists believe it's flexible when it clearly is...grrr) allows different people to express themselves differently, but to still be completely understood. This is one of the reasons why it is "easy". You're not forced into just one way of saying things... --Chuck SMITH 16:50 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I don't think we should give an example using ŝatas in this sense, as it's widely considered to be wrong (no matter how common in colloquial use) and it certainly isn't the intended meaning of the word. The Google search doesn't prove much, as some of those may be correct uses of ŝatas (and using the proper spellings reduces the difference anyway: 1730 for plaĉas and 2310 for ŝatas). --Zundark 20:13 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oliver -- No, I think you were quite right. There is too much of a tendency to insist on what appears to be easy (possibly in order to present Esperanto as easy to learn) without really coming to terms with the fact that the same phraseology can't be equally intuitive for speakers of different languages, and that if everyone is free to choose what's easiest for them you create some kinds of dialect.

However, the X ŝatas Yn / Y plaĉas al X example is relatively tame, in that the meanings are related, and differences in usage are unlikely to lead to great confusion. But here is a much more severe example: the interpretation of answers to negative questions, e.g. = "Don't you understand?". English speakers are used to the answer "yes" meaning "I do understand". But to a Japanese speaker asking the same question, wakarimasen ka?, hai (meaning yes) would mean "I don't understand" (NB I'm sure of this one, although my knowledge of Japanese is very limited).

Both of these questions would translate simply enough as ĉu vi ne komprenas? But how in Esperanto should the answer be interpreted to this question, or indeed to any statement with ĉu ne? (~ isn't it?) tacked on? Esperanto generally claims to transcend national idiom by choosing the logical usage, e.g. talking about medicines "against" rather than "for" a disease. The logical use here is surely that given a statement with ĉu to make it a question, then jes means you agree with the statement.

I did a quick google, on "cxu vi ne" jes. Top of the list was a chapter of Gerda malaperis, a prominent Esperanto work. The usage found in it was in the European sense of "don't you agree?" "yes" meaning I do agree. I can think of various explanations, none of them particularly flattering:

  • The usage in Gerda malaperis is simply wrong, despite it being a prominent work.
  • The usage is correct, given that it is written by a European, but it would not be the dialect used by Japanese-speaking Esperantists.
  • The usage is correct for everyone. Despite all protestations of non-Euro-centricity, and choosing logical over idiomatic usage, European idiom is chosen over logical usage.

Which is it, or what have I missed?

--Trainspotter 08:45 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I never actually was sure of what the reply meant in English, so I see Esperanto as having the same "ambiguity problem" as English... --Chuck SMITH

In ReVo (Reta Vortaro):

Rim.: En la tradicia lingvouzo (tiu de Zamenhof kaj PIV) ?ŝati? indikas pli altan estimon ol ?ami?; sed en la reala lingvo moderna la situacio estas inversa: ?ŝati? sence proksimas al ?plaĉi? (sed kun alia regado), dum la praan sencon oni preferas esprimi per nova verbo (aprezi aŭ apreci).

So therefore the meaning has indeed changed over time and there's even examples I've seen of Zamenhof using it like the English "to like". But, I'm sick of arguing about this stupid sentence, so if you really want ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi then go ahead and put it back in there. Like I said before, they're both equally valid, but Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun is more commonly used.

I do not insist on "plaĉas", but "ŝatas" should be seen its proper context of ne-fundamenta. I have actually reinstated "ŝatas", despite some anonymous edit to the contrary, given the ReVo quote and your saying that it is majority usage, but have added a section on language evolution saying that departure from the Fundamento is now considered okay.
--Trainspotter 11:54 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I was wrong about people not being able to control living languages. Several times language academies decide on spelling reforms for different languages like what happened in German a few years ago, so it is possible to "control" a living language.

A sidenote: do you ever work in the Esperanto Wikipedia? It would be nice if you could polish that article on Esperanto. It really needs a lot of work! Thanks, Chuck SMITH 01:07 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And no shortage of other people over there who can do it...
--User:Trainspotter (not logged in just now)

Just a minor thing: I've corrected my example Ĝis la revido -> Ĝis revido, this being the appropriate form when one doesn't know of a specific meeting-again (e.g.in the envisaged context of a tourist leaving a shop).
--Trainspotter 09:02 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sexist?

An anonymous user added this to the response to the criticism that Esperanto is sexist. (Note that this is not a proper response to the argument; this is merely an excuse.)

I felt it was better for the talk page than the article. --cprompt 21:05 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have removed the following bit, because I don't consider it suitable for an encyclopedia entry. DiruWiki 15:21, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The Ethnologue data may need to be treated with caution, as on their web page they incorrectly categorize Esperanto as a language of France, and also give -al as a dative ending (not quite correct; al is a separate word meaning "to").

Also, maybe someone can rewrite the reply to 'Esperanto is sexist' to take reference to accusation. Fact that Esperanto only declares the feminines (there's nothing to make knabo male, but the in in knabino to make it feminine). IMHO you can't do awyay with this, because Esperanto is sexist - just like most languages. DiruWiki 15:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The current state of affairs is that words like boy, man, king, uncle and such are treated as masculine inherently, and take the -in- to make them feminine. Put ge- in front instead and the word is neutral.
More or less all other person-words, like editor, runner, murderer, are taken as neutral. Again, you add -in- to make them feminine. In practice, one very rarely comes across the need to make the second group masculine, and when you have to you just use vir- (man) as a prefix. Kwekubo 19:46, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Can I point out that it's not a question of "masculine" and "feminine" (which are grammatical forms not used in Esperanto) but male and female? People not familiar with E-o reading this might imagine that it has gender in the same way as French or Latin, which it absolutely does not.

