Talk:Esperanto

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[edit] Most Widely Spoken?

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

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

[edit] Accessibility

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

[edit] This article is glowingly positive!

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

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

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

Still, more references and citations are needed. -- FayssalF - Wiki me up® 08:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
That is how it works in Wikipedia, though. Articles are written by people who are interested in a subject. All you can do is check for notability, verifiability and NPOV. Wikipedia is supposed to be a secondary reference, not a guide to the relative importance of what "matters" in the world. One oughtn't cut down existing big articles on "hobby" topics; instead one should work at writing bigger articles on everything. --Cam 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the anonymous "glowingly positive" assessment was made in regards to an earlier draft, but the current article seems like an attempt to achieve NPOV by introducing unsupported claims as statements of fact. I'm referring to the Criticism of Esperanto section, where sweeping claims like "The vocabulary and grammar are European, not universal" are presented without necessary qualification. Only the careful reader will realize that this statement is an unsupported claim, rather than a statement of fact. The wording could be improved, e.g. "Some critics claim the vocabulary and grammar are not universal."

Another improvement would be the addition of links to further analysis of some of the criticisms, so that they are not simply presented in a vacuum. For example, former UN translator Claude Piron has addressed this particular criticism extensively; it might be helpful to include a reference to http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm Does anyone object? Hoss Firooznia (talk) 23:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

