Wikijunior talk:Languages/Esperanto

Pronunciation guide
It would be great is a speaker of this language could add a little information about how the special letters are pronounced. --Starchildmom 22:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * This has been done, but it is probably even more important to have information about how the rest of the letters - the ones used in Latin and English - are pronounced. --Haruo 19:01, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of making stuff visual, rather than trying to explain it in a paragraph. Perhaps adding something like this - which has the new letters highlighted - would be easier to digest?

The only other comments you need to add are:
 * How ĥ is pronounced
 * That q, w, x and y are gone (and maybe how they are replaced by kw, ŭ ks and j)
 * That unlike English, every letter has only one sound (you can use a as an example: f a t, f a te and f a ther all have different sounding versions of a)
 * There are no silent letters (like h in p h )

So you could replace what's in "What writing system(s) does this language use?" with:

Esperanto uses the Latin alphabet, like English, but with a few differences. The letters q, w, x and y are gone, and new letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ are added. The Esperanto alphabet looks like this: (put the tables above here) Most Esperanto letters sound like they would in English, except in Esperanto, the sounds of letters never change. In English, the sound of a is different in f a t, f a te and f a ther, and the s is silent in i s land. That does not happen in Esperanto, because there is only one way to spell a sound, and only one way to sound out a spelling. The major differences from English are that c is pronounced like ts and j is pronounced like y, and the new letter ĥ does not have a sound in English, but is like clearing your throat, or how a Scottish person would say the ch in lo ch . The missing letters q, w, x and y are replaced with kw, ŭ, ks and j. (Then continue with the "Because ordinary keyboards don't..." until the end of the section.)

That's not complete and in some cases it's not technically correct, but it's complete and correct enough to make a sound base for a decent class presentation by a kid, i think.

Thoughts? --Indiana (talk) 18:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I like both the text and the chart. I say Be Bold. - xixtas  talk 03:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Bold it is. --Indiana (talk) 00:58, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks good! -- xixtas  talk 03:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Esperist?
Has anyone else heard of Esperantists referred to as "Esperists"? Even a quick Google search gives me this page only, and then a ton pages with "esper ist". I have only ever heard of Esperantists referred to as "Esperantists" or "samideanoj" (by other Esperantists - it means "brother", but not in the family sense - and it's not really a proper name for Esperantists). And then there's the technically correct term Esperantano, but that's not in common use. "Esperantist" is the only term I have heard in common use, and it is the officially designated term by World Congress declaration. Unless someone has heard the term "Esperist" used, I'll take it out. --Indiana (talk) 19:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Contemporary Esperanto writers?
Anyone have any suggestions for more contemporary Esperanto writers who have some influence and/or fame? It's a little depressing that all the candidates I can think of are either dead (see the existing list) or not long for this world (for example, Baldur Ragnarsson). --Indiana (talk) 23:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Living Esperanto-authors
See https://books.google.fr/books?id=-Z_8CG9g2jIC&pg=PA670&lpg=PA670&dq=Essence+et+avenir+de+l%27id%C3%A9e+d%27une+langue+internationale&source=bl&ots=pW8H2IeJel&sig=c8fZEcj0zt3Cb5677WjCDX1GBwo&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjQ8MKd9sjTAhUKKcAKHTMRCRIQ6AEIXDAJ#v=onepage&q=Essence%20et%20avenir%20de%20l'id%C3%A9e%20d'une%20langue%20internationale&f=false

eo.wikipedia.org :