The suffix "-ino" simply signifies a female animal or person - in the same way as "-isto" signifies a person of a particular occupation - with no grammatical implications whatsoever. The prefix "ge-" is usually described as referring to a group that includes both sexes, which rather implies that it can't be used in the singular. There is something of an argument as to whether you can use the word "gepatro", for example, to mean "parent".

The question of sexism is another one, of course, and all we can say is that equivalent constructs occur in English ("-ess") and in most ethnic languages. Maybe E-o would have been different in this respect had it been developed today; but to me it seems an isolated case of the language reflecting attitudes from the era when it was created, and it's a feature that can't lightly be changed.
--Tiffer 18:58, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

"Esperanto" or "Esperanto Language"?

I am moving the page back to "Esperanto" from "Esperanto language". It's my impression that articles like "English language" and "Spanish language" are done that way for disambiguation. People say that they are eating a French dish, that they are German, or that they're watching Spanish television. Hebrew needs a Hebrew language counterpart because the Bible refers to people as "Hebrews". This disambiguation is not necessary for Esperanto. --cprompt 17:16, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It is Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages policy that all language pages are to be on a page called XXX language, because as you note, it is necessary for disambiguation, but also for consistency. viz Esperanto culture Esperanto history Esperanto flag Esperanto film Esperanto literature Esperanto music. I'm moving it back to Esperanto language. If you disagree with the policy, discuss it on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages --Nohat 20:27, 2004 Jan 29 (UTC)
I'll take a step back on this one, because there is an established policy. Nearly every conlang I've seen is not suffixed with "language", take Ido for example. I will not move any more language pages to one way or the other; as long as Esperanto exists as a redirect if not the actual article.
--cprompt 02:42, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I've moved the article back to Esperanto. Is common sense dead or something? Jeez. --Brion 07:10, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Brion, it's an established policy. Similar conflicts are happening at Inuktitut (vs. Inuktitut language). If you disagree with the policy, it can be discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Languages.--Node 22:01, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Nohat's policy is not an established policy. It is in violation of established policy. --Zundark 07:31, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Yes, it is an established policy.
No, it is not. Creating a WikiProject page and putting ones own opinions on it does not make those opinions an established policy.
Just how is it in violation of established policy? Nohat is a very respectable user and I do not see Nohat as the kind of person who would violate established policy.
For example, Inuktitut is usually known as Inuktitut and there isn't anything else known as Inuktitut, so according to established policy it should go on the Inuktitut page. Nohat's policy says otherwise.
I know that I would probably've gotten into a fight with you, moving things back without a detailed discussion, but Nohat decided it was best to leave it as a non-issue for the time being and wait until a later time.
I don't know what you're talking about here. When I removed Nohat's policy from Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages he put it back the very same day. You can see this in the edit history (30 Jan 2004). There was no edit war because I, not Nohat, decided it was best to leave it.
Also note what cpromt said.--Node 04:01, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
cprompt seems to have been misled by the fact that Nohat called his policy a "Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages policy", which gave the impression that there was some sort of consensus about it. --Zundark 08:35, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

External links; Slang and E-o in France

I created the Lernu! article (pretty much parallels the one at the Esperanto Wikipedia), but I don't know how I should link this article to it. Any ideas? --cprompt 03:11, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Who uses the slang word luton? I spoke Esperanto as my primary language for two years and have never run into anyone who has ever used it? --Chuck SMITH 00:17, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Given the information on Ethnologue is completely flawed and misleading (Esperanto is NOT a language of France!), I have removed that external link, and replaced it by the very informative "Update on Esperanto" by UEA. Marcoscramer 13:42, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

National/Natural/Ethnic languages

Ĉu oni diskutas en E-o pri ĉi tiu temo?

Just made some changes - particularly that LLZ lived in Warsaw at the time he published La Unua Libro; but also, among others, a reference to "National Languages" to conform to an earlier use of the term "Natural Language" (for which a Wiki already exists).

For my own part, I prefer to use the term "Ethnic Language", because neither "national" (languages don't conform to state boundaries) nor "natural" (E-o seems just as natural to me as English, and certainly more so than an unfamiliar language) is satisfactory IMO. The trouble is that there is already a page with the title "Natural language", as referred to above. Do people see the distinction as real? Can we change the title of the "Natural language" page? --Tiffer 20:36, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists; Stability

Really? The reform project by Zamenhof breaks the stability. On the other hand, some say that the reforms were planned to be so outrageous to ensure a rejection from the Esperantists. That would break the "belongs to the Esperantists". -- Error 00:43, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Character of E-o

If you speak Esperanto, or would like to, you might be interested in the Esperanto wiki JerryMuelver hosts at http://unumondo.com.

> It seems, that http://unumondo.com doesn't exist anymore.

Esperanto's potential as a meta-language for machine translation is being explored by the traduki. Other useful links include http://www.esperanto.org and, for US-ians, http://www.esperanto-usa.org. The last can be contacted at ELNA, PO Box 1129, El Cerrito CA 94530; 1-510-653-0998 (real person), 1-800-ESPERANTO (automated info and information requests).

Esperanto isn't an agglutinative language since it inflects: it has different cases as numbers distinguished by different suffices. Agglutinative languages can have inflections too; these aren't absolute categories...

