Talk:Esperanto

/Archive 1 /Archive 2 /Archive 3 /Archive 4

This was nominated as a featured article candidate by Raul654 in February 2005, and failed nomination. It's undergone considerable revision since then, so we'll probably nominate it again after requesting peer review and doing further revision. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It went through Peer Review in late February and early March, and improved a lot. Among the changes were removing some less relevant material to separate articles like Esperanto orthography and Esperanto in English-language media; please see the peer review page and the talk archives here for details. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Template:Oldpeerreview Template:Facfailed

Contents

1 Minor question 2 Opening paragraph (as of Feb.2005) 3 Irrelevancy 4 NPOV on the "five reasons for its strength" 5 Chaplin film? 6 Namesake 7 Englishesque phonetic transcription 8 Size of the article 9 vowel vs. syllable 10 number of speakers 11 edit 12 Final consonant clusters 13 United Citizens Alliance 14 new template: subarticleof 15 Target Audience 16 Growing community? 17 A critique addressed by Ido 18 Would this picture have any relevance to the article? 19 Five vowels like Spanish, Swahili and Japanese?

Minor question

Under History section: "As a constructed language, Esperanto's history is both short and well-known" By well-known do you mean widely known or well-documented? Espermike 07:00, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I can't speak for the person who first wrote that, but to me it only makes sense if it means "well-documented". Maybe we should say it that way. --Jim Henry 10:07, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Opening paragraph (as of Feb.2005)

My comments:

...which the Polish philologist L. L. Zamenhof...

I've never heard that Zamenhof was a philologist, professionally at least.

I've deleted the "Polish philologist" bit. If someone wants to know his complicated personal history they can click the link to L. L. Zamenhof. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

His intention was to create an easy-to-learn language, to serve ...

the comma after "language" is unnecessary and confusing at first glance.

to serve as an international auxiliary language for global communication.

the phrase "for global communication" is redundant with "language." Language is for communication, no? Global is (roughly) redundant with "international." I would delete "for global communication."

I've completely rewritten this sentence. --Jim Henry 18:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Today Esperanto is used for many activities including travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, literature, and language instruction;

maybe add "periodicals" to this list? (i.e. magazines are a popular part of Esperanto as far as I know). Maybe add "congresses" (the various conventions) as well?

it is the most widely used constructed language and even has some native speakers.

I don't know why but I don't like this sentence. It sounds like bragging. Mention the estimated speaker size instead? The "even has some native speakers" phrase is totally irrelevant to an introduction. It's sorta tacked on there at the end like, "and it comes with a kitchen sink too."

Estimated speaker count is in the table, and we now have a whole section on how many speakers there probably are and how hard it is to be sure of the number. I don't think we need to get into that in the summary paragraph. --Jim Henry 16:43, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Just my opinion and someone please delete my comments when it becomes irrelevant to any future revisions of the main article.

Haven't you noticed the "edit this page" link at the top of the article? — Timwi 13:35, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Irrelevancy

I think this paragraph is pretty irrelevant and should be deleted or perhaps moved elsewhere:

Ethnologue also states that Esperanto is a language of France [1] (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ESP). David Blunkett said in the British House of Commons: "My only regret is that I learned a language called Esperanto at school. It was a very good idea at the time, but it got me into certain difficulties at the age of 16 when I used it in Paris." [2] (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200001/cmhansrd/vo010426/debtext/10426-03.htm), although he did not say whether he had been reading Ethnologue.

If nobody objects in a few days, I will delete it. --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Done. --Jim Henry 16:08, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Jeronimo had some other comments about things that seemed to him irrelevant; see Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I removed these links that seemed to me irrelevant:

• Majstro Multlingva Tradukvortaro (http://www.majstro.com/Web/Majstro/dict.php?gebrTaal=eng&bronTaal=epo&doelTaal=eng): An on-line translation dictionary that uses Esperanto as an auxiliary language
• Radio Polonia (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/eo/c/c3/Radiopolonia_20nov2004.OGG) Interview with female Chinese Esperantist, describing difficulties in learning Esperanto for those outside Europe (.OGG file; in Esperanto)
• Trigamba Jochjo (http://starling.ws/gus_sonoj/#GUS-2-1) Science fiction story, Threelegged Joe by Jack Vance, translated into Esperanto, recorded as audio in Ogg Vorbis format.