Post 1991: Postmodernismo Laŭ Lariko Golden (en Ĉu la kvara periodo? Originala Esperanta literaturo en la naŭdekaj jaroj, Budapest, 2002, citita de Sutton en Concise Encyclopedia of the Original Literature of Esperanto 1887-2007, p. 414), nova periodo ekestas per la apero de postmodernismo kun la publikigo de la rakontaro Sur la linio (1991) de Jorge Camacho, sekvata de aliaj komunaj verkoj de anoj de la Ibera Skolo kiel la poemaro Ibere libere (1993). Ĝeneralaj trajtoj de la periodo Romanoj Gersi Alfredo Bays, Gerrit Berveling, Mikaelo Bronŝtejn, Christian Declerck, Sten Johansson, Anna Löwenstein, Paula Mährti, István Nemere, Marco Picasso, Manuel de Seabra, Eugène de Zilah En Kroatio aktivas Spomenka Štimec kiu verkis Tilla (2002) kaj Hodler en Mostar (2006). Rakontoj, noveloj kaj novelaroj Ulrich Becker, Ibera Skolo (Ekstremoj; Abel Montagut), Jean Codjo, Sten Johansson, Gbeglo Koffi, Lena Karpunina, Manuel de Seabra, Tim Westover Poezio Ulrich Becker, Gerrit Berveling, Peter Browne, Tim Carr, Christian Declerck, István Ertl, Ibera Skolo (Ibere libere; Jorge Camacho, Miguel Fernández, Abel Montagut, Gonçalo Neves), Mao Zifu, Moskva Skolo (Mikaelo Giŝpling), Mauro Nervi, Baldur Ragnarsson, Nicola Ruggiero Teatro Paul Gubbins, Giorgio Silfer Eseoj Tradukoj En 1999 La familio de Bakin estis tradukita de Wei Yida. Revuoj de la periodo[bewerken | brontekst bewerken] Krom la jam menciitaj Literatura Foiro en rilato kun Esperanto-sekcio de PEN international, Fonto (ĝis 2006) aŭ La Gazeto, aperas ankaŭ la libroforma revuo Beletra Almanako (de 2007)

e.g. Trevor Steele (Australia), Giorgio Silfer (Italy), Spomenka Štimec (Croatia) are well-known contemporary Esperanto writers...--83.134.161.113 (discuss) 10:48, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Length
I'm concerned about the length of this article. It's now distinctly longer than any of the 100%-completion articles, even the very long ones like (that I recall) German, Serbian, and Swahili; and quite a lot longer than the average. I admit that I too am squeamish about looking any particular content in the eye and telling it "You have to go" &mdash; but we really ought to be looking for opportunities to tighten things up somewhat. Simpler may be better. We don't want to drive away kids who aren't at the extreme upper end of the age range (although we surely also want the material to be useful to kids who are at the upper end). --Pi zero (talk) 00:58, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The bulk of this article is in the history section. Most languages aren't going to have any history to speak of, other than "it evolved as mix of X, Y and Z sometime back in the haze of ancient history". The few that do have anything approximating a recorded history, like Esperanto or Italian (for example), are naturally going to have longer history sections. What makes Esperanto particularly unique is that 1.) a lot of what it is comes from why it is (because it is a designed language)... and to understand that, you need to understand its history, 2.) most of its history is in the current era, involving things that an average kid today will be familiar with (WW1 & 2, for example), rather than relatively ancient history (take Italian as an example - what average kid will know Frederick II from Adam?) and 3.) Esperanto is, in essence, the result of a 13 year-old kid's love project, and what could be more motivating or interesting to a child than seeing that something they are dreaming up today may become a worldwide phenomenon tomorrow? --Indiana (talk) 01:52, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Valid points, all. Though I was already beginning to doubt mildly before the history section.  I certainly don't mean to suggest any precipitous action; but after giving ourselves some time to let the material settle in our minds, so to speak, we may find that we can after all see ways to subtly simplify, here and there.  The occasion calls for a light touch, rather than a heavy one.  And there's no rush (as Ingolemo remarked to me over at the Conlang Wikibook a few months back... or was it more like a year ago).


