Talk:Esperanto/Archive 21

Religion in Esperantujo
It has become standard on Wikipedia to have independent articles on the presence and influence of particular religions or philosophies in particular countries (e.g. Islam in France, Christianity in China, Scientology in Australia, Bahá'í Faith in Sweden). I have been wondering if it would be appropriate to create articles on the presence and influence of particular religions or philosophies in Esperantujo. I know Esperantujo is not a country per se, but it is a community of people where certain religions and philosophies are more common than others. The following are some of the articles that could be created: Islam in Esperantujo, Christianity in Esperantujo, Catholicism in Esperantujo, Bahá'í Faith in Esperantujo, Oomoto in Esperantujo, and Atheism in Esperantujo. I think this would give more credibility to the concept of Esperantujo, too, as it would make it clear that Esperantujo is an actual community of people with different cultures within it. Thoughts? Michipedian (talk) 20:18, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * If there's information to back it up, that would be just fine. I'd go with "... and Esperanto" instead of "... in Esperantujo", however.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:44, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * It would depend on the sources—both quality and quantity. I could see perhaps an Oomoto and Esperanto article, but only if there were enough information out there to spin it off from the main Oomoto article (is there?).  The Oomoto article's not very long—would there be some justification for not having such information in the main Oomoto article? Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:59, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Maybe just one article titled Religion and Esperanto or Esperanto and religion would suffice. Michipedian (talk) 20:05, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Message from Netspy
Hi Prosfilaes. Could you please tell me, why you removed the Lingolia page from Esperanto? I removed the blogpost post because it was not available and does not meet the criteria of WP: EL. --net (talk) 23:15, 15 December 2016 (UTC)


 * What part of the 1985 UNESCO resolutions doesn't met WP:EL? I removed the Lingolia page for two reasons: first place, it was slid in in a edit that had no edit summary and removed another link. Secondly, there are a million and one pages on the net that have Esperanto grammar and vocabulary; why should this page be the only link here to such a thing?--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:01, 16 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The blogpost link doesn't met WP:EL, because blogs avoided (Links normally to be avoided, #11) and the short post doesn’t ″contain further research that is accurate and on-topic″. The original UNESCO resolutions are linked as PDF and should better used as references. --net (talk) 08:06, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Intro/Lead
Ambiguous / readability: "Its usage is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America." could be interpreted as subject's usage in those countries is higher than other languages. Would IMO read better as, "Its highest usage is in...", or "It is most used in ..." Sadsaque (talk) 17:13, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I would not oppose that. Feel free to change it and if someone disagrees you can direct them to this talk thread. ~ ★ nmaia d 02:48, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Polish-Jewish
Why does the article say Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof, would you say American-Cristian or Indian-Buddhist? and if so, should the country/religion be listed about every person mentioned on Wikipedia? - ZLEA  ( Talk, Contribs ) 14:37, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I would say e.g. "African-American". Jews are not merely defined by their religion; they're also an ethnic group. And Eastern Europe, at least in this time, was a mess not clearly defined by nation of birth; Zamenhof was born in Russia, to a family that had long lived in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and died a citizen of Poland, with his city of birth ending up a part of that nation. His native tongues were apparently Yiddish and Belarusian. It's a mess, and comments about "American-Christian" and "Indian-Buddhist" miss the point deeply.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:14, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * I say: we can leave "Jewish" term for religion, while using "Hebrew" for ethnicity (compare: Arabs and Mahometans & Arabic/Hebraic language) so he was a Polish-Hebrew. e.g. somebody can be American-Arab etc

