Wikidata:Lexicographical data/Focus languages/Form/Esperanto

Language: Esperanto

Language details

What is the language, language family, usual scripts, where is it spoken, by how many people, and what other languages do speakers (%) of this language usually speak? (Some of this information can be found in the article list of languages by total number of speakers)

• family: international auxiliary constructed language
• script: Latin with several diacritics
• direction: LTR
• morphological richness: strongly aglutinative, 2 cases (nominative, accusative)
• evidentials: ?
• dialects: not really recognized dialect, regional diferences are rather small
• territory: spread in low density across whole Earth, higher concentration in Brasil, Europe, Eastern Asia
• number of speakers: 2 000 000 ±1 000 000 millions, about 2 thousand are native speakers
• other languages spoken: all Esperanto speakers are at least bilingual, often trilingual, often other languages are Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, English, Chinese, Polish, Russian
• supporting institutions: the highest are Universal Esperanto Association (official representant, "political" support), Academy of Esperanto (linguistic codification)

More info in en:Esperanto

Current representation of this language in Wikimedia projects

Is there a Wikipedia or a Wiktionary? Is it a language in Wikidata? If yes, what are the statistics for pages in Wikipedia or Wiktionary, or for Lexemes in Wikidata? (Details are in m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects, and in the local Special:Statistics pages, and in Ordia for Lexemes.)

Esperanto is one of the first languages in Wikimedia (the Esperanto Wikipedia was 11th founded, already in the same year as the English one). Esperanto is well present in Wikidata. The only one language-specific project without Esperanto is currently Wikiversity (Esperanto Wikivoyage was created on 15th December 2020).

• Wikipedia (eo:): 293 232 articles
• Wiktionary (eo:wikt:): 102 779 articles
• Wikisource (eo:s:): 5 465 texts
• Wikidata: 502 lexemes, 533 senses and 1893 forms (Ordia)
• MediaWiki translations on TranslateWiki: Core 99%, with all extensions and themes 43%

Current representation of this language in other sources

Is there an open corpus of text for this language? How many books are published in this language? Is this language taught in schools? Is it an official language of a country or region? (Please link to details)

Text corpus is available on https://tekstaro.com

The catalog of the World Esperanto Association lists 7 148 books in or about Esperanto. In 2000-2010 in average about 160 new books was added to the catalog every year. (note that the catalog lists only the books that the association sells, not all the books)

Esperanto is only sometimes taught in schools, mostly as a extra curriculum activity, in universities as an optional language, or in elementary schools in developing countries supported by Esperanto speakers.

Esperanto is currently not an official language of country or region. In the past it was an official language of handful of micronations, which no longer exists. Currently it is an official language of many non-profit organisations and informal groups, mostly working to support spreading of Esperanto or using Esperanto to advance their topic of interest or as a social activity.

Seed group of participants

Describe a bit about the seed group that wants to coordinate and actively participate. Describe its size, its current activity, why this group will likely still exist in three years time. Does anyone in the group know how to code? How many in the group know English? How many in the group are not living where the language is spoken, or are not native speakers?

Involvement of our seed group depends on the required level of our engagement, see our question in the Wikidata mailinglist.

Seed group (for now) consists of enthusiasts from the Wikimedia User Group Esperanto and Free Knowledge. The group is the third recognized User Group ever (since 2013) and the oldest stil functioning without derecognition, now in the process of recognition as an Thematic Organisation. It is also legally incorporated and prepares Annual plans. The group is supposed to last long; the question is more about our involvement in this particular project which depends on the required level of engagement (as described above).

Several our activist and community members are programmers and related professionals and / or educated in the IT field.

Most of our seed group speak English.

As Esperanto is not a regionally based language, none of us lives "where it is spoken". None of us is a native speaker. Our level is generally B2 or higher.

Seed group members as listed in:

• Esperanto Wikipedia (3 members as of 2021-03-11)
• Esperanto Wiktionary (1 members as of 2021-04-01)

Participants from Wikidata:

1. So9q (talk) 20:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Potential for community growth

Describe the potential for the language community to grow. Is Internet access widely available? Through which kind of devices usually? What is the literacy rate in the language community? Are there universities, vocational schools, or similar institutions, and how large are the student populations?

Esperanto is traditionally spread horizontally, not vertically. So some of the usual measures does not make a lot of cense.

Internet penetration of Esperanto speakers generally follows the worldwide internet penetration - great availability in developed countries (using mostly table PCs and laptops by not-young generation, and to high extend mobile devices by young generation), limited or mobile internet in developing countries (to high extend on mobile devices).

Significant part of Esperanto speakers are already active in Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia provides some of the best opportunities for services for constructed language like encyclopedia, news site, art work corpus). There is already some room for more Esperanto speakers to newly engage in Wikimedia projects, but it will not be a several time more than now.

Growth of Esperanto speakers community is traditionally the main objective of the Esperanto movement. In last years, hundreds of thousands people newly learn Esperanto on Internet, mostly on Duolingo, Memrise and lernu.net. Esperanto speakers community is supposed to rise to several tens of millions no earlier than after decades.

Esperanto is currently mostly spread among people with basic needs already met, so they have enough free time to learn another language. Education level is generally high - practically everyone have at least high school or is student currently. Literacy is ~100%.

There was a university in Esperanto but it closed several months ago. It continues in informal setting by providing short courses during Esperanto meetings without possibility to gain an university title. Handful of organisations and projects provides popular or basic science education and structured capacity development (like year long "paid" volunteering or internship in European Union programe Erasmus). Couple of universities includes Esperanto study in their curriculum.

Students are probably in several (tens of) thousands range. There are no precise statistics (compare to question how many people play chess).

Openness of the existing community to innovation

If there is a Wikipedia in that language, how open has it been to Wikidata? To Article Placeholder? To bot editing, and to usage of Modules?

The Esperanto Wikipedia is well open to new technology, as long as the community sees its benefits. Amir Aharoni, the product manager of ContentTranslation, expressed that some of the reasons why the Esperanto Wikipedia was elected to be one of firsts to host ContentTranslation, is that (something on these lines) the community is nice, supportive and provides good feedback. Wikidata are used in infoboxes and another templates and the number is slowly growing. Most of the editors simply accept it; active opposition is very small. Esperanto Wikipedia is one of the first Wikipedias to host ArticlePlaceholder - its use is rather small, but with no opposition. The community have bad experience with poor quality of bot created articles, but as long as bot work is of high quality and the creation is discused in advance, the community accepts it. Modules are spreading rather slowly, mostly by importing from another Wikipedias (several Esperanto Wikimedians are in the supporter list of the Global Templates because of this issue). On wiktionary substantial transitional work from a large number of templates to a smaller number of smarter modules was recently done.