 * BTW, not to misrepresent my own position on this &mdash; I really do like the work you've done on this article, quite a lot, which is the basic source of the squeamishness I mentioned earlier. --Pi zero (talk) 02:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, I didn't take your comments as criticism - it's a valid concern, and I did mull it over myself when I was writing the history section in particular (which is why I had all those answers ready ^_^;). I certainly expect trimming, because I tried to make sure that it was as complete as possible without being too complete - or in other words, I erred on the side of length, prefferring to be a little longer rather than lacking in info. I expect editors to come along and trim it a bit - and I don't expect anything more to be added (except one or two more writers in the "who writes" section; contemporary ones), although I might be surprised I guess.


 * In fact, I can already see a few things that might be trimmed out - like the UNESCO mention, and dropping Kálmán Kalocsay from the list of writers (actually, I was aiming for one writer in each "era" of Esperanto: Zamenhof in the formation days, Baghy in the "growth" days (pre WW1), Auld in the golden age (WW1-WW2), Piron in the recovery age (post WW2-80s), and ??? in the modern age - so if I could find a modern name I would ditch Kalocsay and add the modern one), and the paragraph on how to type on computers in Esperanto can probably be cut in half. But I'll leave the trimming to another editor, or I'll do it myself if enough time passes and no one else has done it.


 * I've been working my way down the page sprucing it up with the goal of taking it from "developing" to "publishable". Just the last two sections left. For them, I don't really have all that much new content to add - just a few more things in the words to say, like I'm going to add the numbers, and then drop things like "where's the bathroom" - and it's mostly about reformatting for making it look sweet. --Indiana (talk) 05:48, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I recommend not waiting for other editors; you're immersed in it now, which for purposes of trimming gives you, now, a head start on any other editor, now or later, and even on yourself coming back to it much later. Also, Wikijunior is a slow-paced sort of place (in recent times, anyway), and it could take years before someone else comes around with the time and inclination to tackle the matter.  In all of 2009, for example, the only substantial changes to Esperanto were the expansion and table-izing of the words and phrases, and the removal of some "inappropriately in-depth material" (the latter by Pi zero; I see BTW that that wasn't a matter of length but of focus).  If you see some things that can be trimmed, take the time to be sure of what you want to do, and then just be bold and do it.  If other editors do come around next week, or next month, they'll have an even better starting point from which to further improve this article, or there is no shortage of other articles they can turn their attention to.


 * I'd be interested in your comments on dash-separated lists of words and phrases, as you've reformatted that section, versus tabular format. I always preferred tables, as neat and easy-to-read, to the point in fact that I've long wished I had time to go through and systematically table-ify those lists in all the articles of this book.  Of course some of it is personal taste, but I can't help feeling there are more objective considerations involved, on both sides.  Thoughts?  --Pi zero (talk) 15:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Well the other reason I am stepping back and having a "cool off" period before going at this page again is because I want to get back to my primary project - the main Esperanto Wikibook (i am actually right in the middle of a major overhaul job there, and want to get back to it). I feel that this page is now good enough to rate "publishable" (and I'm going to mark it so). Of course, it can always be improved (a lot ^_^;), but I think we're at the point now where we are no longer creating the page, and are now actually in the improving phase. So ya, I'll be getting back to my main project for now, and after that's somewhat settled i'll come back here to take another look. (About the lists vs. tables, i'm going to make another section for that.) --Indiana (talk) 04:03, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah. Yes, I wondered later if something of the sort might be afoot.  I'm only on Wikibooks to help a bit with the Conlang wikibook &mdash; with about four detours on top of detours that result in my being here.  --Pi zero (talk) 07:00, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * From my perspective as someone who is exclusively a wikijunior focused editor, having a module that might be too long is a really great problem to have. :) -- xixtas  talk 14:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps, but it is a much easier problem to fix than being too short. And it doesn't require editors that are knowledgeable about Esperanto to fix. Unless another print version is being compiled sometime soon, it is not something that needs immediate attention. --Indiana (talk) 19:36, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I made some massive chops. I'm keeping a record of the info before I started cutting. The page was far more in depth than comparable languages in the book. --Indiana (talk) 20:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * There's a handy option on magic word  for things like this.
 * which expands to
 * or, putting it in single square brackets,
 * [ link it to a word or phrase].
 * --Pi zero (talk) 22:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * [ link it to a word or phrase].
 * --Pi zero (talk) 22:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm trying a different arrangement of the writing system(s) section. Different languages have different things that are especially interesting about them, and I was thinking that the phonetic spelling of Esperanto could be made to be the central point of interest for that section. That way, the tables could be presented at the end as an elaboration of that point of interest. --Pi zero (talk) 22:11, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I wonder if typical English-speaking kids will understand roll your tongue; but so far, I haven't thought of another way of putting it that's obviously any better.
 * I didn't quite have the nerve to put an exclamation point at the end of "it has a sound like clearing your throat!", as that semed like it might be getting a little carried away.
 * I tried explaining the word loch with a reference to the Loch Ness Monster, but decided it could come across as patronizing and didn't really add anything.


