Talk:Esperanto as an international language

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Contents 1 Sexist constructs 2 Klingon 3 expansion 4 Possibly exaggerated claims 5 Neutrality 6 Article needs different structure 7 "non-European" morphology 8 Can we find a source? 9 Criticisms? 10 Elvish

[edit] Sexist constructs

I tried to integrate the point-counterpoint nature of this page by putting all the related arguments together while maintaining NPOV. I think I have mostly succeeded, but I encourage those from both sides of the argument to point out parts that might be construed as biased. I personally don't really care, so I though I would be a good person to do it.

However, I have to say that the pro-Esperanto responses to the sexism issue are kind of weak. The bit about being "gender-specific" is lame. I don't see why Esperantists can't just do what people have done to remove sexism from other languages, like English, by stigmatizing gender-specific words and using generic forms for all instances. "Steward" and "Stewardess" has been replaced by flight attendant. Within the acting community, "actress" has been mostly replaced by "actor", and you hardly ever run across references to things like "lady lawyer" or "woman doctor" anymore, and when you do, they are rightly labeled as sexist. I don't see any reason why you can't just say "doktoro" all the time and only use "doktorino" or "virdoktoro" when it is necessary to describe the gender of the doctor. I suppose this isn't done because the grammar of Esperanto is consisered "set" and unchageable, which seems pretty short-sighted to me. Maybe someone with more experience with Esperanto could explain why this argument isn't made. Anyhow, I've tried to keep the handling of it in the article neutral, but I think anyone who reads it will see that the Esperanto response is weak. --Nohat 01:12, 2004 Feb 9 (UTC)

From your second paragraph it can be seen that you have a very Anglo-centric view. Getting rid of gender-specific meanings is just the way it was done in English, given the grammatical features of the English language. In German, for example, it is considered sexist to just use the male form when you mean both (i.e. a sign for neglecting the females). Hence in Germany, the feminist movement caused that more and more people use both forms, saying for example "Kollegen und Kolleginen" for "colleagues", which in written language is sometimes abbreviated as "KollegInnen". A similar use can be observed in Spanish, where the words ending in -o will certainly never get a gender-neutral meaning. There they sometimes use @ for a/o in written language. So the anti-sexism movement needs to consider the given circumstances, and decide what changes can be forced to increase awareness among speakers of that language. In Esperanto, this movement has already changed a few things, namely that more and more words are considered gender-neutral, and only next-of-kin words are still used completely gender-specifically. The word "doktoro" for example is mainly used in a gender-neutral way. The form "virdoktoro" never existed anyway, as this way of forming the male form is only used for animals. A few people still use "doktorino", mainly for anti-sexist reasons, because in their native language it is considered sexist not to mention the female form. When using the plural, one can always use the both-gender-prefix ge- (eg. gedoktoroj), which is however mainly used for next-of-kin words (i.e. words where the stem still clearly has a male meaning), e.g. gefiloj. Only speakers of languages like German would use forms like "gedoktoroj", again in order to be non-sexist. If you understand Esperanto, you can read http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/o-vortoj/seksa_signifo.html for a more detailed explanation of gender in Esperanto.

Anonymous, do you feel this is due to something inherent in German or Spanish culture, or might it be due to the grammatical gender of the German and Spanish languages, so that every word faces the problem that he/she faces in English? Because in English we use precisely the kinds of solutions you illustrate for our pronouns: he or she, s/he, etc. kwami 01:38, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

• I removed European from the sentence Defenders reply that this asymmetric treatment of male and female is not a feature of Esperanto, but only a general feature of most European languages. Why? Because I've found that most languages distinguish between the feminine and the nonfeminine, that is, they treat the feminine in a special way, for good or bad depending on one's point of view. But before saving my change, just to make sure, I pulled a random (but non-European) language book from my bookshelf... Indonesian. And sure enough, I quickly found two Indonesian examples: The word orang is used to refer to people, persons or men; and Indonesian has a term of address for a man (Tuan) and one for a woman (Nyonya)... and one for an unmarried woman (Nona)! Indeed, this asymmetry is not merely European. Ailanto 00:17, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Klingon

...no other constructed language has approached the number of Esperanto speakers or has an extensive body of literature like Esperanto.