Esperanto is fully agglutinative. Two or more grammar suffixes for the same word don't modify each other, and that's usual agglutinativity test. For example: -o + -j + -n is -ojn, it wouldn't have to be in inflective language. --Taw

It certainly looks agglutinative to me. Moreover, John Wells says, on page 27 of his book Lingvistikaj Aspektoj de Esperanto, "Ekzemploj de aglutina lingvo estas la turka, la japana, la zulua, kaj - kiel konate - la Internacia Lingvo Esperanto." ("Examples of agglutinative languages are Turkish, Japanese, Zulu, and - as is well-known - the International Language Esperanto.") There are not many people better placed to judge this than John Wells, so I've changed the article accordingly. --Zundark

Esperanto's grammar resembles that of a typical inflectional language better than that of a typical agglutinative one. The only reason people call it "agglutinative" is because its morphology was designed to be regular (no exceptions) and cleanly segmentable (a word can be divided into individual morphemes easily). A stereotypical agglutinative language (like Turkish), however, has a lot more morphemes per word. I would just stay clear of claiming Esperanto is "inflectional" or "agglutinative". Those words don't really mean that much. It's clearer to just say what I just did about how the morphology was designed. -- 171.64.42.82 06:58, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ease of Learning

Is it just me, or does the "learning Esperanto" section reek of POV? No language is inherently more complex than any other. (see Pullum, Geoffrey K.: Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, The) Also, the study by Williams, ttbomk, did not also compare a year of Esperanto before 3 years of French to a year of, say, Spanish, before 3 years of French. It's a well-known fact that after learning one foreign language, it is much easier to learn another. Can anybody present a study that shows conclusively that Esperanto makes it even easier to learn a foreign language than any other language? Please, I don't want to have an argument about "It's a well known fact that Esperanto is the easiest language to learn on Earth because the British Esperanto Association says so!!!"--Node 21:51, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I think that that was all that was meant - Esperanto has no "magic ingredient" that helps you learn other languages faster. It is merely the case that learning Esperanto, as with learning any other language, makes language learning slightly easier. -- Kwekubo 01:07, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I added back the "Learning Esperanto" section, changing "Esperanto has been proven" to "Numerous studies suggest". If you'd like to cite some studies that dispute the idea that Esperanto is easier to learn than other languages, you're welcome to do so. Please do not remove text that you feel is POV. It's better that you modify the existing article to a NPOV. --cprompt 15:32, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Numerous studies? Only one study was cited. Since I question the validity of said study, I temporarily removed the text (note my usage of comment tags instead of simply deleting the section). I feel that rather than it being MY responsibility to cite some studies that dispute the idea that Esperanto is easier to learn than other languages, that it is the responsibility of whoever added this section to prove the validity of said study. Again, no language is inherently more complex than any other. (see Pullum, Geoffrey K.: Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, The)--Node 04:01, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
"No language is inherently more complex than any other"? Explain what you mean, please. -- Kwekubo 23:14, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Node, I do appreciate that you commented out the text instead of removed it. You are right to say that it is wrong to use the phrasing "numerous" studies when the article is only citing one. I am modifying the article so that the claims made by that single study don't seem like they're backed up by a tremendous body of research that may not even exist. I feel that this block may sum up your concerns in a reasonable way: However, the study failed to prove that Esperanto was responsible for this advantage specifically. It is likely that learning any language will benefit the future study of other languages. It would be greatly benefit the article if anyone could find any studies that prove or disprove the "Esperanto makes language study easy" or "Esperanto is easier to learn than other languages" hypotheses. Let me know what you think. --cprompt 04:17, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Hi guys, I have to hold my hand up that I changed this again - without realising that there was a recent discussion about it. I didn't like the phrase "studies show" either, so I put in "practical use", and changed "a good deal easier" to "many times easier". I claim justification for this in that on numerous occasions at international Esperanto gatherings I have met people who have been able to hold entirely functional conversations in E-o, after only a few months study - and more than once only a few weeks. I am aware that some may be unwilling to believe this, but I will ask them to accept that Esperanto is not just a theoretical exercise, and to defer to those of us who have experienced it. --Tiffer 23:19, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
To say that "No language is inherently more complex than any other" is fun and nice in a theoritical sense. But the Army intensive language training (one of the world's best language training schools, according to Mario Pio) spent four months on French and 12 on Russian or Chinese for a reason. I've talked to a linguist who spoke a little Cherokee, and she found it amazingly hard. In a very serious practical sense, some languages are harder then others, especially if you limit it to native speakers of the Indo-European family of languages, which is far and away the most common family for people to speak natively.

number of people who speak Esperanto

The Wikipedia article now says as a fact that there are 2 Million speakers. 2 million is also the number from the Esperanto FAQ (point 5, .org/faqs/esperanto/faq/part1/)

But I find very different numbers;

  • tens of thousands to over a million [2]
  • Statistics shows there are about 10 million Esperanto speaking people in the world [3]

Is it not more correct to just say it is unknown? Walter 10:06, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Your first source, Omniglot, is known to be a very unreliable source. A friend of mine and I have spotted numerous mistakes on that site in the past. The second I don't know much about, but seeing as it's specifically trying to promote Esperanto, it might be exaggerating deliberately, or using a very forgiving definition of an "Esperanto speaker". — Timwi 21:00, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I tinkered with the numbers paragraph a bit. Culbert died October 28, 2003. I think it's safe to say here he was a longtime Esperantist (see external links at his article).

"Survey" to me implies questionnaires and such, unless he conducted this kind of survey I think "estimate" is better here. I followed his annual World Almanac table for many years; it gave the (rounded) figure of 1 million for Esperanto until 15 or so years ago. — Cam 02:17, 2004 Jul 16 (UTC)

Moved content. Please incorporate

The following was at Esperanto etymology. I was just going to add it to Esperanto as a section, but it's not well enough written. Please incorporate the content into the article. There is more on Talk:Etymology — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 14:57, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Esperanto words were not chosen arbitrarily; most of them are coming from several important languages of western civilization. As Latin had a great influence on modern European languages, it looks like Esperanto is closely related to Latin.

Some words look exactly as they do in English, but the pronunciation is quite different: birdo (a bird), rivero (a river), teamo (a team), boato (a boat).

