Talk:Esperanto/Archive 9

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A reply to a criticism

In the criticism section, there is the following link:

Why Esperanto Suppresses Language Diversity A former Esperantist explains why he left the movement

I found on the Web a forum where a guy contradicts the arguments of the author of the previous article:

[1]

In the interest of NPOV, maybe it would be nice to put a link to the replies of the criticism in the section of external links. However, I could not find a good way to put it there without compromissing the organization of that section. Suggestions are appreciated. By the way, I am neither an Esperanto speaker nor an activist of the Esperanto movement (so my observation of NPOV does not mean I am biased in favour of the Esperanto movement). --Antonielly 15:16, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Replies to criticism are allowed of course. However, the criticism and replies to criticisms (as every info in wikipedia) should come from notable sources as per WP:Notability. The problem here is that both the criticism you are pointing out at exists as an external link. According to Restrictions on linking in wikipedia, A website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for; even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked to are restricted; which is the case here (a website belonging to a student, dividing his time between Helsinki, Finland and Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, Romania). I'll be removing that link in a while.

As for your suggestion to include a riposte, i believe it would not be allowed as well as per Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought (it is a forum).

In cnclusion, Wikipedia would only allow criticism from notable, verifiable sources from notable experts, researchers, academics, journalists, etc... The same applies when responding to criticism. -- Szvest Ω ^{Wiki Me Up ®} 15:37, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

While I knew my website was linked here because WP shows up in my referrer logs, I have never linked to it here. Originally the link was placed by someone on the German WP and then copied from there to other Wikipedias, then deleted from here, and then restored. I'm not pushing my own work, and the fact that the piece was linked to from here surprised me as much as anyone else. CRCulver 18:21, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who inserted the links CRCulver. I know you are not pushing your work and my comment was not subjective at all. -- Szvest Ω ^{Wiki Me Up ®} 14:30, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Then why in the world did you quote the guideline "...a website that you own, maintain or are acting as an agent for; even if the guidelines otherwise imply that it should be linked to..."? CRCulver 17:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Thinking better about this issue, maybe both links I have mentioned should be moved to Esperanto as an international language and removed from this article, because they relate directly to the Esperanto movement, and only indirectly to the Esperanto language. What do you (plural) think about it? --Antonielly 16:42, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally speaking, there would be no difference in terms of guidelines and policies of Wikipedia. It is not about moving them but it is rather a guideline and policy issue. I'd suggest you move some of the remaining link of criticism onto Esperanto as an international language. By the way, have you had a look searching the internet for criticism of Esperanto apart from the ones that were removed? -- Szvest Ω ^{Wiki Me Up ®} 17:01, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have found on the Web some pages of criticisms which have not been listed in the "External links" section of the article. Interlinguistics is a field that pleases me a lot, so I have been studying it intensively, with respect to both the political and the linguistical issues. I intend to publish a (hopefully objective) book about it some day, but first I have to gather more knowledge on the subject; I am currently only a journeyman. I am almost fluent in Interlingua and a novice in Esperanto and Ido (just enough knowledge to understand the valid criticisms), but my current political position in the case of "a common lingua franca for the world" is the pragmatism: I accept any solution that improves the status quo (one of <English, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Chinese, Spanish, ...>, or even 3-4 regional linguae francae). I will follow your advice. I will gradually put some links of criticism in the article Esperanto as an international language. Cheers for you! :) --Antonielly 23:02, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

And good luck for your project. Cheers. -- Szvest Ω ^{Wiki Me Up ®} 11:53, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes related to this article

I've added some Esperanto related userboxes on the New Userboxes page. Enjoy. Parsa 18:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I've put these on one of my sub-pages so you don't have to wait for the huge list of userboxes to load. I also corrected the typo errors on two of the template pages.

