Talk:Esperanto/Archive 2

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Regulating additions to E-o

Is there any commity that regulates new vocab into esperanto, how is it being kept up to date? (please expand in the page)

The Akademio de Esperanto is the body that declares words official, though it tends to follow longstanding existing usage.

for example, who decides what will be the vocalisation for the '@' (Commercial_at in esp?

"@" is commonly read as "ĉe" ('chay'), at least in e-mail addresses and the like. --Brion 04:01, 1 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would give the pronunciation as 'cheh' rather than 'chay' - which suggests a diphthong in English as used in Britain. (I'm never sure how a particular anglicised representation of E-o pronunciation will be interpreted in different English-speaking countries.) No Esperanto vowel should be pronounced as a diphthong. --Tiffer 20:56, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The commat is pronounced as the situation merits, as in other languages: in e-mail addresses, the use of "ĉe" (at) is used; if it is used to mean "at the rate of", the corresponding word "po" is used; etc. -- Kwekubo 22:48, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In one study, a group of high school students studied Esperanto for one year...

A pet peeve of mine in popular writing is the tendency to use phrases such as "studies show" without citing the studies that show this. In this case, the reference is to one particular study, with some details mentioned. What is the study? -- Stephen Gilbert 01:45 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

Williams, N. (1965) 'A language teaching experiment', Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26-28. (I have not read the study myself. Reference snatched from [1], which page I just found via google.) --Brion 07:01 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)

The recent Wikification of the alphabet breaks down on letters not present in English. Please remedy. --cprompt

In view of above comments re the rather limited success in establishing similarities between Esperanto and non-European languages, the comment that "Esperanto has proven to be a good deal easier to learn as a second language than any national language" seems far too sweeping. Unless evidence can be provided that it is generally applicable outside the context of European languages, the assumption must surely be that there are many pairs of non-European languages X,Y for which Y is easier for speakers of X than Esperanto is. I am about to edit that comment to limit its scope to speakers of European languages. --Trainspotter 20:50 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Likewise, removing reference to agglutination / Asian languages. Again, the above discussion seems not to support this assertion but somehow it has remained in the text. (To support assertion, would need to show not only that Asian languages have some agglutination, but that E-o agglutination is *more* similar to that in Asian langs than to that in say German.) --Trainspotter 21:01 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I have strengthened the statement "Esperanto vocabulary is based mainly on European source languages" to "Esperanto vocabulary is based almost exclusively on European source languages". Take for example the Esperanto text of La Espero. I could not find a single word which did not seem to be from a European root. There may be a few words in the language from non-European languages, but if so, then they are so rare as to be curiosities. --Trainspotter 16:52 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I've corrected and made more consistent the pronunciation models given in the "Examples" section - altering some of them back to what they were before an edit on 26 July. The anonymous contributor then added a useful explanation at the beginning, but at the same time put in the words "dole", "cone" and "tone" as guides to some of the syllables.

It may be that in parts of the US (and perhaps in northern England) these words do indicate the correct pronunciation of the Esperanto "o"; but in southern England they certainly don't - they imply a rather ugly dipthong all too common as a mispronunciation among English-speaking beginners (and some long-standing E-ists!) --Tiffer 21:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Criticism and Responses

The recent changes to the Criticism section make the Responses to Criticism require updating. Could someone please do this? I am not yet fluent in Esperanto, and I am no expert linguist. :-) --cprompt 13:26 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Why do they need updating? --Chuck SMITH 16:08 4 Jul 2003 (UTC)

How can there even be criticisms of a language? Can we also put up criticisms of English, Spanish, Catalan, Frisian... ? Isn't this a bit offensive to speakers of that language? Especially to those of us who speak it as our primary language? --Chuck SMITH 11:37 5 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chuck, the criticisms are not meant to be to the existance or usage of the language, but to its viability as an intauxlang. If Frisian or Spanish or Catalan or English were "created" for this purpose, then perhaps we would add similar sections to their articles.--Node 22:01, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it seems a bit petty. Especially now that we have "criticisms" and "responses to criticisms." Is this a encyclopedia or a debate forum? user:J.J.