This is interesting. Those conlangs that might compete with Esperanto in popularity have been around for much shorter periods of time. The Klingon Dictionary has sold more than a quarter of a million copies, and Klingon as a language has only existed for about 15 years. I'd like to see how Klingon does over the next hundred years; maybe it will catch up to Esperanto. You never know... :D thefamouseccles 23:21, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

15 years after it was published (so by 1902), Esperanto was already in use internationally, and 3 years later the first World Congress was held. I somehow don't think Klingon will have anything equivalent in the next 3 years - at Klingon conferences few people speak anything but English. Just because 250,000 Star Trek fans might have the Klingon dictionary on their bookshelves doesn't mean that more than a handful of the most dedicated can as much as hold the simplest conversation in Klingon. The reason is straighforward: it was never designed to be a spoken language, but to represent the way an extra-terrestrial race might speak - in someone's imagination!

Compare conlangs with what Esperanto achieved at the same period in its development - rather than speculate about what they might do should they still be around at the age Esperanto is now. Don't forget that Esperanto wasn't the first conlang - there were hundreds before it, as well as hundreds since. Also, don't imagine that the reason Esperanto hasn't been universally adopted is because of some inherent deficiency, and that all we need to do to get it accepted is to "fix" it in some way - the painful truth is that any such language will face the same political obstacles as Esperanto no matter how it might be constructed. --Tiffer 23:22, 22 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] expansion

I'll make a stab at addressing some of these issues over the next few days, as well as bringing up some new ones. Of course, I have my own biases, so I'd appreciate any feedback. kwami 01:30, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly exaggerated claims

The core grammar (fundamento) can be learned in less than one hour, the basic vocabulary (by English-speaking people) in 2 hours, and the pronunciation and spelling in half an hour.

The first claim is somewhat exaggerated, and I'm sure the second claim is extremely exaggerated... what number of roots are we estimating one can learn in two hours, and what sense of "learn" are we talking about? The pronunciation and spelling claim is probably about right, in some sense (which is still compatible with a native speaker of English occasionally writing "y" for "j" even though he "knows" that the latter is correct). I'd like to revise this, but I"m not sure what revised figures to put in place of these... anybody? --Jim Henry | Talk 19:05, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

The core grammar can be probably be learned in 10 minutes by a European polyglot, but a several hours is probably required for the average monolingual Usonian. Depends on what you mean by "basic". Throw out the participles and when you need to use the accusative, and "less than an hour" is probably about right. (Though there'd be no retention, of course.) Maybe "an hour or two"? Six 20-minute sessions should result in decent retention. If you're a European language speaker! A lot longer if you're Chinese.

I would consider "basic vocabulary" to mean the more common half of the Fundamento (~500 roots) plus derivitives. Even your European polyglot would have trouble doing that in two hours. However, from what I understand, you can teach Esperanto 15 minutes a day to monolingual Usonian third graders, and by the end of the school year they can correspond to penpals in China. I would consider that to be competence in basic vocabulary, though of course it doesn't tell us how quickly they would learn to speak it. kwami 00:58, 2005 July 20 (UTC)

• Extremely exaggerated, I'd say too! I don't think I'd be able to learn 500 (or 1000 as stated on the page) roots in two hours. Two weeks, maybe. I dunno, even then I think that I'd be forgetting some I learned on the first days... Ailanto 00:27, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

I just took out the numbers entirely. 'A few hours' is probably as specific as it needs to be. Mithridates 02:21, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality

The first article about neutrality or euro-centrism is surprisingly unneutral in nature itself. The vocabulary, spelling and phonology are indubitably European-derived, but it is difficult to argue the same with regards to the grammar and semantics, the grammar often being described as being closer to Chinese than to any European language (in terms of regularity of conjugation and so on), and the semantics, as in every living language, is determined by the population of speakers. But the most surprising claim is in regards to syntax, which in Esperanto is 99% free, with a few exceptions (e.g. the preposition immediately preceding the word it preposes, for obvious reasons).