Tabascofernandez (talk) 00:15, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

easy spell
ẑ for /dz/ where ŝ/ts/, then c/tʃ/, j/dʒ/ and q/x/, y/j/, x/ʃ/. adittion of ẑ excludes ĝ, while q, x, and y existing on any standard keyboard. it reduces the numbers of extra letters to three: ẑ, ŝ and ĵ. (instead of six) [also w for ŭ] Tabascofernandez (talk) 00:31, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Religion
Isn't the section Esperanto too detailed? I got this impression after reading it. I think it could just give an overview, instead of giving this level of details about each religion and its relation with Esperanto. The details could be on another article, to be created, Religion and Esperanto. What do you people think about this?--200.223.199.146 (talk) 14:55, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Esperanto. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131115144559/http://pasportaservo.org/monda-mapo to http://www.pasportaservo.org/monda-mapo
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.geocities.com/bujdosoivan/okt.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 16:01, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Non-existent Criticism
I like how "Criticism of Esperanto" was nominated for deletion and redirected to this article, but there is no centralized discussion of the criticism of Esperanto in the article... 203.206.248.163 (talk) 09:57, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Gender subsection, under Neutrality, seems unclear
In particular, this line doesn't seems to express a complete thought:

"Some masculine nouns, primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro 'Mr, sir' vs. sinjorino 'Mrs, lady' and patro 'father' vs. patrino 'mother'."

I would fix it myself but I am not entirely sure what it is trying to say. AlfonsoAnonymous (talk) 09:38, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

forgotten consonant
in "phonology" section chart, the /dz/ is forgotten. for diacritics workaround this method can be helpful: ŭ=w, ŝ=x, ĵ=y, ĉ=q (while /dz/=ĉ). [keeping ĥ/ʔ/, ĝ/ɣ/ in eastern transliteration] Tabascofernandez (talk) 07:51, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not missing, not everyone agrees that /d͡z/ is a phoneme in Esperanto. PMEG considers it as two consonants. And I don't understand your point about diacritics. Mutichou (talk) 17:49, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

lingua franca of choice
Why was this addition rejected ? "or lingua franca of choice " ?Alifono (talk) 14:15, 15 January 2018 (UTC)


 * You changed the first sentence from "Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language." to "Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language or lingua franca of choice." I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, but I would say that a lingua franca "of choice" is not a particularly coherent idea. Something is either the language two people with different native languages use to communicate or it's not. If you take "lingua franca of choice" to say that Esperantists use Esperanto to communicate... I don't think that's a particularly interesting thing to say. However I cut it, it's not something clearly true and incredibly fundamental about the language, of the standards needed to put it in the first sentence.
 * Secondly, the cite does not say "lingua franca". I don't see how it supports that claim.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:27, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Criticism of Esperanto
I remember this article had a section devoted to things that people have criticized about the language. I now see it disappeared in April 2016. The deletion is justified in a series of edits with messages including "Criticism SECTIONS aren't allowed under Wikipedia". This is the first time I hear of such a thing. There are tons of articles in wikipedia with criticism sections and these sections are VERY important to maintain a neutral point of view. I believe the criticism section should be restored. --Martinkunev (talk) 12:38, 18 January 2018 (UTC)

Writing diacritics
the BEST way is to employ: ĥ = x, ĵ = y, ŭ = w and dz = q. I think it should be done as a REFORM in introducing esperanto letters; or at least an INTERNATIONAL alternative to writing esperanto with qwerty based keyboards. Tabascofernandez (talk) 04:15, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * This is irrelevant. This article should describe Esperanto as it is actually used, not someone's idea of how it should be reformed. Mutichou (talk) 09:35, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Esperanto vs. Esperanto movement
Should this article solely be about Esperanto qua a language and the Esperanto movement article about Esperanto qua a movement? The two are treated relatively inseparable in this article, so I don't see why the Esperanto movement article even exists, unless this article is only about the language. Thoughts? Michipedian (talk) 03:50, 27 May 2018 (UTC)

Vatican Radio link down?
I tried going to the Vatican Radio site in Esperanto, however, the link is broken. Does anybody know if there's a replacement that we could use on this page instead, or if they just removed it entirely? Tymewalk (talk) 17:16, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Every fact about Esperanto should not be in the lead
I worked diligently to rewrite the lead to be comprehensive and include the most notable information on the language, notable especially to those who have little to no knowledge of it. Since then, many have added more facts, and I think the lead is now too long. Will we all please try and keep the lead concise and not detailing excessive information that is already included in the body? Michipedian (talk) 04:44, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Ĉu vi parolas Esperante? Can parolas be intransitive?
Both the English Wiktionary and Esperanto Wiktionary seem to think parolas can be used intransitively, but seems to think it can't. Anyone else want to weigh in?--Prosfilaes (talk) 02:06, 2 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Difficult to call on the support of the 16 rules on this point, as this edit summary does, when they don't distinguish transitive and intransitive verbs, make no comment on acceptable usage of adverbs, and don't define acceptable verb objects. Which is why we don't allow that sort of interpretation from primary sources per WP:NOR.


