Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Native Esperanto speakers

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. SarahStierch (talk) 16:32, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Native Esperanto speakers

Native Esperanto speakers (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • Stats)
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Completing nomination for an IP editor. Their rationale, as posted on the article's talk page, is included verbatim below. On the merits, I have no opinion. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 17:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be deleted as WP:OR, due to the lack of authoritative sources concerning existance of this phenomenon or truth in inclusion of the listed persons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.49.18.203 (talk) 08:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. 19:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC) I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 19:18, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
See my post below as regards independent coverage, which I hope will show that this appraisal is off the mark. In case of merger, though, I hope you will agree that Esperanto Culture would be a more appropriate destination than the top level Esperanto. --81.250.217.57 (talk) 23:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure if this comment is serious, but if any elements of the article are OR or unsourced, please do tag them as such. I am fairly certain that adequate references will not be hard to provide. --81.250.217.57 (talk) 23:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I was commenting on a different version of the article; more references have been added since (mostly by you it seems). However even as it stands I'm still not convinced there's a need for the article as it could be covered adequately by a section in the Esperanto article. Keresaspa (talk) 17:41, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and improve. There are links to several reliable sources on the Japanese version of the article. They are in English, so anyone who is actually interested enough in the subject should be able to improve the English article. --Mlewan (talk) 19:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep This article has been in Wikipedia for some time - and if you look on its talk page, you will see that some one expressed skepticism about it, but later added that it was an article on a real subject. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:40, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This isn't an article about the Esperanto language or culture, nor about specific individuals: it is an article about a (curious and interesting) sociological phenomenon. There are plenty of external sources on the phenomenon---the Google Scholar link at the top of this page brings up 12 academic articles right there, and many more turn up if you view the citations for those articles. This besides the couple thousand people alive who fall into this category, many of whom belong to organizations for native speakers, which have a web presence. 18 other language Wikipedias include an article on the topic (many of them well-referenced), and it has been on the English wikipedia for over 10 years. The one nominating seems to doubt that this phenomenon really exits; this ignorance only proves the article's utility. --81.250.217.57 (talk) 20:49, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    There is a clear lack of independent, reliable sources, not from esperantists, particularly, as evidenced by that article. Unless they are referenced there, it should be considered as a PR action from esperantist group. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 14:32, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is untrue, on two levels. The Journal of Child Language is a respected academic journal in the field, and the author is clearly not an esperantist. Secondly, no Esperanto group has a PR motive to boast of its L1 speakers, because the purpose of the Esperanto movement is to promote the language as a neutral second language, not to impose it as a first language. --81.250.217.57 (talk) 16:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Personally, I feel inclined to merge. Not because the subject is not notable or because there isn't enough verifiable information about it, but simply because this information naturally belongs in the article about Esperanto. I mean, of course it is an interesting sociological phenomenon, but so are native speakers of Irish or Kashubian. But do, or should, we have articles about those as well? For me, the primary reason to have this kind of information in a separate article, is that there is too much that can be said about it that is not directly relevant to the main article, or that otherwise the main article would become too long. This is clearly not the case here; the only really relevant information here consists of some three sentences and a few names. —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 23:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The key difference here is that Esperanto is an artificial language. The mere existence of native speakers, then, is the result of a process entirely different from Irish, Kashubian, Choctaw, or any other less commonly-spoken language. (And even then, the Gaeltacht does have its own article.) No other artificial language has ever gained native speakers before this, which makes this a unique phenomenon in human history. (Which is why there have been scientific studies focused particularly on this phenomenon.) In case the consensus runs against my arguments, however, let me at least urge the (ill-advised) merger to go to Esperanto Culture rather than Esperanto (which would completely upset the coherence of this encyclopaedia).--81.250.217.57 (talk) 23:38, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This article is misleading as it suggests existance of people whose native language is Esperanto, not just bi-tri-etc-lingual persons. The claims require corresponding proofs, which are now lacking. 178.49.18.203 (talk) 14:36, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you are misunderstanding "native speaker" as "unilingual speaker"? A child who grows up in a home where two languages are spoken has two native languages (for instance I speak English and my wife speaks French, my children never grew up not speaking either language, and both are native to them). The article does not even suggest that there are any unilingual Esperanto speakers. --81.250.217.57 (talk) 16:42, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You'll be surprised, 81.250.217.57, but I even kind of agree with you. I am just not sure if it is true that Esperanto is indeed the first artificial language with native speakers; there are data about a native speaker of Volapük. And there must be artificial languages with native speakers after that as well. From that point of view I think it would be more relevant to have an article Native speakers of constructed languages or somesuch, one that would not delve specifically into the peculiarities of Esperanto culture, but rather deal with the unique sociological phenomenon itself. That would make sense, because most (if not all) of the explanatory text goes for any constructed language and not specifically for Esperanto.
It doesn't change the fact that in my opinion the key data about native speakers should be part of the Esperanto article.
For the rest, I think the whole Esperanto business on WP is much too fragmentary. Dozen of articles about details, while Esperanto culture in its current form is a somewhat abundant listing of expressions of art in which Esperanto plays a role, while many other articles are mostly lists as well. But there doesn't seem to be any decent article about Esperanto culture in the broader sense, which I believe is a pity. Such an article could easily combine material from several minor articles like this one as well. —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 20:50, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the article never claims that Esperanto is the first artificial language with native speakers. Your points on improving Esperanto Culture are well taken, though. The idea of a more general article on native speakers of artificial languages is an interesting one, especially if in fact there are others (although I'm sure the context would be radically different between the circumstances of a native speaker of Esperanto/Ido/Volapuk on the one hand, and Klingon/Quenya/Sindarin on the other). If such an article were created, though, it would be important for Native Esperanto Speakers (et al.) to redirect to the appropriate section, since many readers will be more interested in a specific language than the general phenomenon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.250.217.57 (talk) 07:06, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. I see no sign of any "lack of authoritative sources concerning existance [sic] of this phenomenon or truth in inclusion of the listed persons", which is the purported reason the article was nominated for deletion. If peer-reviewed academic journals are not considered valid sources, then what is? Somehow I think that if this article did merit deletion, it would have happened sometime already in the past ten years. --194.98.58.121 (talk) 13:31, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]


That was an excellent point about how if the article did merit deletion, it would have happened already in the past ten years - I am inclined to agree. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 14:12, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, so am I. Like I said, I am in fact for a "soft delete", but for completely different reasons than the person who nominated it, whose argumentation is simply wrong. Yes, there's more than enough that can be said about this subject that it notable and verifiable in independent sources, so that is surely not a good argument for deletion. My question is only: is the very fact that notability and verifiability can be established enough to warrant a separate article about a subject? Well, in my opinion this information is worth including, but it would be better off in a broader article: either Esperanto, and/or an expanded article about Esperanto culture, and/or an article about Native speakers of constructed languages. Best, —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 15:59, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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