Well, the fact that Esperanto is "new" to most people means that they need a reason to accept it. Besides that, Esperanto's goal is to be an international language. The criticisms are whether it is ideal for that purpose. English and Spain strive to be nothing more than the languages spoken in England and Spain. Perhaps these criticisms should be moved to a new article. It could be referenced by Esperanto as "Esperanto is sometimes Criticisms of Esperanto|criticized as not being an ideal international language." In any case, the criticisms kind of made it look like Esperanto was too flawed to be taken seriously. It's a bit more neutral with both sides presented, I think. As Chuck and I were talking about another time, maybe the English article should have criticisms. --cprompt 19:02 6 Jul 2003 (UTC)

La titolo "kritikoj" estis iom miskomprenata. La teksto origine temis ne pri kritikoj de Esperanto en si mem, sed pri la eblaj maladvantaĝoj uzante ĝin kiel internacian lingvon. Poste oni aldonis titolon "kritikoj", kiu ŝajne kompreniĝis havi pli ampleksan signifon ol intencitan (kvankam la artikola teksto - laŭ mi - sufiĉe klare montris pri kio temis). Do mi lastatempe ŝanĝis tiun titolon, por ke iom pli klariĝu la afero, kaj ankaŭ por ke la parolantoj ne sentu sian lingvon entute kritikata...
--Trainspotter 10:42 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Translation of above: The title "criticisms" was a bit misunderstood. The text originally was not about criticisms of Esperanto itself, but about the possible disadvantages of using it as an international language. Afterwards, someone added the title "criticisms", which seems to have been understood as having a broader meaning than intended (even though the article itself seemed to show what it was about). So, I've recently changed that title to be a bit more clear so that the speakers would not feel their language to be criticized throughout...

This is the English Wikipedia, please leave comments in English (unless of course you can't write well in English), but you can quote something in Esperanto if you feel that is needed. --Chuck SMITH

There are so-called "criticisms" about any conlang, or, for that matter, any real language. Klingon only has about 3500 words in its total vocabulary (there's no word, for instance, for striped). Most pronouns in English distinguish three cases (nominative "I", accusative "me", genitive "my"), but some distinguish a different three, although some are archaisms (nominative/accusative "what", locative "where", ablative "whence" and allative "whither"). Ubykh uses concrete situations to describe many abstractions (I love you is verbalised as I see you well), and has 83 consonants but just two vowels. French has a highly irregular spelling system (there are only two phonemes in the word gars "guy", but four in the word mars "March"). The fact that I speak all the above languages puts paid to the possibility of my ethnocentrism. In other words, it doesn't matter what the irregularities are, but whether the language is usable, and Esperanto certainly is that. - psendall

I still think the whole part of criticisms and their responses don't belong in the article on Esperanto. Perhaps we could move them to Esperanto as an international language, but it feels like we're leaving the realm of an encyclopedia here... --Chuck SMITH

I think to be honest that it has largely arisen out of an article which started out conveying an overall tone of how wonderful Esperanto is. Hence the criticisms were added (hey, if we're going to have advocacy it'd better be both sides of the argument). Hence of course also the responses to criticisms. Hence eventually the creation of titled sections once the amount of text warranted it.

If it can be pared down to an article without the criticisms/responses then fine. They could be moved to a separate encyclopedia entry, or if more appropriate just a talk page.

But please bear in mind that if the pared down article which you (or others) create appears to promote Esperanto then it should be no great surprise if the criticisms are back soon also. For example, beware of simply moving the section about criticism and responses, without considering the tone of the text which remains.

(Incidentally, on a minor point, I am reverting the translation of "I like this one" to what I previously wrote. You have written what really means "I highly esteem that one" (notwithstanding neologisms); if it looks cumbersome to an English-speaking person to say "this one is pleasing to me", bear in mind that to a Spanish-speaking person it corresponds exactly to éste me gusta.)