How is "the vocabulary and grammar of Esperanto are European, not universal" an unsupported claim? I'm looking at the "Etimologia Vortaro de Esperanto", and it identifies almost every root as coming most directly from English, French, Latin, Italian or Greek, with frequent references to cognates in Polish or Russian--usually when the word is also found in the Western European languages. There is no question that the vocabulary is as European as any European language. Grammar is harder, as Esperanto is more artificial here, but it's not ergative, it's not agglutinative, it's not isolating, etc. Claude Piron has a counterargument, but that makes the question of the European nature of the grammar debatable, not an unsupported claim.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I added in these criticisms to address this issue of the article being too positive, which I agree it was. However, they are presented as criticisms - whether they are reasonable is irrelevant, as is obvious from the fact that several of them contradict each other. Anyway, support can be found in the specialized articles, which cover claims and counter-claims, as well as things such as the European etymologies which Prosfilaes mentioned. The only non-European morphemes in Z's original vocabulary are two roots he made up, ĝi (it, s/he) and -ujo (suffix for containers), plus, possibly, the jussive mood in -u from Hebrew. (-u could also be from Latin, or from earlier European-derived conlang proposals - it's hard to know with such a short form.) The only non-European aspect of the grammar is the use of plural plus accusative rather than a separate suffix, and this isn't actually taken from a non-European language. kwami (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, Prosfilaes, Esperanto is almost perfectly agglutinative, the only exception being pet names, but this is just a regularization of European grammar, not, say, a Turkish influence. kwami (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
Putting aside the problem of defining just what constitutes an ambiguous trait like "European-ness", it's correct to say that most of Esperanto's lexemes have been derived, directly or indirectly, from Latin. So yes, in that sense the claim about vocabulary being "European" is correct, albeit vague. (Note that if we define "Latinate" to mean "European", many languages of Europe cease to be "European".)
The claim about grammar, however, is simply false. Esperanto's system of freely combining invariant morphemes is rather alien to speakers of the Latinate or Germanic languages of Europe. You're correct that Esperanto does not have an ergative-absolutive distinction, like say, the European language Basque has. And the morphology is in fact quite agglutinative, a trait that is relatively rare among languages of Europe. The typology also skews towards isolating languages, like Mandarin. My point is that claims about grammatical features being "European" or "non-European" are largely meaningless: for one thing, the grammatical features of Europe's languages vary quite a lot, and typological classifications like "fusional", "agglutinative", "isolating" and so forth are by no means confined to Europe. By such a ridiculous standard, even languages outside the Indo-European family could be criticized for being too "European". Hoss Firooznia (talk) 03:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Huh? How we define Latinate has zero effect on the meaning of the word European. --Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, that should have read "if we define 'European' to mean 'Latinate'". To criticize Esperanto's word stock for having Latinate roots is fine, but to criticize it as being "European" is considerably less meaningful, since there are European languages whose word stocks are not based on Latin. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
And why would we be defining European to mean Latinate? Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Because if the assertion is "Esperanto's word stock is primarily European", then we may need to redefine "European" as "Latinate" for the assertion to be truly meaningful. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I have no clue what you're trying to say. Latin words are European words. Saying that the vocabulary is European is just as meaningful as saying it is Latinate. More over, a significant number of words in Esperanto are Germanic in origin; to turn to more or less random page in the Etimologia Vortaro, I find 9 headwords on the 2 page spread that are Germanic in origin, and just 2 that are Latinate. I'll admit that it wasn't entirely random, and that Ŝ seems very heavy in such words, but birdo, vintro, and slipo are all fine examples of common Germanic words.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
It's entirely meaningful to point out that a speaker of Spanish, English, Portuguese, Russian or German is likely to find many cognates in Esperanto --Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but that wasn't the criticism. And we should note that the English, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers are likely to find cognates because these languages all contain large numbers of Latinate words. Additionally, the German and quite possibly the Russian will likely find many cognates due to their exposure to Latin-derived roots absorbed into their own native languages. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
whereas a speaker of Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali or Japanese is likely to find the vocabulary as alien as Klingon and and phonology difficult.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I suspect speakers of Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali and Japanese find the vocabulary and phonology of Esperanto far more familiar than that of Klingon, due to the presence of roots (again, largely Latinate) that enjoy widespread familiarity. That existing international recognition was in fact Zamenhof's motivation for choosing the roots; not the fact that they were present in any particular European language. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Chinese doesn't borrow international vocabulary; it recoins the words. Even with that, the international roots are a small chunk of the language; they all have words for wall and ship, and most of their speakers are wiser than English speakers, and don't need to borrow for adjective forms. Mono-lingual speakers of all of these languages would find Esperanto's phonology alien; for example, just because English has borrowed words starting with ps, like pseudo, but we still would find words starting with ps (pronounced as spelled) alien.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't know the exact percentages of words of English and German origin and the percentages of words ultimately of Greek origin, but they're enough that I would prefer to say European rather than Latinate.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps a better term would be "of European origin". Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The claim about grammar is not simply anything. If the system were alien to the speakers of the Latinate or Germanic languages of Europe, the language would not have taken off. --Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007
True. Yet the grammar and morphology are relatively alien to Europeans. However, the flexibility of the language allows Esperanto to conform to patterns familiar to European audiences when necessary. In fact, Zamenhof made use of this flexibility to introduce the language in a European-friendly guise. As he wrote in La Unua Libro:
The various grammatical inflexions, the reciprocal relations of the members of a sentence, are expressed by the junction of immutable syllables. But the structure of such a synthetic language being altogether strange to the chief European nations, and consequently difficult for them to become accustomed to, I have adapted this principle of dismemberment to the spirit of the European languages, in such a manner that anyone learning my tongue from grammar alone, without having previously read this introduction—which is quite unnecessary for the learner—will never perceive that the structure of the language differs in any respect from that of his mother-tongue. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
On one hand, it is true that many of the grammatical features of Esperanto are more artificial rather than European.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The point isn't that the grammatical features of Esperanto are "artificial" -- in fact, they're quite natural in that "natural" languages use them. The point is that there is no such thing as a "European" grammar. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand, it's not ergative, and its genders are typical of European languages. (And yes, when I say European languages, I don't mean Basque, which isn't related to anything else, and has no political power.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The political power of Basque is irrelevant. If lacking an ergative-absolutive distinction makes a language "European", then most languages found outside Europe are also "European". Which demonstrates, I think, how pointless this criticism is. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The strongest defense to the "too European" complaint would be to show evidence that the origins were not in fact European, or to show some clearly non-European features.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I think the strongest defense is to point out that grammatical typology is not bound to geography. Ergative-absolutive languages are found both inside Europe and outside Europe. Nominate-accusative languages are found both inside Europe and outside Europe. Agglutinative, isolating, etc... both inside and outside Europe. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Again, my complaint is not that the criticisms are mentioned in the article; they definitely do have a place there. My complaint is that they are not adequately presented: they are just dumped in a list of claims without context or response. It is not enough to print what in some cases amounts to ignorant prejudices and then expect a reader to have to burrow through other articles to find the beginnings of a response. That's just misleading. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 03:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
All of the criticisms on the page have context and response. I find your response frustrating, because as far as I can tell, you want to downplay the criticisms to Esperanto. That's not the way to get an NPOV article for Esperanto. You can dismiss them as ignorant prejudices on the talk page, but they have to be taken seriously in the article itself.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't want to downplay anything. I merely sought to (a) respond to the complaint that the article is "glowingly positive", and (b) ask for a bit more balance in the "Criticisms" section. That's all. :-) Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
The "glowingly positive" comment was made when nearly all critical material had been removed to the subarticle. I wrote the current contents in response. Esperanto isn't just a language, it's a language project, so a section on criticism is warranted. However, we can't start detailed analysis of every point without getting back to the bloat we once had - the section is already a substantial fraction of the length of the subarticle. There are several defenses already in the section - that Esperanto wasn't supposed to be equally representative, for practical reasons; wasn't supposed to convey a particular culture, for reasons of equality; as well as pointing out that several criticisms contradict each other.
"Of European origin" would be okay [added it], but the grammar is clearly based on European languages (Romance, Germanic, Slavic) and biased toward speakers of European languages. That's not a problem in America, Africa, or the Pacific, where education is in European languages, but it is definitely a problem in East Asia. Once you look from a vantage point outside 'Standard European' languages, it becomes glaringly obvious just how European Espo is. kwami (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
What are you talking about? As a strongly agglutinative language, Esperanto has very few grammatical similarities to any European languages, particularly Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages! Yes, the word roots are derived from these languages. No, the grammar is absolutely, positively, not. Of the languages that I have some working familiarity with (English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese), Esperanto is by far the most grammatically akin to Japanese - about as far from Romance/Germanic/Slavic grammar as one can get. Skybum (talk) 11:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Learn Japanese, and you'll no longer think Esperanto is similar. The Japanese certainly don't. Agglutinativity is a minor aspect of grammar, and derives from Slavic: Zamenhof noticed productive Russian derivational suffixes, and merely extended them to their logical conclusion. Look at the parts of speech: prepositions, personal pronouns, adjectives, etc, none of which occur in Japanese, but which are universal in the source languages of Esperanto (except for adverbs in German). Subordinator kiu is the same word as the interrogative kiu - Japanese doesn't have the former, and many languages which do find the identity puzzling. Esperanto grammar is so similar to 'standard' European that it can be picked up without much conscious effort by most Europeans, but it can be quite a struggle for the Japanese unless they're already familiar with a European language. kwami (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, when I said I had "working familiarity" with those languages, what I meant was that I have some experience with what I'm talking about. I took two years of undergraduate Japanese, and while that only leaves me speaking at a crudely conversational level (far from fluent), it does give me a reasonably good baseline for comparison. As far as Slavic agglutinativity goes, are you quite sure of that? I also studied Russian for six months -- nothing agglutinative there -- and looking through the literature I can't find any evidence for this, beyond some somewhat tentative suggestions of agglutinative structures in the Balkan languages. So, I still maintain that Esperanto grammar is a good deal more akin to Japanese than any European language I know. (Maybe Basque or Finno-Ugric languages would be closer, but that doesn't really get us any closer to Romance / Germanic / Slavic). Agreed about the subordinator vs. interrogative kiu -- I can see how a native Japanese speaker would struggle with that. But the rest of it... no, not really. Can't see your point. And, er, Japanese doesn't have personal pronouns or adjectives? Admittedly I'm not a linguist, so perhaps what I thought were personal pronouns and adjectives were actually somehow indistinguishably different. Anyhow, I can't see that there is anything particular reason why there should be much grammatical difficulty mapping anato onto vi or midori onto verda. Where the grammatical structures are particularly concordant is in the construction of correlative words (subordinators notwithstanding), and of course the use of particles. When learning Esperanto, I found it easier to grasp concepts by mapping them back to Japanese rather than English. So, ka becomes ĉu, ga (when used as an object marker) becomes -n, -masu/-mashita/-mashoo becomes -as/-is/-us, no becomes -a, et cetra. It doesn't always work (ie volas and --ai are used in very different constructions), but there's enough to make the two languages at least as comparable as between Esperanto and any given European language.
In any case, it doesn't matter which one of us is right; the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. So the question is, are there reputable sources who make the claim that Esperanto grammar is too much based on European languages? If so, then the article should state that so-and-so claims such-and-such, and then provide a source for the claim. I would be very happy to support this; I am just uncomfortable with leaving the "based on European grammar" bit without attribution or source, as that is a statement which can be hotly contested by people acting in good faith. Skybum (talk) 21:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Actually, Esperanto helped me with my Japanese, but more because of the flexibility of its grammar, which allowed me to break out of the confines of English, than any particular similarity. (Now Turkish - there's a similar grammar to Japanese. I found I could speak basic Turkish if I thought in Japanese, but not if I thought in English.) I didn't mean to claim that Russian is agglutinative - it clearly is not - only that the agglutinativity of Esperanto was developed through the regularization of European languages, initially Russian. kwami (talk) 23:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
This illustrates a distinction that seems to be missing from the discussion: the fact that Zamenhof may have been inspired by something he encountered in a European language (in this case, a slavic one) does not make the inspired grammatical feature (in this case, agglutination) uniquely European. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you can translate 'anata' to 'vi', but if you do, it will be bad Esperanto. You can translate English, Polish, or French more or less literally into Esperanto, and the result can be well formed. You can't do that with Japanese. (Japanese words like 'anata' are nouns, not really pronouns. So is 'midori', whereas 'aoi' is a verb. The only adjective in Japanese is 'onaji'.) As for tense, '-ta' isn't past, it's perfective: When you spot a bus that hasn't yet arrived, you say basu-ga kita "the bus is here"; translating it as "the bus came" would be misleading. (You can even use '-ta' in the future, whereas Espo. '-is' can never be future.) True, IE languages are for the most part inflecting, not agglutinative, but that isn't much of a conceptual hurdle, and there's a whole lot more to grammar than that one feature.
As for sources, yes, I've seen several, though I couldn't point out which they are. We don't need to say that so-and-so claims such-and-such, because the entire section is a list of opinions, not facts. kwami (talk) 23:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] why dont i make up a language

couldnt it be possible for any person who speaks 3or more languages to make up their own languageBouse23 (talk) 18:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course. Lots of people make their own languages (conlangs). It can be quite fun. Just go ahead, and good luck!
PS. Learning Esperanto or another constructed language would be a good starting point for you, so you can avoid ”reinventing the wheel.”
NN

