Talk:Esperanto/Archive 22

List of sources about the number of native speakers
https://denaskuloj.home.blog/2019/03/15/kiom-da-denaskuloj-estas-en-la-tuta-mondo/

Tuxayo (talk) 18:52, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The Hungarian 2011 census counted 8397 speakers, of which 7412 don't speak it as a mother tongue (meaning that 985 do). Hegsareta (talk) 04:27, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

"He" used generically in English
Under Neutrality > Gender:

"As in English, li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female."

I'm not sure that this is correct. How can "he" be used generically in English? Perhaps the writer meant to say that the male form of a profession (actor, baron, etc.) can be used generically, while the female form (actress, baroness, etc.) is always female? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.194.218.228 (talk) 07:26, 28 September 2019 (UTC)


 * Traditional English grammars (i.e. those written between the eighteenth century and the mid-twentieth century) preferred he as a pronoun for a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant. Examples from Wikipedia:


 * If any one did not know it, it was his own fault — George Washington Cable, Old Creole Days (1879)
 * No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality —  Article 15, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
 * everyone will be able to decide for himself whether or not to have an abortion — Albert Bleumenthal, New York State Assembly


 * However, this rule fell out of fashion in the 1960s because it came to be seen as sexist. The most common alternative nowadays is the singular they, but not many of those who reject the singular they would advocate the generic he as an alternative.


 * I have reworded the text to remove the suggestion that generic he is standard in English. Kahastok talk 10:50, 29 September 2019 (UTC)


 * On the contrary, I think that many of those who reject the singular they would advocate the generic he as an alternative. The change may have started in the 1960s, but I remember cases of it being used in the 1980s and 1990s. I don't know of its current prevalence, but I think the comparison is important.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:33, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Nightic Esperanto
Hello, I have completed the Nightic Esperanto alphabet! Say "egg" on this discussion if you want me to make an article about it! I'm so excited! This poll will close in 7 days. PhoenixSummon (talk) 21:26, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Hen. Wikipedia is not for things made up one day. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:58, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Ok, don't be rude. I just wanted people's opinions.

Ok, the poll is closed. I will postpone the article to 01/23/2020. Thanks for the time, bye! PhoenixSummon (talk) 20:21, 27 November 2019 (UTC)


 * wasn't being rude (unless that's what "hen" was about). They were just telling you that your idea doesn't belong in Wikipedia, and pointing you to the page explaining that policy. If you post such an article it will be swiftly deleted. The only way it could belong in Wikipedia is if you publish your idea somewhere else and it is picked up and commented on in reliable sources such as newspapers, news reports, dictionaries, academic papers, etc. Then an article could be written about it – but not by you. Someone else would have to write it up. That's another Wikipedia rule: basically, someone with an interest in a topic shouldn't write about it. Quoting Independent sources:
 * Wikipedia is not a place to promote things or publish your thoughts, and is not a website for personal communication, a freely licensed media repository, or a censored publication.
 * --Thnidu (talk) 04:14, 12 December 2019 (UTC)


 * / PhoenixSummon (talk) 02:50, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

"Criticism of Esperanto" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Criticism of Esperanto. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 12:36, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

"Эсперанто" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Эсперанто. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 21:44, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction
What is said under "Criticism/Neutrality" contradicts what is said, IMHO closer to reality, under "Linguistic properties/Neutrality". I think the latter should be moved to, or maybe rewritten, where the former is, because once the contradiction is addressed, "Criticism" is a more logical place for that section. , what do you think? — Tonymec (talk) 14:19, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

not a language according to most linguists
Apparently linguists now understand that Esperanto and other international auxiliary languages are not languages but parasitic systems based on real languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C09jMAH6X18&feature=youtu.be&t=1231 at 20'30" and 22'30". --Espoo (talk) 11:36, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how a couple of sentences by one linguist who hasn't studied Esperanto supports the claim that "most linguists say Esperanto is not a language". Mutichou (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2019 (UTC)


