Talk:List of Esperanto speakers

Unsorted additional Esperantists
I have not spent the time to compose amplifications appropriate for the subsections, nor identified the correct subsections, but I am placing these eleven links here, in order to clear this from my agenda for now. I may complete this later, or someone else may do it instead. -- Wavelength 18:06, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Boris Kolker (Esperantist of the Soviet Union, Russia, and United States)
 * Vladimir Varankin (Esperantist of the Soviet Union)
 * Gerrit Berveling (Esperantist of the Netherlands)
 * Nikolai Vladimirovich Nekrasov (Esperantist of the Soviet Union)
 * Sándor Szathmári (Esperantist of Austria-Hungary)
 * Jorge Camacho (Cordón) (Esperantist of Spain)
 * Don Harlow (Esperantist of the United States)
 * Persone (Esperantist rock trio of Sweden)
 * Claude Piron (Esperantist, linguist, translator, writer)
 * Louis de Beaufront (Esperantist)
 * Cezaro Rossetti (Esperantist of the UK)


 * Have added most of these. Tanzeel 19:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

William Shatner
Isn't he an Esperantist? I know he "sang" some songs in Esperanto. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.78.235.101 (talk) 04:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * He repeated lines in the film Incubus for his role in the film. I doubt this makes him a speaker of Esperanto as is claimed. If anyone can find further sources backing up that he ever practised Esperanto outside his role for the film then I retract this statement. Genjix (talk) 21:50, 18 August 2010 (UTC)
 * He does say a sentence of (broken) Esperanto in this 1999 clip from the Daily Show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-21-1999/bad-language -- Yekrats (talk) 03:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Ref [2] isn't playing for me (might be nationality issue, might just be a dead link), while the above Daily Show also won't play for me (outside the US), so I can't speak to those sources. As for [1], I suspect Mr Tanzola's statement, "He may not speak French, but he's fluent in Esperanto" is not to be taken to the Nth degree of accuracy, or indeed seriousness. In the line before this Mr Tanzola describes Shatner as "well versed in interplanetary diplomacy, so international relations should be a cinch" while a few lines later he "suggests some political characters for the next Star Trek movie: Ms. Jean for Uhura,; Mr. Ignatieff as Spock; Gilles Duceppe as Chekov; Jean Chretien as Scotty; John Baird as Khan and Helena Guergis as the Borg Queen." and also states that Shatner would lobby the RCMP to "replace Tasers with phasers." I would not therefore take this fleeting mention of Shatner being 'fluent' in Esperanto as a serious and reliable source.


 * I guess the question is at what point a speaker of Esperanto becomes an Esperantist. If the only word I can say in Esperanto is "Jes" does that make me an Esperantist? If all we have evidence of is that Shatner can still remember a few words from Incubus, does that make him an Esperantist? -- Taohinton (talk) 12:42, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Article name issue
I feel like this article should either be called Esperantism or List of Esperantists. See what happens with the articles Communism, Anarchist, Libertarian, Inclusionist. --Quintucket (talk) 19:45, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

The Polgars
The list features László and Zsuzsanna, but not Judit or Zsófia. I'm pretty sure their father László Polgár taught Esperanto to all three of them. 213.109.230.96 (talk) 14:24, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Esperantist and/or "Esperanto speaker"?
Some Esperanto speaking people don't like the word "Esperantist" (or "Esperantisto"). They prefer the more neutral term "Esperanto speaker" (me, for instance :-) ). I think, this should be mentioned. The term "Esperanto speaker" is used only once in the page, but it is used e.g. in Fluent in 3 months, The Economist and NPR.

The term "Esperantisto" is defined in the "Deklaracio pri la esenco de Esperantismo". Those who do not want to be identified as followers of the "esperantism" (me, for instance), do not accept that a declaration with such a name (and content) defines how they should be named.

The article says "Although definitions of Esperantist vary (...)". There is no source for this assertion (and where are the other definitions?).

The article also says: "An Esperantist is also a person who participates in Esperanto culture." No source for this either...

Why do we speak about "Native Esperanto speakers", not about "Native Esperantists"? Or, the other way around - isn't this a good idea which should expand? --Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven (talk) 14:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

J. R. R. Tolkien in fact learned Esperanto, read "a fair amount" it and wrote in it
Sources now in the article (and in the article about J. R. R. Tolkien). It should be noted that the remark about Esperanto from 1956 is only in a draft of a letter; it is not known, if the letter was sent and who "Mr. Thompson" was.

As to the remark: Tolkien wrote about the authors of Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial etc. that they "never invented any Esperanto legends". Why should e. g. the author of Volapük invent "Esperanto" legends (and not "Volapük legends")?! So it's clear Tolkien didn't think too much about this sentence.

There is still another point: For a living language like Esperanto it's not necessary that the author himself invents the legends of the language and of the language community. There are hundreds of authors who write in Esperanto, some of them do invent legends; and the community of Esperanto speakers forms own legends... --Lu Wunsch-Rolshoven (talk) 10:45, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

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Requested move 16 May 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: moved as requested per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 19:58, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Esperantist → List of Esperanto speakers – It is unclear to me and to many who have commented on this talk page previously why this article exists in the way that it does. We do not have a separate article for the term Francophone—it is simply a term mentioned in the French language article. Similarly, the term Esperantist should simply be mentioned as a term that describes Esperanto speakers in the Esperanto language article. This article also appears to function as a list of Esperanto speakers, or Esperantists. I say this article should only function as a list of Esperanto speakers, since that appears to be its primary purpose and value. I think List of Esperanto speakers is preferable to List of Esperantists because it is more straightforward and neutral. Michipedian (talk) 07:39, 16 May 2018 (UTC) --Relisting.  Anarchyte ( work  &#124;  talk )  04:31, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support per nom's reasoning. Terms like "Esperantist" should be covered at the article on the language, while this page already isn't serving any real function beyond a list (and it needs some cleanup; it's not WP's job to brand certain people "important", for example. See WP:NPOV and WP:Systemic bias. "Famous" is also not something we use. Everyone in WP is "famous" (i.e., notable) or they wouldn't be in WP.  I would suggest an alphabetical list, divided if necessary by occupation following the same naming scheme as our WP:Category system.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:14, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Support on the grounds of the above justifications and support dividing by name in the subsequent page, occupation could get messy because many notable people (i.e. those featured on Wikipedia) have multiple occupations. LibrePrincess (talk) 15:37, 27 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.