[edit] Nonsense on this page

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

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

Really? Have you ever met anyone who spoke Hausa? Do you contend that Hausa isn't spoke? I've never met... is a pretty lousy argument.--Prosfilaes 14:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
One can go and find speakers of the Hausa language speakers among the Hausa people.
True: the "I've never met anyone" criterion is very weak. However, that Hausa is widely spoken in documentable in places like the CIA World Factbook [1].
On the other hand, the frankly wildly POV-laced statements about the utility and number of speakers in this article strain credulity. How can estimates of the numbers of total speakers and native speakers each be off by an order of magnitude (100 000 vs. 2 000 000, & 200 vs. 2000). Also, that all of two feature films have been produced in Esperanto is not evidence of a broad and deep culture.
For a main article on such a broad subject, the lack of references and POV is embarrasing. MARussellPESE 17:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Yiddish says there's three million Yiddish speakers; Jewish Studies at Rutger's says 600,000; that's a half an order of magnitude. For languages whose speakers are spread over the world, it's hard to get a good count of how many people speak the language. Furthermore, for such languages, there's going to be a large range of fluency, and asking people whether they speak a language may get an answer that depends more on politics than actual fluency. Nobody registers native speakers of Esperanto, and given that many of them leave the movement, they are even harder to count than speakers.
Wikipedia lists 40 million speakers of Hausa, 20 times as many Esperanto. And yet the IMDB lists between two and six full length feature films in Hausa, depending on what you count. Do you contend that they don't have a broad and deep culture? Perhaps the fact that low budget for a feature film is a couple million dollars, and that Esperanto speakers are spread out enough that theaters can't justify showing movies targeted at them would be a better explanation for the lack of feature films. The time, money and cultural energy of Esperanto speakers is better spent on books, music, and other materials that are cheaply produced and easily distributed to a widely distributed audience.
You are welcome to provide more references, but I don't agree that just because it's hard to find good information on subjects that that means there's POV.--Prosfilaes 13:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
At let me also note that the count of speakers comes from Ethnologue, which is comprehensive, non-partisan and frequently referenced (see Yiddish and many other languages, which use the Ethnologue numbers.)
Sorry, but none of these comparisons are of use. Noting that WP articles don't jibe with genuine reliable sources make the points in "Criticism of Wikipedia", but does not inform the discussion.
I take exception to your insinuation of any "contentions" on my part about the Hausa culture. West Africa is not a hot-bed of movie production so — of course — there'd be few Hausa-language movies. Neither is that region a center of publishing; but I'd stack up the Hausa story-telling heritage to the best of Esperanto's literature and expect to see it excel Esperanto at every turn — as I would expect of any langage hundreds of years older. MARussellPESE 04:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
None of what comparisons? Yiddish uses the Ethnologue numbers, which is a genuine reliable source.
Your continued comments about Esperanto culture are irrelevant and WP:POV.--Prosfilaes 14:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
What about Klingon? This is from the National Review: "Despite the fact that the linguist Mark Okrand created Klingon only about a decade and half ago, many experts estimate that more people speak Klingon today than Esperanto, which was launched over a century ago. " Jonah Goldberg, March 30, 2001
Haha, that's sheer nonsense! I guess this was published by some tabloid press. No expert in artificial languages would ever claim or even believe that there are more people speaking Klingon than Esperanto. There are several thousands of Esperanto native speakers out there and about 2 million (some say more, some say less) speakers or learners of it. Klingon used to have one native speaker once, and it certainly has quite some speakers. Way more than certain dying aboriginal languages. However, they do not exceed the amount of esperantists. — N-true 09:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Your own comparisons make no points:
  • WP's "Yiddish" article to Rutger's Jewish Studies re: number of Yiddish speakers (What does that have to do with Esperanto speakers?)
  • WP's "Hausa" articles to WP's "Esperanto" article to the IMDB re: Number of movies (Compares apples to oranges.)
My commments about "Esperanto culture" are on-point when this article itself makes hyperbolic statements about such and offers not only few attributable sources, but few examples. Where are the Esperanto publishing houses? Esperanto journalism? Multi-media? Any of them commercially viable, or are they agencies of Esperanto societies? etc. A library of 25,000 Esperanto books, as stated in this article, seems awfully thin when compared to the 206,000 published last year in the UK alone.
That I disagree with unsupported claims isn't anti-Esperanto POV, it's a lack of tolerance for hyperbole. MARussellPESE 04:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
You asked how the estimates for the numbers of speakers for Esperanto could be so broadly ranging; I pointed out that languages that have speakers broad dispersed and hidden are hard to count, and I pointed out that Yiddish has the same issues.
You claim that number of feature films can be used to estimate Esperanto's culture; I pointed out that many cultures don't produce many feature films.
Wow! The number of books printed in one of the richest countries in the world with 30 times as many people as Esperanto speakers isn't apples and oranges.
You've sat here and attacked Esperanto culture for the number of feature films, for the number of books in the library, etc. That's not a lack of tolerance for hyperbole; that's POV against the concept of Esperanto culture. I don't see anything in the Esperanto culture section of the article that could amount to hyperbole; all of it is easily citable numbers, and numbers that you have attacked for being small.--Prosfilaes 07:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
If they are easily "citable": cite them. Please read the Culture sub-section. It uses expression like:
  • "Esperanto is often used …"
  • "large corpus of original … as well as translated literature"
  • "over 25,000 Esperanto books"
  • "over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines"
  • "Many Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the world"
The superlatives go on and on, and not a whit of attribution. That, dear, is hyperbole in action.
If "Yiddish" made similar claims with similar absent sources, I'd be as irritated with it as I am with this. MARussellPESE 23:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
What superlatives? I only found one superlative in the whole article, on a quick search for "est", and that merely mentioning that the World Esperanto Organization is the largest Esperanto organization. Given that there's 14 sources linked in the article, I'd say that you're the one engaging in hyperbole.--Prosfilaes 12:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
Read the definition: "an exaggerated mode of expression". Each of the above points exaggerates the scope and/or impact of Esperanto — either directly in terms of "Esperanto is often used …" w/o attribution — or indirectly by dropping key comparisons "over 25,000 Esperanto books" (suggesting lots) vs. say the 35 million circulation of the New York Public Library system.
At virtually every turn here, you've misrepresented my position, opened tangential issues, and/or presumed bad-faith. In this last, you've failed to address the point that the section entirely lacks attribution. The sub-articles are just about as bad. Continued discussion appears pointless. MARussellPESE 23:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I did read the definition: superlative says "the superlative of an adjective or adverb is a form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to in a given context." You linked it, so I assumed that's the definition you meant. I don't agree that they exaggerate the scope or impact of Esperanto, though I will admit that "large", "often", and "many" are not terribly clear or useful words. However, the numeric statements are exact and unexaggerated. I don't see any other article spoonfeeding its readers comparisons, and I don't see how to make those comparisons NPOV. Comparing the New York Public Library, a library with holdings in every major language in the world including Esperanto, to a monolingual library isn't fair. Comparing any English library is unfair, as English is one of the world's largest languages. We could compare Hausa libraries, but you've complained every time I brought up Hausa.
Yes, sections of the article lack attribution. Yes, that should be fixed. And?
I don't think you've looked at Yiddish with the same eye that you looked at Esperanto. Try:
  • "In the early 20th century, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theater and Yiddish film were booming,"
  • "In the United States, the Yiddish language bonded Jews from many countries"
  • "Thriving Yiddish theater in New York City and, to a lesser extent,"
  • "פארווערטס (forverts - The Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City," (out of how many daily newspapers in NYC?)
  • "Hundreds of thousands of young children have been, and are still, taught to translate the texts..." (compared to the millions and millions for English?)
Yiddish, in fact, has the same number of cites as Esperanto, and a section with {{Unreferenced|date=August 2006}}, along with a lot of fact tags. It makes a lot of similar claims without sources, and I can only conclude the reason you're here instead of Talk:Yiddish is your POV.--Prosfilaes 13:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
Ethnologue and "genuine and reliable"?! Muha... I hope that was ironical. Those are mutually exclusive, every linguist can tell you. Ethnologue's speaker numbers are highly controversion in many parts, which is why they always should be taken with a grain of salt. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is merely it's vast multitude of languages. — N-true 14:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to be ironic. The Ethnologue does an outstanding job of tackling a tremendously difficult task. Of course the figures are hard to get right, as the Ethnologue itself tells you. It also is transparent about where and why the figures are less reliable. You imply a degree of scholarly sloppiness that is unjustified to the point of libel. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is that there is nothing else within an order of magnitude that compiles that much original field linguistics in so usable a form. Would you prefer they simply sit on their results and not make them available? Waitak 17:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
Okay, point taken, you're right. I shouldn't be so harsh about it. Ethnologue is one of these things which has many many disadvantages, mistakes, strange views and stuff like that, yet there is nothing better. I also don't know any source for this kind of language information as large and complete as Ethnologue. I just wanted to emphasize that much of its info is at least somewhat controversial and that it's better to cross-check the data. — N-true 18:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