The first is an interesting example of the use of Esperanto, but not especially relevant as information on Esperanto. The latter two, being in Esperanto, are unlikely to be useful to typical readers of this English-language article. --Jim Henry 17:57, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have removed these See Alsos that seemed of lesser importance (they're in Category:Esperanto so easy enough to find if one is looking) and a couple of Miscellaneous external links of doubtful relevance. It might be good to add a more detailed paragraph about things of this kind to the Culture section of this article, or the Esperanto culture article, rather than just these See Also links. --Jim Henry 21:10, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Esperanto services
  • Amikeca Reto — friendship network
  • Esperanto Pen Pal Service
  • Pasporta Servo — hospitality network
  • Esperanto Antaŭen — Esperanto company

• Generator for Esperanto typographical filler text (http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_esperanto)
• The first online role-playing game in Esperanto (http://www.cantr.net)

NPOV on the "five reasons for its strength"

At [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto), Plek comments that

I think this article has some serious NPOV issues. It reads like an Esperanto manifesto, especially the list headed by "More generally, there are five primary reasons for its strength".

I think there's some justice to what he says, though I'm not sure offhand how best to rephrase this section. Comments? --Jim Henry 17:09, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After further comments from Plek on the Featured Article Candidacy page, I cut this:

1. Re-thinking it all: Zamenhof started developing his constructed language early, and he had done an enormous amount of work by the time he left for university. When he returned home in 1881, as the legend goes, he found that his father had burned all his notes and work. Thus Zamenhof was forced to begin again, but this time he had the advantage of all that he had learned in his first attempt. He commented later in a letter to Nikolai Borovko, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that the language was already completely ready."
2. Tapping innate structures: Zamenhof based his language on a regularized version of natural languages, rather than building a totally novel and abstract structure (an approach used by some others). Not only are the word roots generally from natural languages, the overall structure mimics natural languages. This approach means that Esperanto can exploit desirable features from naturally evolved languages.
3. Delay before publication: When Zamenhof was ready to publish his language, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works (such as parts of the Bible and Shakespeare) into Esperanto. This enforced delay led to continuing refinement and improvement before the language was presented to the world.
4. Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists: Many developers of constructed languages are possessive of their brain-children and reject any attempt by others to contribute or have a significant role in the development of the language. Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists" and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.
5. Stability: Constructed languages are often hindered from developing a speaker community by continual tinkering, with the constant changes making the language impossible to learn and use. Zamenhof, in contrast, published his Fundamento de Esperanto and established it as an unchanging foundation. This gave Esperanto a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages possess by virtue of their great body of literature and speakers. Thus one could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot.

I rewrote part of it, hopefully in a more neutral way, and moved some of the historical detail to Esperanto history. If you think some of this should go back in, please rewrite it in a more NPOV manner and put it in a new section (the stuff about "Tapping innate structures", "exploiting desirable features", etc. doesn't belong here in the "Language evolution" section). Some of the stuff I moved to Esperanto history needs better sourcing; some can be sourced from Zamenhof's letter to Borovko, and I added a reference to it in that article, but others (his father burning his papers? the censors not allowing publication at first?) I could not quickly find a reference to back up. Will re-read bits of La Fenomeno Esperanto and other sources to see what I can find. --Jim Henry 15:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Chaplin film?

In the section on Esperanto in the mainstream media, I wonder why the Charlie Chaplin film "the grand dictator" isn't mentioned. (It might be that this is not the English name - in German it is "Der grosse Diktator".) A number of the shop signs in the ghetto are in E-o. - Ar 16:10, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

Sure, go ahead and add it. Make sure it is in the article on Esperanto film as well. Since we have a separate article on Esperanto film, let's avoid letting the mainstream media section get too long and detailed. I think adding the Chaplin film here (since it's one of the earliest, maybe the very earliest) and deleting some of the less important examples (while making sure they're listed in other relevant articles) would be a good thing. --Jim Henry 16:12, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Namesake

