Talk:Esperanto/Archive 6

message: I have replaced a few substituted instances of the template  by . This because the accompanying template  was hopelessly confusing with Main. I have placed the accompanying template  on the according subarticles. For feedback and suggestions please visit Template talk:seesubarticle and Template talk:subarticleof. Thanks --MarSch 11:34, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  new template: subarticleof 

message: I just created a WikiPortal for Esperanto. If anyone is interested in helping to maintain it, please let me know. — —JonMoore 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Esperanto WikiPortal

message: I'm going to write this here first before getting into an edit war - the upper limit is suggested as being 8 million but this is impossible regardless of what is written in a FAQ somewhere. Given that:
*Finnish (5.2 million) has 5540 users,
*Norwegian (4.6 million) has 3856 users,
*Hebrew (5.1 million) has 8940 users, and
*Esperanto has 1320 users.
Add that to the fact that Esperanto speakers are more likely than an average person to want to contribute to Wikipedia, and that all the languages above still have more articles than Espo except Hebrew, and lastly that one of the main sites for Esperanto, gxangalo.com, has had a grand total of *zero* new posts to the bulletin board in the past two days, makes this number wildly unrealistic. Personally I think 8 million would be awesome, but I just don't see it. Especially if we are looking to submit this as a featured article again, this number is just going to be shot down. I suggest we modify it to fit the numbers given in some of the other languages where it has been peer reviewed and featured on the front page. 211.202.17.124 22:40, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Where does the 3M estimate come from? The 1.6M estimate is often attacked as too large, and I've never seen anything higher. Also, these are not people with native or native-like fluency, unlike the other language estimates. And of course it's true that we do have no idea how many people speak Esperanto. kwami 08:41, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe we should just state that estimates vary wildly and there is no solid data then quote a few estimates from differnt sources. Plugwash 12:35, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I've mostly heard 2 million, I think that is a good compromise. --Revolución (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We really shouldn't be doing original research or just guessing, we should be looking for sources on both sides and quoting them. do you have any reasonablly reputable sources that give the 2 million estimate? Plugwash 18:51, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The 2M figure is from World Almanac, which is why everyone quotes it. But it isn't an actual population estimate: It's merely the 1.6M FSI level 3 estimate rounded off to the nearest million. So 2M should be changed to 1.6M wherever we find it. As far as I know, this is the only estimate for the population of Esperanto since the 1920s. The 100k figure comes from a guestimate that there is something 'on the order of' 1k native, 10k native-like, 100k fluent, 1M conversant, and 10M have studied. The UEA site says 'Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions,' but I don't think that's sufficient reason to go over the 1.6M figure. kwami 18:57, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  8 million impossible 

message: This article has just begun and will likely replace the one on Ido on the Esperanto template. I may have a bit of a bias towards Ido but Esperanto is fine too so it should turn out to be objective. This article is pretty much the same thing as the one comparing Esperanto with Interlingua, though I suspect there will be a lot more history to this one. 211.240.138.197 11:29, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Esperanto and Ido compared]]

message: Hello all! I have an article, SYR3: Invito Al Cielo with some text in Esperanto (song titles) in it for which I would like a translation. I don't know if putting the request here is the proper thing to do, but it seems logical to me. Anyway, I would be grateful if someone knowledgeable in Esperanto could translate these titles for me and post them to my talk page. Thanks a lot! --Netvor | T | C 16:53, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Many thanks for the speedy response go out to User:Jim Henry, User:JonMoore, User:Minur and User:Zundark. Problem solved! --Netvor | T | C 20:35, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Translation request 

message: Hi Revolución,
As for "(mostly Indo-European based)", I don't see any reason for including weasel words. Esperanto is based on IE languages. That's pretty straightforward. It's been argued that the volitive may be based on Semitic, but that's not clear. A few roots like edzo can't be traced, but that's the case in any language. And it has foreign borrowings, like any other language (and the borrowings are mostly shared with other IE languages, by the way). Oh, and it doesn't include all the details of the IE languages, just a select few. That's it. Saying it's "mostly" IE based is like saying that French is "mostly" a Romance language, because it might have Gaulish influence, or Spanish is "mostly" Romance because it has Moorish influence. What's the point? The table is for the basic classification, and further details belong in the article. 
BTW, I've had the same argument at Interlingua, and have been called an Esperanto propagandist for my efforts. There the claim was that IL was a pan-European language. When I insisted it was Romance based, some would concede that it's "mostly" Romance based. No, IL is Romance based, and Eo is IE based. That captures the essence of the languages. kwami 19:29, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  complicate things how? 

message: I find Esperanto very Easy tom pronounce, but I wish to learn the language more. --Z.Spy 04:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Easy to pronounce

message: Is there a number for the amount of native speakers of Esperanto. That is those who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language. Furthermore, what is the state of the Esperanto they produce, is it "standard" Esperanto or do they do odd things with it (i.e. like going from a Pidgin to a Creole)? Thanks - FrancisTyers 12:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Native Esperanto speakers — Timwi 13:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Native speakers

message: Might be nice to work in the meaning somewhere: wikt:Esperanto#Etymology. ¦ Reisio 05:39, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meaing