Sometimes, the connection is less obvious but nevertheless there is one, if we look a little further. For example, mano (a hand) does not resemble the English; but we have the same root in "manual" (pertaining to a hand), manufacture, manipulate, manuscript, manacles, maneuver, manifest, manner, manager, command, demand, emancipate, recommend, maintain, maintenance.

Latin is not the only language that influenced our european languages. If we go back to the mythical "indo-european" language, we will find more relations between English, Esperanto, and a lot of other languages.

Note that the root "hand" also occurs in Esperanto: handbalo, handikapo.

If you are interested, have a look at the next indo-european roots :

  • AG (to drive forward)
  • AK (sharp, pointed)
  • AL (to feed, to grow)
  • AL (other)
  • KLEW (to close, to lock)
  • MAN (hand)

Esperanto locale?

If there exist an Esperanto locale?  What are conventions for dates, time, numbers etc in Esperanto writing? — Monedula 06:19, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

One typically uses "." as the thousands separator and "," as a decimal point. Usually but not always 24-hour time with colon between hour and minutes. Dates - usage varies. The typical advice is to use a four-digit year and write out the month name or abbreviation thereof. --Jim Henry 13:39, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Opening paragraph comments

Since the first paragraph is the most widely read, I would make some changes as detailed below but I'll put them here for discussion (text only). My reasoning is that a lot of readers will only quickly skim the first paragraph so it should touch all the main points without any "fluff." (ex: what is Esperanto? Who/Where did it come from? What is the current status? Why should I care or who cares?)

Esperanto is the most widely spoken of the constructed languages.

this is a non-sequiter, what is a constructed language?
The link to the constructed language article makes it clear enough. --Jim Henry 18:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The name derives from the pseudonym (Dr. Esperanto) under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first work on the subject,

he created it, make that clear. "published the first work" is true but imprecise in its relevance. In other words, will a reader realize he created it and not just published first? Keep in mind they may not read past the first two sentences.

and literally means "one who hopes."

delete "literally", that is redundant. Actually I would just change this whole sentence to something like, "The name derives from the pseudonym (Dr. Esperanto) under which L. L. Zamenhof published the language."

Zamenhof, a Jewish oculist from Bialystok

"Jewish" irrelevent to Esperanto, keep in the Zamenhof article, "oculist" likewise irrelevent.

(now in Poland, but then part of the Russian empire), and living in Warsaw,

change to "(present-day Poland)"

published the Unua Libro (first book) of the language in 1887 after working on it for about ten years (see Esperanto history).

"ten years" comment irrelevent, especially in the introductory paragraph. Put in history section.

Example or suggested merging of first two paragraphs, editing them for brevity

Esperanto is a planned (constructed) auxiliary language. The name derives from the pseudonym (Dr. Esperanto) under which L. L. Zamenhof published the language in 1887. (see Esperanto history). His intention was to create an easy-to-learn language, to serve as an international second language (note: "auxiliary" and "secondary" in the original is redundant, likewise the comment about "rather than to replace" is redundant - that is inherent in the word "secondary" or "auxiliary") for global communication. Today Esperanto is used for many activities from travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, and language instruction.
OK, if "planned", "constructed" and "auxiliary" all link to appropriate articles. Also, in the second sentence "international auxiliary language" would suit better than "international second language". --Jim Henry 18:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All the little tidbits I snipped out can be integrated into the longer body of the article. They don't belong in the first paragraph (ex: the raumist/pracelistoj debate).

Nice rewrite. Do you think it's worth mentioning in the last sentence that Esperanto is the most widely-spoken instance of any such language? Marnanel 03:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I like your suggestions, except for "second language". "International auxiliary language" is the established and, in my opinion, more suitable term for what this is talking about. The phrase is defined nicely in the first paragraph of the linked article. Cam 16:35, Aug 25, 2004 (UTC)
Here's my proposed rewrite of the rewrite:
Esperanto is a planned (constructed) auxiliary language. The name derives from the pseudonym (Dr. Esperanto) under which L. L. Zamenhof published the language in 1887. (see Esperanto history). His intention was to create an easy-to-learn language, to serve as an international auxiliary language for global communication. Today Esperanto is used for many activities including travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, literature, and language instruction; it is the most widely used constructed auxiliary language.
--Jim Henry 18:33, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

...OK, since there has been no further discussion on this for some time, if no one objects in the next week or so, I will replace the current first two paragraphs with my above proposed rewrite. Also, the third paragraph:

Angoroj (1964) was the first film produced in Esperanto. Incubus (1965, starring William Shatner) is the only known professionally produced feature film with entirely Esperanto dialogue.

is not relevant in the intro section; it should be moved further down and combined with brief notes on important poems, novels, and music in Esperanto, with cross-references to other articles. --Jim Henry 21:18, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As no one objected, I have replaced the first three paragraphs with my proposed replacement. I moved the second paragraph further down and captioned it "Goals of the Esperanto Movement"; it still needs some more work. The third paragraph (on Angoroj and Inkubo) I simply deleted; it doesn't belong here unless we add a section on music, books, etc. as well, and those films are more thoroughly covered in the article on Esperanto film. --Jim Henry 20:41, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sound of ŭ

In this article, it the pronunciation of ŭ is incorrecly listed as [U]. This is incorrect. [U] is the sound of "oo" in book, and ŭ is clearly not that sound. The correct pronunciation of ŭ is [w]. Take the name of the letter, "ŭo," pronounced "woh." However, if ŭ were pronounced as [U] as said in the article, it would be pronounced as the "oo" in "book" followed by the "o" in "or." Try saying that, and I can assure you it does NOT sound anything like "woh."