--Trainspotter 14:30 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

On the last point, you are correct that the correct translation of éste me gusta is indeed Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi, but it is not as commonly used as Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun. In any case, we're translating "I like this one" and not "éste me gusta." You'll see that google gives 1830 results for sxatas and 1050 results for placxas. Indeed both phrases are grammatically correct, but ŝatas is used more often and thus should be the translation we provide here. --Chuck SMITH 15:32 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But is this just a bias of English-speaking Esperantists? I had the impression that ŝatas was used more by English speakers, just because it fitted the same pattern as the English verb "to like", but I'm not sure, as I'm rather out of touch, to be honest... -- Oliver P. 15:48 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Chuck -- Well, I'll leave your translation in place, as you feel strongly enough to reinstate it and I'm not going to get into a pointless edit war. But if your point stands about there being one correct Esperanto translation of "I like this one" and a different correct Esperanto translation of "éste me gusta", despite the fact that the English and Spanish phrases mean the same and are the usual translations of each other, then a textbook in English should list a different Esperanto phrase from a textbook in Spanish for expressing the same concept. This kind of thing would tend to produce effective dialects of Esperanto depending which other language people use to learn it... (Seems that Oliver P's reference to "English-speaking Esperantists" rather corroborates this.)
--Trainspotter 16:17 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Not really - I did say I wasn't sure. That probably means I'm wrong. ;) -- Oliver P. 17:39 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Indeed, textbooks do indeed have plaĉas. The majority of the people I speak to in Esperanto aren't native English speakers and I don't hear plaĉas very much or not nearly as much as ŝatas and Esperanto has been my primary language for the past year (half a year travelling and now working for TEJO, the World Esperanto Youth Organisation). I think this is because it's faster and shorter to use ŝatas so the language naturally evolved in that direction. As I stated, both expressions are acceptable, but I think it's better to list in Wikipedia the one more commonly used.

As far as dialects go, the flexibility of Esperanto (which in the article is only said that Esperantists believe it's flexible when it clearly is...grrr) allows different people to express themselves differently, but to still be completely understood. This is one of the reasons why it is "easy". You're not forced into just one way of saying things... --Chuck SMITH 16:50 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I don't think we should give an example using ŝatas in this sense, as it's widely considered to be wrong (no matter how common in colloquial use) and it certainly isn't the intended meaning of the word. The Google search doesn't prove much, as some of those may be correct uses of ŝatas (and using the proper spellings reduces the difference anyway: 1730 for plaĉas and 2310 for ŝatas). --Zundark 20:13 8 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Oliver -- No, I think you were quite right. There is too much of a tendency to insist on what appears to be easy (possibly in order to present Esperanto as easy to learn) without really coming to terms with the fact that the same phraseology can't be equally intuitive for speakers of different languages, and that if everyone is free to choose what's easiest for them you create some kinds of dialect.

However, the X ŝatas Yn / Y plaĉas al X example is relatively tame, in that the meanings are related, and differences in usage are unlikely to lead to great confusion. But here is a much more severe example: the interpretation of answers to negative questions, e.g. = "Don't you understand?". English speakers are used to the answer "yes" meaning "I do understand". But to a Japanese speaker asking the same question, wakarimasen ka?, hai (meaning yes) would mean "I don't understand" (NB I'm sure of this one, although my knowledge of Japanese is very limited).

Both of these questions would translate simply enough as ĉu vi ne komprenas? But how in Esperanto should the answer be interpreted to this question, or indeed to any statement with ĉu ne? (~ isn't it?) tacked on? Esperanto generally claims to transcend national idiom by choosing the logical usage, e.g. talking about medicines "against" rather than "for" a disease. The logical use here is surely that given a statement with ĉu to make it a question, then jes means you agree with the statement.

I did a quick google, on "cxu vi ne" jes. Top of the list was a chapter of Gerda malaperis, a prominent Esperanto work. The usage found in it was in the European sense of "don't you agree?" "yes" meaning I do agree. I can think of various explanations, none of them particularly flattering:

The usage in Gerda malaperis is simply wrong, despite it being a prominent work.
The usage is correct, given that it is written by a European, but it would not be the dialect used by Japanese-speaking Esperantists.
The usage is correct for everyone. Despite all protestations of non-Euro-centricity, and choosing logical over idiomatic usage, European idiom is chosen over logical usage.

