Talk:Esperanto/Archive 13

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"By far"

So, the article states that Esperanto is by far the most commonly spoken constructed language (or so it says). One user had a problem with that phrasing, stating that "by far" is POV. I fully agree with Kwamikagami, IJzeren Jan and Prosfilaes that a number 1000× as big as the next-large conlang (Interlingua or Ido, I suppose) is clearly big(ger) enough to merit the addition of "by far". User Antonielly asked where that margin for the inclusion of a "by far" be — I'd say, this is not relevant for the article, be it 5×, 10× or 20× as big... here we apparently have 1000×, what's this if not "by far"? Please discuss. — N-true (talk) 13:02, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't mind "by far" somewhere else in the article, but I don't think it belongs in the first sentence. The first sentence should be just a simple definition. Imagine as a first sentence "Hydrogen is by far the most common chemical element in the universe." This is technically true, and might belong somewhere in the article on hydrogen, but sounds odd to me as the first sentence of an encyclopedia article. Maybe the second sentence would be a better place for a "by far" statement here. --Cam (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, being unencyclopedic is a legitimate objection, claiming non-NPOV is not. kwami (talk) 19:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for opening a discussion topic in the talk page. I actually do not feel comfortable with the qualification "by far" in an encyclopedia that values NPOV because such quantifier is vague, imprecise and subjective: what is "bigger by far" for someone can be "clearly bigger, but far from being very much bigger" for someone else. See Sorites paradox. I believe User:AcroX has indicated that such qualification is POV for the same reasons.

I think this quest for consensus provides a nice opportunity to improve the article with more objective (or at least sourced) data. I would welcome something like: "Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. According to author X [ref.], its speaking community is at least Y orders of magnitude bigger than the speaking community of any other constructed IAL."

It does not need to be those words, of course; my point is just that a concrete numerical estimation (with indication of sources) indicating how big Esperanto is when compared to the 2nd place in the IAL speaker ranking would be NPOV, since it is an objective number. Then each individual reader that would judge whether, in his (subjective) POV, "by far" is or is not a fair qualification in his opinion.

Just for the record, in my POV, "by far" does make sense, but I argue that it is my subjective POV, and your mileage may vary. After all, there is no way to objectively say how much is needed for us to add the "by far" qualification.

I hope I 've made my concern clear for you. I believe we will soon reach a consensus. Thanks for reading. --Antonielly (talk) 23:46, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

One possible reason to avoid using "by far" in the opening paragraph is that it will cause some readers to roll their eyes and exclaim "oh God this article was written by fanatical Esperantists, most likely it can't be trusted." Because this is an issue in which communication is often dominated by partisans, such exuberant language casts doubt on the reliability of the entire article. Anyway, let's ask those who favor including "by far" to search their souls and tell us why they want it in that paragraph. --Rikat (talk) 04:45, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Rikat, I completely agree with you. Anyway, since consensus hasn't been reached yet, I am just going to add a "request for clarification" tag for the expression "by far" in the article's 1st sentence. I hope the discussions will continue for us to improve the text of the article and, after that, remove the unpleasant clarification tag. --Antonielly (talk) 19:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I think Rikat's argument here is perfectly valid and thinking about it, I agree. I change my opinion: it should indeed be excluded from the first sentence. Not because it's POV (it clearly isn't, or otherwise words as "frequently", "often", "large proportion", "very seldom", which occur quite frequently(!) on Wikipedia, would be POV as well). But because of the influence it might have on some readers. "By far" doesn't add much useful information to the article anyways. — N-true (talk) 00:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

"largest" is just as POV and violating of the Sorites paradox; given any two quantities and the same logic, someone might think they are in fact approximately equal, especially when dealing with the vague estimates and large error bars of IAL speaker counts. The Sorites paradox is purely about logic and has nothing to do with reality.