 * The thing is, the section is about writing systems... not phonology. If you check the other languages in the book, very few - if any - have any kind of phonological info at all. And since this chapter is already 2-3 times the average size of the other chapters, something has to go.
 * I agree that different languages have different items of interest, but if we have to pick one thing about Esperanto that's interesting... the fact that it's phonetic and orthographic? Really? I would have put flexible word order before that, but if I really had to pick one interesting thing about Esperanto to share to kids, it would be its history - and the goals with which it was designed. That's interesting, and inspiring, and supremely educational (because while they're hearing the story of Esperanto, they're learning more details about history). --Indiana (talk) 05:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Some thoughts, rambling though they may be.
 * I didn't mean to suggest, and don't believe, that there has to be only one interesting thing about each language.
 * Making each article fun and interesting and, along the way, informative is what matters. Overlength is potentially a problem because it may correlate with things getting boring, but that's a side-effect of length, not inherent.  It's good if a language has personality that comes through in its article, so the whole book doesn't become a tedious progression of generic languages.  I think this article feels shorter than it was.  (I also sense, in a detached sort of way, that sooner or later the history section may shorten up significantly further &mdash; though I cringe in anticipation.)
 * I think the one-sound-per-letter thing is fun, or at least it can be pitched that way (flaws of my own pitch notwithstanding). It makes the alphabet into a kind of game and helps give Esperanto personality, especially with a few curves thrown in like the velar fricative ("clearing your throat" &mdash; I like it).
 * The idea that phonology doesn't belong in that section implies an excessive divorcing of orthography from phonology, to the detriment of the section since the one-to-one phonemic valuing of letters is the distinctive feature of the orthography. (This is somewhat reminiscent of a problem we had at Conlang Intermediate last year, in which trying to separate morphology from syntax was just getting in the way of explaining things clearly.)  Also, I don't think it's entirely fair to insist on limiting the content of the section in a way that really requires a more sophisticated knowledge of languages than we expect our target audience to have even after they've read the book.
 * --Pi zero (talk) 07:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Well:
 * This is not meant to be a comprehensive introduction, and (so I've heard), the goal is to keep this book under 64 pages (obviously impossible, but it's a benchmark). There are 30 languages in the "publishable" section (including Esperanto). Figure on 2 pages per language then. After including the required information, there's really not that much room for other info. Practically speaking, you're simply not going to have room to bring up more than one interesting thing per language.
 * Boredom is not really a concern (of mine). I can write 50 pages on Esperanto and keep kids engaged. The problem is length itself, not the side effects. If this book is going to be transformed into a print book - which is the goal - it has to be kept short for obvious reasons. The Esperanto article is about 50% longer than the next longest article (German), and over 130% longer than the average (see here). (And it's pretty much a given that the history section has to be shortened, but in my opinion, the story told there is the most interesting part of the article, so once the trimming begins, that should be trimmed last.)
 * Saying the alphabet in 30 different languages can surely be fun (and, it might even be a great idea to have a Wikijunior book solely dedicated to alphabets around the world that does just that). But take an average kid, who's read this book. Six weeks later, how is the velar fricative going to "stick" with them? They'll probably never see ĥ again. They may have a few moments of fun when reading the book, sounding out the alphabet, but then... meh. Six weeks later, that's all lost. Instead, think about the story in the history. Six weeks after they've put the book down, they'll still remember that story because stories stick with kids. And whenever they hear a language they can't understand spoken, or hear "united nations", or "nazis", they will recall the story ("the guy who invented Esperanto also understood what it's like to not understand what other people are saying!", "the nazis? oh yes, another one of the evil things they did is they tried to destroy Esperanto!"). It introduces a concept into a child's imagination ("maybe if we could all understand each other, then we could all get along") that can translate into positive action ("wait, instead of fighting about this argument, let's try and understand each others' positions first"). Granted, with many kids that won't happen - they'll put down the book and forget all about it - but more kids will benefit more from the story in the history than will benefit from an afternoon of horking ĥ's. And if we are forced to fit into very limited space, clearly the history warrants the lion's share of the space, so if something's gotta go....
