Talk:Esperanto/Archive 17

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That whole "Johano" thing

What happened? Did everyone just give up? We certainly didn't come close to anything resembling a consensus. It seems evenly split between those who are for retaining "Johano" as-is, and those who would either require an explanation or have it changed entirely. Maybe if we start fresh we can get this sussed out, hopefully without anyone insinuating the other is unintelligent along the way. Let's be adults and keep civil and on topic.

My position is:

1. That "John" changes irregularly and unpredictably to "Johano", following no grammatical or morphological rule. It is not obvious or self-explanatory. In fact, it can be confusing, because:
   1. Not all native English speakers are totally aware that these changes happen across European languages, or why;
   2. Millions of English speakers are non-native, and may come from cultures (e.g. speakers of language isolates) where names have evolved in different languages te way "regular" words have
   3. Esperanto is a conlang, so such "evolved" names would not be expected, even by those who are aware of this happening in European languages
2. At the very least, the non-regular change should be given an explanatory note, but:
3. Given the context of a quick-review/overview type of table, as few surprises as possible should be introduced (the reader will already be dealing with "nomiĝas", when they may be expecting something like "Mia nomo estas..."), especially when those surprises follow no known rules. Thus, we should use an example in which there are no unreasonable irregularities. For example: Marc/Marko changes in a way that strictly follows the grammar/morphology as clearly laid out in the article, while demonstrating the totally regular and normalizing spelling conventions of the language.

Have a beautiful day. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 02:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, it has been a whole week with no response. Is it tacit (dis)agreement? Indifference? If nobody can even be bothered to show they care, then in one more week I'll just simply change John/Johano to Marc/Marko. If someone disagrees, I hope they'll engage in discussion here, rather than just reverting it as if it were vandalism. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 04:04, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

As for changing Johano to Marko, that's a good solution by any standard IMO. There doesn't seem to be any reason at all why this particular example would require the name to be John. Secundo, I'd nevertheless welcome an explanatory section (or even article) about the question how names are dealt with in Esperanto. Even some of the explanations provided above could serve as a base for that. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 09:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Pronunciation

In the Writing system section, some of the examples may not be that familiar to readers. Here are some of my suggestions:

• ĥ: "och", "loch" and "Bach" seem to me to be far more familiar to English speakers
• ĵ: there is a plethora of English examples--no need to go to French (especially as many Wikipedia readers know English only as a second language, and may have limited or no knowledge of French). Try genre, confusion, closure, deluge...
• c: different sources have different pronunciations of "letivocite"---regardless, it's an extremely unfamiliar word to most. You're unlikely to find many English speakers who pronounce "Vaclav" properly". I've had much more luck with "Penderecki", although it's a name most people wouldn't recognize. Tsunami" will get you closer, but far too many pronounce it /suːˈnɑːmi/ (although dictionaries desparately try to give the "proper" pronunciation precedence). I think it would be more helpful to use something like "bits", with a note explaining that this sound tends to be difficult for native English speakers to make when it's not in a final position.

CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 23:42, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The point was to explain the letters, not the sounds. No-one has a problem pronouncing /ts/; the problem is in associating the letter ⟨c⟩ with that sound. I was therefore trying to find English words in which those letters had the Esperanto sounds. Penderecki is probably a better example, though. If we need to explain that /ts/ is the sound in bits, that should be in the phonology section, not the writing section. — kwami (talk) 02:30, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, if that's the point, then I don't see a strong need for it. The article is an overview of the language, not a tutorial. If the reader has to click through to Penderecki to find out how his name is pronounced just to find out how to read "c", then the article hasn't done its job. I've been a Penderecki fan since I was a teenager, and I never found out how to pronounce his name until after my first kid was born (somebody mentioned him in passing, and it caught me off guard---it never occured to me that "ck" wouldn't be pronounced /k/.

Tangentially, I think you give people far too much credit with /ts/. I've been living in Japan for 14 years now, and I still can't get my own mother to pronounce "tsunami" correctly. She's not some hick, either. She was born and grew up in ol' multicultural Toronto. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 03:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not meant as an explanation, just as a way for people to remember. They'll need to remember it just to read the rest of the article. And if it doesn't work for everyone, well, it's the best we can do.

That's because [ts] doesn't occur in initial position in English. We have the same problem with [ʒ] and [ŋ]; telling people these sounds are like bits, Asia, and sing isn't going to help them any if they simply can't pronounce them. — kwami (talk) 05:14, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

If the reason not to use the examples I cited is that certain sounds don't occur initially, then how does it help anyone to tell them "Oh, 'c' is pronounced the same as the 'c' in 'Vaclav' and 'Penderecki' (click through to find out the pronunciation link to click through again to find out how!), only it also occurs initially and in clusters like 'scii'!" How is that even remotely more helpful than just saying it's pronounced [ts] like in "bits"?

