Etsuo Miyoshi, a Japanese Esperantist and president of the Swany corporation, was quoted in an interview as saying that the UEA had 30,000 active members in 117 countries. Possibly he included national associations which are affiliated to UEA in this figure. The interview is on the followoing page:
http://www.liberafolio.org/2005/Agado/miyoshiinter...

Pastorant:
Well, as a physician I’m “overexposed” to the English pronunciation of a lot of chemical and drug names. About puns… it depends: if they are of sexual content I’m quite aware of the enormous creativity of the American pornographers… actually that’s one of my dark hobbies: the study of the porno-erotic filthy English vocabulary. How many times a day do you speak about trees? I could pass weeks without mentioning a tree at all! If 60% is enough for you, you are definitely too benign regarding language mastering.

Miland:
The number of members of national associations could possibly reach 30,000, so that does sound like a possible source of the number. Of course that doesn't mean that all of these people actually speak Esperanto; some people join just to show their support for the idea, not because they actually speak.

Mendacapote:
I think it is worth drawing a distinction between speaking a language and mastering it. I have met people who won't say that they "speak" a language unless they could teach a class in it. Perhaps you follow this definition. But as an example, my Italian is probably at a similar level as awake's Esperanto. I can have a conversation but my vocabulary is limited. I do fine with reading the newspaper, buying things in stores, fulfilling my basic needs. Not fluent by a long shot. But if asked if I speak Italian, it would seem silly to say "no", considering I have been able to host someone in my house and give a reasonably coherent tour of my city in a situation where the only common language was Italian. I certainly wouldn't say I've mastered it, not by a long shot, but it wouldn't seem unreasonable (to me) to say that I speak it.

And to me, being an "Esperantist" doesn't have any connotation whatsoever of speaking the language fluently. Esperant/ist/o - it means someone whose habitual hobby is Esperanto. I don't think anyone expects that a "biciklisto" will be a pro bicyclist; if you know how to ride a bike and you like to ride the bike frequently as a hobby, I think you can call yourself a "biciklisto", even if you're not very talented. You can be an "artisto" if you like to make art often and habitually, even if you're a terrible artist, likewise with "skribisto". If you spend a lot of time writing, and it's your hobby or profession, then you're a "skribisto", whether you're good at it or not.

Honestly I think awake should call himself an Esperantist with no problem. The Esperanto definition of "Esperantist" at the lernu dictionary says "someone who speaks Esperanto (and would like more people to speak it)". That sounds like a good description to me (I am assuming that awake wants more people to speak it).

Sidney Culbert's survey is the best we are likely to get, and he had a clearly defined criterion of fluency: US Foreign Service Level 3 corresponds to being easily able to survive an express oneself in the language, and follow newspapers or broadcasts. His estimate of 1-2 million may be an overestimate in view of Sikosek's observation about Cologne, but to make more progress we would need his data, and unfortunately the man himself has passed on. That is why I felt that the number of films in a language would give us some idea. Ladino with 150,000 speakers does seem a reasonable comparison, which has one full-length film in the language (and six partly), while Esperanto has had three full-length films (of which one, Angoroj, is lost), so I would be inclined to give it a comparable or higher figure - say, up to 300,000 - but it would be good to have more figures for other minority languages.

mnlg:

you are absolutely correct!

When I read the response from erinja,I figured she was talking about something else...

This thread really "grew" quickly since yesterday, so obviously there is quite some interest in the topic.

Gerald

“Esperanton devus lerni unue esperantistoj mem”. “Esperanto should be learned first by the very esperantists”. Something like that said Kabe… and I agree 100%. For me the only esperantists in this “fadeno” are you and mnlg. The rest of us are just enthusiast beginners.

By the way, I do love biking... but I objectively prefer to call myself: “biciklemulo” instead of “biciklisto”.

Maybe we should be called: esperantemuloj... I mean, to avoid the isto connotation.

Thank you for your kind words, but if memory serves me correctly, I have read somewhere that "esperantisto" is a definition that can be applied to anybody using esperanto for any purpose, and, I guess, with any level of fluency. I think I began defining myself as an esperantisto after my first international meeting (1997), when I saw that my afternoons spent memorizing words and grammar rules were not wasted at all; I could understand and be understood by people with which I had no other common language. It was a thrilling experience, and it convinced me that esperanto was much more than a toy for the mind or an utopia; it was a living, working language, and it was well worth studying. Back then I wasn't as skilled as I think I am now, I needed a dictionary with me at all times; but I had some kind of... focalized, realistic enthusiasm, perhaps. I embraced the idea that comes with the language; I felt that I could use it successfully, that it was within my capacity. Perhaps I was still a beginner, but I started considering myself a speaker as well.

I am familiar with Kabe's quote, and I agree with him that Esperantists should learn Esperanto. But I see the quote as a commentary on the "eternaj komencantoj" (eternal beginners). I don't think that he was saying that the eternaj komencantoj aren't Esperantists. He was saying that Esperantists should expend the effort necessary to learn to speak the language well, and should not learn the very basics and then cease to improve, speaking forever like a beginner who has only studied for a month. He was saying that it's a little silly to go around telling everyone to go learn the language if you don't bother to learn it properly yourself. I have personally been shocked upon meeting certain people who have been speaking Esperanto for many years and attending many international events - and manage to use the -n ending wrong nearly every single time (which is quite a feat; if they only did exactly the opposite of their natural inclination every single time, they would be almost 100% correct). But even these people I consider to be speakers and Esperantists, as bad as their grammar is. They can go to an international event, understand and be understood, and presumably get around just fine, erroneous -n endings and all. And they agree with the internal idea of Esperanto. Thus the distinction between an Esperantist (an Esperanto speaker who thinks other people should learn as well) and a simple Esperanto speaker (they speak Esperanto but only speak it, are not involved in the community, don't particularly think that other people should learn, etc)

I see this as a completely separate issue from what language level you need to reach before calling yourself an "Esperantist".

I've done a little digging in Wikipedia and IMDB to find the answer to the question: is there a critical mass of speakers of a language beyond which the film industry takes off? Well, this is only a small sample of figures, but Alsatian with 548,000 speakers has 3 films, Breton with something between a half and one million speakers has 6 films and Occitan with 1.9 million has 8 films. But now three interesting figures, which may well be influenced by something mnlg referred to, of special help for groups: Maori with 1.1 million speakers has 35 films (help from NZ government, perhaps), Basque with 1 million has 68 films listed in IMDB, and Yiddish with 3 million has 199!
All this suggests to me that to get a film industry you need the amenities and population of a large city, with 1 million people or more. It is also evidence for the number of fluent speakers of Esperanto being less than the 1.6 million that Culbert predicted - for at that level we might expect at least half a dozen films by now. Still, we've had 3 full length ones (with two surviving) and one half-length one on the way, not too bad.

Miland:But now three interesting figures, which may well be influenced by something mnlg referred to, of special help for groups

Of course it makes sense for me. For film-making you need resources, perhaps a contiguous minority in a defined community, as a potential market, to justify the costs (DVD-oriented production might sidestep this, though).

Perhaps another indicator could be used: the amount of literary work. How many books are published each year in Maori or Breton? How many for Esperanto? I'm not sure how easily these figures can be retrieved. With even more detail, we could compare according to original work and translations.