Talk:Esperanto/Archive 11

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 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)

Russian, German, Arabic, Swahili, and Chinese do sound funny, but Russian less so, now that I'm learning some.--24.59.157.62 (talk) 01:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)Mr. Kitty

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)

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)

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)

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)


 * In reply to the "are there any curse words" comment, yes there are. Go ahead and sign up on lernu.net, take a few free courses, and eventually you will stumble on a whole lesson on that, pretty much anyway.  209.234.206.43 (talk) 06:24, 9 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Here you go: Curse course on Lernu! - Parsa (talk) 05:33, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

/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)

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.

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.ler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/mkv1ch11.html 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

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".

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.

Mein Kampf

 * Source: Adolf Hitler, ler.org/writings/Mein_Kampf/ 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!

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.

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. 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. 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.'"

"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."

"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. 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." ""


 * 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)

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)
 * It might also be useful to distinguish between universals of language evolution (is it possible for a language with such-and-such properties to evolve naturally?) and universals of the human language faculty (is it possible for humans to learn a language with such-and-such properties fluently and think/speak in it in real time?). Study of Esperanto and other constructed languages that have fluent speakers is probably the only way to determine which are which. --Jim Henry (talk) 02:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

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. :/ - The Crimson  A NTHROPOLOGIST 07:06, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

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)

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)

"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)

If you can search for pages in Elmer Fudd language then that is indeed a language. French websites can be explored from the French interface of Google search.... Is French not a language either? I think the point is that it's recognised and used on the internet. I'd suggest adding this again - it's not factually wrong Frognsausage (talk) 22:10, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

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)