Talk:Esperanto/Archive 10

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why dont i make up a language

couldnt it be possible for any person who speaks 3or more languages to make up their own languageBouse23 (talk) 18:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Of course. Lots of people make their own languages (conlangs). It can be quite fun. Just go ahead, and good luck!

PS. Learning Esperanto or another constructed language would be a good starting point for you, so you can avoid ”reinventing the wheel.”

NN

I made a language called Catspeak. It's like this: Zdrresstvucz! Yoj inoj Casza, esst yoj amoroj parsselcho moy! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.59.157.62 (talk) 00:43, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Nonsense on this page

Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting.

Since I have never met anyone who used Esperanto for any of these purposes, I register Strong Doubt. As is obvious to anyone, replacing the word "Esperanto" with the word "English" in the cited sentence would actually make the sentence correct.

Really? Have you ever met anyone who spoke Hausa? Do you contend that Hausa isn't spoke? I've never met... is a pretty lousy argument.--Prosfilaes 14:39, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

One can go and find speakers of the Hausa language speakers among the Hausa people.

True: the "I've never met anyone" criterion is very weak. However, that Hausa is widely spoken in documentable in places like the CIA World Factbook [1].

On the other hand, the frankly wildly POV-laced statements about the utility and number of speakers in this article strain credulity. How can estimates of the numbers of total speakers and native speakers each be off by an order of magnitude (100 000 vs. 2 000 000, & 200 vs. 2000). Also, that all of two feature films have been produced in Esperanto is not evidence of a broad and deep culture.

For a main article on such a broad subject, the lack of references and POV is embarrasing. MARussellPESE 17:25, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Yiddish says there's three million Yiddish speakers; Jewish Studies at Rutger's says 600,000; that's a half an order of magnitude. For languages whose speakers are spread over the world, it's hard to get a good count of how many people speak the language. Furthermore, for such languages, there's going to be a large range of fluency, and asking people whether they speak a language may get an answer that depends more on politics than actual fluency. Nobody registers native speakers of Esperanto, and given that many of them leave the movement, they are even harder to count than speakers.

Wikipedia lists 40 million speakers of Hausa, 20 times as many Esperanto. And yet the IMDB lists between two and six full length feature films in Hausa, depending on what you count. Do you contend that they don't have a broad and deep culture? Perhaps the fact that low budget for a feature film is a couple million dollars, and that Esperanto speakers are spread out enough that theaters can't justify showing movies targeted at them would be a better explanation for the lack of feature films. The time, money and cultural energy of Esperanto speakers is better spent on books, music, and other materials that are cheaply produced and easily distributed to a widely distributed audience.

You are welcome to provide more references, but I don't agree that just because it's hard to find good information on subjects that that means there's POV.--Prosfilaes 13:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

At let me also note that the count of speakers comes from Ethnologue, which is comprehensive, non-partisan and frequently referenced (see Yiddish and many other languages, which use the Ethnologue numbers.)

Sorry, but none of these comparisons are of use. Noting that WP articles don't jibe with genuine reliable sources make the points in "Criticism of Wikipedia", but does not inform the discussion.

I take exception to your insinuation of any "contentions" on my part about the Hausa culture. West Africa is not a hot-bed of movie production so — of course — there'd be few Hausa-language movies. Neither is that region a center of publishing; but I'd stack up the Hausa story-telling heritage to the best of Esperanto's literature and expect to see it excel Esperanto at every turn — as I would expect of any langage hundreds of years older. MARussellPESE 04:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

None of what comparisons? Yiddish uses the Ethnologue numbers, which is a genuine reliable source.

Your continued comments about Esperanto culture are irrelevant and WP:POV.--Prosfilaes 14:24, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

What about Klingon? This is from the National Review: "Despite the fact that the linguist Mark Okrand created Klingon only about a decade and half ago, many experts estimate that more people speak Klingon today than Esperanto, which was launched over a century ago. " Jonah Goldberg, March 30, 2001

Haha, that's sheer nonsense! I guess this was published by some tabloid press. No expert in artificial languages would ever claim or even believe that there are more people speaking Klingon than Esperanto. There are several thousands of Esperanto native speakers out there and about 2 million (some say more, some say less) speakers or learners of it. Klingon used to have one native speaker once, and it certainly has quite some speakers. Way more than certain dying aboriginal languages. However, they do not exceed the amount of esperantists. — N-true 09:43, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Your own comparisons make no points:

• WP's "Yiddish" article to Rutger's Jewish Studies re: number of Yiddish speakers (What does that have to do with Esperanto speakers?)
• WP's "Hausa" articles to WP's "Esperanto" article to the IMDB re: Number of movies (Compares apples to oranges.)