The Namesake section mentioning the asteroid named for Esperanto is irrelevant here, as Jeronimo pointed out at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Esperanto. There is a whole book (Monumente pri Esperanto) about things named for Esperanto or Dr. Zamenhof; but none of them are relevant in an encyclopedia article on Esperanto. If no one objects in a couple of days, I will delete this section. --Jim Henry 16:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't quite see why it would be "irrelevant in an encyclopedia article". — Timwi 20:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Do you want to list other things named for Esperanto, maybe in another article Things named for Esperanto or Esperanto namesakes? To me, it makes sense for the article on the asteroid to link here, but not much sense the other way around. The fact that there is an asteroid named for Esperanto seemed to Jeronimo irrelevant to this article, and on reflection I agree with him. Mentioning the asteroid by itself in a tiny section just looks silly; either we should beef up the section with more namesakes, or move it to another article, or delete it. Personally, I think improving the namesakes section (or writing a namesakes article) is a lot lower priority than improving the cursory treatment of Esperanto history and remedying the total lack of any section in this article on Esperanto culture, literature, music, etc. --Jim Henry

I've removed the text. If you really think it belongs, please expand it with additional material into a new article and put it in Category:Esperanto. --Jim Henry 20:56, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The minor planet (1421) Esperanto is named in honor of the language. It was discovered on March 18, 1936 by Yrjö Väisälä.

• Schmadel, Lutz D. Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (2nd ed.). Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag, 1993.

Englishesque phonetic transcription

In Wikipedia:Peer_review/Esperanto, Mark Dingemanse suggested getting rid of the rough transcriptions (e.g. [choo vee pah-ROH-lahss ess-peh-RAHN-tohn?]) now that we have IPA transcriptions. I'll do that in a few days if no one objects. --Jim Henry 17:43, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Size of the article

After adding material as recommended by the FAC objectors and peer reviewers, the article is now over 35KB. Any suggestions about which sections could most profitably be abridged or spun off into separate articles? IMO, the Esperanto in mainstream media section is the most easily dispensible - we might move the whole section into a see also article. The section on Writing system could probably stand to lose some or all of the extended discussion of ASCII transcriptions, Latin-3, Unicode, and locales. --Jim Henry 22:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

vowel vs. syllable

Sorry, I really think we should stick to saying Esperanto stress is on the penultimate vowel, not syllable. Of course, it's the vowel that defines the syllable, but saying that the stress is on the penultimate syllable causes people to make mistakes with words like familio, which they expect to be trisyllabic [fa.'mi.ljo] based on analogy with the Romance source languages. More recent Esperanto grammars often avoid this problem by saying "next-to-last vowel", and I've heard several people express appreciation as to how clear that is. kwami 23:22, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense. --Jim Henry | Talk 19:42, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

number of speakers

I've changed the figure to the best guess on Vikipedio, [2] (http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nombro_de_Esperanto-parolantoj). The Vikipedia article reports a guestimate that there are 1000 native speakers, 10,000 native-like speakers, 100,000 fluent speakers, a million conversant with the language, and 10 million who've studied a bit of the basics, so a best guess would be 100,000 to one million speakers, depending on your definition of a "speaker". --kwami 19:47, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Sorry for repeating the info at the link here, but I don't know if everyone reading this page will be literate in Esperanto! kwami

I'm not sure I fully trust Dr. Culbert's figures, but they seem to have more solid methodology behind them than Dr. Lindstedt's guesstimate. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:03, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

edit

Removed the bit about E especially helping with IndoEuropean languages. Yes, Italian would be quite easy because of the shared vocab, but I doubt the improvement of learning time of Russian or Persian would be much greater than, say, Japanese. I found Japanese to be rather easy after picking up Esperanto. And I had studied Spanish for years without much to show for it, so it wasn't just the second-language effect: when I learned a new construction in Japanese, I translated into E, and that made me comfortable enough with it to think directly in Japanese, rather than going through English as I would've done otherwise. The one relevant section of the propedeutic article seems to support this position. --kwami 10:42, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Final consonant clusters

Final clusters are uncommon except in learned vocabulary, foreign names, and poetic elision of final o.

Can someone point out an instances of learnéd vocabulary which have final consonant clusters? (Not a final cluster in the root - you don't have to look at technical vocabulary to find that - but a final cluster in the actual word.) --Jim Henry | Talk 15:01, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, that was sloppy. Just corrected it. kwami 22:18, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

P.S. If anyone recalls any such words besides cent, my 'correction' needs to be corrected, and they should be added to the phonotactics section of Esperanto phonology.