The fact that these claims are mentioned isn't a problem in itself, but then the article would be more suited to a title such as "Criticisms of Esperanto" with a separate article entitled "Arguments for Esperanto". I don't however, think this is necessary, as any Wikipedia article is expected to be neutral and balanced.

The claims about the time needed to learn the language is exaggerated in most people's cases, although the specified time-frame is not impossible for some people (Tolstoi being a notable example). Sumthingweird 11:52, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

If you knew Chinese, you wouldn't think they were similar! Also, only Eo word order is free (as in Latin, Greek, Russian). Syntax is more than word order, however. It includes such things as relative clauses and other embedding. Eo syntax is completely European & IndoEuropean. The morphology is much more regular than any IndoEuropean language that I'm aware of, and because it's agglutinative it's been compared to Turkish or Hungarian. However, that's a very superficial similarity: they are completely different in the details. (Possessive pronouns are not suffixes, for example. Such differences are much greater than the difference between Eo and IndoEuropean morphology.) As for things determined by the culture of the speakers, it's true that you can be polite in Eo in the European fashion of saying 'please' and 'thank you', or in the African fashion of inquiring about one's family. But that's pragmatics. Semantics deals with the meanings and implications of words and phrases, and these are again completely European. I'm thinking of Japanese, which is full of concepts there are no equivalents for in Eo, whereas you can translate into Eo from French or Polish literally, word for word, without a problem. kwami 18:31, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

I still maintain my point - that the section on "neutrality" is not neutral in itself. I disagree with your interpretation on a few finer points, but I don't want to get bogged down in detail so I'll just point out an example: in Esperanto you can say please in the European so-called fascist way "bonvolu", or in a more introspective way "mi petas", or even the passive "se placxas al vi". Thankyou can be expressed "Dankon", "Mi dankas al vi", "Mi dankas vin", right down to "Vi estas gxentila" or "kia dankinda ago", most of which nuances are difficult to accurately translate into English. This last example was used by Claude Piron in his book "Le défi des langues". But more importantly, this article tends to talk about linguistic and non-PC elements of the language, which are useful enough to talk about later on. A section about neutrality should probably be about neutrality. The main point of Esperanto is that diplomatically, it is undeniably more neutral than English or any other national language. Whether or not you agree is a different point - a Wikipedia article should deal in facts, not opinion, and when discussing opinion, should express the range of opinions unless the article is entitled "Criticisms of..." which this article is not. This article is entitled "Esperanto as an international language" but only briefly discusses Esperanto as an international language. Sumthingweird 02:54, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

You're right about that - as it stands it is an article on criticism, rather than neutrality. Please feel free to rewrite it. Eo is neutral in the sense that you can say things however you like, and coin new words as you like, and as long as it makes sense, it's good Esperanto - something which isn't true of any ethnic language. This is important, and makes the language tremendously easier to learn than ethnic languages. And there is an element of this in the grammar: "blue" can be an adjective or a verb; the definite article is optional, as is the Slavic aspectual system; the verbal root far can be used as a preposition; and you can coin conditional participles. However, it should be born in mind that only Europeans consider Eo to be neutral grammatically or semantically: 'Neutral' only means neutral with respect to the various European languages. That's something that's too often forgotten in Eo marketing campaigns. Only citing Europeans and saying that anything that disagrees with this is POV is somewhat disingenuous. kwami 05:01, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, we seem to agree that it is near impossible to have a language which is neutral in all respects, especially linguistically. I suppose we are then discussing two different issues - the linguistic neutrality of an international language, and the diplomatic neutrality of an international language. Certainly English, Spanish, Russian, etc, are not neutral in the same respect as we would consider Esperanto to be neutral. Perhaps I have some kind of preconception as to what a section "Neutrality" in "Esperanto as an international language" should be about. Neutrality is, I'm sure most would agree, the point of an international conlang. As to its ease of use - that is a variable for people of different backgrounds. Sumthingweird 08:25, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