Personally, I don't waste my time communicating with people who demand I search my soul in what's supposed to be a rational discussion.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Cam, that 'by far' is stylistically inappropriate for the intro regardless of accuracy. All the tags were making a mess of the intro, and I moved the phrase down to to Demographics. Citation would require a decent estimate for the number of Interlingua speakers, which may prove difficult. kwami (talk) 00:18, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-existing letters

I'm confused about one thing. If the aim was to create a language, simple and without conjugation. Why create letters that don't exist in other languages. Is there a reason for using special letters instead of consonant combinations? McCharraigin (talk) 23:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The reason was so that the alphabet would be completely phonetic. As you see, Zamenhof defined optional consonant combinations (ch, gh, etc.), but these sometimes cause difficulties. One is the problem of computer sorting: ach- should come after aco-, not before. Another is compound words, such as flughaveno, which means "airport". This is formed from the roots flug- and haveno, and is NOT fluĝaveno. (The x-system, in my opinion, should be used in emailing and other temporary computing—if the diacritical letters are not available—and the standard diacritics should be used elsewhere.)

Note that Ido, a spin-off of Esperanto, does not have special characters: it has fewer sounds than Esperanto and is slightly more non-phonetic. Jchthys _cont. 02:35, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a minor correction: it is phonemic, not phonetic. A phoneme may represent a range of equivalent sounds/phones (which are not the same, but have the same function in a given specific language). For instance, open "o" and closed "o" are different sounds/phones independently of language. They are equivalent (may be freely exchanged with each other) in Spanish, but not in Portuguese (as in "avô" [grandfather - closed "o"] and "avó" [grandmother - open "o"]). Therefore open "o" and closed "o" are a single phoneme in Spanish, but not in Portuguese. And they are different sounds/phones universally, even in languages where they are functionally equivalent.

In Esperanto, open "e" and closed "e" are the same phoneme (represented by "e" in writing), open "o" and closed "o" are the same phoneme (represented by "o" in writing), etc. The perfect alignment between graphemes (letters/symbols) and phonemes (not sounds/phones) is what makes the Esperanto alphabet a phonemic one (but it is not phonetic at all). --Antonielly (talk) 03:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to the original question: the problem is that a sequence like sh could mean the sound of s plus the sound of h, like "grass hut" in English. (You can have a phonemic script with digraphs, that's not the problem.) Zamenhof was used to languages, such as Russian and Czech, which have few or no digraphs, and where one letter pretty much stood for one phoneme, and vice versa. However, he didn't want to copy the orthography of an existing language in an age of intense nationalism in Europe, so he created new letters that would be associated with no language in particular. kwami (talk) 06:32, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

"[...] he didn't want to copy the orthography of an existing language in an age of intense nationalism in Europe, so he created new letters that would be associated with no language in particular.". That is very interesting! Do you have a source for that? If sourced, this design rationale could be included in the article (and would be a satisfatory counter-argument to a common criticism). --Antonielly (talk) 21:17, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Don't recall specifically. Prob'ly Don Harlow. Eo wiki doesn't seem to mention it. But it wouldn't be much of a counter argument anyway: the criticism isn't that Z didn't use the Czech alphabet, really it's that he didn't use Western European conventions. People making these criticisms mostly object to an international language not looking like their national language. kwami (talk) 22:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I see, but why do words like grass hut and flughaveno have to be seperate sounds. If two letters make that sound why not have it that way? Is it only for better understanding if you don't speak the language very well? For example in Swedish, the word varsågod which is pronounced /vaːrʃɔːgoːd/ but is made up by the words var så god which are pronounced /vaːrsɔːgoːd/, but now when I think about it foreigners have problems with that. Hm, I feel like I'm contradicting myself. Anyway, thank you all for your help and contribution. McCharraigin (talk) 21:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the question. I don't know Z's exact motivations, but I would assume that he wouldn't want "sh" because that would be sometimes /ʃ/ and sometimes /sh/. He was trying to make the language unambiguous and without exceptions, and "one letter, one sound" was part of that approach. kwami (talk) 22:07, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