[edit] ŭ

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

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

The letter ŭ is always pronounced like English w. The poster who said v was pronounced like w was probably thinking of Latin. SimpsonDG 23:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
In latin v isn't pronounced like w. 82.33.125.160 (talk) 19:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
How do you know? — N-true (talk) 22:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
In some pronunciations of Latin, it is pronounced as w; Gavin Betts's Teach Yourself Latin would assign that sound to the v. The Roman Pronunciation of Latin argues that the Roman pronunciation was more likely to have been a v sound, with many quotes from Roman authors, though he admits there's many who argue the other way. It's probably out of date, but those are the sources at hand.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
The pronunciation of v depends on one's native language, and varies between [v] and [w]. A lot of people (very possibly including Zamenhof himself) do not distinguish [v] from [w], and in Esperanto there is no such distinction in normal vocabulary. (There are a few mimetic forms with [w] like ŭa!, but with that criterion we can argue English has clicks because of words like tsk!.) Some people who do make the [v]-[w] distinction, such as some English speakers, try to introduce it into Esperanto by using the letter ŭ as a consonant (also ŭ is very common in Chinese and Japanese proper names), but this is primarily restricted to writing and is in no way universal. kwami 16:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Why do you think (or know) that Zamenhof himself might not have distinguished [v] from [w]? After all, he spoke Polish, didn't he? They have this distinction. I think it is indeed nonstandard to pronounce <v> as [w] or <ŭ> as [v]. They are in no way allophones, 'cause there are minimal pairs like laŭ ("according to") and lav' ("washing"). — N-true 20:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd forgotten about Ł, though even today some people pronounce that as a lateral. I didn't say there was no distinction between [v] and [ŭ], nor that <ŭ> was pronounced [v], I said there was no distinction between [v] and [w], which isn't the same thing. Give me a minimal pair between consonantal [v] and [w], not between consonantal [v] and vocalic [ŭ]. (Excepting mimesis, proper names, & the like, of course.) kwami 23:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I also suspect that there is none. But if the sequences <aj> and <aŭ> (just to name a few) are analyzed as [aj] and [aw] (which is logical for some languages; e.g. French and Vietnamese, if I'm not mistaken), for that matter, the diphthong becomes a VC sequence again, and then it can be compared with another VC sequence, for example <av>. It shouldn't be too hard to find minimal pairs there. I've given one up there, but I'm sure that there are better ones in case you don't accept shortened forms like lav'. I need to think about this, but I would indeed prefer to analyze <ŭ> as a consonant instead of a vowel or part of a diphthong. I'm trying to think of parallel occurrences in natural languages... — N-true 02:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Kalocsay and Waringhien (Plena Analiza Gramatiko) talk about this. They comment that the letter <j> serves two functions, as a consonant /j/ and as an offglide in diphthongs; they say that if Espo were consistant here, the latter role would be played by a letter <ĭ>, and that aj should be analyzed as /aĭ/, not as /aj/. I completely accept that lava and laŭa are a minimal pair, but in English work and wick are a minimal pair, and that doesn't mean r is a vowel. A diphthong doesn't necessarily become a VC sequence just because it's followed by another vowel, though of course in some languages it will. This can be a difficult issue: does English cooperate have a /w/ in it? Regardless of whether laŭa has a consonantal [w] in it phonetically (and I suspect that will depend on the language background of the speaker), phonemically /ŭ/ behaves as a vocoid. It can't initiate a word, and not even a syllable if you analyze aŭ and eŭ as diphthongs. That makes its behavior completely unlike any consonant in Espo. And if we do analyze it as a consonant here, then Espo no longer has any diphthongs. kwami 02:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Writing system

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

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

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

SimpsonDG 13:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

they use it at lernu.net for some of their lessons. here's where they explain it: [2]. --fanturmandos 15:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't see anything on that page that's not the normal x-method.--Prosfilaes 15:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I also only see the x-method there; no mention of this bizarre "tx q y x w hh" business. SimpsonDG 02:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 1000 native