Here are a couple examples:
{{User:Parsa/Userboxes/Esperantio}}	{{User:Parsa/Userboxes/eo2_esperanto}}

- Parsa 05:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Pop-culture section is unclear/contradicts self

The "Esperanto in popular culture" section, in the first paragraph, says Charlie Chaplin used Esperanto in 1940. The second paragraph says "The earliest film to incorporate Esperanto was the thriller "State Secret" 1950". I put up the "contradictory" tag because it's (technically) true. But I'm guessing that whoever wrote the "State Secret" sentence probably meant "incorporated into the dialogue", or something similar. I am not familiar with either film, so I'm not going to change anything. Bowmanjj 00:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, Chaplin's film The Great Dictator used Esperanto as a metaphor of Yiddish on signs etc. in the Jewish ghetto, insofar as I remember, but I don't remember it being spoken. I think State Secret used Esperanto in spoken form, while Chaplin's film printed it in the background. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Official Language

The article Republic of Rose Island lists that the micronation declared Esperanto as its main language during its short existence. It was never officially recognized as a country, but it might still be worth mentioning in the article. --Yono 06:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

im gunna say that its the first time it is spoken ...i have no proof just saying it could have been poorly written

Geek Reference

I find "More rarely, it is used jokingly, referred to as a "geek language"" to be charitable, considering the only references to Esperanto as a "real" language that I have heard of has been as a "joke" tied to "geeks" It really sucks because when I explain to one of my friends who isnt a "Geek", I have to tell them what Esperanto is, and it spoils the funny. (I must explain, I am an American, so if you are a more cultured European, I apologize.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jfnord (talk • contribs) 20:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC).

Does being an uncultured American automatically make all Europeans cultured? hmm...

Google summary

The summary of this page on Google is:

Description of Esperanto with answers to arguments against its use as an international language.

Doesn't that seem a bit POV? Couldn't we change this to something like

Description of Esperanto with some common criticisms, and common replies to them.

--Islomaniac 973 21:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

There is nothing we can do about the summary that Google chooses to present for this article. The text also does not appear anywhere within the scope of Wikipedia's control. Certainly feel free to contact Google to get an adjustment of the description. --Puellanivis 21:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that Google generates teh text used for the summary, so there is probably a way to change teh summary. doesn'yt the description META tag provide details for the ssearch engine to show? If so, ther must be some way to change it, possibly usingg a separate field on the edit page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 150.101.102.188 (talk) 04:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC).

Indo-European constructed language!?

Dear linguist friends, since Esperanto was constructed from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, I would like to suggest Esperanto to be called an "Indo-European constructed language", since those three are of the Indo-European family. --Edmundkh 18:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Corrections to sample text

I've made some corrections to the sample text in the article[2] —this is based on the assumption that the source did not contain the mistakes I found. Does anyone have a copy of the book so that they can check? Thanks. garik 16:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Most Widely Spoken?

I am an intermediate Esperanto speaker, and as such I was interested in the popularity of Interlingua versus Esperanto. I did notice, however, that at the beginning of both articles, they claim to be the most widely spoken "international auxilary language" in the world. Maybe there are some nuances in the specific wording that I'm missing, but it sounds to me like a contradiction, folks. Any help? -ExNoctem 04:36, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The Interlingua article asserts specifically that Interlingua is the most widely spoken "naturalistic" IAL, not just the most widely spoken IAL. Esperanto seems to be classed as an "a posteriori" IAL according to International auxiliary language. Goulo 16:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Accessibility

This article, in some places, seems too targetted towards linguists and not enough towards a lay person who casually wants to learn more about the language. For example, under phronology, I have no idea what this means: "Esperanto has 5 vowels and 23 consonants, of which two are semivowels. Tone is not used to distinguish meaning of words. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel, unless a final vowel o is elided (which in practice occurs mostly in poetry). For example, familio (family) is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], but famili’ is [fa.mi.ˈli]." Rm999 06:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

This article is glowingly positive!

