i like the idear. but i do not think that you can get a real number of the speakers. you can say, at least xxx speakers exist.

but that is also good so let´s share the link.

pasporta servo has 1500 users, just like esperanto.com, i think it will be hart to get more in your petition. but let us try it!

erinja:I don't think that it would take 15 minutes to sign the petition, it's probably more like 5 minutes.

It took me only 30 seconds to sign it, and I find this petition interesting. It could give some indication of, at least, where esperanto speakers live.

erinja:
I doubt that karaoke helps Esperanto culture any more than petitions do. Each person has their own hobby. One person's hobby is petitions, another person's hobby is karaoke, another person doesn't care about any of those things at all.

Yes, I agree, using statistical data of petitions to make some pie chart* torte fight could be same entertaining fun like karaoke.

*

qwertz:Assuming that this signing will take 15 minutes...
So what statistical counting is doing to enrich E-o culture?

1) It took me less than 90 seconds to sign. Writing your message against signing surely took much more time than actually signing would have. And how did that message enrich the culture?

2) Do you not think that having a source of encouragement for people who would learn it if they only believed that anyone else actually spoke it is a way to enrich the culture? Evidence of a substantial number of existing speakers will lead to even more people willing to learn. I can think of nothing more enriching than additional speakers.

erinja: I think I have now gotten well past the point of caring very much about what the exact number of Esperanto speakers is.

I certainly don't care much, either. The issue is that a lot of would-be Esperantists do care and use it as a reason to give up on the idea of Esperanto. It would be nice to have ammunition to tear down that erroneous reason for not learning.

I think that the people who want to tear down the idea of learning Esperanto don't much care how many speakers there are. Let's say you did a super accurate study and you discovered with great reliability that the number of Esperanto speakers was five million (a number that is probably well more than twice the actual number of speakers).

There are about five million speakers of Swahili; you can imagine people's reactions if you said Esperanto had as many speakers as Swahili. Or Norwegian, which also has about five million. What if it were ten million speakers? Now we're getting into languages like Swedish, Belarusian, Somali, Serbian.

The bottom line is that whatever number you come up with, it could never possibly be even close to high enough that people wouldn't joke about it. Who in the world says that they will learn Somali because it's so useful and so many people speak it?

With all due respect to the petition writers, I respect that they want to come up with an accurate number, the same way I support anyone who wants to broaden human knowledge, but for "propaganda" purposes I see no point at all. We are only fooling ourselves if we think we can encourage someone to learn Esperanto by saying that a lot of people speak it. Anyone who believed these numbers and then learned Esperanto based on that would have some unpleasant truths to confront, and would probably come away feeling they'd been lied to.

The truth is that Esperanto has very few speakers, even compared to the smaller of the world languages. And there are only a few world languages that people learn because they have many speakers (English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic). If you told your friends you were learning Bengali, you would probably be laughed at and told you were wasting your time, unless you lived in a very specific region of the world, or unless you spent your career dealing with Bengali-speaking immigrants, or if you had a particular interest in Bengali culture. Bengali is the 6th most spoken language in the world.

Suffice it to say - a "numbers" argument probably couldn't convince someone to learn a huge language like Bengali, so why would we suppose that it would convince someone to learn a small language like Esperanto? How about we ALL drop Esperanto and go learn Bengali, if numbers are so important?

erinja:How about we ALL drop Esperanto and go learn Bengali, if numbers are so important?

Now, Enrinja, I suspect that you are being deliberately obtuse. Certainly, you can see the difference between the number of speakers of a natural, localized language versus an intentional, international language with speakers world-wide.

I have had a number of conversations which hinged upon the number of speakers. When I explain that the estimate is between 200,000 and 8 million, with the most reliable estimate being around 2 million, people are shocked. Not at the 2 million estimate, but at the minimum of 200,000. They don't even think that there are that many speakers! They think, really, that it is a dead language with as much modern utility as Latin (except without doctors and lawyers to keep it alive).

If I believed that there were fewer than 200,000 speakers, I don't know that I would have undertaken learning the language despite my high level of idealism.

Please note, also, that I'm not talking about a number to provide anti-Esperantists. I'm talking about a number to give to would-be Esperantists.

Would having a number of even ten million be enough to convince someone dead-set against Esperanto to start learning? Of course not. However, if we can swat away enough arguments against the language, then people at least may run out of reasons to maintain their derision.

