Talk:Esperanto/Archive 5

This was nominated as a featured article candidate by Raul654 in February 2005, and failed nomination. It's undergone considerable revision since then, so we'll probably nominate it again after requesting peer review and doing further revision. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It went through Peer Review in late February and early March, and improved a lot. Among the changes were removing some less relevant material to separate articles like Esperanto orthography and Esperanto in English-language media; please see the peer review page and the talk archives here for details. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Minor question
Under History section: "As a constructed language, Esperanto's history is both short and well-known" By well-known do you mean widely known or well-documented? Espermike 07:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I can't speak for the person who first wrote that, but to me it only makes sense if it means "well-documented". Maybe we should say it that way. --Jim Henry 10:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Opening paragraph (as of Feb.2005)
My comments:

...which the Polish philologist L. L. Zamenhof...


 * I've never heard that Zamenhof was a philologist, professionally at least.


 * I've deleted the "Polish philologist" bit. If someone wants to know his complicated personal history they can click the link to L. L. Zamenhof. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

His intention was to create an easy-to-learn language, to serve ...


 * the comma after "language" is unnecessary and confusing at first glance.

to serve as an international auxiliary language for global communication.


 * the phrase "for global communication" is redundant with "language." Language is for communication, no? Global is (roughly) redundant with "international." I would delete "for global communication."


 * I've completely rewritten this sentence. --Jim Henry 18:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Today Esperanto is used for many activities including travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, literature, and language instruction;


 * maybe add "periodicals" to this list? (i.e. magazines are a popular part of Esperanto as far as I know). Maybe add "congresses" (the various conventions) as well?

it is the most widely used constructed language and even has some native speakers.


 * I don't know why but I don't like this sentence. It sounds like bragging. Mention the estimated speaker size instead? The "even has some native speakers" phrase is totally irrelevant to an introduction. It's sorta tacked on there at the end like, "and it comes with a kitchen sink too."


 * Estimated speaker count is in the table, and we now have a whole section on how many speakers there probably are and how hard it is to be sure of the number. I don't think we need to get into that in the summary paragraph. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Just my opinion and someone please delete my comments when it becomes irrelevant to any future revisions of the main article.


 * Haven't you noticed the "edit this page" link at the top of the article? &mdash; Timwi 13:35, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Irrelevancy
I think this paragraph is pretty irrelevant and should be deleted or perhaps moved elsewhere:


 * Ethnologue also states that Esperanto is a language of France [1] (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESP). David Blunkett said in the British House of Commons: "My only regret is that I learned a language called Esperanto at school. It was a very good idea at the time, but it got me into certain difficulties at the age of 16 when I used it in Paris." [2] (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010426/debtext/10426-03.htm), although he did not say whether he had been reading Ethnologue.

If nobody objects in a few days, I will delete it. --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Jim Henry 16:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jeronimo had some other comments about things that seemed to him irrelevant; see Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I removed these links that seemed to me irrelevant:


 * Majstro Multlingva Tradukvortaro: An on-line translation dictionary that uses Esperanto as an auxiliary language
 * Radio Polonia Interview with female Chinese Esperantist, describing difficulties in learning Esperanto for those outside Europe (.OGG file; in Esperanto)
 * Trigamba Jochjo Science fiction story, Threelegged Joe by Jack Vance, translated into Esperanto, recorded as audio in Ogg Vorbis format.

The first is an interesting example of the use of Esperanto, but not especially relevant as information on Esperanto. The latter two, being in Esperanto, are unlikely to be useful to typical readers of this English-language article. --Jim Henry 17:57, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have removed these See Alsos that seemed of lesser importance (they're in Category:Esperanto so easy enough to find if one is looking) and a couple of Miscellaneous external links of doubtful relevance. It might be good to add a more detailed paragraph about things of this kind to the Culture section of this article, or the Esperanto culture article, rather than just these See Also links. --Jim Henry 21:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Esperanto services
 * Amikeca Reto &mdash; friendship network
 * Esperanto Pen Pal Service
 * Pasporta Servo &mdash; hospitality network
 * Esperanto Anta&#365;en &mdash; Esperanto company


 * Generator for Esperanto typographical filler text
 * The first online role-playing game in Esperanto

NPOV on the "five reasons for its strength"
At, Plek comments that


 * I think this article has some serious NPOV issues. It reads like an Esperanto manifesto, especially the list headed by "More generally, there are five primary reasons for its strength".

I think there's some justice to what he says, though I'm not sure offhand how best to rephrase this section. Comments? --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After further comments from Plek on the Featured Article Candidacy page, I cut this:


 * 1) Re-thinking it all:  Zamenhof started developing his constructed language early, and he had done an enormous amount of work by the time he left for university.  When he returned home in 1881, as the legend goes, he found that his father had burned all his notes and work.  Thus Zamenhof was forced to begin again, but this time he had the advantage of all that he had learned in his first attempt.  He commented later in a letter to Nikolai Borovko, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that the language was already completely ready."
 * 2) Tapping innate structures:  Zamenhof based his language on a regularized version of natural languages, rather than building a totally novel and abstract structure (an approach used by some others).  Not only are the word roots generally from natural languages, the overall structure mimics natural languages.  This approach means that Esperanto can exploit desirable features from naturally evolved languages.
 * 3) Delay before publication:  When Zamenhof was ready to publish his language, the Czarist censors would not allow it.  Stymied, he spent his time in translating works (such as parts of the Bible and Shakespeare) into Esperanto.  This enforced delay led to continuing refinement and improvement before the language was presented to the world.
 * 4) Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists:  Many developers of constructed languages are possessive of their brain-children and reject any attempt by others to contribute or have a significant role in the development of the language.  Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists" and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.
 * 5) Stability:  Constructed languages are often hindered from developing a speaker community by continual tinkering, with the constant changes making the language impossible to learn and use.  Zamenhof, in contrast, published his Fundamento de Esperanto and established it as an unchanging foundation.  This gave Esperanto a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages possess by virtue of their great body of literature and speakers.  Thus one could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot.

