raffadalbo: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?

Hungary is at the extreme upper end of the curve as far as Esperantists as percentage of the population, because it is the only place I know of where you can use Esperanto to fulfill your university language requirement, and many people choose Esperanto just because it's easy (and then they drop it after). It would be exceedingly dishonest to take Hungary's numbers and assume they apply to the whole world. It would be like taking the population of Manhattan and using it as a basis for calculating the population of the United States. It's a terrible idea because the rest of the US doesn't have even close to that population density, it's a very poor representative of the rest of the country.

erinja:It would be exceedingly dishonest to take Hungary's numbers and assume they apply to the whole world. It would be like taking the population of Manhattan and using it as a basis for calculating the population of the United States. It's a terrible idea because the rest of the US doesn't have even close to that population density, it's a very poor representative of the rest of the country.

Yes. But it is also exceedingly dishonest if you assume that out of Manhattan there are only a few villages and no major town.

We only have to avoid both excesses.

raffadalbo:

erinja:It would be exceedingly dishonest to take Hungary's numbers and assume they apply to the whole world. It would be like taking the population of Manhattan and using it as a basis for calculating the population of the United States. It's a terrible idea because the rest of the US doesn't have even close to that population density, it's a very poor representative of the rest of the country.

Yes. But it is also exceedingly dishonest if you assume that out of Manhattan there are only a few villages and no major town.

We only have to avoid both excesses.

I think you don't understand the EXTREME paucity of Esperanto speakers in large swathes of the world's population. These kinds of methods of "count all of the Esperantists in a European city and assume this counts for the whole world" - they will never work. At best they will work for Europe only, to estimate the number of speakers in Europe. I went on a trip to Chennai, a city of more than 4 million. I was personally unable to find a single Esperanto speaker there, and Indian Esperanto speakers were not aware of any, either. In Hyderabad (according to the local speakers, "a medium-sized city of 3.6 million people" ), I found 2 or 3. You can't tell me that these cities hide hundreds of Esperanto speakers who can't be bothered to lift their heads and say a peep to anyone. If anything characterizes Esperanto speakers, it's an interest in meeting other Esperanto speakers, and I refuse to believe that there are dozens or hundreds of speakers that are simply invisible.

By the way, if the world has 2 million Esperanto speakers, and if they are all distributed evenly, then we should expect to find 1241 in Chennai. I could not find one, ten, or a hundred speakers there. In New York City, we should find more than 2400. Hungary is literally the only place I can devise where its estimated number of speakers according to this metric would be less than its supposed actual numbers. Sorry. I'm just not seeing it, not even close. We need to live in the real world and not throw unbelievable numbers around, it makes us look silly to the outside world. These supposed two million Esperanto speakers certainly don't buy many books or attend many events. It is hard to imagine how they can keep up their Esperanto level (remember that this number was calculated pre-internet, so that would not have been an option to them).

erinja:These supposed two million Esperanto speakers certainly don't buy many books or attend many events. It is hard to imagine how they can keep up their Esperanto level (remember that this number was calculated pre-internet, so that would not have been an option to them).

Good point. Maybe, a better metric to look at is people who are active members of Esperanto associations.

erinja:We need to live in the real world and not throw unbelievable numbers around, it makes us look silly to the outside world. These supposed two million Esperanto speakers certainly don't buy many books or attend many events. It is hard to imagine how they can keep up their Esperanto level (remember that this number was calculated pre-internet, so that would not have been an option to them).

In my opinion based on participance at European renkontiĝoj 2,000 (maximum 5,000) aktivuloj in Europe & Russia and 20,000 (maximum 50,000) worldwide scattered aktivuloj could be realistic.

Just some example how local German press judges E-o number game: 1:52 minute "... worldwide only(?!) 100,000 people speak Esperanto. 300 of them participate at congress* in Wiesbaden/Germany ..."

Just recommendation: Forget it to motivate yourself with vague user numbers of E-o. Instead try to fall in love with Esperanto language itself. There's PMEG, there's Vinilkosmo, there's Muzaiko, there's Lernu k.t.p. Thats way most young Espis I met live for and will E-o use and relaxed spread for.

*IJK 2015

At the end of the day, I guess it isn't important. Let's say that there were 5 million speakers yet you never ever meet or talk with any of them. Or, conversely, let's say that there were 5 hundred speakers and you chat with a lot of them on a regular basis. Which is better?

Until a scientific method is shown, we'll assume it's up to 10m, but the consensus is 2m.
Emotions don't count.

675k learners on Duolingo (as of 6Jan17) & >100k lernu, +++.
It's growing all the time.

Intelligent people will understand the importance of a neutral intercultural communication language.

Estu inteligenta, kaj parolu Esperanton.

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

At the online suffrage there was only three places for languages. Some people speak more languages. Garbage in, garbage out.