A hairsplit: "genre" is very common English, and I don't think I've ever met a native speaker who mispronounced it. How do people pronounce it if they can't make an initial [ʒ]? CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 06:22, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, you're missing the point. This isn't in the pronunciation section, it's in the writing section. It's not about pronunciation, it's about the alphabet. We've already told them there's a /ts/ in Eo; here we're telling them how it's written.

They pronounce it /dʒ/. I suspect that most people who can't pronounce it /ʒ/ don't have genre in their active vocabulary. I know it's a word I didn't use in conversation until after I had struggled with initial /ʒ/, and I didn't even realize there could be an intial /ʒ/ (in any language) until I was in high school. The one exception I can think of is Zsa-Zsa Gabor. For some reason people don't seem to have a problem with that, maybe because it's reduplicated?

As for your mom not pronouncing "tsunami" correctly, IMO she is pronouncing it correctly. The English word begins with an /s/, because there is no initial /ts/ in English. — kwami (talk) 06:34, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm perfectly well aware that it's the writing section. I'm not aware, however, of any other language article that bends over backwards the way this one does to provide contrived "English" equivalents of the pronunciation of letters. I also don't see how this helps when something simpler like "'c' =[ts]" gets the job done more clearly and in less space, without sending readers bouncing from one link to another to find out what was meant.

I'm astounded that a native English speaker would have trouble with initial /ʒ/. That is entirely outside of my experience. Is it because they couldn't pronounce it, or (what I suspect) they didn't know the word and thus didn't know how to pronounce it? Say, pronouncing it /ˈdʒɛnər/?

As for "tsunami", yes that's a common pronunciation, but some dictionaries (like the COD, look it up) don't even recognize it (the COD lists only /tsu:'na:mi/). That in no what explains how "Penderecki" helps solve the problem.

I'll repeat the question: How does this help? CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 06:53, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

The don't have trouble saying /ʒ/, any more than your mom has trouble with /ts/. The problem is putting it in initial position. You're from Toronto, so perhaps you have more exposure to French? In other parts of the worlds, initial /ʒ/ is as difficult as initial /ts/.

How does it help: it illustrates a letter with this sound in the language our readers already know. It's the same as saying ĝ is like the g in gem. — kwami (talk) 23:26, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I asked the American (from California) that I work with how he pronounces g-e-n-r-e. Of course, he pronounced it /ʒɒnɹə/. When I asked him if he had ever heard anyone pronounce it /dʒɒnɹə/, he laughed out loud. Honestly, I think any native speakers who pronounces it with a /dʒ/ is doing so not because they are unable to pronounce it with a /ʒ/, but because they were unfamiliar with the word and thus wouldn't have guessed it should be pronounced that way. This is all tangential, of course.

I want you to put yourself into the shoes of a reader. Now, imagine you are a Trekker who has just clicked through to the Esperanto article from Incubus (I suspect a not-insignificant number of this article's readers fall into that category). You're a smart guy (Trekkers generally are), but you've never had any interest in languages before. Now you are being told "c is found in Eastern European names like Polish composer Penderecki and Czech president Václav Havel", "ĵ [is] a French j, as in Jacques" and "ĥ is like the h in Hanukkah for those who give it its Yiddish pronunciation". What do you believe that reader will have gotten out of that paragraph? CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 22:24, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It depends on whether they recognize the words. If they do, then they'll get something out of it. If they don't, they won't. But that's true of anything we write. We can only dumb down the article so far. I know from experience that people have great difficulty remembering j, so much so that even when using the IPA, many Americans use ⟨y⟩ for [j]. An illustration of English ⟨j⟩ used for [j] is therefore useful, and fortunately hallelujah and Jägermeister are common enough to serve. Similarly, the French name Jacques is quite common. (Perhaps we could change it to Jean Luc for the Trekkies?) And joking over-enunciation of Hhhhhanukkah is all over the place – I doubt there are many people who've never heard it. Which leaves us with ⟨c⟩, which isn't used for [ts] in any common name that I'm aware of. That's unfortunate, but the alternative is to not provide any connection at all, and how does that help the reader?

re genre: Sure, and perhaps he pronounces the /ts/ in tsunami too. But /dʒ/ is common enough that it's listed in the dictionary, and I've heard it often enough.

