Talk:Esperanto/Archive 6

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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)

A critique addressed by Ido

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would this picture have any relevance to the article?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five vowels like Spanish, Swahili and Japanese?

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

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

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

Collation

Anon's addition:

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

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

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

Featured article candidate again?

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

Esperanto Template

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

Esperanto topics
This article is part of the Esperanto series
Language
Grammar · Phonology · Orthography · Vocabulary · Etymology
History
Zamenhof · Proto-Esperanto · Unua Libro · Declaration of Boulogne · Fundamento · Montevideo Resolution · Prague Manifesto
Culture and media
Esperantist · Esperantujo · Film · La Espero · Libraries · Literature · Music · Native speakers · Pop culture references · Publications · Symbols · Zamenhof Day
National Associations
Australia · Britain · British Youth · British Labour · Canada · Quebec · USA
Organizations and services
Amikeca Reto · Esperanto Academy · Kurso de Esperanto · Encyclopedia · Pasporta Servo · Plouézec Meetings · TEJO · UEA · SAT · World Congress · Youth Congress · Congress of the Americas · Skolta Esperanto Ligo
Criticism
Esperantido · Propedeutic value · Reformed · Riism · vs. Ido · vs. Interlingua · vs. Novial
Related topics
Auxiliary language · Constructed language · Ido · Interlingua · Novial · Volapük · Signuno · Anationalism
Wikimedia
Portal · Task force · Vikipedio · Vikivortaro · Vikicitaro · Vikifonto · Vikilibroj · Vikikomunejo · Vikispecoj

Any comments, criticisms?

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

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

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

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

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

No "Criticisms" link? kwami

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

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

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

Looks good! kwami

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

Learning skills

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RahXephon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esperanto WikiPortal

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

8 million impossible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Esperanto and Ido compared

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

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

"Indo-european based"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

reprinted in:

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

Translation request

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

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

Phonology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(*) Teorie oni povas distingi kvar duonvokalojn:

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

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

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

(*) Theoretically one can distinguish four semivowels:

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

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

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

kwami 01:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

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

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

complicate things how?

Hi Revolución,

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

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

Easy to pronounce

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

About External Links: Criticism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Native speakers

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

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

Meaing

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

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