Talk:Native Esperanto speakers

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Esperanto speakers actually do not refer to children who learn Esperanto from birth as being a native speaker, but rather "from birth children" (denaskaj infanoj).

This is a very confused and confusing statement; the Esperanto term for "native speaker" is "denaska parolanto" (if you must translate literally, "speaker from birth"). In short, this usage of the English word "native" corresponds to this usage of the Esperanto word "denask(a)". In the term "denaska(j) infano(j)", consider "denaska(j)" to be an elided form of "denaska(j) parolanto(j) de Esperanto". Brion VIBBER, Monday, April 1, 2002

At first I thought this was a joke article: how can one be a "native speaker" of an artificial language? But it piqued my interest and I read it with pleasure. Let me only suggest that some better title be created for the article, lest others dismiss it as a joke. --Ed Poor

The title is accurate and "correct" and I don't think a better one could be found. We have a lot of articles on Wikipedia with titles that sound like jokes.
Okay. The natural language article says that constructed languages can still have "native" speakers, if children learn it at a young age from parents who have learned the language. --Ed Poor

I've heard the phrase "denaska Esperantisto" (I was repeatedly asked whether I am one of those when I attended a congress; I am not). "Denaska infano" is silly.

I do not like "denaska Esperantisto" because it seems to imply exactly what the Esperanto version states is not the case … (something like) "denaskaj parolantoj de Esperanto ne estas sklavoj al al movado." The decision to be an Esperantist must be a conscience one made by a person, not a birth thing. --Andrew Belisle

Why exactly would people think the article is a joke? Granted: many people aware of the existence of Esperanto are ignorant of the existence of native speakers of Esperanto, but being surprised to learn of something's existence is not the same as thinking it's a joke.

How was the "200 - 2000" figure arrived at? Michael Hardy 20:21 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

I arrived at that figure by reading http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESP How Ethnologue arrived at that number, I don't know... --Chuck SMITH

Well, shouldn't the article's title stress that 200-2000 speak it 'as their mother tongue', not that they are "natives" of the language (of which there are none)? The difference might seem arbitrary, but it has a point. --Gabbe 21:07 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help if you explain the difference. --Brion
I'm going to hazard a guess as to what the difference is. Nobody is a "native speaker" of any language because nobody is born knowing how to speak any language. Therefore nobody has a native language, but all of us who were not raised as Romulus and Remus were raised have a mother tongue. If that's not what Gabbe meant, I'm at a loss. A "native" of a place, on the other hand, does exist; it means someone who was born there. Michael Hardy 21:56 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)
Looking up the definition on [ http://m-w.com/ ] I see that the two (in my mind separate) defitions are given as synonyms. My bad... I retract my claim. --Gabbe 22:15 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)
If, as you say, there is no "native speaker" in the litteral meaning, then we can always use the phrase in its broad meaning without any ambiguity, can't we?

Look at the definitions provided in [ http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=native%20speaker ]. Native speaker is "a person who has spoken the language in question from early childhood". It does not imply being born in a specific place. I think that this settles the question. Evallejr

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[edit] Native speakers of Esperanto

I am highly suspicious of this concept. I highly suspect that people who teach this language to their children at a young age do so as a second language and retain their mother tongue and pass that on to their child - using it as thier primary way to convey the majority of their culture, intelligence, experience and personality. If I am simply ignorant of the extent to which Esperanto has loosed its tethers to its constructed language origin, excuse me. I would think that the individuals and movement that created the language would resist it becoming a Creole and then a natural language because then they would lose almost all control over it. From what I have seen there is a strict control exercised over this language and as such it is and always will be a constructed language. Pushing the age at which it is acquired down will not make it into a natural language with native speakers. Qaz