 * If there was room, then it would make perfect sense to map the orthography to the phonology... but there really isn't. And there is no requirement for the readers to understand the division between the two - this is up to us editors to make the judgment call. It's a kid's book - they're not going to miss the phonology if it's not there, and they're not going to suffer as students of the language because this isn't supposed to teach them Esperanto, just give them an idea that it exists, along with a little taste of what it is. This is one chapter in a larger book, and few (if any) of the other chapters discuss phonology. We have to work within the community standards. Unless you want to include phonology everywhere, then it shouldn't be here. (Incidentally, what I was planning to do eventually was link each of the letters in the alphabet to a sound file of the letter being pronounced. That doesn't change the length of the print book, but gives bonus material to people who view the hypertext version.)
 * If you think it's really important to mention that Esperanto is phonetic (or orthographic, or both), then you can do that with a single sentence. All you need to do is: "Esperanto uses the Latin alphabet, like English, except without q, w, x, and y, and with new letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ. Each letter is only pronounced one way (unlike in English, where a is different in fat, fate and father"), and there are no silent letters." And that's all there is to it. But I don't really think it adds all that much. (That actually has the benefit of being better than what's there now, because what's there now is technically wrong in the details.)
 * --Indiana (talk) 19:54, 11 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Just a quick comment for now: I was actually surprised to hear you characterize this article as fifty percent longer than German.  Although I was readily able to work out your basis for that, I think &mdash; size of page in bytes &mdash; that really isn't how I was measuring the relative lengths.  IMHO byte count doesn't matter much anymore.  You can't see it when you're reading.  I was using a much more simple-minded hands-on measure: vertical length of the article in my browser.  By that measure, when I first expressed concern here about length this article was longer than German, but now it's about twenty percent shorter than German.  --Pi zero (talk) 00:40, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Byte count is exactly what you see when you're reading. Assuming two pages use roughly the same concentration of markup, the page with the bigger byte count is the page that will take you longer to read. Page length (as in how long the page is in the browser window - I'll use "size" for byte size and "length" for length in browser window) is a measure of formatting. The Esperanto page may look shorter than the German one, but that's because:
 * Unlike the German page, the Esperanto word list is columnized. If you removed the columnizing, the Esperanto page would be longer.
 * Unlike the German song, the Esperanto songs are columnized. If you columnized the German song, the page length would be cut dramatically.
 * The German page uses lots of call backs to the definitions in the intro, which take up a lot of vertical space. This isn't new information, just a reminder of what the kids should have read already. Esperanto only has the definition for "constructed language". If we put in definitions for just "native speaker" and "secondary language", the Esperanto page length would get close (or, alternately, if the German page took them out, it would get shorter).
 * The German page uses templates that won't show up in the print version. That means that even though it looks longer when viewed as a standalone page, it will be shorter in the actual book.
 * Basically, length is a misleading metric. If I were to go and format the German page nicely - without adding or removing a single bit of info - I could shorten the page length by half, easy. Size isn't perfect, but it's much more reliable. --Indiana (talk) 01:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The columnization is a telling point, certainly. You make a good case for byte count as a more useful size-heuristic than vertical length.  When it comes to contemplating specifics of where to cut, though, I'm pretty sure I use pure intuitive feel.  My intuition tells me, for example, that the writing system(s) section feels much shorter to me now than it did in its [ next most recent tables incarnation], despite the fact that by those objective measures they're pretty much the same.  (The difference seems to be that the text is more cohesive and a bit more narrowly focused; imho, not splitting the text around the tables is at least half of the effect.)