United Citizens Alliance

since this seems an almost non-existant organisation whose article is being considered for deletion, i dont think the reference should remain especially since it seem to indicate that this is a large organisation, and significant to the language. --vierstein

Agreed. In fact, I remember it being removed before. kwami 20:09, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

I removed it before, when it was more widespread. The re-added stuff seemed less problematic to me, but it doesn't matter much to me either way.

When I last checked, the UCA didn't even have their web site up. The refs in this article struck me as more of an ad than anything else. SAT's also pretty minor, but at least they've been around since the twenties, so we know they're a real organization. For all I know, UCA's one person sitting in front of their computer. kwami 21:30, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

new template: subarticleof

I have replaced a few substituted instances of the template {{Main}} by {{seesubarticle}}. This because the accompanying template {{seemain}} was hopelessly confusing with Main. I have placed the accompanying template {{subarticleof}} 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)

Target Audience

I'm sorry, but this seems to be a classic case of somebody 'getting in first' and writing an entry to show how clever THEY are...not to inform. I cite 'alveolar trill', labiodental fricative', 'allophones', agglutinative', 'morpheme', 'deictic' and 'propeduetic'. None of this was mentioned (or necessary) when I learned Esperanto. Esperanto is supposed to be simple and accessible to all; what chance has the language got if nobody can even understand its description in their mother tongue?. Chris R, UK

You have a good point. On the other hand, the articles aren't designed to teach people Esperanto (that would be in Wikibooks), and our audience may include people who know the basics of the language, but want to learn more about the details. We could probably do a better job of making the main article more accessible, rather than just short, and saving the technobabble for the subarticles. In the end, though, the same problem will arise. Maybe a disclaimer just under the intro, directing would-be learners to good teaching websites? kwami 09:32, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

I've started editing out the technical terminology. Hopefully it should read a little better now for the non-linguist, but it needs another pass or two. kwami 08:47, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

Thank-you Kwami. The entry now reads much better; It is more "user-friendly", and so clear and simple that even I can understand it :-). Chris R, UK

Growing community?

IMO, this recent revert (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Esperanto&curid=9248&diff=0&oldid=0) is appropriate if and only if evidence is cited of the community's growth. Comments? - PhilipR 18:50, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I mostly reverted it because the text that replaced it, "a small number of people", made it sound like the extent of Esperanto was 5 people in a basement somewhere. Perhaps "a relatively small community" would be better? DenisMoskowitz 20:20, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

That sounds like weasle wording. What's "relatively"? Relative to English? to Interlingua? Almost anything we say is going to sound POV to someone. At a million people, more or less, the community is pretty small. The evidence is out there that the number has been growing or holding steady, depending on the vagaries of the era. Right now I believe it's growing. It's not an impressive rate of growth, but I think it's important to mention it, to correct the common impression that no one speaks Esperanto anymore. The language was very much in the public eye in the past, and people interpret the current lack of publicity to mean a lack of speakers, as if the language were moribund. I believe that was the motivation for the original wording: not (necessarily) as propaganda, but to correct a common misperception. Philip is right, we should be able to substantiate the claim. But the phrase "a small but growing community" is accurate and entirely appropriate to the goals of an encyclopedia. kwami 21:52, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

I'm starting to wonder. The E community has definitely grown, but how has it grown compared to world population? The Kongreso attendance numbers haven't gone up all that much, despite the fact that transportation is so much quicker and cheaper now. Does anyone have an idea? kwami 08:52, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

A critique addressed by Ido

I took that bit out as Ido isn't the only IAL that addresses this. I'm an Idist myself but there's no need to add a cheap advertisement in the middle of everything. The main differences that Ido addressed were the diacritical marks, the -n object marker, and word formation. There was no cry of "this language isn't European enough, let's change it."

Oh. I just reverted that. (I don't give a lot of consideration to anonymous edits.) Wasn't meant as an ad for Ido, just that Ido is the only Esperanto reform that ever went anywhere. Change it to Interlingua if you like. My point was that a lot of the criticisms are diametrically opposed, so that it's impossible to satisfy everyone. kwami 23:56, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)

Did you now? Now I'm not anonmymous - I'm the largest contributor to the Ido Wiktionary and one of the largest to our Wikipedia. This is the article to reference when comparing the two: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5037/chefaj.html

And you will notice a complete lack of decrying Esperanto for its un-Europeanness. Mithridates 05:30, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

PS if you are going to stick with the 'not European enough' line then Ido should be changed to Interlingua, but you can keep the reference to Ido if you reference the diacritical marks, as Ido was the first language reform to address that in 1907.