 * (That is not to say that Esperanto doesn't have rules on these things - clearly it does or else it wouldn't function as a language. Only that a reference to that specific document is not compelling evidence.)


 * Ĉu vi parolas Esperante would seem to my non-Esperantist ear to be fairly consistent with Esperanto's use of adverbal forms of proper nouns. I could not say whether it is correct or not, but would suggest that there is no consensus at this time for the change, and would note that while message boards are not reliable sources, the one you cite is probably better than nothing. Kahastok talk 11:21, 2 September 2018 (UTC)


 * This is I never said that paroli can't be used intransitively, so please don't put words in my mouth. I said that it can't be used intransitively in the specific context being disputed, saying that you speak a specific language. I also wish to remind everyone that "Esperante" can be easily confused for "hopingly." Anyways, you cited Wiktionary to state that paroli can be used intransitively. However, it is also important to note definition 2 of paroli on Wiktinary, which states that paroli the transative form of the verb is especially used in the context of speaking a language, which would mean the form "Esperanton" would be needed to be gramatically correct.


 * , I did not "make assumptions about people I don't know", as you suggested in your edit summary. Your change and your comment made it absolutely clear: you don't know Esperanto, you are just quoting some imaginary rules. I referred you to a good, quality controlled Esperanto corpus, not to some obscure Google search results. Sure, "Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?" is correct and frequent but your preferring one wording over another is not sufficient to change what somebody else has chosen to write. Please stop saying that the original "Ĉu vi parolas Esperante?" was wrong. It was not. Besides, you had to delete the sound file, thus reducing the value of the article. --Surfo (talk) 14:20, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * , firstly, I do know Esperanto. Your argued "There is no rule saying that a transitive verb can only have a direct object as modifier." This line of reasoning goes to show that you don't know what a transitive verb is. A transitive verb ALWAYS NEEDS AN OBJECT WITH ZERO EXCEPTIONS! This is the definition of a transative verb. Also, I was going to make a new audio file, but if my fixing of a grammatical issue to a form that everyone can agree is correct keeps getting undone, then what is the point. The fact of the matter is that when used in the context of speaking a language, the transitive form of "paroli" is proper.


 * Can you please sign your posts with --~ ? Esperanto, like English, does not make a big deal about transitivity of most verbs. "I speak Esperanto" or "I speak in Esperanto", or "Mi parolas Esperanton" or "Mi parolas Esperante".--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:53, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * The problem with your reasoning is that in the English examples, both verbs are used transitively with objects. The only difference is a preposition, which is actually incorrect to place, because it implies that you speak inside of a place called Esperanto. In the Esperanto examples, you use the verb "paroli" in the context of speaking a language. Wiktinary definition 2 of paroli states: (transitive) to speak (a language, usually) (the "usually" meaning it can be transitive in other cases as well). Example provided by Wiktinary: Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? It just makes sense to me to use the standard universally agreed upon phrase, as opposed to the disputed one.Cole478 (talk) 12:39, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

I've no opinion to offer on this disagreement, but I can see that edit warring is occurring. Can I suggest that reverts his changes and stops altering the article while the matter is discussed? BRD principles maintains if you wish to make a disputed change you reach a consensus first, you don't just keep editing. The article should remain as it was until agreement is reached. Thanks. -- Escape Orbit (Talk) 14:29, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Oh boy, an edit war. Reading through this whole discussion has brought up some interesting arguments. After eading through both sides, I think is correct in that we should use the Esperanton form. I have seen both used before, but Esperanton is more standard across major platforms like duolingo and as  pointed out, it is used on the Wiktinary entry for paroli. I am pretty new on wikipedia, but I still hope that I can help everyone come to a consencus.Yubeltz (talk) 17:13, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Nomination of Criticism of Esperanto for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Criticism of Esperanto is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Criticism of Esperanto until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Salix alba (talk • contribs) 06:29, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Reference needed for statement on number of hours
There is a paragraph in section "Education" on the number of hours needed to learn Esperanto: "The Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy at Paderborn (Germany) has compared the length of study time..."