 * I'm also at a loss to articulate objectively why I think this additional detail doesn't overburden the article, although it's probably something to do with what I consider a rather light-hearted attitude toward the sounds/letters combined with the fact that that detail quietly fits into the historical motivation of the language (without actually explaining the connection, which would probably come across as heavy-handed). In terms of numbers of print pages... I guess I just rate the writing section valuable enough that I'm inclined to look for significant cuts elsewhere before stepping back for a wider view and bringing the writing section back into play.  (And if I eventually felt I had to shorten it, my first try would be to remove the tables and keep all the current text.)


 * You seem to think in terms of greater uniformity between articles, a trend visible in your Standard list of basic words to learn? proposal. I think in terms of encouraging some variation between articles in what is covered and how deeply, with the common structure of the sections and general patterns broadly followed within the sections, but also some outliers to keep things a little spontaneous.  I would consider the Esperanto writing section such an outlier.  Saying the alphabet in every language would rob it of its novelty at the same time it would cause it to take lots of space in the book rather than a little extra space in one article.  It only makes sense to me as an outlier.  (I'm still mulling over the standard basic words proposal.)


 * I did say a while back that you had an advantage because you know the article in depth. I'll add to that that you have a real disadvantage in that you evidently know too much about the subject.  Even worse, you know enough to realize it's all interesting.  An enthusiast trying to pare down material about the subject of their enthusiasm is a grim sight.


 * Any idea where you heard the under-64-page figure? --Pi zero (talk) 04:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Guh, I'm a goof, sorry. It's 48 pages, not 64.


 * You're absolutely right in saying I'm basing my standards on the book rather than the chapter, and all the criticisms about doing that are spot on. Why am I doing that? Because, as you noticed ^_^; I know too much about the subject, and could easily ramble on for 48 pages myself. I can't use the Esperanto chapter itself to gauge how much is enough, so I use the other chapters.


 * If you want my personal opinion, I agree with you: the chapter is fine as is (although, I do think someone else should take an edit run through the history). I would prefer to see that all the other languages were brought up to this standard, rather than having Esperanto pared down to the existing standard (which is why I am starting a push toward getting standardized phrases across the languages). But... is it more practical to ask 30 other chapters to change to this standard, or this chapter to adapt to their standard? My position is this: I am compromising for now by trying to bring Esperanto down to the community standard... while attempting to raise the community standard... so that if the community standard does rise up, I can use [ the information I saved] to restore the page to where I think it should be.


 * Variation between the languages is all fine and good - in fact, it's a great idea - but Esperanto is like the 200th most spoken language in the world. ^_^; Most people will go their entire lives without seeing or hearing anything in Esperanto (other than a few background noises in movies like Blade). It shouldn't be the biggest (by far) chapter in the book. Clearly that's a sign that something is out of whack: either the rest of the book is too short, or Esperanto is too long. (Incidentally, I've been looking at expanding the Japanese page quite a bit. It doesn't even list katakana, and doesn't say a word about vertical vs. horizontal writng... things that I think are interesting, because you could then mention to kids that Japanese books are "backwards". But for now, I am deep in my Esperanto book improvement project.) --Indiana (talk) 20:41, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Although I started this thread with an article-wide concern, the scope of my postings has been getting mostly narrower and narrower. It's time for me to revisit wider issues, reassessing and clarifying my positions.