The word "ŭo" is a special case. In all other Esperanto words, ŭ is preceded by a vowel, e.g. aŭ, which is pronounced [aU]. Ŭ thus forms a diphthong with the previous vowel. [w] is not a vowel sound; like [j], [w] is generally followed by a vowel rather than preceded by one. [aw] is possible but hard to pronounce and sounds nothing like aŭ. — Timwi 10:46, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Unfortunately, it's not as simple as either explanation here. [U], [u], and [w] are all basically the same sound, with varying degrees of closure. [U] and [u] are generally used as vowels, and [w] is used as a consonant; the implication is therefore that the difference in closure between [u] and [w] is concomitant with the difference in closure between vowels and consonants. The question then becomes one of phonetic versus phonological representation. Clearly, ŭ is used in Esperanto to mark back closing diphthongs, but what phonetic symbol should be used to represent the closed portion of that diphthong? If we look to the traditions used in phonetically transcribing English, we find use of the lax vowel symbols [U] and [I], as in the diphthongs [aU] as in 'cow', [oU] as in 'go', [eI] as in 'hay', and [oI] as in 'toy'. This is because acoustic analyses have shown that the off-glides of these diphthongs are acoustically most similar to the [U] and [I] vowels, which exist as separate phonemes in English. A brief survey of the web has shown that there is not a lot of detailed phonetic description of Esperanto phonemes. Most of the descriptions of the Esperanto diphthongs are in terms of English diphthongs, so unless it can be shown that Esperanto diphthongs are in fact more close than English diphthongs, the symbols for lax vowels should be used to represent Esperanto off-glides. Nohat 17:39, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

how does one add हिन्दी (hindi) to the "in other languages" navigation box on the main page of the article on esperanto? there is now a faq on esperanto in hindi at http://hi.wikipedia.org/esperanto. antaudankon :>) Giridhar 10:45, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Done. Edwinstearns 13:31, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

oops! you have linked the article Hindi to the word 'hindi' in the navigation box. it's the article Esperanto ( http://hi.wikipedia.org/esperanto ) that needs linking to (just as the word 'italiano' -- above 'hindi' -- links to the italian article Esperanto). Giridhar 13:43, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oops! Now it's done. Edwinstearns 14:42, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Contradiction

I wonder if someone who knows more about this than me can explain what's going on with 'it even has some native Esperanto speakers' (first paragraph) and 'Total speakers: est. 2 million (estimates vary greatly); none of these are native speakers' (fact box)? mat_x 18:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

(Okay, cool, looks like somebody resolved this already.) I think the problem was created by conflicting definitions of "native". Some might consider "native" to mean something related to one's homeland, and of course there is no country in which Esperanto is the official language, so in that sense it is impossible for one to be a "native speaker" of Esperanto. But in the context of constructed languages "native" can have a less (or more, depending on your point of view, heh!) restrictive definition, for example meaning something related to one's home. "Native Esperanto speakers" are those born into a home in which Esperanto is used, and grow up using it just like they use their national language. Ailanto 21:59, 2005 Jan 30 (UTC)

Esperanto is the most-spoken international language?

I thought that English was the most-spoken international language. Most schools in Europe require students to learn at some English. → JarlaxleArtemis 03:55, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't say that anywhere in the article. It only says that Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed language. English isn't constructed. — If you're so fond of English, why didn't you learn it properly then? — Timwi 22:26, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Amen. I think that it means that Esperanto is the most widely spoken International Auxiliary Language flockofpidgeons 01:10 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good article

Just wanted to say I realy enjoyed reading this article. Bawolff 06:12, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

This was nominated as a featured article candidate by Raul654 in February 2005, and failed nomination. It's undergone considerable revision since then, so we'll probably nominate it again after requesting peer review and doing further revision. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It went through Peer Review in late February and early March, and improved a lot. Among the changes were removing some less relevant material to separate articles like Esperanto orthography and Esperanto in English-language media; please see the peer review page and the talk archives here for details. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Minor question

Under History section: "As a constructed language, Esperanto's history is both short and well-known" By well-known do you mean widely known or well-documented? Espermike 07:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak for the person who first wrote that, but to me it only makes sense if it means "well-documented". Maybe we should say it that way. --Jim Henry 10:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Opening paragraph (as of Feb.2005)

My comments:

...which the Polish philologist L. L. Zamenhof...

I've never heard that Zamenhof was a philologist, professionally at least.
I've deleted the "Polish philologist" bit. If someone wants to know his complicated personal history they can click the link to L. L. Zamenhof. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

His intention was to create an easy-to-learn language, to serve ...

the comma after "language" is unnecessary and confusing at first glance.

to serve as an international auxiliary language for global communication.

the phrase "for global communication" is redundant with "language." Language is for communication, no? Global is (roughly) redundant with "international." I would delete "for global communication."
I've completely rewritten this sentence. --Jim Henry 18:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Today Esperanto is used for many activities including travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, literature, and language instruction;

maybe add "periodicals" to this list? (i.e. magazines are a popular part of Esperanto as far as I know). Maybe add "congresses" (the various conventions) as well?

it is the most widely used constructed language and even has some native speakers.

I don't know why but I don't like this sentence. It sounds like bragging. Mention the estimated speaker size instead? The "even has some native speakers" phrase is totally irrelevant to an introduction. It's sorta tacked on there at the end like, "and it comes with a kitchen sink too."
Estimated speaker count is in the table, and we now have a whole section on how many speakers there probably are and how hard it is to be sure of the number. I don't think we need to get into that in the summary paragraph. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Just my opinion and someone please delete my comments when it becomes irrelevant to any future revisions of the main article.
Haven't you noticed the "edit this page" link at the top of the article? — Timwi 13:35, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Irrelevancy

I think this paragraph is pretty irrelevant and should be deleted or perhaps moved elsewhere:

Ethnologue also states that Esperanto is a language of France [1] (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESP). David Blunkett said in the British House of Commons: "My only regret is that I learned a language called Esperanto at school. It was a very good idea at the time, but it got me into certain difficulties at the age of 16 when I used it in Paris." [2] (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010426/debtext/10426-03.htm), although he did not say whether he had been reading Ethnologue.