It sure is refreshing to read such a positive article on the hobby-language that is Esperanto. None of that NPOV nonsense for the Esperanto article , no sir! Sure, it avoids NPOV by letter, but not in spirit-- the impressive article breadth and serious treatment of the language implies that Esperanto enjoys formidable international respect and is actually notable as something other than a historical curio and/or cult favorite. I especially like how "criticism" gets allocated to a tiny text ghetto near the end of the article. You can find more in the "Esperanto as an International Language" article, but that's safely isolated from any kid actually searching for/reading an article on Esperanto. They'll have to dig deeper to learn that Esperanto has been anything other than a roaring success.

Thanks to the de facto Esperanto advocacy via article breadth, any significant editing or revision of this text is next to impossible without provoking a ghastly flamestorm. Congratulations to the authors! This article is simply brilliant, albeit disingenuous, and nearly impossible to revise.

Also: editing the talk page = classy. Narrow minded simpletons generally try to assume good faith on the Wikipedia, so it's up to idealists LIKE YOU to make sure that this mistaken attitude dies out. Remember: the talk page is a delicate flower that cannot survive radical literary devices such as sarcasm or satire. Criticism of the parent article has to be *serious*, otherwise someone could anonymously point out that an article needs major rethinking *without* hurting any author's feelings. And that would just be wrong. 69.129.196.12 04:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Still, more references and citations are needed. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 08:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

That is how it works in Wikipedia, though. Articles are written by people who are interested in a subject. All you can do is check for notability, verifiability and NPOV. Wikipedia is supposed to be a secondary reference, not a guide to the relative importance of what "matters" in the world. One oughtn't cut down existing big articles on "hobby" topics; instead one should work at writing bigger articles on everything. --Cam 13:14, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the anonymous "glowingly positive" assessment was made in regards to an earlier draft, but the current article seems like an attempt to achieve NPOV by introducing unsupported claims as statements of fact. I'm referring to the Criticism of Esperanto section, where sweeping claims like "The vocabulary and grammar are European, not universal" are presented without necessary qualification. Only the careful reader will realize that this statement is an unsupported claim, rather than a statement of fact. The wording could be improved, e.g. "Some critics claim the vocabulary and grammar are not universal."

Another improvement would be the addition of links to further analysis of some of the criticisms, so that they are not simply presented in a vacuum. For example, former UN translator Claude Piron has addressed this particular criticism extensively; it might be helpful to include a reference to http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm Does anyone object? Hoss Firooznia (talk) 23:06, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

How is "the vocabulary and grammar of Esperanto are European, not universal" an unsupported claim? I'm looking at the "Etimologia Vortaro de Esperanto", and it identifies almost every root as coming most directly from English, French, Latin, Italian or Greek, with frequent references to cognates in Polish or Russian--usually when the word is also found in the Western European languages. There is no question that the vocabulary is as European as any European language. Grammar is harder, as Esperanto is more artificial here, but it's not ergative, it's not agglutinative, it's not isolating, etc. Claude Piron has a counterargument, but that makes the question of the European nature of the grammar debatable, not an unsupported claim.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:13, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I added in these criticisms to address this issue of the article being too positive, which I agree it was. However, they are presented as criticisms - whether they are reasonable is irrelevant, as is obvious from the fact that several of them contradict each other. Anyway, support can be found in the specialized articles, which cover claims and counter-claims, as well as things such as the European etymologies which Prosfilaes mentioned. The only non-European morphemes in Z's original vocabulary are two roots he made up, ĝi (it, s/he) and -ujo (suffix for containers), plus, possibly, the jussive mood in -u from Hebrew. (-u could also be from Latin, or from earlier European-derived conlang proposals - it's hard to know with such a short form.) The only non-European aspect of the grammar is the use of plural plus accusative rather than a separate suffix, and this isn't actually taken from a non-European language. kwami (talk) 00:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Prosfilaes, Esperanto is almost perfectly agglutinative, the only exception being pet names, but this is just a regularization of European grammar, not, say, a Turkish influence. kwami (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Putting aside the problem of defining just what constitutes an ambiguous trait like "European-ness", it's correct to say that most of Esperanto's lexemes have been derived, directly or indirectly, from Latin. So yes, in that sense the claim about vocabulary being "European" is correct, albeit vague. (Note that if we define "Latinate" to mean "European", many languages of Europe cease to be "European".)