I think this paragraph needs a proper source. In the current version, [66] is cited, but this is not the original source. It cites another publication (Flochon, 2000) which is also not the original source, but refers to something done by the "Institut de pédagogie cybernétique". Actually, such an institute does not exist (anymore?), but there was a department for "Bildungskybernetik", which was part of the "Institut für Kybernetik" in Paderborn. This department was headed by Helmar Frank, a German scientist who studied, amongst others, the advantage of Esperanto for language learning.

It would be great to find the original source of the above statement about the number of hours, otherwise it would be just hearsay. Similar statements also appear in other publications (all giving Helmar Frank as source), sometimes with deviating numbers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trastuv (talk • contribs) 17:03, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

English as a secondary universal language
English is now the de facto universal second language. Doesn't this fact make Esperanto obsolete, since the goal of the creator has already been accomplished with English? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1004:B050:E64B:9CA9:1E87:1EB1:C8F5 (talk) 23:47, 11 October 2018 (UTC)


 * Not if the goal is a common second language that is easy to learn. —Tamfang (talk) 18:16, 8 December 2018 (UTC)


 * That may well be your point of view, and you wouldn't be the only one to hold it - but others would disagree. This is not the place for that discussion. Kahastok talk 19:38, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Simple phrases
A little while ago I added En ordo alongside Bone as a translation of English "All right" and "Okay". Though En ordo and Bone are not synonymous in Esperanto, like "All right" and "Okay" in English, they can both be used in several ways:
 * As an answer to a question such as "How are you doing?" / Kiel vi fartas? or "How did your meeting go?" / Kia via kunsido sukcesis?
 * As consent to a command such as "Get that done by five o'clock" / Finu tion antaŭ la kvina or "Please wash the dishes" / Bonvolu lavi la pladojn
 * As a reply, indicating satisfaction, to a statement such as "I've patched that hole in the fence" / Mi riparis tiun truo tra la barilo or "I'll put it on the calendar" / Mi skribos ĝin en la kalendaron

Since "All right" and "Okay" are in adjacent rows and have the same content in their Esperanto and IPA columns, I've combined them by making those cells two rows high.

--Thnidu (talk) 18:43, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

Help request
Esperanto is the second language of Republic of Molossia which is a micro nation. Please could you mention it in template or in the text.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170706103815/http://www.molossia.org/esperanto.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4665236/Micronation-Molossia.html Struck edit request by sock of blocked user:Shingling334. IamNotU (talk) 00:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't see how that would improve our readers' understanding of Esperanto. It belongs in the article on Molossia (and indeed is already mentioned there). The website of Molossia is not a reliable secondary source, and the Daily Mail is, well, the Daily Mail. Huon (talk) 01:46, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Request for critical voice
This article is great and it has lots of good information apart from the sections which are insufficiently verified. Unfortunately it just contains glowing praise. I know that there is a body of knowledge which provides a balanced view of why this artificial language hasn't been more widely implemented. It wasn't successful on such a large scale as was initially intended for very specific reasons related to the European basis for the grammar and vocabulary; it is easier for westerners with a Germanic/Romance language as a mother language than anyone else. There are also other reasons for criticism and such interesting information about this fascinating language needs to be balanced with such critical information if it is to be taken seriously again. I see that an article called 'Criticism of Esperanto' has been deleted and one is redirected to this site. Criticism isn't negative. But praise about good intentions havs to be balanced with the many linguists and politicians who disagreed with it and published information about their grievances. I'd say that the criticism HASN'T been sufficiently adopted into this text. I couldn't actually find anything but outright praise. The Dutch article has a section on the persecution of people who spoke the language but that's hardly criticism either. As long as there is no clear critical voice this article is going to keep reading like an advertisement for Esparanto. –Zachar Laskewicz (talk) 20:22, 14 March 2019 (UTC)