If nobody objects in a few days, I will delete it. --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Jim Henry 16:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jeronimo had some other comments about things that seemed to him irrelevant; see Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I removed these links that seemed to me irrelevant:

  • Majstro Multlingva Tradukvortaro: An on-line translation dictionary that uses Esperanto as an auxiliary language
  • Radio Polonia Interview with female Chinese Esperantist, describing difficulties in learning Esperanto for those outside Europe (.OGG file; in Esperanto)
  • Trigamba Jochjo Science fiction story, Threelegged Joe by Jack Vance, translated into Esperanto, recorded as audio in Ogg Vorbis format.

The first is an interesting example of the use of Esperanto, but not especially relevant as information on Esperanto. The latter two, being in Esperanto, are unlikely to be useful to typical readers of this English-language article. --Jim Henry 17:57, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have removed these See Alsos that seemed of lesser importance (they're in Category:Esperanto so easy enough to find if one is looking) and a couple of Miscellaneous external links of doubtful relevance. It might be good to add a more detailed paragraph about things of this kind to the Culture section of this article, or the Esperanto culture article, rather than just these See Also links. --Jim Henry 21:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

NPOV on the "five reasons for its strength"

At [4], Plek comments that

I think this article has some serious NPOV issues. It reads like an Esperanto manifesto, especially the list headed by "More generally, there are five primary reasons for its strength".

I think there's some justice to what he says, though I'm not sure offhand how best to rephrase this section. Comments? --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After further comments from Plek on the Featured Article Candidacy page, I cut this:

  1. Re-thinking it all: Zamenhof started developing his constructed language early, and he had done an enormous amount of work by the time he left for university. When he returned home in 1881, as the legend goes, he found that his father had burned all his notes and work. Thus Zamenhof was forced to begin again, but this time he had the advantage of all that he had learned in his first attempt. He commented later in a letter to Nikolai Borovko, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that the language was already completely ready."
  2. Tapping innate structures: Zamenhof based his language on a regularized version of natural languages, rather than building a totally novel and abstract structure (an approach used by some others). Not only are the word roots generally from natural languages, the overall structure mimics natural languages. This approach means that Esperanto can exploit desirable features from naturally evolved languages.
  3. Delay before publication: When Zamenhof was ready to publish his language, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works (such as parts of the Bible and Shakespeare) into Esperanto. This enforced delay led to continuing refinement and improvement before the language was presented to the world.
  4. Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists: Many developers of constructed languages are possessive of their brain-children and reject any attempt by others to contribute or have a significant role in the development of the language. Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists" and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.
  5. Stability: Constructed languages are often hindered from developing a speaker community by continual tinkering, with the constant changes making the language impossible to learn and use. Zamenhof, in contrast, published his Fundamento de Esperanto and established it as an unchanging foundation. This gave Esperanto a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages possess by virtue of their great body of literature and speakers. Thus one could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot.

I rewrote part of it, hopefully in a more neutral way, and moved some of the historical detail to Esperanto history. If you think some of this should go back in, please rewrite it in a more NPOV manner and put it in a new section (the stuff about "Tapping innate structures", "exploiting desirable features", etc. doesn't belong here in the "Language evolution" section). Some of the stuff I moved to Esperanto history needs better sourcing; some can be sourced from Zamenhof's letter to Borovko, and I added a reference to it in that article, but others (his father burning his papers? the censors not allowing publication at first?) I could not quickly find a reference to back up. Will re-read bits of La Fenomeno Esperanto and other sources to see what I can find. --Jim Henry 15:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chaplin film?

In the section on Esperanto in the mainstream media, I wonder why the Charlie Chaplin film "the grand dictator" isn't mentioned. (It might be that this is not the English name - in German it is "Der grosse Diktator".) A number of the shop signs in the ghetto are in E-o. - Ar 16:10, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead and add it. Make sure it is in the article on Esperanto film as well. Since we have a separate article on Esperanto film, let's avoid letting the mainstream media section get too long and detailed. I think adding the Chaplin film here (since it's one of the earliest, maybe the very earliest) and deleting some of the less important examples (while making sure they're listed in other relevant articles) would be a good thing. --Jim Henry 16:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Namesake

The Namesake section mentioning the asteroid named for Esperanto is irrelevant here, as Jeronimo pointed out at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. There is a whole book (Monumente pri Esperanto) about things named for Esperanto or Dr. Zamenhof; but none of them are relevant in an encyclopedia article on Esperanto. If no one objects in a couple of days, I will delete this section. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite see why it would be "irrelevant in an encyclopedia article". — Timwi 20:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Do you want to list other things named for Esperanto, maybe in another article Things named for Esperanto or Esperanto namesakes? To me, it makes sense for the article on the asteroid to link here, but not much sense the other way around. The fact that there is an asteroid named for Esperanto seemed to Jeronimo irrelevant to this article, and on reflection I agree with him. Mentioning the asteroid by itself in a tiny section just looks silly; either we should beef up the section with more namesakes, or move it to another article, or delete it. Personally, I think improving the namesakes section (or writing a namesakes article) is a lot lower priority than improving the cursory treatment of Esperanto history and remedying the total lack of any section in this article on Esperanto culture, literature, music, etc. --Jim Henry
I've removed the text. If you really think it belongs, please expand it with additional material into a new article and put it in Category:Esperanto. --Jim Henry 20:56, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The minor planet (1421) Esperanto is named in honor of the language. It was discovered on March 18, 1936 by Yrjö Väisälä.

  • Schmadel, Lutz D. Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (2nd ed.). Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993.