You don't need to be into languages to know that Vaclav is pronounced with a /ts/. You just have to listen to the news once in a while. — kwami (talk) 00:44, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I have never heard of Vaclav. I see no point in this list; if we can explain the alphabet more accurately and clearly by not digging for an example where the letter in English happens to have that sound (maybe!), then we would be better off not doing so and explaining it with other characters. We certainly wouldn't say that В in Russian has the sound of B in Beta, if you pronounce it the Modern Greek way!--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I've read of Vaclav Havel dozens of times, but have never heard the name (and who *listens* to the news these days anyway?) and didn't know it was a /ts/ until I learned it from this article -- reversing the intended cause and effect. I've never heard of Penderecki and certainly wouldn't have expected the "c" there to be /ts/. I have to agree with the comments that at least these two examples are very poor and, if that's the best we've got, then we'd be better off with just the "bits" example. PeterHansen (talk) 04:26, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Somehow I overlooked the fact that we don't give the values in IPA. Didn't we used to have it? We should have both: these are merely examples of English words which have the sounds. — kwami (talk) 06:38, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to say something like e.g. "ĉ = /tʃ/ = (English) 'ch'". Everything else is just baggage and confusing clutter. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 06:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

We do say that. The rest I find clarifying, not confusing. But readers can concentrate on what works for them. — kwami (talk) 08:08, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I mean in the table---clean & concise. As the writer, whether you find it clarifying is irrelevant. The person who draws a map already knows how to get where they want to go. It's the reader of the map you have to think of. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 09:06, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't find it clarifying as a writer. I find it clarifying as a reader. — kwami (talk) 09:30, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

(smacking forehead in exasperation)

Having written it, you cannot be objective as a reader. Only an objective third party could tell you if it effectively conveyed your intent. CüRlyTüRkey^Talk_Contribs 09:54, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

By the way, what does letivocite mean? —Tamfang (talk) 00:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Misspelled letovicite. — kwami (talk) 00:31, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Goals?

On my wish-list: the original "official" goals as listed by Zamenhof or some Esperanto international congress. IMHO most intauxial proposals overstresses ease-of-learning, while not providing a way to express extremely complicated concepts such as for science, making the learning pretty pointless, while Esperanto adresses this problem in a way, by its extreme "artificialness" (= orthogonality), although deficiently. So therefore it would be interesting to have a list of goals to see what happened intentionally, and what happened accidentally. Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 07:33, 13 July 2012 (UTC)

Care to clarify the word "intauxial"? It doesn't exist on the internet apart from this page, nor on GBooks, the OED, etc. — kwami (talk) 03:41, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing he is using it as shorthand for "international auxiliary", i.e. proposals for international auxiliary languages.  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 04:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It looks like international auxiliary IAL, IAL being moderately common for international auxiliary language. —Tamfang (talk) 00:15, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Number of speakers

This article's lead section says there are "10,000 to 2,000,000 active or fluent speakers". 2,000,000 is 200 times as many speakers as 10,000. This estimate is so wide and vague as to be practically useless; couldn't we make it more accurate or specific?  dalahäst ^{(let's talk!)} 01:38, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure; you have a few million dollars to give an international research team? We have a number of estimates of pretty poor quality from a number of sources. Read the article, and if you see some argument for narrowing that estimate that works within WP:NOR, bring it back here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 06:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I think it would read better if it said something like "The number of Esperanto speakers is highly uncertain, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 2,000,000 active or fluent speakers". Right now it is worded as if the "10,000 to 2,000,000" number is a useful and worthwhile piece of data, which it patently isn't (except to show that no one knows). 86.160.223.239 (talk) 20:41, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

"I think it would read better if it said something like "The number of Esperanto speakers is highly uncertain, with estimates ranging from 10,000 to 2,000,000 active or fluent speakers". Right now it is worded as if the "10,000 to 2,000,000" number is a useful and worthwhile piece of data, which it patently isn't (except to show that no one knows)."

I completely agree!!!!

"Esperanto has a notable presence in over a hundred countries."

If only 10,000 people speak it, exactly how notable of a presence can this language possibly have? Heck, if we don't even know how many people speak it, how can we make this determination?

That's easier then a count of speakers; there's surely a reliable source that has a list of active national Esperanto organizations. In any case, 10,000 speakers is surely an understatement. When located in Europe, the World Congress of Esperanto runs around 2000 participants; I'm highly sceptical of any claim that 20% of the Esperanto speakers come to any one conference every year.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:29, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