I don't think the article as a whole is fine as is. I'd no longer say it's too long, because "length" isn't the right word for what I mean. Nor "size". Something less suggestive of gross form; perhaps "weight" or "magnitude". Say the article is "too heavy". The reason I'm not particularly worried about the current Writing system(s) section, in particular, is that it feels lighter to me than the preceding with-tables version. The song/poem/story section isn't overweight, I think, nor the phrases. The words list may be (too many number words), and the authors section should lighten up a little (that one won't be straightforward, as it probably shouldn't get shorter, only lighter).

But then there's the history section. My sense is that it's way too heavy. Reducing that is going to be brutal; to be safe, you may want to bite down on a scrap of leather when the time comes.

I'm pretty sure you're the wrong person to do these weight-reductions; you're just too close. I remarked on that before; but there's more going on here &mdash; a larger perspective in which to place your situation. Some languages like to proselytize, using their hosts (the people who are like the cells of their bodies) to gain footholds in further potential hosts, and languages like that will tend, statistically, to have heavier articles here; but even amongst those, Esperanto is in a unique position. It isn't the dominant language of any region, from which it would acquire new hosts automatically; it's an exception to the rule that a language is a dialect with an army. It has to, and does, win converts in every generation just to stay alive, which isn't true even of the more aggressive natural languages. That's fine for Esperanto, but I don't think how much a language wants to spread itself should be a determining factor in the size/weight/magnitude of its article here. (Note that, as with all memetics, this is attributing the actions of individual people to a deliberate purpose that is usually not deliberate by the people who actually do them.)

On the other articles of the book, I'm uncomfortable with a systematic expansion across all of them. It's not at all obvious to me that the average magnitude is actually all that wrong. There's a certain logic to the idea that most of the articles should be like popcorn or the like &mdash; individual pieces that are very light and can be scarfed down one after another in numbers that add up (though of course these pieces are nutritious). A few of the completed articles might benefit from pinpoint, very limited additions, but there might also be some judicious reductions to some of the long ones. --Pi zero (talk) 06:10, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The section on history has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 10.7 and a Gunning fog index of 14.5. Both of these numbers indicate that there's some work to do here in terms of simplifying the writing. It's 723 words long (just FYI). The section on where it is spoken has a grade level of 7.7 and can pretty easily be brought down to 6.5 (which is what I aim for when I'm writing for Wikijunior.) xixtas  talk 22:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Despite my general distrust of metrics, I admit that's rather cool. --Pi zero (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

List vs. tables for "what words can I learn?" section
I just rewrote the "what words can I learn?" section - mostly to change the words that were there - but while I did it I replaced the table formatting with lists instead. Really... that was just because that was how i wrote the list of words. ^_^; Much easier to make a list of words as a list rather than in wikitable formatting. ^_^;

But I do have some reasons for picking one over the other. They're all entirely unscientific, and based only on how I read, so your mileage may vary.

Tables are great for associative data - information where you're trying to say "here's A, and here's the B associated with A". If we were making a vocabulary list for an actual Esperanto lesson, a table would be perfect, because we would want to show "here's the Esperanto word, and here's the English meaning associated with it" (or vice versa, linguistically). But in this case, we're not trying to teach the kids the language; we're not trying to teach them associations between Esperanto words and English ones (or vice versa). We're just trying to show them a bunch of Esperanto words so they can see what Esperanto words look like. Technically, we really don't even need the English translations there at all... they're just incidental to the goal of that section (of course, when we give them the English translations, they can play with using those words meaningfully... but that's not really the primary goal, the primary goal is just to show them the words). We could, in theory, just list a bunch of Esperanto words and say, "there, there are some basic Esperanto words that you can learn, as the section title promises". The English translations provided as asides are just icing to spice up the words, not information they are expected to learn associatively.

