Talk:Esperanto/Archive 7

message: I wrote what I think is a better sentence; you decide:
"Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is a large body of evidence that suggests learning Esperanto is useful preparation for learning other languages (see Propaedeutic value of Esperanto)."
The current wording says "there is evidence that..." which makes it appear, on some underlying level, as if the evidence is not concrete- yet, reading the article on Propaedeutic value of Esperanto leave little room for doubt. There is little to none when it comes to legitimate arguments against this claim, so I think making that a little more clear in this language would be a right ambition.
Also, I am not intimately familiar with stylistic guidelines, but I would prefer to redirect straight to the "propaedeutic value" page, but failing that, at least to the section on propaedeutic value on this page. As of now, it is pointing to "Esperanto and education" (or something) section on this page.
Opine, please. Lackinglatin 12:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion for rewording sentence in intro

message: Under the criticism section is a quote by Hitler about how Jews want everyone to learn a single language, like Esperanto, so that Jews can more easily take over the world. As thrilling as that logic might be to someone, that is indeed not a valid criticism of the language. You could use this logic for any single language, and instead I read here that this one set out to not replace other ethnic languages. So I removed the quote from Mein Kampf someone had inserted into this article. I noticed it did not appear in the criticisms article so it must not really carry favor. Right?! Abisai 02:16, 13 June 2006
: This is a tough one. On the one hand, I find it repugnant to include the Hitler quote. On the other hand, it is an historically interesting fact that Hitler was aware of Esperanto to the point of including a reference to it in Mein Kampf. Waitak 07:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Abisai that that quote had no place in this article. We might include it in History of the Esperanto language, where it is already being alluded to. Marcoscramer 00:32, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Ok HOLD ON. Iv'e read Mien Kampf (I'm not racist, it's just a good look into hitlers mind) I don't remember him saying much about the Jews and esperanto and what he did say wasn't exactly what I would call Vailid Criticism, it's also kind of rare when he talks about jews and esperanto... to tell you, the book isn't about the Jews... it's about him, his life, and scociety's shortcomings.  he mentions the jews alot less than people give him credit for.  but yeah, In the book, I wouldn't have put that there...
Dejuismaster 18:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hitler reference

message: Google hits for each word plus kaj: --Jim Henry 16:11, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistics for use of ''in'' with various person-words 

message: It seems an edit war has begun. Anonymous user, what is your justification for the placement of a link to a two-paragraph weblog post to this Wikipedia article? I do not think it is appropriate. -- Cam 02:43, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've deleted both the link and the link it's a response to. The original screed has little more reason to be here than the weblog post that responds to it.--Prosfilaes 03:58, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: OK by me. -- Cam 04:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

text:  I'm not crazy about letting Anonymous User veto the link to first article, which struck me as fairly substantial (well, OK, a screed, but a thousand times more substantial than Mike Fox's rejoinder). --Chris 06:17, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't see why we need to link to a non-notable screed. It's not of a factual nature, it's heavily controversial, and it's not notable in and of itself at all.--Prosfilaes 07:10, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Critics to Criticism 

message: The article claims:
::There is evidence that learning Esperanto before another foreign language improves one's ability to learn that language — so much so that it takes less time to learn both than it would to learn just the second.
Do you have a citation? I would contend that this might be true for a lot of the european languages but not for chinese, hindi, urdu, bantu languages......etc, etc,...
:Yes, there's a ref. just after your quote. And if you follow the link where it says, for more details see..., you'll find a bunch more. (In fact there have been criticisms that there were too many.) You're right, most of the studies involve European languages, but one Australian study involved an Asian language. My own experience leads me to believe that that study is credible and that the benefit works for "exotic" languages as well as "average European" ones. kwami 05:26, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember looking at that Australian study a couple of years ago. I got the impression that the propedeutic effect was stronger for Romance and/or Western languages, but it did exist for Asian ones (Japanese and Indonesian if I remember correctly). There was another study that showed a stronger effect for Italian than Hungarian. No surprise.--Chris 12:09, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I looked at that Australian study again (called EKPAROLI), and frankly it set off my bullshit alarm. Students who had studied Esperanto in primary school were better at learning languages in high school than those who'd studied other foreign languages. However, the language they had most frequently studied in primary school was Japanese - a language that (according to other data in the report) was generally loathed by the children and taught by extremely underqualified staff. So the positive effect shown for Esperanto may be better explained as a negative effect of low-quality instruction in Japanese. The fact the author didn't bother to break out the figures by language background (just classing students as having Esperanto or non-Esperanto) suggests sloppiness or deliberate fudging.--Chris 23:20, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How can I learn Esperanto?Cameron Nedland 21:46, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a list of online resources part way down the external links section of the article, or you can try the ELNA learner's site here. Looks like there's a club in Kansas City, MO. If you prefer books, I personally like Butler's Step By Step in Esperanto (US$16), but there's other stuff around. kwami 01:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Thank you.  Kansas City is only a couple hours from hours from where I live.  I gotta check that out sometime. Once again thanx alot!Cameron Nedland 15:40, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Learning Esperanto