It was suppose to turn out as a question but I felt I was contradicting myself so I stopped half way through. Anyway, thanks everyone for their help. McCharraigin (talk) 17:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we see this as problem because we use computer, but in the past, just few people used typewriter, and most of the people handwrote. It was a simple solution to create such letter, and the " ^ ˘ " diacritics were present in all typewriters able to write French, that was in that time the most important language. We are used to press keys on keyboard of our computer, but using a typewriter it was simple to write "s" and ^ separately. Later, when the internacia lingvo arrived in France, some French started to criticize that because the Eastern European languages were considered not important for them (even if diacritics were in French). So it was some estetical criticism when it started, and in the last years it became a problem in e-mailing (until the unicode will not be used in all servers, we must still wait at least 2 years to be 100% sure that our email in any language with any character non included in ASCII will be safely delivered - some more patience). --Iosko (talk) 19:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Not related to anything, from scratch? Maybe not true!

> As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language.

Is this true? I've heard esperanto being mentioned as "pidgin spanish", that is a very much simplified version of spanish or an attempt at creating a too few rules artificial neo-latin language.

Supposedly native english and german speakers find it difficult to learn esperanto, because it is "so much like spanish" and they find its logic and spelling too alien. 91.82.33.216 (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

A friend of mine who knows a lot of languages has told me that Esperanto is very much like Spanish, and it can be roughly "read" with a basic understanding of Spanish. Alan16 ^talk 21:56, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

The key word is "genealogically". Like pidgins and creoles, constructed languages are not derived from other languages via gradual linguistic change. Spanish (or better yet Italian) did not evolve into Esperanto, Esperanto was created from Italian and other roots. kwami (talk) 06:28, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Estetically it looks like Spanish or Italian, but if you compare its grammar with Sp, Ita and English, you will notice that a lot comes from English: the verb doesn't change for the person (as in English, with the difference that En changes the 3rd person of the present and that esperanto doesnt use words like "do" to ask or negate, let, shall, will ...), there is just one determinative article like in Eng (here a further semplification, there are not indeterminative articles, but still, italian has 3 sing. + 3 plur. determinative articles + indeterminative articles; also Sp changes articles with number and gender); the plural is made by adding -j and in Eng. and Sp -s is added (in Italian the last vowel changes, and nothing is added). So it cannot be considered a semplification of spanish, but it could be considered a semplification of indoeuropean languages + the agglutinative structure. The fact that it sounds like Latin languages it was almost a forced chose, because they are the easiest to be pronounced than germanic and slavic languages (it's easier for an english to pronunce correctly an italian word, than for an italian to prounuce correctly an English word - just check the phonology of English and how many phonemes it has, and the same is for slavic languages) --Iosko (talk) 19:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I need help for translation

I speak no very good english , sorry , I think that link is intresting for you . This the link about rapport grin http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapport_Grin -- 90.34.218.110 (talk) 16:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Maybe as source, but here, not in the french wikipedia, where it has already been deleted. --Iosko (talk) 20:24, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It's still there in wiki-fr. kwami (talk) 21:31, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

IF you need autentic "rapport grin" you can see eye hier http://cisad.adc.education.fr/hcee/documents/rapport_Grin.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.18.35.183 (talk) 20:49, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Can francophone please check a source?

"A study realise in panderborn academie in germany showed that 150 hours of esperanto = 1000 hours of italian = 1500 hours of nglish = 2000 hours of german"

Source for this is http://cisad.adc.education.fr/hcee/documents/rapport_Grin.pdf (in French). Could a francophone please review this article to:

- (a) Verify that the facts as stated are in this article.
- (b) (Maybe more important) Provide some context. Hours of Esperanto = hours of other languages for speakers of what languages? (Article is in French, about a German institution, and references English and Italian.) -- Thanks. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 15:35, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

On page 81 (83 by pdf count) it says,

Flochon (2000 : 109) note que « l’Institut de pédagogie cybernétique de Paderborn (Allemagne) a comparé les durées d’apprentissage de plusieurs groupes d’élèves francophones, de niveau baccalauréat, pour atteindre un niveau dit ‘standard’ et comparable dans quatre langues différentes : l’espéranto, l’anglais, l’allemand et l’italien. Les résultats sont les suivants : pour atteindre ce niveau, 2000 heures d’études de l’allemand produisaient un niveau linguistique équivalent à 1500 heures d’étude l’anglais, 1000 heures d’étude de l’italien et… 150 heures d’étude de l’espéranto. Sans commentaire ».