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

Shalom93 12:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there really are some native speakers; I've heard a couple of them. Occasionally a man and woman will meet through Esperanto and get married, having only Esperanto as their common language. Their children then grow up having Esperanto as their native language, since that's the language spoken at home. - SimpsonDG 12:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I've personally met some 20 native Esperanto speakers. In the whole world there certainly are at least about a thousand. Ethonolgue mentions "200-2000", but certainly its lower bound is a bit out of date, since the number of native Esperantists has been increasing in recent years. Marcoscramer 22:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Two of my friends have spawned such creatures. One of them estimates the total to be something under a thousand. Internet discussion lists dedicated to them only have a couple hundred members, he says.
Only a couple hundred members? I would think that the majority of people, even today, would not be found on such a list, and certainly the George Soross of the world, who are not active Esperantists, would not be on such lists. If most of the people on those lists are native Esperantists or actively involved in raising a native Esperantist, I would expect the number to be quite a bit higher than a thousand.--Prosfilaes 14:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Khomeini

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

[edit] Vowel system comparison

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

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

Actually, Italian has seven vowels, so it doesn't fit either. kwami 16:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, I only know of Spanish and modern Greek (the latter not a Romance language) having a five-vowel system. 144.82.107.146 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
/a e i o u/ is probably the most common vowel system in the world (offhand, if you don't count vowel length, I can think of Hausa, most of Polynesian, several languages in New Guinea), but that really isn't the point. Most languages around the world have these five vowels (Russian, German, French, Hindi, Yoruba, Turkish, Persian, Korean, Bengali, Wolof) regardless of what else they may have, whereas there is no sixth vowel that is widely supported. A few languages lack one of them: there is no /o/ in Mandarin or /u/ in Japanese; and a some lack two (English, Arabic, Malay, Quechua), but this is a reasonable compromise, one used by almost all other popular conlangs. Of course, much of the attraction is that they're the default vowels of the Latin alphabet. kwami (talk) 19:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] World congresses

This statement appears in the article:

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

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

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

[edit] Demographic information?

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

I have heard anecdotal evidence that e.g., the Esperanto speakers in the UK are mostly old, those in Iran are mostly young, there are a disproportionate number of young female E-o speakers in Ukraine, etc.. And it's my impression that a disproportionate number of the older speakers in the U.S. are female and most of the younger ones are male; but I don't know of any actual studies, besides (Sikosek 2003) which is already in the references section.
Looking at group photographs would show you the people who travel to conferences, who tend to be either young people in school with lots of free time, or older retired people with lots of free time. Looking at Internet activity, you see more of the working-age people who are underrepresented at conferences. --Jim Henry 14:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] use of esperanto

Some objections to the opening paragraph's bit about use of esperanto:

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

so whats the deal with all those? could someone just quick explain that to me? or put up some more citation needed markers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.168.12 (talk) 20:41, August 28, 2007 (UTC)<!** Template:UnsignedIP **> <!**Autosigned by SineBot**>

Most of these items briefly mentioned in the opening are expanded on later on. For instance, "world travel" links up to the discussion of Pasporta Servo later on. There are also tours in Esperanto each year, usually in conjunction with the Universala Kongreso. "Cultural exchange" is kind of vague but could apply to pretty much any contact between Esperanto speakers of different cultures, e.g. when last weekend an E-o speaker from Tanzania visited our local E-o group here in Atlanta and gave a talk about his country. Literature is discussed in the "Culture" section of this article as well as in Esperanto literature. One aspect of "Language instruction" is obvious enough, but E-o is also used as as medium to teach other languages, both natural and constructed. I'm not sure if that's discussed in the article or not. Yes, radio broadcasting needs to be discussed more and given more citations in this article or in a spin-off article; there are a number of shortwave radio stations that now or in the past have done broadcasts in Esperanto.
Conventions: Yes, it refers to Esperanto conventions, but not all conventions that use E-o as the working language are primarily or solely about Esperanto. If I look at a typical program for the recent conventions of the Esperanto League for North America [now "Esperanto-USA"], probably less than half the program items on average are about Esperanto, and I suspect the proportion is lower at more specialized conventions. And how is it relevant if Klingon is or isn't used for conventions? --Jim Henry 15:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There are, say, E@I seminars, that are not about Esperanto at all. The two ones I've been to were primarily about Internet technologies like wiki scripts, PHP/MySQL, XHTML/CSS and so on. Slavik IVANOV 01:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article?

I just counted up. This article contains:

  • 4 sections tagged as requiring references
  • 17 fact-tags, including two in the lead.
  • 3 attribution tags.

So, there are significant attribution/WP:V/WP:NOR issues. Plus, the article is just not written from a NPOV. Very little criticism of Esperanto is present - buried in a short section at the end of the article. The tone is frequently based on the expectation that Esperanto should be the international language, and we should not be using that as a starting point on Wikipedia.

In short, in my opinion, this article doesn't come close to making point 2 of the good article criteria, and also fails point 4 - and as such I am delisting it. Pfainuk talk 19:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Where do you think the article has the tone that Esperanto should be the international language, as opposed to is designed for?--Prosfilaes 20:43, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
As part of a recent quality sweep of GA's for Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles, I would concur with that assessment. I will be bringing this up at GAR for further discussion.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I have to admit the tone of the article is rather glowing. Not surprising, since the only people likely to put any time into it are Espists. I'm as guilty as anyone on that count. kwami 04:50, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Actually the problem is more that when people who aren't militant espists have questions or edits, it seems like espists find some way to sneak their POV into shooting down those questions or edits. Granted that is a POV statement, but just putting that out there. There are lots of non-espist linguists interested in this article I'm sure, but because they're not advertising for the great global esperanto takeover, they're not to be trusted to provide NPOV information.

Dsmccohen 21:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I haven't seen any decent critiques. Most of it is quite juvenile and shows a basic misunderstanding of language: It sounds funny, looks funny, etc., as if that's not true of any language one's not familiar with. No one would accept such comments about Russian, German, Arabic, Swahili, or Chinese, all of which look and sound "funny" to many English speakers. My personal criticisms are so specific and POV that they don't belong in an encyclopedic article. There were at times links to external critiques, but they were more rants than rational. About the only general criticisms I can think of offhand is that Eo doesn't have a culture of its own (or that it has a narrowly European culture, take your pick); that it isn't universal (or that it isn't sufficiently European); that it doesn't have a significant speaking population and therefore isn't practical; that, despite the opportunity, it hasn't eliminated some of the biases of Western languages, such as sexism; and ... I forgot the 5th. Do you have links to any rational criticism we could incorporate? kwami 20:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
This material had been split off, but given the apparent bias of much of the rest of the article, I agree more of it should remain here. I expanded that section; see what you think. As for it being at the end of the article, isn't that where criticism usually goes? You need to understand the basics before you can understand the critiques. kwami 21:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article Reassessment initiated