My commments about "Esperanto culture" are on-point when this article itself makes hyperbolic statements about such and offers not only few attributable sources, but few examples. Where are the Esperanto publishing houses? Esperanto journalism? Multi-media? Any of them commercially viable, or are they agencies of Esperanto societies? etc. A library of 25,000 Esperanto books, as stated in this article, seems awfully thin when compared to the 206,000 published last year in the UK alone.

That I disagree with unsupported claims isn't anti-Esperanto POV, it's a lack of tolerance for hyperbole. MARussellPESE 04:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

You asked how the estimates for the numbers of speakers for Esperanto could be so broadly ranging; I pointed out that languages that have speakers broad dispersed and hidden are hard to count, and I pointed out that Yiddish has the same issues.

You claim that number of feature films can be used to estimate Esperanto's culture; I pointed out that many cultures don't produce many feature films.

Wow! The number of books printed in one of the richest countries in the world with 30 times as many people as Esperanto speakers isn't apples and oranges.

You've sat here and attacked Esperanto culture for the number of feature films, for the number of books in the library, etc. That's not a lack of tolerance for hyperbole; that's POV against the concept of Esperanto culture. I don't see anything in the Esperanto culture section of the article that could amount to hyperbole; all of it is easily citable numbers, and numbers that you have attacked for being small.--Prosfilaes 07:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

If they are easily "citable": cite them. Please read the Culture sub-section. It uses expression like:

• "Esperanto is often used …"
• "large corpus of original … as well as translated literature"
• "over 25,000 Esperanto books"
• "over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines"
• "Many Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the world"

The superlatives go on and on, and not a whit of attribution. That, dear, is hyperbole in action.

If "Yiddish" made similar claims with similar absent sources, I'd be as irritated with it as I am with this. MARussellPESE 23:54, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

What superlatives? I only found one superlative in the whole article, on a quick search for "est", and that merely mentioning that the World Esperanto Organization is the largest Esperanto organization. Given that there's 14 sources linked in the article, I'd say that you're the one engaging in hyperbole.--Prosfilaes 12:10, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Read the definition: "an exaggerated mode of expression". Each of the above points exaggerates the scope and/or impact of Esperanto — either directly in terms of "Esperanto is often used …" w/o attribution — or indirectly by dropping key comparisons "over 25,000 Esperanto books" (suggesting lots) vs. say the 35 million circulation of the New York Public Library system.

At virtually every turn here, you've misrepresented my position, opened tangential issues, and/or presumed bad-faith. In this last, you've failed to address the point that the section entirely lacks attribution. The sub-articles are just about as bad. Continued discussion appears pointless. MARussellPESE 23:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I did read the definition: superlative says "the superlative of an adjective or adverb is a form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to in a given context." You linked it, so I assumed that's the definition you meant. I don't agree that they exaggerate the scope or impact of Esperanto, though I will admit that "large", "often", and "many" are not terribly clear or useful words. However, the numeric statements are exact and unexaggerated. I don't see any other article spoonfeeding its readers comparisons, and I don't see how to make those comparisons NPOV. Comparing the New York Public Library, a library with holdings in every major language in the world including Esperanto, to a monolingual library isn't fair. Comparing any English library is unfair, as English is one of the world's largest languages. We could compare Hausa libraries, but you've complained every time I brought up Hausa.

Yes, sections of the article lack attribution. Yes, that should be fixed. And?

I don't think you've looked at Yiddish with the same eye that you looked at Esperanto. Try:

• "In the early 20th century, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theater and Yiddish film were booming,"
• "In the United States, the Yiddish language bonded Jews from many countries"
• "Thriving Yiddish theater in New York City and, to a lesser extent,"
• "פארווערטס (forverts - The Forward) was one of seven Yiddish daily newspapers in New York City," (out of how many daily newspapers in NYC?)
• "Hundreds of thousands of young children have been, and are still, taught to translate the texts..." (compared to the millions and millions for English?)