Flochon (2000:109) notes that, "The Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy at Paderborn (Germany) has compared the learning times of several groups of Francophone students, at a high-school level, to obtain a comparable 'standard' level in four different languages: Esperanto, English, German, and Italian. The results are as follows: to obtain this level, 2000 hours of study of German produce a language level equivalent to 1500 hours of studying English, 1000 hours of studying Italian, and ... 150 hours of studying Esperanto. Without comment" [I think this might mean 'nothing more needs to be said'].

Flochon, Bruno, 2000 : « L'espéranto », in Gauthier, Guy (ed.) Langues: une guerre à mort, Panoramiques. 4e trim. 48: 89-95.

kwami (talk) 22:34, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I see that 65.26.125.199 removed this from the article, with the comment "Deleted seemingly meaningless sentence." I've re-added it, in User:Kwamikagami's translation, to the section "Education".
I see that our current cite #27 reads "Protocols of the annual November meetings in Paderborn "Laborkonferencoj: Interlingvistiko en Scienco kaj Klerigo" (Working conference: Interlinguistics in Science and Education), which can be obtained from the Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics in Paderborn. Also in the works by Frank, Lobin, Geisler, and Meder."
As far as I can tell, this is referring to a separate publication/study from Paderborn, but if anyone knows otherwise we may want to tweak the cites. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 20:13, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

A literal translation doesn't read so well in English, so I'll paraphrase it. kwami (talk) 20:24, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

From what I get, 150 hours of Esperanto are required to attain a "good" level in ESPERANTO, while for example 1500 hours are required for a similar level IN ENGLISH, that doesn't mean 150 hours Esperanto = 1500 hours of english —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.69.250.247 (talk) 19:31, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapport_Grin and http://www.internacialingvo.org/public/126_plena.htm and http://www.internacialingvo.org/public/study.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.7.58.145 (talk) 08:18, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Number of esperanto speakers

The number of esperantists wrote, is usually the one of Coulbert (1960s): it's a little out of date, but it's the only possible source so far. However, I heard that the Guinnes world record has a more recent estimate, does anybody know if this is true, and which is the estimated number? --Iosko (talk) 11:57, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

At Google Books I was only able to find

is now estimated from textbook sales to have a million speakers. (1983)

and

It is now estimated (by textbook sales) to have a million ... (1993)

Those at least sound like what we already have. kwami (talk) 15:04, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Ehm... the number I heard was 6 million, that's why I am curious to know it is true. Unfortunately I cannot find the site that gives this number now (with guinness book as reference, but it was not mentioned from which year).--Iosko (talk) 12:31, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Fall of (the) empire

Having a little dispute on how to translate la pereo de la imperio. The second "the" is not colloquial in English. Yes, we can say "the fall of the Roman Empire", and after that is established, refer back to it anaphorically with "the fall of the empire". However, when introducing the concept, it is "the fall of empire". For example, in James Breasted, A History of the Ancient Egyptians, chapter 24 is "the fall of the empire" only because it is anaphoric to chapter 22, "the empire of Ramses II". However, in Charles Hemans, A History of Ancient Christianity and Sacred Art in Italy, chapter 5 is "the fall of empire", as there is no such direct anaphora: chapter 3 is merely "the first Christian emperors". That is parallel to what we have here: we are not discussing the Soviet empire, and then anaphorically saying that the empire fell on a certain date, but rather introducing the concept of "the loss of empire". This is a difference in the use of the articles "the" in English and "la" in Esperanto. kwami (talk) 16:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