I rewrote part of it, hopefully in a more neutral way, and moved some of the historical detail to Esperanto history. If you think some of this should go back in, please rewrite it in a more NPOV manner and put it in a new section (the stuff about "Tapping innate structures", "exploiting desirable features", etc. doesn't belong here in the "Language evolution" section). Some of the stuff I moved to Esperanto history needs better sourcing; some can be sourced from Zamenhof's letter to Borovko, and I added a reference to it in that article, but others (his father burning his papers? the censors not allowing publication at first?) I could not quickly find a reference to back up. Will re-read bits of La Fenomeno Esperanto and other sources to see what I can find. --Jim Henry 15:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chaplin film?
In the section on Esperanto in the mainstream media, I wonder why the Charlie Chaplin film "the grand dictator" isn't mentioned. (It might be that this is not the English name - in German it is "Der grosse Diktator".) A number of the shop signs in the ghetto are in E-o. - Ar 16:10, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead and add it. Make sure it is in the article on Esperanto film as well. Since we have a separate article on Esperanto film, let's avoid letting the mainstream media section get too long and detailed. I think adding the Chaplin film here (since it's one of the earliest, maybe the very earliest) and deleting some of the less important examples (while making sure they're listed in other relevant articles) would be a good thing. --Jim Henry 16:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Namesake
The Namesake section mentioning the asteroid named for Esperanto is irrelevant here, as Jeronimo pointed out at Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. There is a whole book (Monumente pri Esperanto) about things named for Esperanto or Dr. Zamenhof; but none of them are relevant in an encyclopedia article on Esperanto. If no one objects in a couple of days, I will delete this section. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't quite see why it would be "irrelevant in an encyclopedia article". &mdash; Timwi 20:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * Do you want to list other things named for Esperanto, maybe in another article Things named for Esperanto or Esperanto namesakes? To me, it makes sense for the article on the asteroid to link here, but not much sense the other way around.  The fact that there is an asteroid named for Esperanto seemed to Jeronimo irrelevant to this article, and on reflection I agree with him.  Mentioning the asteroid by itself in a tiny section just looks silly; either we should beef up the section with more namesakes, or move it to another article, or delete it.  Personally, I think improving the namesakes section (or writing a namesakes article) is a lot lower priority than improving the cursory treatment of Esperanto history and remedying the total lack of any section in this article on Esperanto culture, literature, music, etc. --Jim Henry


 * I've removed the text. If you really think it belongs, please expand it with additional material into a new article and put it in Category:Esperanto. --Jim Henry 20:56, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The minor planet (1421) Esperanto is named in honor of the language. It was discovered on March 18, 1936 by Yrjö Väisälä.


 * Schmadel, Lutz D. Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (2nd ed.). Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993.

Englishesque phonetic transcription
In Peer_review/Esperanto, Mark Dingemanse suggested getting rid of the rough transcriptions (e.g. [choo vee pah-ROH-lahss ess-peh-RAHN-tohn?]) now that we have IPA transcriptions. I'll do that in a few days if no one objects. --Jim Henry 17:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Size of the article
After adding material as recommended by the FAC objectors and peer reviewers, the article is now over 35KB. Any suggestions about which sections could most profitably be abridged or spun off into separate articles? IMO, the Esperanto in mainstream media section is the most easily dispensible - we might move the whole section into a see also article. The section on Writing system could probably stand to lose some or all of the extended discussion of ASCII transcriptions, Latin-3, Unicode, and locales. --Jim Henry 22:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

vowel vs. syllable
Sorry, I really think we should stick to saying Esperanto stress is on the penultimate vowel, not syllable. Of course, it's the vowel that defines the syllable, but saying that the stress is on the penultimate syllable causes people to make mistakes with words like familio, which they expect to be trisyllabic [fa.'mi.ljo] based on analogy with the Romance source languages. More recent Esperanto grammars often avoid this problem by saying "next-to-last vowel", and I've heard several people express appreciation as to how clear that is. kwami 23:22, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, that makes sense. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

number of speakers
I've changed the figure to the best guess on Vikipedio,. The Vikipedia article reports a guestimate that there are 1000 native speakers, 10,000 native-like speakers, 100,000 fluent speakers, a million conversant with the language, and 10 million who've studied a bit of the basics, so a best guess would be 100,000 to one million speakers, depending on your definition of a "speaker". --kwami 19:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * P.S. Sorry for repeating the info at the link here, but I don't know if everyone reading this page will be literate in Esperanto! kwami


 * I'm not sure I fully trust Dr. Culbert's figures, but they seem to have more solid methodology behind them than Dr. Lindstedt's guesstimate. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

edit
Removed the bit about E especially helping with IndoEuropean languages. Yes, Italian would be quite easy because of the shared vocab, but I doubt the improvement of learning time of Russian or Persian would be much greater than, say, Japanese. I found Japanese to be rather easy after picking up Esperanto. And I had studied Spanish for years without much to show for it, so it wasn't just the second-language effect: when I learned a new construction in Japanese, I translated into E, and that made me comfortable enough with it to think directly in Japanese, rather than going through English as I would've done otherwise. The one relevant section of the propedeutic article seems to support this position. --kwami 10:42, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)