This article does not seem to meet the good article criteria as spelled out in WP:WIAGA. If you have something to add to the discussion, please come to the good article reassessment page. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Looks like someone already delisted it half way, that is this TALK page was changed, but the article was not removed from the list. I will be doing so presently. Please consider fixing this article to be compliant with the good article criteria. It is an important article, and it would be nice to see it improve. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
I think I've pretty much taken care of the citation problem except in the section on culture. I've expanded the section on criticism. The section on religion needs to be cleaned up. kwami 09:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] totalitarianism

It's a subtle detail of grammar and meaning, but "Esperanto and 20th-century totalitarianism" is definitely superior to "Esperanto and 20th-century totalitarianisms" to my native English-speaking ear. Totalitarianisms is rare in English; books.google.com shows only 689 books that use the word, compared to 14000 that use the world totalitarianism. I, and other native English speakers, wouldn't usually speak of a totalitarianism as they would a democracy; they would instead say a totalitarian state (which gets 2400 hits on books.google.com). It's perfectly correct to speak of all the practice of totalitarianism in the 20th century as "20th-century totalitarianism", just like you would say "20th-century art" or "20th-century bigotry".--Prosfilaes 01:06, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia in Esperanto

Is it worth noting that wikipedia, and indeed this article, is available in Esperanto? If so under which category? Prince.timotheus 22:39, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

It's already mentioned and linked in a) "in other languages" (in the bar on the left), b) as a link under "See also" and c) as a Wikipedia language icon with text under the "External links" section. A detailed description can be found at Esperanto Wikipedia. — N-true 00:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial Sound

Article says (in the criticism section) that people say Esperanto sounds artificial. That's BS, of course it mentions that this is an impression created by the fact that there aren't many fluent speakers, but hey, there still are some, and even if you're not you can memorize some text well and then say it fluently enough. Look at some videos on the Youtube, sounds fine to me, pretty close to how Spanish sounds.

BY THE WAY. ARE THERE CURSE WORDS IN ESPERANTO?!! OMG, what if there aren't? That's just very interesting, imagine what people with Tourettes Syndrome are going to do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.225.240.84 (talk) 04:52, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

"Artificiality" is a common criticism of Espo, and so requires mention. Of course, you don't have to take it seriously. As for curse words, yes, there are quite a few. Nothing like what English has, but then a lot of ethnic languages don't have the numbers that English has. kwami 10:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] /x/ falling out of use?

According to the article, the phoneme /x/ 'is falling out of use'. But are there really Esperanto speakers who don't attempt to use it in ĥoro and eĥo? If not, it is not 'falling out of use', it is just uncommon, which is something else entirely. Timeineurope (talk) 05:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Hey, discussion! Yes, there are common replacements for all ĥ words: these are koruso and ekoo. There's a continuing progression here: an official alternate form of ark- for arĥ-type words, I think in the 1920s, then a general change of ĥ to k except for a couple words which were internationally ĉ, such as ĉino, and finally ĥoro and eĥo, which were resistant because of homophony. I typically don't see ĥ used for much besides place names in recent texts. You are right, because of that ĥ is not obsolete, and some people do continue to use it, but there is a progressive lessening of use. Did a quick Google search, and there were hits on 137,000 Esperanto pages for koruso vs. 61 pages for ĥoruso, and hits on 453 pages for ekoo vs. 0 hits for eĥoo, presumably nearly all from the past 18 years. kwami (talk) 09:27, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
There are 35,000 Google hits for +eĥo (you need the plus sign or Google will strip out the circumflex). To me ĥ still seems to be used fairly often in developing techical terms. It can be useful in making Esperanto forms out of Greco-Latin international words that have "ch". --Cam (talk) 16:30, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, it makes no difference in hit count whether or not I use the +. Regardless, I'm now getting different numbers: the same 137,000 for koruso, but only 15 ĥoruso; 460 ekoo vs. 55,000 eĥo. So, yes, ĥ still appears to be the dominant pronunciation of at least one common noun — but I think it's still safe to say that ĥ is falling out of use. kwami (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
No, because if something is 'falling out of use', it is disappearing. However, as your numbers for eĥo vs. ekoo show (more than 99% eĥo), ĥ is not going anywhere. (By the way, shouldn't you be comparing koruso to ĥoro rather than to ĥoruso?)
You're right. Braino. Ĥoro has a slight majority of use. kwami (talk) 19:47, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I also don't agree with your new wording, 'has largely fallen out of use', since the vast majority of Esperanto speakers still use it. Timeineurope (talk) 14:06, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I'll take it out. It's too small a detail to be included in such a short summary anyway, and is discussed in the subarticles. kwami (talk) 19:55, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Stalin & Hitler

There are a number of serious contradictions between this article, another article, and outside sources. For comparison, I present (1) the relevant section of this article, (2) its highly questionable source, (3) an excerpt from the WP article History of Esperanto, (4) the only reference to Esperanto in Mein Kampf, and (5) the statement in a 1943 journal article that first piqued my uncertainty.

[edit] Esperanto and 20th-century totalitarianism

Source: Wikipedia - Esperanto

In his work, Mein Kampf, Hitler mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used to achieve world dominance by an international Jewish Conspiracy.5 As a result, this led to the persecution of Esperantists during the Holocaust.6

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin denounced Esperanto as "the language of spies", while United States Senator Joseph McCarthy, known for his rabidly Anti-Communist speeches and instigating the House Un-American Activities Committee, considered knowledge of Esperanto to be "nearly synonymous" with sympathy towards Communism.7

[edit] Esperanto - Questions, Answers, Fun Facts, Information

Source: M.T. Arkey (a.k.a. OofahLandian), funtrivia.com

Tyrants thrive on creating enemies. Esperanto helps unite people of many various nationalities; common language brings common understanding. Under Nazi Germany, Esperantists were singled out and sentenced to death or worse in concentration camps for their interest in the language (in "Mein Kampf", Hitler calls it "the language of spies"). Stalin had Esperantists killed, and US Senator Joseph McCarthy considered knowledge of Esperanto to be nearly synonymous with sympathy for the "Communist cause".

[edit] History of Esperanto

Source: Wikipedia - History of Esperanto

Starting in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin murdered many Esperanto speakers because of their anti-nationalistic tendencies. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that it was created as a universal language to unite the Jewish diaspora. Stalin called it "the language of spies". While Esperanto itself was not enough cause for execution, its use was extended among Jews or trade unionists and encouraged contacts with foreigners. The teaching of Esperanto was not allowed in German prisoner-of-war camps during World War II. Esperantists sometimes were able to get around the ban by convincing guards that they were teaching Italian, the language of Germany's closest ally.

[edit] Mein Kampf

Source: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

As long as the Jew has not become the master of the other peoples, he must speak their languages whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they became his slaves, they would all have to learn a universal language (Esperanto, for instance!), so that by this additional means the Jews could more easily dominate them!

[edit] A Language versus the Axis

Source: Hugo R. Pruter, A Language versus the Axis, The Modern Language Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Feb., 1943), pp. 140-141.

Esperanto's most ardent supporter among the national leaders of the world strangely enough is autocratic, Joseph Stalin.