More importantly, for people on the fence, who like the idea but are afraid that it may not be worth the time? Well, knowing that there are enough speakers just may be enough to push them onto our side of the fence. This I whole-heartedly believe.

witeowl:

qwertz:Assuming that this signing will take 15 minutes...
So what statistical counting is doing to enrich E-o culture?

1) It took me less than 90 seconds to sign. Writing your message against signing surely took much more time than actually signing would have.

Yes, and creating an digital idendity via an Yahoo etc email account with an fake name takes 10 minutes. Yes, I know less than that. So where is there any value of an Internet online petition? I can't see any. Maybe I don't trust the Internet very much contrary to the Offline world.

witeowl:
And how did that message enrich the culture?

I have no idea because I didn't intented that message to be enriching the E-o culture.

witeowl:
2) Do you not think that having a source of encouragement for people who would learn it if they only believed that anyone else actually spoke it is a way to enrich the culture? Evidence of a substantial number of existing speakers will lead to even more people willing to learn. I can think of nothing more enriching than additional speakers.

You're lucky being an English native and don't have to soldier on through learning a language which in my opinion often just learned for career purposes. Please travel through the world and see what i.e. music culture, scientifical information etc. from English native countries in English language spreads and motivates(?)/enforces(?) people to learn English. After that pain of having to learn a bridge language the next language will be choosen to full own willings (=personal adoptive language pdf file). If the pain of the learned bridge language didn't destroy any motiviation to learn some other foreign language.

witeowl:

erinja: I think I have now gotten well past the point of caring very much about what the exact number of Esperanto speakers is.

I certainly don't care much, either. The issue is that a lot of would-be Esperantists do care and use it as a reason to give up on the idea of Esperanto. It would be nice to have ammunition to tear down that erroneous reason for not learning.

They are free to do so. I assume you solely self-centered know the definition who got the honor to be an "Esperantist" and who an "Fake-Esperantist".

erinja:
With all due respect to the petition writers, I respect that they want to come up with an accurate number, the same way I support anyone who wants to broaden human knowledge, but for "propaganda" purposes I see no point at all. We are only fooling ourselves if we think we can encourage someone to learn Esperanto by saying that a lot of people speak it. Anyone who believed these numbers and then learned Esperanto based on that would have some unpleasant truths to confront, and would probably come away feeling they'd been lied to.

I full agree with that. In my opinion it doesn't make any sense to make a moskito an elephant. I can live with Esperanto as an minority language with worldwide scattered speaker community.

qwertz:I have no idea because I didn't intented that message to be enriching the E-o culture.

And yet you used enrichment as an argument against taking the time to join the petition. I find it ironic for someone to say, "I can't take the time to complete that petition because it doesn't enrich the culture, but I will take the time to write this message against completing that petition even though it doesn't enrich the culture."

quertz:

witeowl: I can think of nothing more enriching than additional speakers.

You're lucky being an English native and don't have to soldier on through learning a language which in my opinion often just learned for career purposes. Please travel through the world and see what i.e. music culture, scientifical information etc. from English native countries in English language spread and motivate/enforce people to learn English. After that pain of having to learn a bridge language the next language will be choosen to full own willings (=personal adoptive language pdf file.).

I don't get your point here. Yes, I grew up speaking English. (Well, after the first five years of my life in which I only spoke German as my family emigrated from Germany shortly before my birth.) True, I don't have to learn another language, which is a shame and part of my motivation for learning Esperanto. (I could go back and complete my studies of German or Spanish, but I choose Eperanto as being not only the most flexible but the language which carries the best political impact.)

But, again, I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Are you telling me that people shouldn't be encouraged to learn Esperanto?

They are free to do so. I assume you solely self-centered know the definition who got the honor to be an "Esperantist" and who an "Fake-Esperantist".

Please explain what you are saying here. I know that English is not your first language, so perhaps it would be best to move this discussion into one of the Esperanto forums so that we are both working in an auxiliary language. At this time, I'm a bit offended (and perplexed) at being called self-centered, and I'm hoping that that was not your intention.

I definitely don't understand your point about Esperantists and Fake-Esperantists. I wouldn't even think that there is such a thing... Either you are learning or speaking Esperanto or you are not. How or why would someone "fake" this? Perhaps you misunderstood my use of "would-be-Esperantist"? This phrase was meant to refer to people who would be willing to and/or interested in learning the language if they had enough reason.

If it is easier for you, please feel free to clarify in German the parts that I don't understand. My relatives can surely fill in any gaps left by my insufficient skill in the German language.