 * No, it did not have very specific reasons related to the grammar and vocabulary. I doubt Esperanto's lack of major success had any reasons related to its grammar or vocabulary; there are various political reasons, but ultimately a system where having a huge compatible base is important is very hard to break into, and it's hard to pick a better example than language. There are 5,000 languages with Esperanto arguably having more speakers than all but about 200, but most languages people learn are part of a handful of very large languages, like English, Spanish or Chinese, or their local national language. Esperanto never hit critical mass that most people felt it worth their time for learning.
 * (As for Germanic/Romance... the hardest part of language learning is a pile of vocabulary with some semantic complexity in there. You can either play on the knowledge that a billion speakers (plus millions of second language learners) already have, or you can make it harder for everyone but more "equal". There's no way you can effectively help speakers of Arabic and Chinese at the same time; in fact, at the current time, basing things off of Germanic/Romance may be the most effective way to reach Arabic and Chinese speakers, who probably have English (maybe French or Italian) as their second language.)
 * We have comments from politicians "Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat" and "In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to forbid Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist"". That pretty much covers the basic arguments: everyone should speak our language, and anyone speaking an "international" language is obviously associated with the other "side", whatever that is.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:48, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

-Also isn't it just a bit misleading to start the article with the three lofty goals of Zamenhof? And then a detailed description of where you can learn the language today? Shouldn't this come later and not be included in such detail? Shouldn't it start with the history, phonology and grammar? This is not meant to sound negatively critical at all by the way. When I read this article I felt like I was only getting one side of the story - and remember I am a reader who wants to learn positive things about Esperanto. I think it would be much better for Esperanto if this sounded more balanced. -Zachar Laskewicz (talk) 20:40, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Why shouldn't you start an article with why something was created? That's the start of history; these are the reasons for creation.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:48, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

I have a couple of suggestions to introduce a more critical voice to this article. One is to move quite a bit of the stuff about language acquisition (basic phrases is the part that comes to mind) to another page and link to that with only a sentence or two on this page. Language acquisition material veers towards promotion I think and detracts from encyclopaedic neutrality. Also like many articles we could have a controversy section at the bottom. Or something similar - comparison to other languages or other conlangs? For example as the current article states although some esperantists argue that it is neutral it is based on European languages. Although currently the article doesn’t mention that esperantists tend to be referring to neutrality in a different and very limited sense - that as a conlang no-one speaks it and so avoids resentment at having to learn a foreign country)s language. Could also do with reference to conlangs in general while we’re at it. Some of those would highlight drawbacks to Esperanto. Another “controversy” is that it has symbols that aren’t easily used on a computer and could have been avoided since the originator left out some Roman letters. Unfortunately as usual, plenty of ideas but no time to chase up sources. But in case anyone has time and interest I thought I’d throw them out there. Dakinijones (talk) 17:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Removal of request to check a source for reliability
Just a heads up that I removed this tag from some data regarding the time it takes to learn Esperanto vs. other (European) languages. I checked the source and found the following:- the original study was done by a research institute of Paderborn University who are respected in the international pedagogic field, meeting part of wiki’s reliability criteria. The results were published in a printed text, which meets another part of the wiki reliability criteria. And the quotation itself came from a French document (quoting the printed Paderborn results) which was produced as a consultation document for the French Ministry of Education by an organisation the French government created to provide reliable data about school education for its Ministry. To me this seems to be about as reliable a source as it can be.

The only issue I can see is it’s hard to check if you don’t read French but at WP:V it states that the source being in the wiki’s native tongue isn’t a requirement for something to qualify as a reliable source, although it is preferred when available.

BTW I don’t speak Esperanto but I do speak French ;-) Dakinijones (talk) 17:18, 4 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Dakinijones. BTW, I speak Esperanto with high though not native fluency, but I only read French a fair bit better than I speak it. :-) BTW2, I added a link to your mention of WP:V. It's easier for most readers to understand that way. --Thnidu (talk) 06:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)