Which is it, or what have I missed?

--Trainspotter 08:45 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I never actually was sure of what the reply meant in English, so I see Esperanto as having the same "ambiguity problem" as English... --Chuck SMITH

In ReVo (Reta Vortaro):

Rim.: En la tradicia lingvouzo (tiu de Zamenhof kaj PIV) ?ŝati? indikas pli altan estimon ol ?ami?; sed en la reala lingvo moderna la situacio estas inversa: ?ŝati? sence proksimas al ?plaĉi? (sed kun alia regado), dum la praan sencon oni preferas esprimi per nova verbo (aprezi aŭ apreci).

So therefore the meaning has indeed changed over time and there's even examples I've seen of Zamenhof using it like the English "to like". But, I'm sick of arguing about this stupid sentence, so if you really want ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi then go ahead and put it back in there. Like I said before, they're both equally valid, but Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun is more commonly used.

I do not insist on "plaĉas", but "ŝatas" should be seen its proper context of ne-fundamenta. I have actually reinstated "ŝatas", despite some anonymous edit to the contrary, given the ReVo quote and your saying that it is majority usage, but have added a section on language evolution saying that departure from the Fundamento is now considered okay.

--Trainspotter 11:54 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I was wrong about people not being able to control living languages. Several times language academies decide on spelling reforms for different languages like what happened in German a few years ago, so it is possible to "control" a living language.

A sidenote: do you ever work in the Esperanto Wikipedia? It would be nice if you could polish that article on Esperanto. It really needs a lot of work! Thanks, Chuck SMITH 01:07 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And no shortage of other people over there who can do it...

--User:Trainspotter (not logged in just now)

Just a minor thing: I've corrected my example Ĝis la revido -> Ĝis revido, this being the appropriate form when one doesn't know of a specific meeting-again (e.g.in the envisaged context of a tourist leaving a shop).
--Trainspotter 09:02 9 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Sexist?

An anonymous user added this to the response to the criticism that Esperanto is sexist. (Note that this is not a proper response to the argument; this is merely an excuse.)

I felt it was better for the talk page than the article. --cprompt 21:05 13 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have removed the following bit, because I don't consider it suitable for an encyclopedia entry. DiruWiki 15:21, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The Ethnologue data may need to be treated with caution, as on their web page they incorrectly categorize Esperanto as a language of France, and also give -al as a dative ending (not quite correct; al is a separate word meaning "to").

Also, maybe someone can rewrite the reply to 'Esperanto is sexist' to take reference to accusation. Fact that Esperanto only declares the feminines (there's nothing to make knabo male, but the in in knabino to make it feminine). IMHO you can't do awyay with this, because Esperanto is sexist - just like most languages. DiruWiki 15:31, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The current state of affairs is that words like boy, man, king, uncle and such are treated as masculine inherently, and take the -in- to make them feminine. Put ge- in front instead and the word is neutral.

More or less all other person-words, like editor, runner, murderer, are taken as neutral. Again, you add -in- to make them feminine. In practice, one very rarely comes across the need to make the second group masculine, and when you have to you just use vir- (man) as a prefix. Kwekubo 19:46, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Can I point out that it's not a question of "masculine" and "feminine" (which are grammatical forms not used in Esperanto) but male and female? People not familiar with E-o reading this might imagine that it has gender in the same way as French or Latin, which it absolutely does not.

The suffix "-ino" simply signifies a female animal or person - in the same way as "-isto" signifies a person of a particular occupation - with no grammatical implications whatsoever. The prefix "ge-" is usually described as referring to a group that includes both sexes, which rather implies that it can't be used in the singular. There is something of an argument as to whether you can use the word "gepatro", for example, to mean "parent".

The question of sexism is another one, of course, and all we can say is that equivalent constructs occur in English ("-ess") and in most ethnic languages. Maybe E-o would have been different in this respect had it been developed today; but to me it seems an isolated case of the language reflecting attitudes from the era when it was created, and it's a feature that can't lightly be changed.
--Tiffer 18:58, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)