But most importantly, I don't know if everyone does this, but whenever I read text that has a table in the middle of it... I don't read the table. ^_^; I read the surrounding text to find out what I am expected to see in the table, and refer back to the table to see what the text was talking about. I don't actually sit there and read through a table. Tables are like figures, or illustrations... they add to whatever the primary text is... but they, themselves, aren't the primary text. Me, personally (and I would imagine most people, especially kids), I find it more natural to scan down a list than to parse a table. Tables are just unnatural - first you have to examine the structure of the table (is it vertical or horizontal), then you have to examine how the data is laid out (English or Esperanto first?), then you begin scanning the table, all the while keeping in mind the structure and layout so what you're scanning makes sense. On the other hand, a list is a list - people make lists naturally without thinking (shopping lists, to-do lists, etc.). Lists are just natural and easy to understand - the only drawback is they're not great at formatting associated data.. but again, that's not the goal here.

But you know, really, this is all moot. What should be done is someone should make templates for the book, so the word lists for every language look like this:

...

And for a more complicated example:

...

And then, all the languages in the book will be formatted the same.

I may even do that myself one day... but I have other projects to focus on for the time being. --Indiana (talk) 04:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * The interesting prospect of templates such as you describe makes the tables-versus-lists question that much more important to resolve (although I actually have in mind another target for templating: I've more than half worked out how to set up a system of templates so we can easily generate correctly formatted vocabulary boxes that automatically extract the correct definition from the glossary).


 * Here are two thoughts on the other side of the question.


 * I suggest that the list format is not so easy to read &mdash; or, to be precise, each individual entry in these lists is not so easy to read. More so for the phrases.  My basis for this is rather primal (although I'm afraid I won't express it very well, not being a perceptual psychologist, or whatever the name is for someone who would know the scholarly name for this effect):  the use of a punctuation mark to separate the foreign-language phrase from its English translation requires extra mental effort for the reader, because they have to assimilate the whole to sort out which glyph is the separator before they can do the more rapid sort of processing on each half that becomes possible when you know what frame of mind to approach it with.  The more unfamiliar the script of the other language is, the harder this separation task is.  A table makes this trivial, by providing a visual separation between the two that can be processed before the reader even begins to assess either version of the phrase.  Each of the two versions of the phrase is then easier to process, because the reader does know what frame of mind to approach each version with.  It seems to me that if you are looking through a text in a strange language, and you unexpectedly hit several consecutive words in English, it will take you a moment longer (an "extra neuron firing" is the way I often describe this sort of thing) to process than if you had gone into it already expecting English, because you have to decide that it is English, switch out of your admiring-an-unfamiliar-language mode, and switch into your reading-English mode.


 * I think there is an associative component to what we'd like to gently get across. No, I certainly agree, we aren't trying to teach the language; but ideally, we'd like with these few words and phrases to suggest the "look and feel" of the language, and the parallelisms between the different entries here carry some of that, which is communicated better by the table format than by the list format.


 * --Pi zero (talk) 15:21, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Hm, perhaps. As i said, i didn't really give it all that much thought before doing it - i made it as a list, and just copy-pasted it and left it because it looked presentable. I figured they would have to be redone with templates anyway someday, so it didn't matter how I formatted it. With templates, the tables-versus-lists questions becomes a book-wide decision, which I consider beyond my scope.


 * How about a mid-way measure between tables and lists? Something like this:


 * The big space there between the languages makes the separation natural - no parsing of any letters or symbols required. But at the same time there are no distracting lines and borders, and no need to try and figure out what structure the data's in. --Indiana (talk) 17:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Whereas my attitude toward the visible lines is that they make it easier to zip visually from one side of the table to the other without having to work at which item on the right aligns with the element one started at on the left (or vice versa).  So I like the visible lines (depending on details of format, of course).  Seems I'm preferring somewhat more structured layout and somewhat less structured choice of content.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:36, 12 February 2010 (UTC)