But the two are intertwined. Let's suppose Esperanto were made the international language of diplomacy, business, and higher education. Then Europeans, who find the language almost simplistic to learn, would have a marked advantage over Asians. A European and an Asian speaking Esperanto are not on equal footing. How is that 'neutral'? True, Asians could become functional in it much more quickly than they do today in English, but not as the near afterthought that Europeans find it. This 'neutrality' is a bit like racial "equality" in the USA: Legal equality is not terribly impressive when education, job opportunitities, salaries, access to the ballot box, and imprisonment rates (for the same offences) are all heavily biased towards whites. Esperanto is similarly biased heavily toward Europe. I love the language, but I also love not being pulled over by the police for DWB every time I get in my car: It doesn't make me think the thing is neutral. kwami 08:52, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Lol. Well, you might think so, but apparently people in Asian countries don't necessarily agree with you. The bulk of the Esperanto-speaking population is in Eastern Asia. For many of them whom I've spoken to, they find Esperanto a lot easier to learn and a lot more immediately usable than, for example, English. Of course the only languages that are fully unbiased towards any group are the a priori languages, but none has so far become very popular because they do not base themselves on any other evolved language, and so rely on a lot of luck to be suitable for a speaking population. I suppose that the issue is then relative neutrality - Esperanto is easier to learn for some people than to others, but the discrepancy is to a much lesser extent than to any real alternative. So you see how we have different points of view. Both are valid, and we each make points that the other has not, but then of course a Wikipedia article should have facts about the subject, not merely opinions. Sumthingweird 04:20, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

As long as we stick to facts, then. I've had very different experiences with Asian Esperantists. Sure, the language is much easier than English, but that isn't saying much. Plenty of people I've met have expressed frustration at how illogical Esperanto is, with the only reason they can see for it being the comfort of European language speakers. kwami 05:37, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article needs different structure

As the argument is called "Esperanto as an international language", it shouldn't just be structured as a collection collection of criticisms to that role with some replies. Instead, there should first be a paragraph introducing why Esperanto is proposed as an international languages (i.e. the Esperantists' conception of the language problem and how Esperanto might solve it), and then the list of criticism can come after it (still with replies and possibly counter-reblies by critics). Unless someone disagrees with this, I will soon write a first version of the new introductary section. Marcoscramer 00:07, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Go for it. This is one of the Eo articles I never got to myself - next on my list, actually, but I won't get to it anytime soon. kwami 00:15, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Maybe the "criticisms" might be moved to a new article, such as Criticism of Esperanto? [[User:JonMoore|— —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)]] 00:53, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

I disagree: Almost all of the criticism against Esperanto is criticism against its use as an international language (hardly anyone objects to their being people who do it as a hobby). So this criticism should stay here as well.

I have now written the first version of the new introductory section, and added a few bits to the section on criticisms. If other people feel that some of it is POV, please improve it! I made some effort not to make it too POV, but since I have strong feelings bout the subject, it might not be perfect. Marcoscramer 16:14, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Good job. It's now a much better article. I copyedited about half of it, and took out some stuff I thought was fluff (much of which wasn't from you), but left the flow and the points you made intact - or at least I think I did! kwami 02:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "non-European" morphology

Since the claim is often made that Eo morph is non-Indo-European, I was wondering if anyone could actually justify the claim. Otherwise I think it needs to be debunked. Stringing affixes together in Eo isn't much different than German; the primary differences are that the system is more regular in Eo (an artifact of its being constructed), and the invariability of its roots. But lots of roots in all Indo-European languages are invariable (Greek mous- "mouse" below is one example); the fact that Eo is nearly regular in this regard (except for words like 'panjo') is again an artifact of its being consciously designed.

