Aportes: 48
Idioma: English
Alkanadi (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 06:31:12
Evildela:I run the YouTube channel Evildea. I can tell you I don't know the word for "Egg plant" because I've never needed it.Eggplant = melongeno
I am a huge fan of your channel. I watch you everyday. I find it a good way to practice my Esperanto listening skills.
I showed my wife one of your videos yesterday and she was amazed that you can speak Esperanto with such fluency. She said it was a miracle that a made up language could actually catch on like this. Now, I think she wants to encourage me to become better at Esperanto.
Evildela:I have worked in the Esp community in Sydney for a long time and I'd say there are 9 active (meeting attending Esperantist), 30 fluent speaking (no interest in meeting / rarely attending meeting Esperantists, and about 40 - 60 in total.Maybe, these fluent people aren't going to meetups because they are introverts. Perhaps, local Esperanto groups could discover a way for introverts to get involved.
Alkanadi (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 06:34:57
Professor Sidney S. Culbert of the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, has done the most comprehensive survey on language use ever attempted. He has conducted interviews in dozens of countries around the world and tested for "professional proficiency", i.e. much more than just "hello, please, goodbye".
Based on this survey, Prof. Culbert concluded that Esperanto has about two million speakers worldwide. This puts it on a par with "minority" languages such as Lithuanian or Hebrew.
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-5.html
Armand6 (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 06:39:08
Alkanadi (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 06:47:24
Armand6:Sorry, Alkanadi, but that method is crap and gives ridiculous results. There is no way there are more than 50k fluent Esperantists in total.Okay. Can you tell me what is wrong with the method and I will never cite this source again.
With any ideology, there will be propaganda. Not because they are intentionally trying to mislead people, but rather, people believe what they want to believe and they also like to share their beliefs. Oh course, I take this figure of 2 million speakers with a grain of salt.
However, I think there must be about 2 million speakers. Lernu has Registered - in total: 199 757. If this is how many people are on lernu, doesn't it seem reasonable that there are about 2 million speakers in the world?
Armand6 (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 06:54:02
Alkanadi:Lernu has Registered - in total: 199 757And how many of them are fluent Esperantists? How many of them are Chinese spammers? As I said earlier, there are 10400 people in Esperanto group, and less than 20 people who can post in Esperanto at all.
erinja (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 14:33:26
Alkanadi:However, I think there must be about 2 million speakers. Lernu has Registered - in total: 199 757. If this is how many people are on lernu, doesn't it seem reasonable that there are about 2 million speakers in the world?2 million is a ridiculous number. Lernu's user numbers are in no way indicative of fluent speakers - the only meaning is "people who were interested enough in learning a little about Esperanto to register an account". Some people register an account because they somehow think you can learn Spanish or English here. Only about 45000 of those users indicate an Esperanto level above "zero". In many cases people register an account and only log in a couple times, or they use the site for maybe a few days or a week and then drop it. By that low standard, the standard of doing a couple beginner lessons for a few days or a week, I must speak about 10 languages!
(I speak only about 5 languages to the minimal level of having a very basic "hi how are you, I am fine, how's the weather" type of conversation, and only 3 languages to speak meaningfully about myself and my life and experiences)
Alkanadi (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 16:05:06
erinja:I think the original question is about how many people have a basic level, not how many people are fluent. Thanks for the stats. Interesting to know that some people try to learn Spanish on this website.Alkanadi:However, I think there must be about 2 million speakers. Lernu has Registered - in total: 199 757. If this is how many people are on lernu, doesn't it seem reasonable that there are about 2 million speakers in the world?2 million is a ridiculous number. Lernu's user numbers are in no way indicative of fluent speakers
erinja (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 16:21:37
Alkanadi:I think the original question is about how many people have a basic level, not how many people are fluent. Thanks for the stats. Interesting to know that some people try to learn Spanish on this website.You are missing the point. A basic level in 2010 is essentially a zero level today if the person hasn't stayed active, because people forget, so even the basic level is probably higher than the real number.
It's not so much that people try to learn Spanish here, it's that they confuse Esperanto for Español and write to us asking where they can find the Spanish course.
Tempodivalse (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 17:05:41
Does anyone know where Ethnologue's optimistic 2m figure comes from? I don't see a cite.
raffadalbo (Mostrar perfil) 10 de agosto de 2015 18:09:07
ravana:I mean from basic level to better .Clearly, no one knows. Statistical researches in this field are very poor.
But why should we choose the worst estimate?
In a few countries official statistic about Esperanto are available. In Hungary the 2011 census has given a total of about 8000 people declaring that they can speak Esperanto. So, should we believe that most of them lied to official requests and that they have in fact no knowledge of the language? Should we believe that the whole world except Hungary has only 1.5 times the speakers of a small country that accounts for about 0.1% of the world population?
I believe that 2 millions Esperanto speakers (including basic level) is much nearer to truth than 20 thousands. Maybe, the best estimate is in between: around 200 thousands?