Yiddish, in fact, has the same number of cites as Esperanto, and a section with {{Unreferenced|date=August 2006}}, along with a lot of fact tags. It makes a lot of similar claims without sources, and I can only conclude the reason you're here instead of Talk:Yiddish is your POV.--Prosfilaes 13:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Ethnologue and "genuine and reliable"?! Muha... I hope that was ironical. Those are mutually exclusive, every linguist can tell you. Ethnologue's speaker numbers are highly controversion in many parts, which is why they always should be taken with a grain of salt. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is merely it's vast multitude of languages. — N-true 14:55, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it wasn't intended to be ironic. The Ethnologue does an outstanding job of tackling a tremendously difficult task. Of course the figures are hard to get right, as the Ethnologue itself tells you. It also is transparent about where and why the figures are less reliable. You imply a degree of scholarly sloppiness that is unjustified to the point of libel. The reason why Ethnologue is used so often is that there is nothing else within an order of magnitude that compiles that much original field linguistics in so usable a form. Would you prefer they simply sit on their results and not make them available? Waitak 17:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, point taken, you're right. I shouldn't be so harsh about it. Ethnologue is one of these things which has many many disadvantages, mistakes, strange views and stuff like that, yet there is nothing better. I also don't know any source for this kind of language information as large and complete as Ethnologue. I just wanted to emphasize that much of its info is at least somewhat controversial and that it's better to cross-check the data. — N-true 18:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The majority of the claims challenged by the OP could be sourced to

• Auld, William. La Fenomeno Esperanto ("The Esperanto Phenomenon"). Rotterdam: Universala Esperanto-Asocio, 1988.

which already appears in the "Further Reading" section. The bit about television would need a more up to date source. That's just off the top of my head -- more up to date and specific sources could be found for the other claims as well. --Jim Henry 23:27, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

ŭ

It should be elaborated somewhere on this page that ŭ is sometimes pronounced like a w. ŭo would be pronounced "wo".

I think I remember when this page said some nonsense that v was pronounced like a w. I was annoyed by that glad to see it gone. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.199.93.88 (talk • contribs).

The letter ŭ is always pronounced like English w. The poster who said v was pronounced like w was probably thinking of Latin. SimpsonDG 23:32, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

In latin v isn't pronounced like w. 82.33.125.160 (talk) 19:00, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it is. I studied Latin for a year at Georgetown University. In classical Latin, v is pronounced like English w. SimpsonDG (talk) 00:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

How do you know? — N-true (talk) 22:44, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

In some pronunciations of Latin, it is pronounced as w; Gavin Betts's Teach Yourself Latin would assign that sound to the v. The Roman Pronunciation of Latin argues that the Roman pronunciation was more likely to have been a v sound, with many quotes from Roman authors, though he admits there's many who argue the other way. It's probably out of date, but those are the sources at hand.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:20, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

The pronunciation of v depends on one's native language, and varies between [v] and [w]. A lot of people (very possibly including Zamenhof himself) do not distinguish [v] from [w], and in Esperanto there is no such distinction in normal vocabulary. (There are a few mimetic forms with [w] like ŭa!, but with that criterion we can argue English has clicks because of words like tsk!.) Some people who do make the [v]-[w] distinction, such as some English speakers, try to introduce it into Esperanto by using the letter ŭ as a consonant (also ŭ is very common in Chinese and Japanese proper names), but this is primarily restricted to writing and is in no way universal. kwami 16:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Why do you think (or know) that Zamenhof himself might not have distinguished [v] from [w]? After all, he spoke Polish, didn't he? They have this distinction. I think it is indeed nonstandard to pronounce <v> as [w] or <ŭ> as [v]. They are in no way allophones, 'cause there are minimal pairs like laŭ ("according to") and lav' ("washing"). — N-true 20:24, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about Ł, though even today some people pronounce that as a lateral. I didn't say there was no distinction between [v] and [ŭ], nor that <ŭ> was pronounced [v], I said there was no distinction between [v] and [w], which isn't the same thing. Give me a minimal pair between consonantal [v] and [w], not between consonantal [v] and vocalic [ŭ]. (Excepting mimesis, proper names, & the like, of course.) kwami 23:38, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I also suspect that there is none. But if the sequences <aj> and <aŭ> (just to name a few) are analyzed as [aj] and [aw] (which is logical for some languages; e.g. French and Vietnamese, if I'm not mistaken), for that matter, the diphthong becomes a VC sequence again, and then it can be compared with another VC sequence, for example <av>. It shouldn't be too hard to find minimal pairs there. I've given one up there, but I'm sure that there are better ones in case you don't accept shortened forms like lav'. I need to think about this, but I would indeed prefer to analyze <ŭ> as a consonant instead of a vowel or part of a diphthong. I'm trying to think of parallel occurrences in natural languages... — N-true 02:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Kalocsay and Waringhien (Plena Analiza Gramatiko) talk about this. They comment that the letter <j> serves two functions, as a consonant /j/ and as an offglide in diphthongs; they say that if Espo were consistant here, the latter role would be played by a letter <ĭ>, and that aj should be analyzed as /aĭ/, not as /aj/. I completely accept that lava and laŭa are a minimal pair, but in English work and wick are a minimal pair, and that doesn't mean r is a vowel. A diphthong doesn't necessarily become a VC sequence just because it's followed by another vowel, though of course in some languages it will. This can be a difficult issue: does English cooperate have a /w/ in it? Regardless of whether laŭa has a consonantal [w] in it phonetically (and I suspect that will depend on the language background of the speaker), phonemically /ŭ/ behaves as a vocoid. It can't initiate a word, and not even a syllable if you analyze aŭ and eŭ as diphthongs. That makes its behavior completely unlike any consonant in Espo. And if we do analyze it as a consonant here, then Espo no longer has any diphthongs. kwami 02:33, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

