raffadalbo:the 2011 census has given a total of about 8000 people declaring that they can speak Esperanto.

They are most probably lying.

Armand6:

uosuaq:"Fluent" is perhaps an unfair standard for an international second language.

In that case Esperanto has no reason d'etre, as everyone in the world has a rudimentary English knowledge already. Esperanto is intended to facilitate fluent conversations.

I suppose it depends on how you think of Esperanto's raison d'etre. From what I understand, a big part of the idea was that nobody should have to learn *somebody else's* language to get along with people from another linguistic background. Of course, another part of it was that the language you *do* need to learn should be as easy as possible, which is why it's easier to get fluent in Esperanto than English if you take the time.

At the same time, I think a post-Fina-Venko world would be a place where you could order a cut of meat at a butcher's shop, get a cab, make your way through an airport or subway system, deal with police or doctors, etc. in Esperanto all over the world, without anyone necessarily speaking Esperanto at the level of their own language. (The butcher may also not know the word for "eggplant".)

From a more "Raumist" perspective, if you can't speak Esperanto above a basic level, you can't really be part of the culture of Esperantujo.

I'm mostly just thinking out loud here, I don't have a strong opinion...

Armand6:

raffadalbo:the 2011 census has given a total of about 8000 people declaring that they can speak Esperanto.

They are most probably lying.

What makes you think so? Hungary does have a disproportionate number of Esperantists, judging by my experience.

8k does seem rather much, though - maybe it's not a case of "lying", but rather overestimation of one's abilities.

Big-picture question: Does it really matter how many people speak Esperanto fluently, aside from idle curiosity? I guess as an open Raumist, I am removed from these kinds of worries...

Tempodivalse:What makes you think so? Hungary does have a disproportionate number of Esperantists, judging by my experience.

They may have had a course of Esperanto as a mandatory foreign language, but I doubt they have retained anything useful; the German still remains the primary foreign language there. Five hundred, a thousand, these numbers I would believe.

Armand6:

Tempodivalse:What makes you think so? Hungary does have a disproportionate number of Esperantists, judging by my experience.

They may have had a course of Esperanto as a mandatory foreign language, but I doubt they have retained anything useful; the German still remains the primary foreign language there. Five hundred, a thousand, these numbers I would believe.

Well, in the absence of more concrete information, I'm not sure we can do much more than conjecture.

This is the problem with measuring the number of speakers - self-reporting is notoriously unreliable.

Alkanadi:
I am a huge fan of your channel. I watch you everyday. I find it a good way to practice my Esperanto listening skills.

Thanks a ton
Yes, also I think a lot of Esperanto speakers are the type of people who don't like to go out into the world and put themselves out there.

I was interested in Sidney Culbert's research and tried to find out a little about it during my work for my Ph.D. though it made no more than an extended footnote (an appendix in fact). From what I could gather from correspondence with David Wolff, Culbert used methods similar to those in polling. He surveyed 14 French Departments or administrative districts. In each he interviewed Esperantists, got estimated figures from them and then tried to follow up leads in yearbooks or (in two cases) stayed in two of the regions and made a thorough search.

Unfortunately he died without publishing his findings. His methods seem to me as good as one could hope for, and his initial overall estimate was in fact 1 million, but he increased it to 2 million in the 1980s.

Possible explanations for his findings may be:

1. Most Esperantists don't attend congresses, much less World Congresses.

2. His research was carried out in France, which has a stronger movement than most places (there were 2600 at Lille this year, quite a strong showing).

3. His research was carried out in the 50s, when the movement was stronger than today.

Culbert's papers are probably still at the University of Washington, so there's a chance for anyone who wants to look into it further.

It is really problematic establishing how many speakers of Esperanto there are, even if you could agree on what level of Esperanto should count as being a speaker.

What you can say for certain is that the number is currently too small for Esperanto to fully realise its potential as a lingua franca.

You can also comfortably assert that number of Esperantists who have a command of Esperanto directly comparable with their command of their denaska language is zero.

By denaska here I mean not just any language they have leant as a child, but the language they started learning as a child, have been educated in, have continued to learn throughout their life and use to conduct their daily life (shopping, watching TV, in their job, with their partner etc).

However that degree of knowledge of Esperanto (which is theoretically not achievable anyway) is not required for Esperanto to be practically useful when travelling abroad. For that just a decent basic level among say 10% of the population would suffice.

200 000 Is realy small nuber for 7 000 000 000 of world population .

Tempodivalse:

Armand6:

raffadalbo:the 2011 census has given a total of about 8000 people declaring that they can speak Esperanto.

They are most probably lying.

8k does seem rather much, though - maybe it's not a case of "lying", but rather overestimation of one's abilities.

Well, maybe some of those 8000 did overestimate their abilities, but 985 noted Esperanto as their native language, I don't think you could say anyone "overestimated" that, and I don't picture people lying on an official survey for no winning gains. As per Wikipedia, if there are 985 native speakers of Esperanto in Hungary, and the % of native speakers to the percentage of people registered in the national Esperanto clubs there are 8000-9000 native Esperanto speakers in the world. Surely some numbers by people claiming several million fluent speakers are over exaggerated, but there are surely also a lot of under exaggerated numbers in this thread.