Englishesque phonetic transcription

In Wikipedia:Peer_review/Esperanto, Mark Dingemanse suggested getting rid of the rough transcriptions (e.g. [choo vee pah-ROH-lahss ess-peh-RAHN-tohn?]) now that we have IPA transcriptions. I'll do that in a few days if no one objects. --Jim Henry 17:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Size of the article

After adding material as recommended by the FAC objectors and peer reviewers, the article is now over 35KB. Any suggestions about which sections could most profitably be abridged or spun off into separate articles? IMO, the Esperanto in mainstream media section is the most easily dispensible - we might move the whole section into a see also article. The section on Writing system could probably stand to lose some or all of the extended discussion of ASCII transcriptions, Latin-3, Unicode, and locales. --Jim Henry 22:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

vowel vs. syllable

Sorry, I really think we should stick to saying Esperanto stress is on the penultimate vowel, not syllable. Of course, it's the vowel that defines the syllable, but saying that the stress is on the penultimate syllable causes people to make mistakes with words like familio, which they expect to be trisyllabic [fa.'mi.ljo] based on analogy with the Romance source languages. More recent Esperanto grammars often avoid this problem by saying "next-to-last vowel", and I've heard several people express appreciation as to how clear that is. kwami 23:22, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

number of speakers

I've changed the figure to the best guess on Vikipedio, [5]. The Vikipedia article reports a guestimate that there are 1000 native speakers, 10,000 native-like speakers, 100,000 fluent speakers, a million conversant with the language, and 10 million who've studied a bit of the basics, so a best guess would be 100,000 to one million speakers, depending on your definition of a "speaker". --kwami 19:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Sorry for repeating the info at the link here, but I don't know if everyone reading this page will be literate in Esperanto! kwami
I'm not sure I fully trust Dr. Culbert's figures, but they seem to have more solid methodology behind them than Dr. Lindstedt's guesstimate. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

edit

Removed the bit about E especially helping with IndoEuropean languages. Yes, Italian would be quite easy because of the shared vocab, but I doubt the improvement of learning time of Russian or Persian would be much greater than, say, Japanese. I found Japanese to be rather easy after picking up Esperanto. And I had studied Spanish for years without much to show for it, so it wasn't just the second-language effect: when I learned a new construction in Japanese, I translated into E, and that made me comfortable enough with it to think directly in Japanese, rather than going through English as I would've done otherwise. The one relevant section of the propedeutic article seems to support this position. --kwami 10:42, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Use in media

At least one theatrical movie was made in this language, Incubus (1965)

Final consonant clusters

Final clusters are uncommon except in learned vocabulary, foreign names, and poetic elision of final o.

Can someone point out an instances of learnéd vocabulary which have final consonant clusters? (Not a final cluster in the root - you don't have to look at technical vocabulary to find that - but a final cluster in the actual word.) --Jim Henry | Talk 15:01, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, that was sloppy. Just corrected it. kwami 22:18, 2005 May 12 (UTC)
P.S. If anyone recalls any such words besides cent, my 'correction' needs to be corrected, and they should be added to the phonotactics section of Esperanto phonology.
Remember the preposition post? /st/ in its end, though, surely, they can yet say final consonant clusters are uncommon.

United Citizens Alliance

The question of whether the UCA is significant to the language Esperanto, in a wikipedia context, is a complicated one. It is important to note here that despite what a number of people here on Wikipedia have said, the UCA is a fairly large and growing international entity which, as is pointed out below, has numerous offices and projects all over the world.

Given this status, it is at least as significant to the language as SAT, but I believe for different reasons. SAT is a much older organization, but its activities and influence are limited to certain areas. The UCA on the other hand is a fairly young organization, but has shown a pattern of rapid growth in the time it has been around, and also is a much more broad spectrum organization with many different kinds of projects and programs, in many different areas.

The original mention of the UCA in this article was perhaps too significant, however that does not warrant its deletion altogether, and I think most will agree that the current changes are appropriate. GregorU 16:54, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

since this seems an almost non-existant organisation whose article is being considered for deletion, i dont think the reference should remain especially since it seem to indicate that this is a large organisation, and significant to the language. --vierstein

Agreed. In fact, I remember it being removed before. kwami 20:09, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)
I removed it before, when it was more widespread. The re-added stuff seemed less problematic to me, but it doesn't matter much to me either way.
When I last checked, the UCA didn't even have their web site up. The refs in this article struck me as more of an ad than anything else. SAT's also pretty minor, but at least they've been around since the twenties, so we know they're a real organization. For all I know, UCA's one person sitting in front of their computer. kwami 21:30, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)
The UCA has offices and projects in almost two dozen countries and coordinates humanitarain aid programs all over the world. (For some reason no one was bothering to go past the flash-based welcome screen for the OHA website, so the welcome screen has been taken down.) Trishkincade 28 June 2005 14:24 (UTC)
I'd love to include a note on the UCA, as soon as there's some sort of verification of its activities! -- other than claims on a web site (which BTW is still little more than a front page). I get the eery impression reading what little is there that I'm reading about the Dear Leader: Hegemon Wolf did this, Hegemon Wolf said that, Hegemon Wolf has big plans for the future, ... kwami 2005 June 29 01:16 (UTC)
Have you typed "United Citizens Alliance" into google lately? Indymedia centers have picked up at least one of our press releases. And as to the nature of the website; go to the President's website and it it seems to be pretty much the same kind of thing. "George Bush did this, George Bush did that. George Bush plans to do this with the budget over the course of next year..." This page is for the Office of Hegemony Affairs, and is basically the UCA's counterpart to Whitehouse.gov. On our old server we had one large website for the UCA that had a little information about every aspect of the UCA. However there were some major changes in 2004 to the way parts of the UCA are organized, and it was decided that rather than continue to update, or try to rennovate that website, after transferring it to our new server, we would scrap it completely and rebuild our web presence from scratch. We have 30-40 websites for various UCA agencies and departments, under construction and scheduled to open as they are completed over the next year or so. The OHA website, in addition to being the website that deals with Hegemony Affairs, is also the primary web portal that connects them all together. And as I'm sure you noticed, the OHA website isn't technically open yet, and won't be until August; but there is certainly enough information about who we are and what we are doing to prove the organization is fairly large and involved in some significant humanitarian projects.Trishkincade 29 June 2005 12:37 (UTC)

This reasonable mention was just edited out:

Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda and United Citizens Alliance, but most others are specifically Esperanto organizations.