According to "WILLKOMMEN, Dirk: Esperanto-Grammatik. Hamburg: Buske (2001)", p. 13f. the letter "ŭ" is pronounced as [w] and the letter "v" as [v]. Both are phonemes. According to the book there are as many phonemes as letters of the alphabet, meaning 28. So 28 phonemes minus 5 vowels leaves 23 consonant-phonemes. The article itself names 22 phonemes. So as /j/ is listed in the consonant-chart, so should be /w/.78.50.235.192 (talk) 20:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, j can be either a consonant or a semivowel, while ŭ can only be a semivowel (in offical Esperanto roots). Therefore, ŭ should not be in the list of consonants, while j may.

I have heard speakers pronounce lingvo like lingŭo, so there doesn't seem to be phonemic difference between [v] and [w]. The letter ŭ is always analysed as a semivowel in standard Esperanto words, so that there is officially no phone [w] in the language. Therefore [w] may be used as a variant of [v]. Jchthys _cont. 21:31, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

It isn’t true that [w] may be used as a variant of [v] in Esperanto. There are several minimal pairs v ~ ŭ, for instance vo ”name of the letter V” versus ŭo [wo] ”name of the letter Ŭ”, av’ ”grandfather” versus aŭ ”or”. 85.83.41.19 (talk) 08:07, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Writing system

I'd like to remove this statement regarding the alphabet:

A recent convention is to use the digraph "tx" for "ĉ", "q" for "ĝ", "y" for "ĵ", "x" for "ŝ", "w" for "ŭ" and double "h" for "ĥ"

I've been a speaker of Esperanto for over 30 years, and I've never heard of this. I suspect that if Esperanto were ever actually written using this "convention", it would be utterly unreadable to the vast majority of Esperantists. It wud bi kaynd ov layk saing txat inglix rayting kan bi txanjd layk txis.

SimpsonDG 13:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

they use it at lernu.net for some of their lessons. here's where they explain it: [2]. --fanturmandos 15:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see anything on that page that's not the normal x-method.--Prosfilaes 15:55, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I also only see the x-method there; no mention of this bizarre "tx q y x w hh" business. SimpsonDG 02:47, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

1000 native

I really diasgree with this, I don't think that there are any "native" speakers of Esperanto, only those who can speak it fluently

Shalom93 12:11, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there really are some native speakers; I've heard a couple of them. Occasionally a man and woman will meet through Esperanto and get married, having only Esperanto as their common language. Their children then grow up having Esperanto as their native language, since that's the language spoken at home. - SimpsonDG 12:48, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I've personally met some 20 native Esperanto speakers. In the whole world there certainly are at least about a thousand. Ethonolgue mentions "200-2000", but certainly its lower bound is a bit out of date, since the number of native Esperantists has been increasing in recent years. Marcoscramer 22:13, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Two of my friends have spawned such creatures. One of them estimates the total to be something under a thousand. Internet discussion lists dedicated to them only have a couple hundred members, he says.

Only a couple hundred members? I would think that the majority of people, even today, would not be found on such a list, and certainly the George Soross of the world, who are not active Esperantists, would not be on such lists. If most of the people on those lists are native Esperantists or actively involved in raising a native Esperantist, I would expect the number to be quite a bit higher than a thousand.--Prosfilaes 14:34, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Khomeini

An IP poster added unsourced information about Khomeini and Esperanto recently. I can't find evidence of an Esperanto translation of the Qur'an originating in Iran. Has anyone heard about this? --Cam 17:26, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Vowel system comparison

"Esperanto has the five "pure" vowels characteristic of the Romance languages like Spanish."