"Colloquial" is definitely the wrong word here; this is not a phrase characteristic in any form of casual informal speech. Personally, as a native English speaker, I can't imagine ever using empire without "an" or "the" proceeding it. I guess I can see it as a parallel to phrases like "the loss of democracy", but "the loss of the empire" is perfectly fine English, and even preferable to my ear.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:41, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think Kwamikagami meant "idiomatic" rather than "colloquial". Both "fall of empire" and "fall of the empire" seem idiomatic to me, though I prefer "fall of the empire" in this context. --Zundark (talk) 16:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, idiomatic. Prosfilaes, as for "can't imagine ever using empire without "an" or "the" proceeding it", over a quarter of the hits for "fall of (the) empire" in Google books do not have the article, and for those I checked, the reason appears to be just as I outlined above. When you get to "loss of (the) empire", the form without the article is actually the more common form. This is clearly perfectly idiomatic English.

You get the form without the article in cases like "a classic problematic of political philosophy: the decline and fall of Empire". I just came across a book, The end of empire?: the transformation of the USSR in comparative perspective, entirely parallel to how the phrase is being used here. kwami (talk) 19:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the exact context of the statement here. Simply "Empire" would fit talking about empires in general, and "the empire" would fit talking about a specific empire. The latter is the case in this instance: the article in Monato is about the fall of the Soviet Union.—Jchthys 00:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Thus my example, which contradicts your understanding: The end of empire?: the transformation of the USSR in comparative perspective is also about a specific empire: the same one, in fact. "The end of the empire" would occur when discussing a particular empire; "the end of empire" is used when announcing an event. Therefore an idiomatic translation in English would not have a "the". kwami (talk) 08:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Given that native speakers are telling you they would prefer "the end of the empire", it should be obvious that an idiomatic translation could have a "the" no matter how much evidence you bring forth that an idiomatic translation could also have a "the". As you say above, even in "loss of (the) empire", the "the"-less version is merely the more common.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

But they don't mean the same thing! One isn't merely more common; it is the idiom that conveys the appropriate meaning. What we have now is like saying "the losing of the empire"—technically correct, and possibly something native speakers would say, but hardly what we'd want in an encyclopedia article. kwami (talk) 17:08, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

You’re right, they don’t mean the same thing. Only “the fall of the empire” carries the correct meaning, since the article is about the fall of the Soviet empire in particular, not the fall of empire in general.—Jchthys 18:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Again, you don't apparently understand this rather common construction. "Fall of empire/end of empire/loss of empire" cannot be parsed into its constituent parts, any more than can "watch television" (cf. "listen to the radio"). "Fall of empire" is used for cases of a particular empire, as the citations, which you apparently didn't bother to read, attest. This is like debating with someone who argues that "go to bed" is incorrect English if the person is going to their own particular bed, and that we must write "go to the bed" or "go to their bed" instead. kwami (talk) 00:21, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

OK, I’ve just never heard that construction. Might be a dialect difference between you and me. In any case a Google search at least confirms “fall of the empire” as more common.

Thanks for not edit-warring!—Jchthys 03:51, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Institut für Kybernetische Pädagogik

The Institut für Kybernetische Pädagogik used to exist (here's an entry for it in the catalog of the German National Library). I suppose one can question the work that was done there, but the Institute's former existence doesn't seem disputable. The "Laborkonferenco: Interlingvistiko en Scienco kaj Klerigo" would be the Werkstattgespräch "Interlinguistik in Wissenschaft und Bildung" which apparently used to take place annually. --Cam (talk) 04:37, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Equal?

I fail to understand why Esperanto is regarded as a neutral language when the vocabulary obviously derives mainly from the Romanic languages. (not to mention that it have inherited the ugly pronunciation and overall melody) Wouldn't a English sounding "neutral" language be most successful? As English is probably the best known language in the world. 213.67.41.107 (talk) 04:10, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

This article doesn't call Esperanto neutral except in a quote by William Auld. Do you want to remove the quote? --Cam (talk) 12:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It's described as "neutral" because it does not belong to any one nation. Frognsausage (talk) 22:01, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

What does "most widely spoken constructed language" mean?