To explain the wide range of estimates: The low estimates are generally based on a more strict concept of fluency while the higher estimates allow for less-than-fluent competency in the language. Arguably since Esperanto is an international auxiliary language the number of competent speakers (ability to "get by") is more relevant than strict fluency (ability to rapidly and effortlessly speak about anything one knows about).---Cam (talk) 04:48, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, but come on: there are 82,467 registered users on the Esperanto Wikipedia alone. Clearly Esperanto's footprint, in terms of literary works published, periodicals, internet presence, and membership of Esperanto organizations, is a sure sign that there cannot possibly be so few as 10,000 speakers (unless one applies an absurdly strict standard of fluency, by which I mean one that would exclude the majority of English or Chinese speakers as well). If, in the interest of neutrality, we just wanted to include lower and higher estimates, we should just have "0 to 2,000,000", since there are certainly people out there who don't believe the language exists at all. A more productive approach, since we can't define the number of speakers, would be to speak instead of what we do know. There must be a number for UEA membership, there are the 82,467 Esperanto wikipedians, and there may be other figures on book sales or the like that we could use instead, and that would be verifiable. --Jcrave (talk) 22:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The number of Esperanto Wikipedians includes those people who have a unified account. These people may never have heard of Esperanto, let alone speak it. And people who believe that Esperanto does not exist are, frankly, delusional. The Esperanto Wikipedia or any Esperanto literature is already sufficient to show that 'it exists'. --JorisvS (talk) 10:28, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

A Esperanto or an Esperanto

An Esperanto translation or a Esperanto translation. It would seem to be 'A' because 'Esperanto' is pronounced with the 'S' sound at the start rather then a vowel. Your thoughts? Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 02:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's news to me that the word is pronounced with an 's' sound at the start. I've never heard it said that way, and all the dictionaries I've just checked have it starting with an 'e' vowel, as expected. 86.160.223.239 (talk) 03:32, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I think he means with an "S" sound, not an [s] sound, and "S" begins with a vowel. Just an example of the confusion of sound and script? — kwami (talk) 06:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the letter 'S', but what makes you say that "S" begins with a vowel? And what vowel anyway? Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 07:39, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Whence all the discussion? It is simple, really. 'Esperanto' is pronounced beginning in a vowel (an [ɛ], from the <E>), so it is 'an Esperanto translation', as in the article. --JorisvS (talk) 09:14, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Your right it is pronounced with a leading 'e' sound per http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/esperanto, I thought before the 'e' was silent. So the correct grammar would be 'an Esperanto' Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 10:23, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Politically neutral?

I feel like this should be reworded or removed. It seems rather nebulous, and doesn't seem to contribute much. If the intention was a language without biases (ie gender pronouns) that's one thing, but to simply say 'politically neutral' is another. 128.189.236.201 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:26, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I think "politically neutral" was intended inthe sense that it wasn't a language that was "owned" by any nation or group of nations. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:25, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

PROD Grin Report

I've prodded Grin Report. Discussion there and mostly at Languages of the EU#Esperanto. Pushpov. Si Trew (talk) 14:44, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

hitler.org

The website hitler.org is used as a reference about Esperanto in Mein Kampf. Is it possible to use a different website for this? If not, we'd have to add this article as an exception, or else it will continue to get tagged by Cyberbot II. --JorisvS (talk) 14:56, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Use this instead. The page at the hitler.org site is a translation of Mein Kampf—as a primary source, it should be avoided. Curly Turkey (gobble) 20:36, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

That link unfortunately is not accessible. A primary source is fine if all we're saying is that it occurs in that source. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Sources don't have to be easily accessible, and there's no reason to include Esperanto's being mentioned in passing if secondary sources haven't picked up on it. This page is not an indiscriminate collection of every passing reference to Esperanto. The reason it's notable is because secondary sources have noted it. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:20, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Here's the line from Mein Kampf, by the way:

"As long as the Jew has not become the master of the other peoples, he must speak their languages whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they became his slaves, they would all have to learn a universal language (Esperanto, for instance!), so that by this additional means the Jews could more easily dominate them!"

And here's the line in the Esperanto article:

"In his work, Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an International Jewish Conspiracy once they achieved world domination."

So, what gets a throwaway parenthetical (a "for instance", no less!) in Mein Kampf gets an entire line devoted to it in this article. The only excuse for even including this is if it were picked up by secondary sources—which it has been, so we use those secondary sources. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:31, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay, but we should use a standard ref format, not a broken Google Books link. — kwami (talk) 00:52, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not "broken", it's just not accessible wherever you happen to be. Here's a formatted version—do with it what you will:

Sutton, Geoffrey (2008). Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto, 1887-2007. Mondial. ISBN 978-1-59569-090-6.

The relevant quote is:

"Hitler specifically attacked Esperanto as a threat in a speech in Munich (1922) and in Mein Kampf itself (1925). The Nazi Minister for Education banned the teaching of Esperanto on 17 May 1935....all Esperantists were essentially enemies of the state, serving through their language Jewish-internationalist aims" (pages 161–162)

There's more stuff in there about the Nazis, as well as the Soviet Union, and even about debates in the League of Nations. Curly Turkey (gobble) 03:43, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Verified and changed in the article. --JorisvS (talk) 07:57, 25 September 2013 (UTC)