-- What other Romance languages besides Spanish and Italian have the same five-vowel system as Esperanto? French, Portugese and IIRC Catalan all have more vowels than that... is it valid to make this a generalization about Romance languages? Aren't there some non-IE languages with essentially the same 5-vowel system we could mention here? An earlier version of the article mentioned Swahili in this context, and I've seen Japanese mentioned elsewhere in a similar context, though it actually has a couple of voiceless vowels and an unrounded /u/ that make it a less than exact fit. --Jim Henry 23:21, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Italian has seven vowels, so it doesn't fit either. kwami 16:11, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, I only know of Spanish and modern Greek (the latter not a Romance language) having a five-vowel system. 144.82.107.146 (talk) 11:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

/a e i o u/ is probably the most common vowel system in the world (offhand, if you don't count vowel length, I can think of Hausa, most of Polynesian, several languages in New Guinea), but that really isn't the point. Most languages around the world have these five vowels (Russian, German, French, Hindi, Yoruba, Turkish, Persian, Korean, Bengali, Wolof) regardless of what else they may have, whereas there is no sixth vowel that is widely supported. A few languages lack one of them: there is no /o/ in Mandarin or /u/ in Japanese; and a some lack two (English, Arabic, Malay, Quechua), but this is a reasonable compromise, one used by almost all other popular conlangs. Of course, much of the attraction is that they're the default vowels of the Latin alphabet. kwami (talk) 19:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

World congresses

This statement appears in the article:

"Since then world congresses have been held on five continents every year except during the two World Wars, and have been attended by up to 6000 people (typically 2000-3000)."

Taken literally, the sentence states that there are five "world congresses" per year, one on each continent. Can that be correct? Seems unlikely.

• Nope, you're quite right; I've corrected the sentence. --Kwekubo 22:50, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Demographic information?

Is there any source for demographic information for Esperanto speakers? Not just the total number but age / gender breakdown, rankings by nationality, etc.? For example, I often come across references which indicate that they are an aging population. Is there any way to back this up officially, or are we reduced to staring at group photographs?

I have heard anecdotal evidence that e.g., the Esperanto speakers in the UK are mostly old, those in Iran are mostly young, there are a disproportionate number of young female E-o speakers in Ukraine, etc.. And it's my impression that a disproportionate number of the older speakers in the U.S. are female and most of the younger ones are male; but I don't know of any actual studies, besides (Sikosek 2003) which is already in the references section.

Looking at group photographs would show you the people who travel to conferences, who tend to be either young people in school with lots of free time, or older retired people with lots of free time. Looking at Internet activity, you see more of the working-age people who are underrepresented at conferences. --Jim Henry 14:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

use of esperanto

Some objections to the opening paragraph's bit about use of esperanto:

• World travel, what does this mean? Do they host esperanto language tours of Paris? Are there airlines using esperanto to communicate with their customers?
• Correspondence, this one I buy, esperanto pen pals, yeah?
• cultural exchange, is this the same as correspondence?
• conventions, does this refer to esperanto conventions? or does it refer to conventions on other things with esperanto being used to communicate with an international crowd? if not, couldn't you just as well say klingon was used for conventions?
• literature, this one makes sense too
• language instruction, i probably buy this, because i'm sure theres certain languages or audiences with which this is a practical option.
• television youve cited Internacia Televido
• radio broadcasting. there's already a [citation needed] marker

so whats the deal with all those? could someone just quick explain that to me? or put up some more citation needed markers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.198.168.12 (talk) 20:41, August 28, 2007 (UTC)<!** Template:UnsignedIP **> <!**Autosigned by SineBot**>

Most of these items briefly mentioned in the opening are expanded on later on. For instance, "world travel" links up to the discussion of Pasporta Servo later on. There are also tours in Esperanto each year, usually in conjunction with the Universala Kongreso. "Cultural exchange" is kind of vague but could apply to pretty much any contact between Esperanto speakers of different cultures, e.g. when last weekend an E-o speaker from Tanzania visited our local E-o group here in Atlanta and gave a talk about his country. Literature is discussed in the "Culture" section of this article as well as in Esperanto literature. One aspect of "Language instruction" is obvious enough, but E-o is also used as as medium to teach other languages, both natural and constructed. I'm not sure if that's discussed in the article or not. Yes, radio broadcasting needs to be discussed more and given more citations in this article or in a spin-off article; there are a number of shortwave radio stations that now or in the past have done broadcasts in Esperanto.

Conventions: Yes, it refers to Esperanto conventions, but not all conventions that use E-o as the working language are primarily or solely about Esperanto. If I look at a typical program for the recent conventions of the Esperanto League for North America [now "Esperanto-USA"], probably less than half the program items on average are about Esperanto, and I suspect the proportion is lower at more specialized conventions. And how is it relevant if Klingon is or isn't used for conventions? --Jim Henry 15:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

There are, say, E@I seminars, that are not about Esperanto at all. The two ones I've been to were primarily about Internet technologies like wiki scripts, PHP/MySQL, XHTML/CSS and so on. Slavik IVANOV 01:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)