The article states that "An agglutinative morphology means not just that complex concepts are expressed by adding multiple affixes to word roots, but that its grammatical inflections work the same way." But which grammatical inflections are we talking about? The verbs aren't agglutinative that way; we can't say that -s in indicative or -i is past, for example. The plural and accusative nouns and adjectives are very much like Classical Greek: mousa (Esperanto: muso), mousan (muson), mousai (mousoj), musās (musojn). That's it for the agglutinative inflections in Eo: the accusative plural is formed by plural+accusative rather than a separate suffix, as in Greek. Are we going to call Eo morphology "non-European" because of that one tidbit? Does it do anything to make Eo "neutral"?

kwami 10:43, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

When I learned Swahili, I was surprised to see how similar its morphology is to that of Esperanto: German (my mother tongue) doesn't resemble either of them much in its morphology. Let me illustrate that with a few examples:

Use of regular affixes (in eo and sw) vs. inflection in the root and varying affixes (in de):

German	Esperanto	Swahili
groß	granda	kubwa
Größe	grandeco	ukubwa
lang	longa	-refu
Länge	longeco	urefu
reich	ricxa	tajiri
Reichtum	ricxeco	utajiri
Kind	infano	mtoto
Kindheit	infaneco	utoto

(Eo and sw always use the affixes -eco and u- and don't change the root; German needs a number of different affixes and sometimes changes the root)

Conjugating verbs:

German	Esperanto	Swahili
ich sage	mi diras	ninasema
ich sagte	mi diris	nilisema
ich werde sagen	mi diros	nitasema
ich soll sagen	mi diru	niseme
ich würde sagen	mi dirus	ningesema
sagend	dirante	anayesema
(der gesagt hat)	dirinta	aliyesema
(der sagen wird)	dironta	atakayesema

(in eo and sw, there is an analogy between indicative and participles (in eo, the vowel stays, while s gets replaced by nt; in sw, the tense marker (na, li or ta/taka) stays, while "ye" is added); in German no such analogy exists; for some forms, German needs two words, while eo and sw always just need one)

I could think of many more examples in other parts of morphology (it would just take ages to write them all down). I take it that it must be possible to argue in similar ways with Turkish instead of Swahili, since it is often named as an example (I personally can't confirm this, though, as I don't know any Turkish). Marcoscramer 23:23, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

If you want to show how one language is different from another, then we could show how Eo parallels German but not Swahili in other aspects. What we're really talking about here is regularity. Swahili is a reasonably regular language; German is not. Perhaps that has something to do with agglutinativity, but I think it would be less misleading to say Eo is 'regular' than to say it's morphology isn't European, just because it's regular. Also, Esperanto syntax is closer to Romance than Germanic, so there's that. The German comparison isn't the best; but it shows that stringing morphemes together to form new words isn't alien to European languages. There is some regularity in the Eo verbal paradigm that is innovative. For instance, Eo has future participles, which don't exist in any Indo-European language that I've heard of, and which you could argue is paralleled in Swahili. But atakayesema is perhaps closer to li kiu diros than to dironta. Again, this is a product of regularity, and the Eo verbal system isn't agglutinative (the o doesn't just indicate future tense, but each participle is a separate morpheme; also, German sagte and gesagt have the same t which you migh claim marks past tense, so there is some parallel there). Most European languages are annoyingly irregular, and when we see nice regular Swahili or Turkish (actually rather irregular, but regular in many of the places where European languages are irregular, which tends to get noticed first), then they seem similar to mostly regular Esperanto. But nearly every element of Eo morphology and syntax can be found in the European languages Z was familiar with. kwami 01:16, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