The claim about grammar, however, is simply false. Esperanto's system of freely combining invariant morphemes is rather alien to speakers of the Latinate or Germanic languages of Europe. You're correct that Esperanto does not have an ergative-absolutive distinction, like say, the European language Basque has. And the morphology is in fact quite agglutinative, a trait that is relatively rare among languages of Europe. The typology also skews towards isolating languages, like Mandarin. My point is that claims about grammatical features being "European" or "non-European" are largely meaningless: for one thing, the grammatical features of Europe's languages vary quite a lot, and typological classifications like "fusional", "agglutinative", "isolating" and so forth are by no means confined to Europe. By such a ridiculous standard, even languages outside the Indo-European family could be criticized for being too "European". Hoss Firooznia (talk) 03:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Huh? How we define Latinate has zero effect on the meaning of the word European. --Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, that should have read "if we define 'European' to mean 'Latinate'". To criticize Esperanto's word stock for having Latinate roots is fine, but to criticize it as being "European" is considerably less meaningful, since there are European languages whose word stocks are not based on Latin. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

And why would we be defining European to mean Latinate? Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Because if the assertion is "Esperanto's word stock is primarily European", then we may need to redefine "European" as "Latinate" for the assertion to be truly meaningful. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no clue what you're trying to say. Latin words are European words. Saying that the vocabulary is European is just as meaningful as saying it is Latinate. More over, a significant number of words in Esperanto are Germanic in origin; to turn to more or less random page in the Etimologia Vortaro, I find 9 headwords on the 2 page spread that are Germanic in origin, and just 2 that are Latinate. I'll admit that it wasn't entirely random, and that Ŝ seems very heavy in such words, but birdo, vintro, and slipo are all fine examples of common Germanic words.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It's entirely meaningful to point out that a speaker of Spanish, English, Portuguese, Russian or German is likely to find many cognates in Esperanto --Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but that wasn't the criticism. And we should note that the English, Spanish, and Portuguese speakers are likely to find cognates because these languages all contain large numbers of Latinate words. Additionally, the German and quite possibly the Russian will likely find many cognates due to their exposure to Latin-derived roots absorbed into their own native languages. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

whereas a speaker of Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali or Japanese is likely to find the vocabulary as alien as Klingon and and phonology difficult.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I suspect speakers of Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Bengali and Japanese find the vocabulary and phonology of Esperanto far more familiar than that of Klingon, due to the presence of roots (again, largely Latinate) that enjoy widespread familiarity. That existing international recognition was in fact Zamenhof's motivation for choosing the roots; not the fact that they were present in any particular European language. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Chinese doesn't borrow international vocabulary; it recoins the words. Even with that, the international roots are a small chunk of the language; they all have words for wall and ship, and most of their speakers are wiser than English speakers, and don't need to borrow for adjective forms. Mono-lingual speakers of all of these languages would find Esperanto's phonology alien; for example, just because English has borrowed words starting with ps, like pseudo, but we still would find words starting with ps (pronounced as spelled) alien.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the exact percentages of words of English and German origin and the percentages of words ultimately of Greek origin, but they're enough that I would prefer to say European rather than Latinate.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a better term would be "of European origin". Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The claim about grammar is not simply anything. If the system were alien to the speakers of the Latinate or Germanic languages of Europe, the language would not have taken off. --Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007

True. Yet the grammar and morphology are relatively alien to Europeans. However, the flexibility of the language allows Esperanto to conform to patterns familiar to European audiences when necessary. In fact, Zamenhof made use of this flexibility to introduce the language in a European-friendly guise. As he wrote in La Unua Libro:

The various grammatical inflexions, the reciprocal relations of the members of a sentence, are expressed by the junction of immutable syllables. But the structure of such a synthetic language being altogether strange to the chief European nations, and consequently difficult for them to become accustomed to, I have adapted this principle of dismemberment to the spirit of the European languages, in such a manner that anyone learning my tongue from grammar alone, without having previously read this introduction—which is quite unnecessary for the learner—will never perceive that the structure of the language differs in any respect from that of his mother-tongue. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

On one hand, it is true that many of the grammatical features of Esperanto are more artificial rather than European.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The point isn't that the grammatical features of Esperanto are "artificial" -- in fact, they're quite natural in that "natural" languages use them. The point is that there is no such thing as a "European" grammar. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

On the other hand, it's not ergative, and its genders are typical of European languages. (And yes, when I say European languages, I don't mean Basque, which isn't related to anything else, and has no political power.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The political power of Basque is irrelevant. If lacking an ergative-absolutive distinction makes a language "European", then most languages found outside Europe are also "European". Which demonstrates, I think, how pointless this criticism is. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The strongest defense to the "too European" complaint would be to show evidence that the origins were not in fact European, or to show some clearly non-European features.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the strongest defense is to point out that grammatical typology is not bound to geography. Ergative-absolutive languages are found both inside Europe and outside Europe. Nominate-accusative languages are found both inside Europe and outside Europe. Agglutinative, isolating, etc... both inside and outside Europe. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, my complaint is not that the criticisms are mentioned in the article; they definitely do have a place there. My complaint is that they are not adequately presented: they are just dumped in a list of claims without context or response. It is not enough to print what in some cases amounts to ignorant prejudices and then expect a reader to have to burrow through other articles to find the beginnings of a response. That's just misleading. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 03:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

All of the criticisms on the page have context and response. I find your response frustrating, because as far as I can tell, you want to downplay the criticisms to Esperanto. That's not the way to get an NPOV article for Esperanto. You can dismiss them as ignorant prejudices on the talk page, but they have to be taken seriously in the article itself.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:59, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to downplay anything. I merely sought to (a) respond to the complaint that the article is "glowingly positive", and (b) ask for a bit more balance in the "Criticisms" section. That's all. :-) Hoss Firooznia (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

The "glowingly positive" comment was made when nearly all critical material had been removed to the subarticle. I wrote the current contents in response. Esperanto isn't just a language, it's a language project, so a section on criticism is warranted. However, we can't start detailed analysis of every point without getting back to the bloat we once had - the section is already a substantial fraction of the length of the subarticle. There are several defenses already in the section - that Esperanto wasn't supposed to be equally representative, for practical reasons; wasn't supposed to convey a particular culture, for reasons of equality; as well as pointing out that several criticisms contradict each other.

"Of European origin" would be okay [added it], but the grammar is clearly based on European languages (Romance, Germanic, Slavic) and biased toward speakers of European languages. That's not a problem in America, Africa, or the Pacific, where education is in European languages, but it is definitely a problem in East Asia. Once you look from a vantage point outside 'Standard European' languages, it becomes glaringly obvious just how European Espo is. kwami (talk) 23:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