[edit] questions

  • Did Stalin support or oppose Esperanto?
  • Who called Esperanto "the language of spies", Hitler, Stalin, or neither?*
  • Was Esperantism grounds for execution or confinement in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia?**

* This quotation does not appear in Mein Kampf.

** Less than 24 hours ago, this article stated that there were such executions under Stalin.

It is clear that there are errors; I believe it is important to locate them and, if they are in Wikipedia, to correct them. MagnesianPhoenix (talk) 12:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC) [signed retroactively]

Thank you for this. Here's the relevant extract from Harlow's site.[3] Harlow seems to be careful in his research, has spent a lifetime on these things, and hasn't made the obvious mistakes you pointed out in Wikipedia. kwami (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Don Harlow

The growth of ideological rigidity in the nations of Europe was also to put a strain -- eventually, more than a strain -- on the Esperanto movement. Hitler's election to the Chancellory of Germany in 1931, and to the Presidency in 1933, was an unmitigated catastrophe for the language. Hitler had long known of Esperanto, and despised it; he had attacked the language as early as 1922, in a speech in Munich, and later, in Mein Kampf, he spoke of Esperanto as part of the Jewish conspiracy to enslave the Aryan races of the world.[1] Now he had a chance to do something about it. It took some time for him to consolidate his power, but when he had done so, he took steps. In 1936 the Ministry of Education banned the teaching of Esperanto. The German Esperanto Association, in the face of competition from another national Esperanto organization established by the Gestapo, expelled its Jewish members, a step which led to a corresponding significant reduction among its outraged Aryan members, who remembered that the creator of Esperanto had been a Jew. In any case, the expulsion did the organization no good in the long run; by the end of the year all Esperanto activity in Germany was banned.

Germany was not alone in its suppression of Esperanto. After the relatively moderate and liberal Leninist period in the Soviet Union came the repressive Stalinist period. The Soviet Union, which had provided some of the major Esperantist literary figures of the twenties, went strangely quiet, after breaking relations with SAT. By the early thirties, Esperantists were already among the legions unwillingly building the White Sea Canal; and "by the end of the twenties and at the beginning of the thirties the leadership of the [Soviet Esperantist Union] were occupying ever more dogmatic, sectarian positions and in fact helping Stalin build and strengthen the machine of violence and mass terror whose victims they were later to become."[2]

One night, in March, 1937, as many SEU members as possible were rounded up by the police, taken to local prisons, and forced to confess participation in "an international espionage organization of Esperantists." Several -- figures as high as 2000 have been quoted -- were executed, while the rest were remanded to the Gulag.

The president of the Soviet Esperanto organization at that time was the Latvian Ernst Drezen, a noted Esperantologist and a loyal, committed Communist. My late friend Nikolai Rytjkov, at that time a minor official of the organization, once mentioned to me having seen one or two books bearing Drezen's ex libris in the library of the prison where he himself was confined -- a sure sign that Drezen himself had been liquidated and his property confiscated by the state. Since Drezen was never seen again, this seems to be a reasonable interpretation. Lins devotes two thirds of his book on persecutions of Esperantists to the situation in the Soviet Union, then and more recently.

For the next nineteen years, any sort of Esperanto activity was outlawed in the USSR. No Esperantist worth his salt, of course, would permit such regulatory nonsense to prevent him (or her) from continuing to use Esperanto, as SEJM has been showing in the USSR for the past two decades or more. One young poet continued to write his poems in Esperanto; they were never found by the secret police because he hid them inside his father's beehive, a location relatively immune to investigation.

The attempted extermination of the Soviet Esperanto movement had several causes. One of the most interesting possibilities, for which Lins makes a good case, is that the Soviet government saw in Esperanto a viable alternative -- and therefore, competitor -- to Russian as a national language for the USSR. Even today, according to Soviet emigrés with whom I have spoken, Soviet Esperantists invariably speak to each other in Esperanto rather than in Russian.[3]

Most Esperantist historians assign the near-extermination of the Esperanto movement to the Second World War. Within the Soviet Union, at least, most of the damage had been done before the war began. Nevertheless, the war allowed the dictatorships to spread their suppression across all of Europe; and at least in the West the human damage to the Esperanto movement after September, 1939, was considerably greater than it had been before. Great numbers of Esperantists died in the Nazi death camps.[4] Others, including almost the entire Zamenhof family, were singled out by the Nazis for total extermination; Zamenhof's son Adam was shot dead in Palmiry Prison courtyard not long after the occupation of Warsaw, and daughters Sofia and Lidia were shipped off to the concentration camp at Treblinka, from which they never returned. The Esperanto movement throughout Europe was effectively decimated.

  1. ^ Lins, Ulrich: La Danĝera Lingvo ("The Dangerous Language"). Gerlingen: Bleicher Eldonejo, 1988, 546p.; reprinted Moscow: Progress, 1990.
  2. ^ Stepanov, N.: "Esperanto kaj Esperanto-Movado en Sovetunio" ("Esperanto and the Esperanto Movement in the Soviet Union"), in Esperanto U.S.A., 1991(4).
  3. ^ Grigorij Gertsikov, personal communication.
  4. ^ Boulton, Marjorie: Zamenhof: Creator of Esperanto. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1960.
The most comprehensive scientific work about the history of the Esperanto movement with regards to persecutions etc. is "Die gefährliche Sprache" (the dangerous language) by Ulrich Lins. Unfortunately I don't have my copy here to look up what he wrote on these questions or what sources he gives, but maybe somebody else can. Junesun (talk) 22:22, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Universal grammar

Does Esperanto violate the rules of any particular theories of universal grammar? -- Beland (talk) 17:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Not that I'd know of. Do you have a special theory or violation in mind? — N-true (talk) 18:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Might there be a rule against antonymics, which is rare but would also be violated by Piraha? But since UG is not based on language universals, I don't see what difference it would make. kwami (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
There was a discussion named prodrop and meteorologic verbs in soc.culture.esperanto. The topic discussed was that Esperanto has both obligatory personal pronouns (i.e. is not a pro-drop language) and subject-less weather verbs (pluvas instead of ĝi pluvas) at the same time, which is supposed to contradict some language universal. --Schuetzm (talk) 23:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, such universals – even though sometimes misleadingly called "absolute" – often don't apply to 100% of the world's languages. One guy mentioned Cape Verdian Creole, others mentioned Finnish. Language universals, especially the one discussed, should be regarded strong tendencies, rather than inviolable rules. There are often exceptions and quirks around the world, but no language that has naturally arisen would be claimed "non-real" — this is an attribute merely given to constructed languages. — N-true (talk) 05:21, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
These are all language universals, which are derived from observation. They have nothing to do with Universal Grammar. kwami (talk) 06:23, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pop culture

Esperanto was also mentioned in an episode of Frasier... ah, but I don't remember which episode right now. It had something to do with a cruise ship. Well, it was only a brief reference. :/ -TheCrimsonANTHROPOLOGIST 07:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vi ne parolas Esperanto, cxu ne?

"Ti-" ne signifas "this" aux "that", sole "that". La vorto "cxi" estas tial. Do... Kio estas tio? = What is that? Kio estas cxi tio? = What is that?