 * +1. Myriads of linguists have no doubt that Esperanto is a full-fledged language, and one with far more speakers than, for instance, the average indigenous language of Vanuatu. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't believe anything from youtube, so I guess i shouldn't comment. --Malerooster (talk) 20:54, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * The title is uncomplete. Better add language, such as e.g. in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_language “It isn’t a language unless you can speak it.” 1 Alifono (talk) 19:45, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Not only anyone who cheks his facts, and studies what Esperanto actually is, rather than believing the lies spread about it by its many enemies, will have no doubt that it is a language, and one extremely easy to learn and speak; but professional linguists who studied the various linguistic properties of Esperanto have arrived at the conclusion that it has no intrinsic properties that put it apart from the many languages spoken all over the world. Of course its history is different, and it doesn't belong in any of the big language families like Indo-European, Semitic, Sinitic, etc.; some linguists classify Esperanto among "contact" and "creole" languages, why not? But "parasitic system" is nothing but a slur with no base in reality; and attributing it to "linguists" without qualification, i.e. supposedly to "all linguists" is a lie pure and simple.
 * For more detailed arguments than I could write here, see this table-of-contents page resending to articles in a multitude of languages including English, French and Esperanto by Claude Piron, who certainly knew what he was talking about (see the wiki page about him). Most of these articles are about Esperanto or about the lies spread about it. — Tonymec (talk) 15:06, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, this comment misrepresents what Chomsky actually said, which was a classification of Esperanto according to his ideas. He did not dispute the fact that Esperanto can be used as a means of communication. I think this results from his narrower definition of language being understood to mean languages in general. TucanHolmes (talk) 11:52, 30 May 2020 (UTC)


 * "[N]ow understand that" – this value-laden assertion is not an "understanding". Whatever you think of Esperanto as a project, you cannot fairly deny that it is a language spoken by many more than a lot of natural languages. There are even several native Esperanto speakers, meaning that the language (even if initially artificial) is arguably now a natural language with its own community of speakers, which will evolve in its own way. IMHO, that is closer to an impartial view of what linguists now "understand". Moreover, this comment does nothing but disparage Esperanto in a POV-based way, and does not propose anything constructive. Archon 2488 (talk) 14:15, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

"Espéranto" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Espéranto. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 22 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 06:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

"Esperantu" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Esperantu. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 August 2 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 12:17, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Origins
User:Tonymec:

The source that we have for Esperanto's similarity with other languages says:

The Esperanto phonological system is almost entirely Polish.

This cannot be used to justify the claim "the phonology is Italo-Polish". The phonology of Esperanto is neither ot Italo-Polish. It is, in fact, with a few tweaks and relatively marginal changes, very close to Polish. - Comment by Kahastok talk 21:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC) continues below


 * It is very close to Polish and very close to Italian. Just like these two languages, it has the five vowels /a/, /ε/, /i/, /ɔ/, /u/, and a set of consonants that gives little difficulty to either. AFAIK the only consonant not present in Italian is /x/ (ĥ) but it is the rarest letter of the whole Esperanto alphabet, and it is becoming rarer as words containing it have a tendency to be replaced by neologisms not containing it, e.g. -rĥ- → -rk- anywhere by Academy Addendum 8, ĥoro (choir, choral group) → koruso, etc. The Esperanto phonology cannot be said to be either "Slavic" or "Romance" without qualification since both Russians and French usually have a very noticeable accent reflecting the customs of their respective mother languages. Not so with Poles and not so with Italians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonymec (talk • contribs) 00:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Just like these two languages, it has the five vowels /a/, /ε/, /i/, /ɔ/, /u/, and a set of consonants that gives little difficulty to either. No, Italian has a seven-vowel system, neither, nor , an extremely weak  contrast, and a different stress system, see Italian phonology. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 01:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Similarly, the source says:

In fact, the huge majority of Esperanto words (around 75%) come from Romance languages, particularly French... Other important contributions to the Esperanto lexicon came from Greek (13%) and Germanic languages, mostly English and German, which combined make up 10% of it.

This goes directly against your unsourced claim, "about three-quarters from Romance, two-thirds from Germanic and one-half from Slavic languages, with these groups' parency acording for the overlap". (sic) - Comment by Kahastok talk 21:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC) continues below


 * If your source says that Esperanto has no more than 10% of its vocabulary in common with English and German together, then it is at best mistaken and at worst lying. For one thing, English has such an enormous store of French-derived words that any source asserting that Esperanto has "75% of Romance words but no more than 10% in common with English" should be regarded as suspect. For another thing, any reputable linguist should know that Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages share many words that are recognizably cognates even if with the passing of time they have ceased to be exactly synonymous. When putting together the "fundamental vocabulary" of Esperanto, Zamenhof built upon this shared vocabulary, and when adding neologisms afterwards it was often done the same way. La maro (the sea) resembles both French la mer and German das Meer; domo (a house) will be recognised by Russians as meaning дом and by the French as cognate with domicile or even, if they studied Latin, as borrowed from Latin domus. Danci is translated by English to dance, French danser, Dutch dansen, German tanzen, Russian танцевать "tantsevat'". There are countless such examples. Indeed, anyone asserting that words in common with French, words in common with German and words in common with Russian cannot possibly add to more than 100% because nothing can add to more than 100% is either ignorant or dishonest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonymec (talk • contribs) 00:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