In his edit summary, ChildofMidnight asks "What does "most widely spoken constructed language" mean?". Quite simply, there exists a set C of constructed languages. Let f(c ∈ C) equal the number of speakers of the language, and let e be the element of C such that f(e) is maximized; in that case, you will find that e is Esperanto.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:02, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

And the Edsel is the most popular car named after a family member of an auto company executive that starts with the letter E. The opening sentence should tell you what Esperanto is and summarize the article, not produce some bit of trivia. It would be informative to note how many people actually speak it, for what purposes, and in what context, rather than hypeing up its status with some arcane and misleading status out of context. Esperanto is not spoken widely and isn't an official language anywhere. So why would we start the article off with "is the most widely spoken language..."? Are you trying to deceive readers? How about Esperanto is a constructed language developed by XYZ in YEAR. It's purpose is to... It is used by ... to ... but was never widely adopted. You know, something informative??? ChildofMidnight (talk) 05:58, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. There are thousands of constructed languages. Most of them are so unnotable that they are not even listed in lists of constructed languages. Esperanto, on the other hand, is both the most famous and the most widely spoken. That is its claim to notability, and the reason it has an article in Wikipedia. Therefore we should have that info in the title. It is neither hype nor misleading, whereas omitting the info would be misleading: it is more important than who created it, when, and why. If the article implies that Eo is more important than it actually is, the fault is not in this statement. kwami (talk) 07:32, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, can we note that it's the most widely spoken of constructed languages in the third sentence after we've explained what the subject is? ChildofMidnight (talk) 16:38, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

IMO no, because that *is* the subject. If Eo weren't the most widely used conlang, we wouldn't be bothering with it. People learn Eo because they want to learn a conlang; they learn IA or others because they don't like Eo. That doesn't imply Eo ranks high in absolute importance, any more than saying Yezidism is the most widespread pre-Zoroastrian religion of Iran suggests that it has any significant importance on the world stage. kwami (talk) 19:47, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's very unfortunate that you insist on an introductory sentence giving it accolades of popularity out of context rather than one that complies with WP:Lead by providing "a concise overview of the article." It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points. ChildofMidnight (talk) 21:37, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

What is Esperanto? It's a constructed language, specifically speaking an international auxiliary language. Okay, but out of the set of such languages, what makes this one distinct? It's by far the most widely spoken. So that's what should start out the article. Zamenhof in 1887 is an unambiguous definition, but doesn't tell the reader that doesn't know about the language anything.

In any case, your new text is horribly problematic and doesn't really address what you're complaining about. "a language developed to be logical and appropriate for use as an international language." is confusing, as Esperanto is not a logical language and is redundant with calling it an [[[international auxiliary language]]. "is studied mostly as a novelty of well intentioned grammatical artifice that was never widely adopted or practiced." is simply wrong, to start with; I think very few Esperanto speakers would say they studied it as a novelty. International community is a big goal, though hope for the final victory still resides in some speaker's hearts. Frankly, that sentence fails NPOV; "well intentioned" is almost always a POV construction outside a quote.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I'm always happy to have someone with expertise make sure the wording is precise. It would have been great if the description of Esperanto had been tweaked instead of resorting to a wholesale revert to a statement about how popular it is that doesn't provide context or an explanation of what it is in the first place. But I'm outvoted. So, c'est la vie. I suspect you are very familiar with the subject and aren't considering how it reads to a general audience that wants to learn more about the subject. ChildofMidnight (talk) 01:36, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I assume the readers have a reasonable comprehension skills or are at least willing to read through the first paragraph, which includes the lines "Esperanto has had continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers for over a century, and approximately one thousand native speakers. However, no country has adopted the language officially." Perhaps if you don't know much about a topic, you shouldn't be adding lines about why people speak it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 12:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)