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How many speakers?

od jdawdy, 17. novembra 2014

Príspevky: 43

Jazyk: English

sudanglo (Zobraziť profil) 6. decembra 2014 10:53:17

The appropriate standard for being classed as a speaker of Esperanto is not quite the same as that applied in the case of national languages. Inevitably in the latter case the comparison is with the native speaker competence.

A more appropriate standard in the case of Esperanto is whether the speaker's competence is at sufficiently high level to be useful in a situation where there isn't a common language.

This means that many Esperantists who are only at an 'intermediate' level can legitimately be classed as speakers.

In other words, the criterion should be that which you would apply where, say, English is being used as a lingua franca.

DOCENKO_Dmitrij (Zobraziť profil) 7. decembra 2014 13:05:55

It seems that there are about 505 Esperanto speakers on linkedin.com with Esperanto levels
Professional working proficiency
Full professional proficiency
Native or bilingual proficiency

I checked it using boolean Google search like
site:linkedin.com "esperanto=*=Professional working proficiency"
First Google shows much bigger number of search results but if you click the last page of results, their number will decrease.

Lernu.net has about 2300 Esperantists with "high" level of Esperanto.
Unfortunately there is no way to search people by language level on Facebook which is the most popular social network among Esperantists.

bartlett22183 (Zobraziť profil) 7. decembra 2014 20:58:39

DOCENKO_Dmitrij:Unfortunately there is no way to search people by language level on Facebook which is the most popular social network among Esperantists.
Most popular??? Says who? By what measure? On what basis is this claim made? Regardless of what may be my competence, or lack thereof, in Esperanto, I have nothing to do with Facebook. To be blunt, I don't even know how it works and have no interest in learning how it works. It is a misjudgment to assume that everyone uses the same media of communication.

RiotNrrd (Zobraziť profil) 7. decembra 2014 21:05:11

I also am not a Facebook user, nor do I have any desire to be.

kaŝperanto (Zobraziť profil) 8. decembra 2014 17:23:23

RiotNrrd:I also am not a Facebook user, nor do I have any desire to be.
Same here. I have an account if I need to use it for something (quite rare), but otherwise I am silent. Most of the damned notifications are people inviting me to some stupid game anyways.

Christa627 (Zobraziť profil) 9. decembra 2014 20:57:08

kaŝperanto:
RiotNrrd:I also am not a Facebook user, nor do I have any desire to be.
Same here. I have an account if I need to use it for something (quite rare), but otherwise I am silent. Most of the damned notifications are people inviting me to some stupid game anyways.
My mom has it set to block game invitations; not sure how that is done, but if she's done it it must be possible.

My facebook account only exists for the purpose of my business page, so I'm not active there socially to speak of.

marbuljon (Zobraziť profil) 11. decembra 2014 20:37:44

"Among the approximately 1,000 planned languages the Esperanto language, initiated in 1887 and since that time evolving through self regulation, stands forth remarkably. 95% of the literature of the planned languages (about 10,000 volumes, 43,000 annual collections of 10,500 periodicals etc.) has appeared in Esperanto."
http://www.ipernity.com/blog/156463/526453

Is this really how much stuff has been published in EO?

eojeff (Zobraziť profil) 15. decembra 2014 3:35:23

marbuljon:Is this really how much stuff has been published in EO?
Those numbers are most likely wildly inaccurate. It's not as though every Esperanto language work registers itself as such. A quick Google search using common Esperanto only terms yields about 341,000 results. Hell, Esperanto Wikipedia alone has 206,755 pages of Esperanto text. This is hardly a scientific approach but sufficient, I think, for me to make my point.

I believe Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto by Geoffrey Sutton has some relevant historical stats on the number of works published in Esperanto. Note: he is primarily concerned with original Esperanto language works, not translations.

~Jeff

T0dd (Zobraziť profil) 15. decembra 2014 14:05:38

I'm inclined to set a fairly low standard for what counts as an Esperanto speaker, and I'd do the same in reference to speakers of other languages. That is, I wouldn't say that a person needs to have native-speaker fluency to be considered a speaker of English or any other language. Rather, I'd place being a "speaker" at the level of what might be called "low intermediate" knowledge of the language: Enough to "get by" in simple situations, and enough to read basic written material, such as popular newspaper and magazine articles.

My reason for accepting that relatively low level of competence as sufficient is that a person who has gone that far can, if there is a reason to do so, pretty quickly improve to a higher level. I very rarely get to use spoken Esperanto. When I do get to use it, I find myself frustrated, struggling to think of words and expressions. But if find myself needing to speak Esperanto on a few occasions in quick succession (such as at a conference), the words come back and I pick up new ones, and things generally get better. I'm "intermediate" here on Lernu, but I wouldn't hesitate to call myself an Esperanto speaker.

My French is much rustier than my Esperanto, but I wouldn't hesitate to call myself a French speaker either, for the same reasons. When I've needed to speak French, the initial experience is maddeningly obstructed by forgotten words and a general loss of the feel of the language. But after a few days in a francophone environment, it gets a lot better.

marbuljon (Zobraziť profil) 17. decembra 2014 12:33:53

I think that in everyday use (coming from the viewpoint of someone who lives abroad), "x-language speaker" means "can you make it through everyday life while using only that language, even if you are bad at it". So, can you go to the doctor and struggle through the conversation somehow and get what is going on. Can you talk to the old man on the street even if it's difficult and you forget words.

When you're in a foreign country and someone asks "Can you speak (our language)?" what they mean is "should this situation we're in right now be done in our language, or do we have to use another one because you wouldn't be able to understand anything or talk back?".

Nahor