You further wish the article to claim that the semantics are Germanic. Let's go back to the source:

A more subtle influence of Slavic languages on the structure of Esperanto, and more precisely its morphology, can be traced in the semantic build-up of Esperanto word formations... While all these words are built from Esperanto (sen-) and Romance elements, they are actually semantic calques from Slavic languages, but again telling whether it’s Polish or Russian may be next to impossible."

Polish and Russian are not Germanic languages. They are Slavic languages. So that's also directly rejected by the source. - Comment by Kahastok talk 21:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC) continues below


 * OK, so I was mistaken when mentioning German semantics, though I would have sworn I read about it somewhere. However, Claude Piron, who spent much of his life as a translator and interpreter of Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish into French for UN and the WHO, gives so many examples of words, phrases and sentences which can be translated word-for-word or element-by-element between Standard Chinese and Esperanto, including under various synonymous changes of word-order, but not between Esperanto and any European language, that I'm tempted to believe him when he says that Esperanto is, in a sense, an Asiatic language under European vestments, the only difference being that in Esperanto, unlike in Chinese, the phrase structure is immediately apparent (with, for instance, adjectives agreeing with their noun) — and, of course, that Esperanto, like pinyin but unlike hanzi, is written with one variant of the Latin alphabet under the principle "one letter, one sound". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tonymec (talk • contribs) 00:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I will be reverting based on this source. Kahastok talk 21:30, 21 June 2020 (UTC)


 * When quoting sources talking about Esperanto, one should be particularly careful, because, strange as it may appear, many authors, including Ph.D.'s in linguistics, have made ex abrupto pronouncements about it without ever studying what Esperanto actually is and how it functions. Examples of such prejudices about Esperanto are listed and refuted in Some Comments on Ignorance About Esperanto by Claude Piron, who was both a better linguist and a better Esperantist than I am; and in Psychological Reactions to Esperanto, translated by William Auld, he goes in search of the psychological mechanisms which created those prejudices. (After spending many years as a translator, he studied psychology in order to understand unreasoned contrary-to-fact prejudices against Esperanto; and he became a university professor in psychology and pedagogy teaching at Geneva University.) And BTW, when quoting Piron's Esperanto, a Western language? I ought also to have mentioned his Esperanto: European or Asiatic language? which explores in much greater detail the similarities between Esperanto and Chinese.
 * Oh, and you reproach me the fact that I put "too much weight" on one author's opinion's, namely Piron's; I'm quoting him because I know that he knows what he's talking about, both when talking about Esperanto and when talking about various languages including Chinese; I could probably have quoted Helmar Frank, Detlev Blanke, Bertil Wennergren, Gaston Waringhien, Ivo Lapenna, John Wells or Humphrey Tonkin if I had had ready access to their writings; the fact is that Piron has a whole site full of articles in various languages, and that this site was found sufficiently valuable to be kept up (and all dues paid) even after the author's death, which happened in 2008. The table of contents is arranged by language, scroll down to "English", which is approximately one-third of the way down, to find the English titles. Or, since your Babelbox says you're proficient in French, you may be interested in the articles in French, Piron's mother language. — Tonymec (talk) 00:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)


 * I don't know if Piron masters any Sinitic language, but several grammatical features of Esperanto are extremely difficult for native Mandarin speakers, especially tense, number, and the definite article. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 01:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Please do not break up my talk page comments, this makes the text very difficult to follow and is not allowed per WP:TPO.

On phonology, I'd endorse this comment from LiliCharlie. Also bear in mind that phonology is more than just the phonological inventory. Esperanto phonotactics, for example, are far more permissive than Italian phonotactics.

On word origins, the fact that a word has cognates in multiple languages does not mean that a given word was not based on one of those languages. The word maro is clearly based on Italian mare, and not German Meer, for example. More to the point, all of of these, we have a source. That trumps whatever argument you make that is not based on a source.