What are you talking about? As a strongly agglutinative language, Esperanto has very few grammatical similarities to any European languages, particularly Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages! Yes, the word roots are derived from these languages. No, the grammar is absolutely, positively, not. Of the languages that I have some working familiarity with (English, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Japanese), Esperanto is by far the most grammatically akin to Japanese - about as far from Romance/Germanic/Slavic grammar as one can get. Skybum (talk) 11:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Learn Japanese, and you'll no longer think Esperanto is similar. The Japanese certainly don't. Agglutinativity is a minor aspect of grammar, and derives from Slavic: Zamenhof noticed productive Russian derivational suffixes, and merely extended them to their logical conclusion. Look at the parts of speech: prepositions, personal pronouns, adjectives, etc, none of which occur in Japanese, but which are universal in the source languages of Esperanto (except for adverbs in German). Subordinator kiu is the same word as the interrogative kiu - Japanese doesn't have the former, and many languages which do find the identity puzzling. Esperanto grammar is so similar to 'standard' European that it can be picked up without much conscious effort by most Europeans, but it can be quite a struggle for the Japanese unless they're already familiar with a European language. kwami (talk) 19:52, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, when I said I had "working familiarity" with those languages, what I meant was that I have some experience with what I'm talking about. I took two years of undergraduate Japanese, and while that only leaves me speaking at a crudely conversational level (far from fluent), it does give me a reasonably good baseline for comparison. As far as Slavic agglutinativity goes, are you quite sure of that? I also studied Russian for six months -- nothing agglutinative there -- and looking through the literature I can't find any evidence for this, beyond some somewhat tentative suggestions of agglutinative structures in the Balkan languages. So, I still maintain that Esperanto grammar is a good deal more akin to Japanese than any European language I know. (Maybe Basque or Finno-Ugric languages would be closer, but that doesn't really get us any closer to Romance / Germanic / Slavic). Agreed about the subordinator vs. interrogative kiu -- I can see how a native Japanese speaker would struggle with that. But the rest of it... no, not really. Can't see your point. And, er, Japanese doesn't have personal pronouns or adjectives? Admittedly I'm not a linguist, so perhaps what I thought were personal pronouns and adjectives were actually somehow indistinguishably different. Anyhow, I can't see that there is anything particular reason why there should be much grammatical difficulty mapping anato onto vi or midori onto verda. Where the grammatical structures are particularly concordant is in the construction of correlative words (subordinators notwithstanding), and of course the use of particles. When learning Esperanto, I found it easier to grasp concepts by mapping them back to Japanese rather than English. So, ka becomes ĉu, ga (when used as an object marker) becomes -n, -masu/-mashita/-mashoo becomes -as/-is/-us, no becomes -a, et cetra. It doesn't always work (ie volas and --ai are used in very different constructions), but there's enough to make the two languages at least as comparable as between Esperanto and any given European language.

In any case, it doesn't matter which one of us is right; the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. So the question is, are there reputable sources who make the claim that Esperanto grammar is too much based on European languages? If so, then the article should state that so-and-so claims such-and-such, and then provide a source for the claim. I would be very happy to support this; I am just uncomfortable with leaving the "based on European grammar" bit without attribution or source, as that is a statement which can be hotly contested by people acting in good faith. Skybum (talk) 21:33, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Esperanto helped me with my Japanese, but more because of the flexibility of its grammar, which allowed me to break out of the confines of English, than any particular similarity. (Now Turkish - there's a similar grammar to Japanese. I found I could speak basic Turkish if I thought in Japanese, but not if I thought in English.) I didn't mean to claim that Russian is agglutinative - it clearly is not - only that the agglutinativity of Esperanto was developed through the regularization of European languages, initially Russian. kwami (talk) 23:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

This illustrates a distinction that seems to be missing from the discussion: the fact that Zamenhof may have been inspired by something he encountered in a European language (in this case, a slavic one) does not make the inspired grammatical feature (in this case, agglutination) uniquely European. Hoss Firooznia (talk) 05:05, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you can translate 'anata' to 'vi', but if you do, it will be bad Esperanto. You can translate English, Polish, or French more or less literally into Esperanto, and the result can be well formed. You can't do that with Japanese. (Japanese words like 'anata' are nouns, not really pronouns. So is 'midori', whereas 'aoi' is a verb. The only adjective in Japanese is 'onaji'.) As for tense, '-ta' isn't past, it's perfective: When you spot a bus that hasn't yet arrived, you say basu-ga kita "the bus is here"; translating it as "the bus came" would be misleading. (You can even use '-ta' in the future, whereas Espo. '-is' can never be future.) True, IE languages are for the most part inflecting, not agglutinative, but that isn't much of a conceptual hurdle, and there's a whole lot more to grammar than that one feature.

As for sources, yes, I've seen several, though I couldn't point out which they are. We don't need to say that so-and-so claims such-and-such, because the entire section is a list of opinions, not facts. kwami (talk) 23:31, 7 December 2007 (UTC)