Yes, sorry but you're ignorant of the extent to which Esperanto has loosed its tethers to its constructed language origin. These children do actually learn Esperanto as one of their mother tongues. It's not that they have been taught the language as a second language, it's that they have acquired it through exposure since early childhood because their parents were Esperanto speakers who spoke the language at home (in many instances, the parents met thanks to Esperanto and Esperanto was the only common language among them, so it functioned as the "bridge" language internally uniting the family). For a language to acquire native speakers, the only required thing is that it is already fully functional and that a child is exposed to it during its early childhood; the history of how the language came into existence is irrelevant. Esperanto doesn't possess any inherently artificial feature; I mean, if suddenly all knowledge about the origin of Esperanto disappeared, we would have no means to differentiate it from a natural language merely by looking at its structure. Aymara, the mother tongue of more than a million Bolivians, has been said to look like an "artificial" language ([1]) because of its amazing degree of regularity and its unexpected trivalent logic grammar; but just try to tell native Aymara speakers that they speak an "artificial" language because it looks too regular to be true. Besides, it's true that there is a conscious effort by Esperanto second-language speakers to prevent it from breaking up into a myriad dialects that would hamper communication between speakers from far away areas. But, on the one hand, this kind of control over the language is not exclusive nor definitory of artificial languages, and can be likened to that exercised by language academies and prescriptivist grammarians. And, on the other, this has not actually prevented the language from evolving: Esperanto is not the monolithical thing that you depict. There has been a continous evolution for over a century, affecting primarily the lexicon (some terms used in the early days have fallen out of use, and neologisms are constantly being introduced), and also some aspects of the grammar (such as the development of additional correlatives, like aliel, aliam..., "another way", "another time"..., and of additional verbal forms, like amantas and amatas, "is loving" and "is loved", for estas amanta and estas amata). Also, it is not unusual for the Esperanto spoken by its native speakers to be frowned on by its second-language speakers, precisely because the latter feel the former take "too much liberty" in using the language. This is because the native speakers feel "at home" with the language and use it "instinctively", unconsciously altering and developing it (just like native English speakers use and develop it instinctively without caring that much about what grammarians have enshrined as its "proper usage"), while second-language speakers are much more strict about using the language according to the rules they've consciously learned from books. Uaxuctum 21:43, 1 May 2005 (UTC)
I also question the concept, but I don't know enough about it to update the article. If both your parents are, say, Icelandic, and you live in, say France, you can easily acquire a fluency in Icelandic from your parents. However, the language you use with most of your friends, class mates and foreigners, will be French, and that is also the language you will learn to speak and write correctly in school. Thus your primary language would be French, even though Icelandic is native. I'm not here talking about big immigration groups, like Chinese in San Francisco or Turks in Berlin. Icelandic is a small language, and it would likely be limited to communication with your parents. My guess is that Esperanto falls into the case of the expatriate Icelander above. There may be people who use Esperanto at home, but to no one it will be their primary language. Could that be right? Mlewan 15:16, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I think you've got it, except for the fact that there are Esperanto speakers all over the world, and Icelandic speakers are concentrated into a relatively small area. I know of native Esperanto speakers whose Esperanto is very strong, as they have become an active Esperantists, and Esperanto becomes the dominant language in the brain when they are around it for extended periods of time. However I think you're correct, it would very rarely be used as a primary language. -- Andrew 12:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd say you need to do some simple research to help assuage your suspicion. I think this article provides some links that could be interesting for you. Bilingualism is a useful tool, no matter what language it is. -- Andrew 20:27, November 25, 2005

Andrew, I don't understand your last phrase. "A useful tool"? Useful for doing what? If I'm perfectly bilingual in Xhosa and Tibetan, how would that be more useful than speaking an acceptable English and Chinese? Ok, next time I wander around Lhasa and see some lost South Africans trying to read the restaurant menu I might be able to help them, but I would be able to help them even with acceptable English and Chinese. Mlewan 08:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Bilingualism will all the more expand your sphere of influence and opportunity, even if miniscully. Especially if you are natively bilingual, it can help you more easily accomplish goals later in life; I'm thinking of the learning of other languages. I think you're under the impression that I said no language is more useful than another, which I did not. I believe a knowledge of practically any language is useful, but to say that to be bilingual in English and Hawaiian is just as useful as speaking both English an Chinese would be silly. If one thinks some language isn't useful in and of itself, I think it can be seen as a capital good. -- Andrew 12:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Esperanto schools and neighborhoods

I believe Timwi is mistaken in referring to "all-Esperanto neighbourhoods and Esperanto schools". To the best of my knowledge, no such places exist, so I removed the reference. Can anyone give evidence to the contrary? --tgeller 16:18, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "panjo" and "paĉjo"

I know that the article hypothetically suggested that these might be the first word of a native Esperanto speaker, but from a development standpoint, it almost definitely wouldn't be - an affricate like "ch" or a palatal like "j" is difficult for a young child to say, and those sounds are usually mastered later than labial sounds (which is why "mama" and "papa" usually are first words, not because of their meaning).

Well certainly they may not be first words; there are plenty of children whose first words are not mommy or daddy, but I do know of children who have addressed the parents panjo and paĉjo as early as age 2, which seems fairly normal. Isn't the Japanese familial term for father chichi? I'm sure there are many examples from other languages. Andrew 03:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
Chi-chi is only what you refer to your father when you are referring to him to people outside your family. It is a term that chidren do not start using until they have developed a substantial social network outside their family, and long after they have have developed full ability in fricatives, et al. Malnova 22:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Highly Suspect

Can we name one person in the world who actually speaks this language? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Landerman56 (talk • contribs) 03:45, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

And can it be claimed that they are native speakers? There is no Esperanto education system, unlike the situation with revived Manx and Hebrew, and no surrounding community. Picking some up from your parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker.
"For this reason, some parents consider it important to regularly bring their children to Esperanto conventions." - Jesus - they'll be wearing anoraks by the age of ten! --86.136.179.179 (talk) 20:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Nonsense. With your "logics", minority languages couldn't be native languages either, if they're not taught in school. Picking up Esperanto from ones parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker, but it can do so. It worked several thousand times. — N-true (talk) 17:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
N-true, Did you read what you replied to? 86.136.179.179 wrote "Picking some up from your parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker." And then you reply that it is nonsense, while agreeing 100%: "Picking up Esperanto from ones parents doesn't necessarily make you a native speaker". 86.136.179.179 never with a word denied that it can make you a native speaker. S/he denied that it would prove anything.
The case for "native Esperanto speakers" is not made well in this article. There are very few sources in this article, and they do not look particularly reliable. None of them defines what "native" would mean in terms of knowledge or priority over other languages or any other criteria at all.
It is of course possible that there are speakers that are "native" according to some criteria, but the article in its current state, after more than six years of edits, in no way proves that it is the case. Mlewan (talk) 20:49, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sources and Style

This article should have more than two sources for this amount of information, such as how native esperanto speakers are created. This also seems to be written from a somewhat biased and clearly first person perspective. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.69.217.144 (talk) 00:58, 28 May 2008 (UTC)