Piron and other Esperanto activists are WP:PARTISAN. It is fanciful to suggest that any connection with Chinese is anything more than coincidental and there is no evidence that Zamenhof considered Chinese speakers when creating Esperanto. Esperanto as an Asian language would look really really different. Kahastok talk 08:52, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I would only compare Esperanto's phonology to other languages, but I wouldn't say it has another language's phonology. Esperanto's phonology is—Esperanto. Depending on what phrasing and words are used, it will sound more or less similar to various languages.
 * Esperanto videos on YouTube are mostly mistaken by the site to be in Italian (Obviously some algorithm isn't a reliable source, but I felt compelled to note that, since it indicates similarity across the potentially biggest audio sample size). TucanHolmes (talk) 18:52, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I had always heard that Esperanto was strongly influenced by, if not based on, Portuguese. The written language looks Portuguese to me; perhaps it's the extensive use of 'j'. No source for this, just what I've hesrd. My 2¢ worth, mostly to get this page on my Watchlist ;-) --D Anthony Patriarche, BSc (talk) 12:33, 28 August 2020 (UTC)

Number of Esperanto speakers
(Pinging because they were the one who changed the entries) The number of estimated Esperanto speakers have recently been changed by omitting the outdated Ethnologue estimates from the infobox. While I agree that the old upper bound is in all likelihood an overestimation, the new upper bound is not necessarily more correct. Just to take one data point for comparison, the English–Esperanto course on Duolingo currently has 291,000 active learners (already exceeding the upper bound provided in the article, and that doesn't even include existing speakers or learners from courses taught in a different language), with an even bigger estimate coming from the cumulative number of people who have taken at least a look at the language (~ 1.36 million, mid-2018). If you look at the actual study the cited Libera Folio article is referring to, it only takes data from traditional Esperanto organisations and resources into account (so mostly 'offline' data), and disregards things like the internet almost entirely. What I'm getting at with this is that the study provides a good, conservative median estimate, but should in no way be used to estimate the upper bound. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:18, 8 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Duolingo defines an active learner as anyone who has used the course in the last year . This is pretty far removed from a reasonable definition of "L2 Users".


 * I might be inclined to argue that the fact that the number dropped so far when they switched from anyone who's ever looked at the course to anyone who's looked at the course in the last year rather suggests that number who have used the course every week for the past three months, say, is probably quite small.


 * I would note that we do not claim the 303,000 "active" Klingon learners, the 478,000 "active" High Valyrian learners, the 463,000 "active" Scots Gaelic learners, the 598,000 "active" Hawaiian learners or the 1,430,000 "active" Latin learners as L2 speakers on their respective articles. Kahastok talk 17:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Oops, probably should have expressed myself more clearly there: I don't want to include the number of Duolingo users as any sort of source, I just used it to illustrate how conservative the currently provided estimate is. TucanHolmes  (talk) 19:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Regarding your second point (what these numbers mean), I want to remind you of another possibility for why Duolingo wouldn't count a learner as active anymore: Because they finished the course and no longer use/need it, i.e. the drop between the cumulative and active users also includes those users that were simply done learning on Duolingo. TucanHolmes  (talk) 20:34, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * A reasonable definition of an L2 speaker would be anyone who could communicate at an FSI-3 level. For Klingon, that would be quite low compared to the number who have studied it online -- Klingon is intentionally not easy to learn. Esperanto would be higher, as the language is much more accessible. The only estimate I'm aware of that even approaches that is Lindstedt (1996), who guesstimated that there are 100,000 who actively use Eo. That agrees quite nicely with Nielsen. Maybe we could add Lindstedt's estimate of 'active speakers'? BTW, there's an article on the Duolinganoj here. — kwami (talk) 20:53, 8 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, makes sense. Which brings us to the old problem of how to estimate the number of speakers that aren't active in any sort of Esperanto organisation, and just use it like any other language (which, in my experience, is where the most growth is happening. Anecdotally, none of the Esperantists I met are members of any organisation). We should definitely keep Lindstedt's 1,000-10,000-100,000-1 Mio model of estimation; in my opinion, this is the only one that makes sense for a language like Esperanto (compare Latin: many European high school and university students, as well as speakers of Romance languages probably understand it to some degree, but how many can speak it fluently and use it actively? Seems similar to me). TucanHolmes  (talk) 11:02, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Lead
Maybe we could include a few sentences about Esperanto's origins, influences, and the language's general character (e.g. especially its vocabulary) in the lead—compare the lead sections of English language or Sindarin. Something in the vain of:

Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent marking pattern, with a rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order and a complex syntax. TucanHolmes (talk) 10:38, 12 April 2021 (UTC)