Oh, sorry if I sounded grumpy when I wrote that. I had just woken up. *^^* Mithridates 06:35, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sure. I'm up too late, so I can relate. (I did puzzle over the "did you now?", but then decided not to worry about it -- I mean, I had just reverted you without bothering to read the talk page!) Let's see, we just had an edit conflict, so you're giving me a chance to make sure I wan't being grumpy ...

My impression from the early Ido documents is that one of the criticisms leveled at Eo was that it was too Slavic and too Germanic. I wouldn't expect anyone to say that today, but it seemed a popular theme around 1910. The 'improvements in clarity' cited at your link tend to replace Slavic semantics with Romance or English semantics - of course, if you're more familiar with the Western languages, their logic will seem clearer. (Shouldn't have said "not European enough". My bad.) As for your link being "the article" to reference, it's a little one-sided, don't you think? Not saying it's wrong, just that I could come up with a similar list of the advantages E has over Ido. (One-to-one orthography, easy-to-learn proforms, better accommodates aspectual distinctions, fewer roots for non-Europeans to memorize, many of the reformed words like skolo and tarda are in Eo too, just nobody cares to use them, yadda yadda yadda.) A good reference article would have both, so the reader could decide for themself. And, of course, propaganda tailored for today's audience will differ from the motivations of the Ido committee.

Anyway, take out the Ido ref if you like. It doesn't matter too much what the exemplar is. kwami 07:32, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

Oh, that article? Yeah, it's completely one-sided and I wouldn't dare try to put it in the article; I just put it in there in case you hadn't seen it before, as it addresses what Idists consider to be the most important of the reforms. I think if they had to choose only a few of the changes they decided on that they would take out the diacritic characters first, then the -n ending, and then the plurals after that. Everything else seems to have been pretty minor to me. Of course, Esperantists of old had to write in the diacriticals by hand after typing out pages on a typewriter and things are a lot easier now with just a simple download.

I'll take another look at the paragraph tonight and make a change; you can tell me what you think of it and I'm sure things will be just fine. ^^ Mithridates 08:12, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I added a bit about the diacritical marks. Pretty much the same as what I wrote in the paragraph above, and I ended it with a remark that the problem has been largely minimized by the downloadable fonts - or should I have said IME or something of the sort? I assume Macs and Linux systems also have their own software for that as well. For me, I downloaded that 'Ek!' button and everything was just fine afterwards. Mithridates 09:17, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph's fine, but the level of detail is more appropriate for the Espo criticism article. (Like many sections, it had grown to the point of being unwieldy in the main article, and was moved. Otherwise the main article would be a good twenty pages long.) The section here is more of an abstract: 'People don't like A, B, and C, have proposed several reforms, for more, read [this].' I've slowly been expanding the debates on the various criticisms, but haven't gotten to the script yet. Your paragraph would make a good addition. I can move it over later, or you can if you like.

Frankly, I don't see how it matters how you write the language. The accusative, agreement, ubiquitous diphthongs, derivation vs. borrowing, those are substantial issues that actually affect the language. But the orthography? It just seems so superficial to make such a big deal out of it. Just use digraphs - who cares? And whether the grammatical endings are familiar or not - you get used to them so quickly, it's hard for me to see how it matters whether the jussive is -u or -ez (except that -ez will come out as [es] for much of the world...). I need to take a closer look at Ido derivation - I have the feeling that under the surface it's just as arbitrary as Espo. But that's where the meat is. kwami 09:56, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)

I'm not sure why they changed it to -ez either. I noticed quite a few romance languages with Wikipedias here that have the -u ending so it's definately not unnatural. It's hard to say - I'm definately grateful to Esperanto for creating the 1.5 - 2 million population that believes in an IAL enough to study a whole new language. I think if the population of Es, Io and Ia were the same that I would choose Interlingua as I like how it looks a bit better, but doing so would invalidate all the effort the Esperantists have put into the movement and that would be a shame. I do think the diacritical marks to be the most important issue though, and the reason is because the vast majority of people are lazy and anything that makes a language less attractive looking, even if it makes sense, can turn people off.