I think that if we ever add something back in, this would be an appropriate wording. kwami 21:03, 2005 July 23 (UTC)

I have readded the above, using what I believe is the correct Esperanto form of the UCA's name. GregorU 22:00, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the Esperanto form given, 'Unuigxintaj Civitanaj Aliancaj'. Despite its presence on the organisation's websites, it makes no sense in the language. I find it dubious whether this body can be referenced as using Esperanto as a working language - not just because of the lack of verifiable size and activity mentioned, but also the fact that it misspells even its own name in the language and uses English on its websites. --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 01:01, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

The UCA is in the middle of its transition into Esperanto, and while the administration has begun working in Esperanto, the Esperanto versions of UCA websites won't be ready for another couple months. The English versions of our websites are still being remodeled, however I haven't personally seen the spelling Gregor used on any of our websites. I expect the UCA Esperanto Commission will be scrutinizing the English websites before they go public, and of course they have complete control over the Esperanto versions of the websites.Trishkincade 13:08, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

See here (second paragraph - I'm assuming that by 'our' you mean 'UCA'). --Gabriel Beecham/Kwekubo 23:18, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
I'm clip&pasting in case the original is lost:
The Unuigxintaj Civitanaj Aliancaj (United Citizens Alliance), founded in 2002, is a civil rights oriented international reform organization.
kwami 01:03, 2005 July 31 (UTC)

LOL, I see what you mean. I'll talk to someone in web services about the typo. My original statement is still true though, the Esperanto Commission will be looking over the English version of the site before it is finished. Trishkincade 01:12, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

new template: subarticleof

I have replaced a few substituted instances of the template {{Main}} by {{seesubarticle}}. This because the accompanying template {{seemain}} was hopelessly confusing with Main. I have placed the accompanying template {{subarticleof}} on the according subarticles. For feedback and suggestions please visit Template talk:seesubarticle and Template talk:subarticleof. Thanks --MarSch 11:34, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Target Audience

I'm sorry, but this seems to be a classic case of somebody 'getting in first' and writing an entry to show how clever THEY are...not to inform. I cite 'alveolar trill', labiodental fricative', 'allophones', agglutinative', 'morpheme', 'deictic' and 'propeduetic'. None of this was mentioned (or necessary) when I learned Esperanto. Esperanto is supposed to be simple and accessible to all; what chance has the language got if nobody can even understand its description in their mother tongue?. Chris R, UK

You have a good point. On the other hand, the articles aren't designed to teach people Esperanto (that would be in Wikibooks), and our audience may include people who know the basics of the language, but want to learn more about the details. We could probably do a better job of making the main article more accessible, rather than just short, and saving the technobabble for the subarticles. In the end, though, the same problem will arise. Maybe a disclaimer just under the intro, directing would-be learners to good teaching websites? kwami 09:32, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)
I've started editing out the technical terminology. Hopefully it should read a little better now for the non-linguist, but it needs another pass or two. kwami 08:47, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

Thank-you Kwami. The entry now reads much better; It is more "user-friendly", and so clear and simple that even I can understand it :-). Chris R, UK

Growing community?

IMO, this recent revert is appropriate if and only if evidence is cited of the community's growth. Comments? - PhilipR 18:50, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I mostly reverted it because the text that replaced it, "a small number of people", made it sound like the extent of Esperanto was 5 people in a basement somewhere. Perhaps "a relatively small community" would be better? DenisMoskowitz 20:20, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
That sounds like weasle wording. What's "relatively"? Relative to English? to Interlingua? Almost anything we say is going to sound POV to someone. At a million people, more or less, the community is pretty small. The evidence is out there that the number has been growing or holding steady, depending on the vagaries of the era. Right now I believe it's growing. It's not an impressive rate of growth, but I think it's important to mention it, to correct the common impression that no one speaks Esperanto anymore. The language was very much in the public eye in the past, and people interpret the current lack of publicity to mean a lack of speakers, as if the language were moribund. I believe that was the motivation for the original wording: not (necessarily) as propaganda, but to correct a common misperception. Philip is right, we should be able to substantiate the claim. But the phrase "a small but growing community" is accurate and entirely appropriate to the goals of an encyclopedia. kwami 21:52, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
I'm starting to wonder. The E community has definitely grown, but how has it grown compared to world population? The Kongreso attendance numbers haven't gone up all that much, despite the fact that transportation is so much quicker and cheaper now. Does anyone have an idea? kwami 08:52, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)
Well, congresses were once a year then and every day in some place -- now. People have a wide range of congresses to choose: that's why the UK-attendance didn't grow much. --Slavik IVANOV 00:03, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I took out "growing community", because I'm not sure that it has grown over the 10 or 15 years. It may have done so, but I don't know of any proof. There's apparently growth in the developing world, but that may be offset by the decline in the former Soviet bloc. Also, if you take Culbert's figure seriously, then the two best estimates we have are Johannes Dieterle's 1928 figure of 127,000 and Culbert's -- what, late 1980s figure? I'll say 1987 -- of 1.6 million. That would suggest a growth rate of 4% per year. By that standard we should be at about 3.4 million by 2005. But nobody talks like that. So, I say it's an open question whether Eo is growing significantly --Chris 14:00, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

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