"Cxi" sola okazas unue. Do... "Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun," ne "Mi ŝatas tiun ĉi.

Fine:

En multaj lokoj de Ĉinio estis temploj de la drakreĝo [la hifeno ne devas uzati]. Dum trosektempoj [“trosecko” signifas “too-dryness”, ne “times of drought”] uloj [“oni” signifas “one” (ekzemple, “Oni pensus ke…” signifas “One would think that…”); “Uloj” signifas “people”] preĝis en la temploj, ke la drakreĝo donu pluvon al la homa mondo. Tiam la drako estis simbolo de la supernaturaĵo [. Kaj pli poste, ĝi fariĝis prapatro de la plej altaj regantoj kaj simbolis la absolutan aŭtoritaton de la feŭda imperiestro. La imperiestro pretendis, ke li estis filo de la drako. Ĉiuj liaj vivbezonaĵoj portis la nomon drako kaj estis ornamitaj per diversaj drakfiguroj [la ‘o’ sole restas se ĝi facilas la prononco.]. Nun ĉie en Ĉinio videblas drakornamaĵoj [Mi ne pensas, ke “ornamento” estas vorto.] kaj cirkulas legendoj pri drakoj.

Novjunulo (talk) 18:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Vi ne parolas Esperanton, ĉu? Inter "tiun ĉi" kaj "ĉi tiun" ekzistas nur stila diferenco. Vi miskomprenas la vorton "oni" - ĝia senco estas pli vasta ol la senco de la angla pronomo "one". (Tamen, la ekzempla teksto ne estas bona. Eble iu volas proponi alian.) --Zundark (talk) 19:41, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Tiu encompases both 'this' and 'that', like French ce. Adding cxi (to either side) specifies that it is proximal. A distal reading is usually only implied, though I have occasionally seen tiu for. kwami (talk) 01:59, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Objectivesea's changes

There were several things unquestionably wrong about this change. The info box always goes at the top of the article, and stuff like Wiktionary and the Featured Article marks always go at the bottom. (I'm not sure it technically matters where the Feature Article marks go, but that makes it almost imperative that we put them where editors expect to find them.) The deleted paragraph under Classification needs to stay; links to subarticles expand, not replace parts of the original article. There are many other things done here, and it's hard to evaluate it because there were so many changes and so many moves. Future changes should be done in pieces small enough to be evaluated.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:09, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

My apologies if the changes seemed disconcerting. I moved about some of the boxed elements purely from a design viewpoint (i.e., into areas where the main article text had a short column width anyway), to try to avoid great gaps of white space. I had no idea that their relative placement was anything but arbitrary. Since such changes appear to be troublesome at least to Prosfilaes (and likely to others also) I will not restore those. Instead, I will confine myself to adding in the references that will justify the removal of the "weasel words" notation. Thanks to Prosfilaes for pointing out the problem with some of my edits. Objectivesea (talk) 19:17, 29 March 2008 (UTC)


[edit] "language of internet websites"

"Esperanto is also a language of internet websites, which can be explored from the Esperanto interface of Google Search." using this logic, i could point out that Elmer Fudd is also a language of internet websites, which can be explored from the Elmer Fudd interface of Google Search.

just saying Iamsodeman (talk) 03:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right, that's ridiculous. Deleted. kwami (talk) 18:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] merge criticism

Stifle added a merge criticism tag ("be merged into other sections to achieve a more neutral presentation"). I object; a language article shouldn't be sprinkled with criticism. That will make it less neutral, since opinions will be mixed in with the factual information. Since this is also a language project, criticism is warranted, but it should be set apart, as it is now. kwami (talk) 21:25, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism section problems

The Criticism section has many problems. I removed some of the 'counter criticisms' because such a style is appropriate for UseNet discussions, but not an encyclopedia. I also agree that the Criticism section is in dire need of sources to avoid total removal, but individual problems with the article should be solved independantly. We can't leave one problem unsolved, just because another remains. Some of the 'criticisms' do seem a bit non-notable or editors opinion and should probably be removed. While others are long standing criticisms which have been written about many times and can probably be cited without too much trouble. Ashmoo (talk) 12:37, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I wrote it as a compromise between editors who made the article read as propaganda, and others who wanted a running critique throughout the article. The points were pretty much whatever popped into my head at the time. At first I thought we needed the responses, but after reading what Ashmoo left, I agree that we don't. (Except to point out that Z intended that Eo carry no particular culture—that is notable.) It's pretty obvious that many of the criticisms contradict one another, so we don't need to come out and say it.
Which criticisms are non-notable, though? They're all pretty standard. kwami (talk) 16:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks kwami. I think cites here would solve almost all the issues. I even think responses would be acceptable if they were sourced to Z defending the language himself, or something similar. Also it would be good to attribute each criticism to a source so the reader knows what sort of standing the crticism has. ie. is it a criticism by linguists, 1920s internationalists, artificial language enthusiasts or conspiracy nuts? If you get my meaning... Ashmoo (talk) 08:12, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I still don't quite understand, why you removed the 'counter critisisms'. In what way is there a style issue? They show that not all of the claims are completely unquestionable. I'm not against the critisism section at all, I really opt for a more neutral critisism section that sheds light on both sides. Currently uses get to read only one side (the negative one), apart from the intented-to-be neutral one of the article itself. I do agree that they might need slight rewording, though. — N-true (talk) 09:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I purposefully picked four of the criticisms so that they would negate each other: no culture / European culture; vocab. too European / not European enough. I'm not sure that we need counter-criticism. What's generally done with articles like this? Say, with astrology: do we defend astrology against its critics, or do we simply present its case, and then present its critics? Too much defense comes off as sounding biased: We present everything that's good, and then down at the bottom we give token attention to critics, but then show how they're all wrong. I'm not sure where to draw the line. kwami (talk) 16:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Citations by reliable sources is the WP test for inclusion. I know you didn't mean it that way, by selecting the criticisms to keep by ensuring thay they are contradictory seems a bit like stealth POV and should probably be avoided. But you are right about counter-criticisms. An encyc. article on Esperanto shouldn't be written so as to help a reader decide whether Esp. is a good language or not, but just to desribe the language objectively and report what 3rd parties have said about it. We really need to dig up some sourced criticisms. Ashmoo (talk) 08:14, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
As for it being stealth POV, we need to cover a range of opinions. These are, after all, opinions, not factual disputes. Noting that people with different language backgrounds have conflicting criticisms of Eo is important for a broad coverage. kwami (talk) 08:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] television

"Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television"

But the source cited is wikipedia, where it says the (internet) television station in question no longer broadcasts!

so its inaccurate to say that "today" esperanto is used in television! 75.7.33.233 (talk) 08:03, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] http://www.experiencefestival.com/

I appreciate the references that TCForever has added to the article, but I'm questionable of the value of the http://www.experiencefestival.com/ links. Not only does it have a huge number of intrusive ads, it doesn't seem to have actual content; it's not even a useful link farm.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)