Word derivation: I think the biggest problem Idists had with the -a turning into -o and then back into -a again is that you get a situation where the original -o is a noun, then tne -a is an adjective based on the noun, but then by turning the -a adjective into an -o again you have a noun written the same as the original word but based on the adjective instead, giving it a different meaning.

I remember some minor things as well when they used Esperanto in real life like trying to shout at somebody that they have to turn maldextre instead of dextre, but from a distance it's hard to make out anything but the -extre sound at the end so they changed it to sinistre because otherwise it could cause confusion. Then there were some problems with a lot of the pronouns sounding the same over the phone, especially ni and mi.

But whatever, nothing's perfect. Korean and Japanese don't make any differentiation between the word 'smile' and 'laugh', and I know that if an IAL were to do that they would get laughed out of town, whereas if a cool Asian language does it it's 'deep'. Ha. ^^ 211.58.237.50 14:38, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I just moved your paragraph over to Esperanto as an international language and integrated it into what was there. I also put in a more obvious reference to the alphabet in the main article.

As for the jussive -u, I've wondered whether replacing it had anything to do with it being the one specifically Semitic morpheme in the language. As for sinistre, E has a word live, but no one bothers to use it. Perhaps if enough people get lost they'll start to. Ses - sep bothers me, because context won't disambiguate numerals. However, mi - ni is almost never a problem in actual conversation, because the referent is almost always easily deductable. Over the phone, I'll ask you about "us" and tell you about "me", so it's easy to keep track - which is why you don't need a pronoun at all in a language like Japanese. And if it is confused and someone asks kiu?, it's easy enough to use circumlocutions like vi k mi or nur mi mem. (This is much less of a problem that English he - she with people who pronounce them the same.) As for the suffix -ala, that's available in E now too, although it's almost never required. The only use of it I can think of is varmala for 'thermal'. Traditionally, tho, people just used a different root, like termala. (Is that what you meant? You use the very common suffix -eco to go from noun to adjective and back to noun again.) kwami 00:42, 2005 Jun 11 (UTC)

Would this picture have any relevance to the article?

I have yet to find a section where this photo could fit, shouldn't there be something about media coverage of Esperanto? Here is the picture: Missing image
Newsweek_esperanto.jpg

What do you guys think? Revolución 02:23, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, there's the E in English media article, as well as the E culture articles. Either might be appropriate. But do you have a copyright release? Otherwise this ain't goin' nowhere. kwami 03:17, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

why do we have to be so agitated about copyright? Nobody is claiming this is their work, of course at the bottom of the image you can see it says Newsweek. Revolución 04:52, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If Newsweek doesn't release the copyright, then posting the image could be illegal, just as if you started duplicating their magazine. Wikipedia doesn't want to get into that. I've included images that I've found on the web, where the originating web site said they were free to distribute for educational purposes, and still had to remove them from my articles. The upside to not using proprietary material is that no one will be able to claim they own Wikipedia and sue for ownership. kwami 05:34, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

For crying out loud, it's ONE PAGE from an August 2003 issue from a week in that month. Considering that there are 52 weeks in a year, and that the issue was published almost 2 years ago, I don't think Newsweek will care. Revolución 15:10, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Your frustration is understandable, but it does seem to be misdirected. Neither kwami nor Wikipedia are responsible for international copyright law. While my undestanding is that "fair use" does allow some latitude for interpretation in the US, obviously Wikipedia doesn't have the army of lawyers needed to get involved in copyright disputes. -- PhilipR 15:23, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If they really don't care, you might be able to email them & have them release it. kwami 17:41, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

One of the reasons is to allow a quite free use of copies of Wikipedia. We don't want to burden secondary copies with the trouble of ascertain the legality of contents. --Error 22:44, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Five vowels like Spanish, Swahili and Japanese?

Anybody realize that /u/ doesn't normally occur in the Japanese language? (And when it does, very sporadically, only in certain dialects, and always as an allophone), what in Japanese transliteration is spelled comes a lot closer to Russian (tl.) <y>. So are we claiming Esperanto contains this Japanese/Russian vowel, the unrounded u?

Oops, that's been corrected before, but has slipped back in. kwami 02:33, 2005 Jun 19 (UTC)

(Actually, it didn't say it had the vowels of Japanese, just that it had 5 vowels, which is also true of Japanese. Should be clearer.)