It's not about regularity: A language can have vowel-shifts inside roots in a very regular fashion, and a language can also have a very irregular system of affixes. The main similarity between Eo and Sw is that both never change their roots, but use only affixes to derive new words from old ones, wheras German and English both use a mix of changing roots (vowel shifts) and adding affixes (an example for English if hot --> heat). Marcoscramer 13:34, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Sure. (I think I mentioned that above as well.) But many if not all European languages have agglutinative alternates for such ablaut. And in English at least, slang words or extended meanings tend to use agglutinative morphology, indicating that it is the more productive. For example, in deriving a noun from hot (as in 'a hot babe'), you get hotness rather than heat; the past tense of hang (as from a gibbet) is hanged, not hung; the plural of mouse (the computer input device) is mouses, not mice. Regardless, the majority of nouns, adjectives, and verbs don't even have the option of ablaut: cold → cold, red → redness, elect → elected; cat → cats. German has all the same options. Now, Esperanto doesn't contain all the morphology of the European languages, but the morphology it does have is widespread in the European languages. Saying it's not European for this is like saying it's not European because it doesn't have gender, or because its cardinal numerals aren't inflected for number or case. A lot of the morphology has been dropped. Also, I believe most European creoles have invariable roots, though perhaps it's questionable to call them European. (What about Lingua franca?) kwami 22:33, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, I certainly wouldn't doubt that all morphological characteristics can be traced to some characteristic in some European language. What is important however, is that the overall morphological system is quite un-European in that it uses no ablaut at all. Almost all European languages use ablaut quite a lot, whereas many non-European languages don't. Isn't that enough to say that Esperanto morphology is in some respect non-European? Marcoscramer 20:19, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, it is non-European in that sense. When you put it that way it's more convincing: Eo lacks something common to Indo-European languages (excepting creoles). However, if you say "Eo has non-European morphology", people will read it in the positive sense that Eo has morphological forms found otherwise only outside Europe. That's how I read it, and why I objected. If we can word this so it's not misleading, I wouldn't have any objections. Maybe something like the way you just did, that "Eo completely lacks the ablaut common to Indo-European languages" or some such. kwami 21:48, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, how about starting a list of elements of Esperanto grammar not found in western IE languages?

• accusative plural compounded instead of portmanteau (-ojn vs. Greek ās)
• future participles (-onto, -oto)
• lack of ablaut/inflection of roots (except, marginally, for pet names)

Separate word endings for parts of speech is sometimes given as an example, but Russian has separate declensions for nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. The only essential difference is that Eo has a consistant ending for nominative singular nouns; in Russian this is the case for feminine and neuter nouns, but not for the masculine. kwami 02:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I added a section to Esperanto grammar covering this. It would be interesting if you can come up with other examples. kwami 03:21, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

(For the record, it appears that some Eur. languages do have future participles, so we're left with just -jn and lack of ablaut/stem change as being "non-European". kwami 08:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Can we find a source?

Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, say, the Romance, Semitic, Indic, Bantu, and Chinese languages would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions

I'm not saying I agree/disagree but it seems like somthing like this needs a sorce.Cameron Nedland 19:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms?

I have no axe to grind either way on this, being a multi-lingual English speaker, completely unthreatened by the notion of Esperanto as an international language. This is simply from the point of view of a neutral observer.

From where I stand, the "Criticisms" section of the article appears to consist largely of defenses against such criticisms, rather than the criticisms themselves. This is not important in itself, but the article doesn't come across as totally neutral. This is understandable, since most people who would be moved to write on this page would be likely to be passionate esperantists, but it may be worth revising with that in mind.

Incidentally, I think Klingon has one thing going for it that Esperanto doesn't. Although many people may intellectually approve of the concept of an international language, in practice an international language doesn't have a great deal of utility (unless your employment or business causes you to deal with people from other countries frequently, which is a small segment of any population. So whilst we may like it in principle, in practice we have little or no reason to use it. By contrast, people use Klingon for a reason of itself - for entertainment value. Johno 14:50, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Elvish

The evlish language spoken by the Noldor, created by J.R.R. Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings and teh Silmarillion, has a fairly full dictionary, if you realise that many words are formed by combining otehr words, such as Mordor, meaning dark land. THi is somewhat similar to Eo. Sindarin also has a fairly full dictionary, if you read the books which use it, particulaary the appendecies. teh Silmarillion has a dictionary (using Latin script), and includes the rules of word formation, while Rings has a table showing the characters used. I would imagine that a large part of the reason that the language is not in greater use is because of the difficulty of writing eitehr Feanorian script or the Angethras Daeron, which are not to the best of my knowledge availabel in any standard charecter set. Unlike Klingon, all the elvish languages in Tolkien's works are based on Old English, and so it is not overly hard for a speaker of a Germanic language to learn, althogh it is hardeer to read than Eo.