How do we tackle creating an Esperantujo "census", or begin gaining a picture of our actual demographics?

Question

Many of us know that the numbers usually cited for the amount of Esperanto speakers is an estimate, and a rather old estimate by now that seems to circulate mainly because everyone repeats it over and over because it matches our gut feelings and vague impressions well enough (as we see on the current Wikipedia page for Esperanto, I see the common range of "between 100,000 and 10 million L2 speakers".)

I intend to differentiate my question from this one: How many Esperanto speakers exist? by asking: We know it's difficult to calculate the real number, so do we have any ideas for how it might one day be done?

The reasons for why it is difficult are clear. It's hard to calculate the "speakers" of any language (and we must first define "speaker"), let alone a language like Esperanto, which is not one of the "larger" world languages, and whose speakers are not concentrated in any particular region.

A starting place for exploring our attempts and successes/failures at calculating Esperanto speakers is here: Statistiko de Esperantujo.

Perhaps this is a question better directed towards specialists in the field of demographics or statistics, but I want to begin asking this question somewhere. And perhaps it's too theoretical, or too discussion-y and not question-y enough. And if my question isn't different enough from "How many Esperanto speakers exist?", I understand. But this is a lingering question in the Esperanto community, and finding a solution would be a great achievement.

Edit: IMO this answer by Marcos Cramer is worth reading (as are all of the answers to "How many Esperanto speakers exist?", but this one particularly) before discussing this topic:

https://esperanto.stackexchange.com/a/105/353

Answer 1

It is always a hard problem to reach even a significant portion of a community. Here, even more so, as there is a growing apparent disconnect between "traditional" Esperantists and the "modern" ones (Internet, Facebook crowd). Only way I see it ever happening would be some kind of "chain letter" thing where a speaker would pass the request to other speakers (on- and off-line) and so on.

Doubt any one individual could pull it off on its own. Enlisting the collaboration of national associations for offline distribution and credibility, as well as the likes of Evildea and other well-known Internet Esperantists might be the way to go (and even so with no guarantees).

I'd tie it to something like Zamenhof Day, and also do it as simple as possible: short hand writable URL e.g. esperantocensus.org, just follow link, enter age and country. Anonymous, as well.

Answer 2

We need to find something that every Esperantist does but only Esperantists do.

Looking at Esperanto dictionaries is probably one of these things. If we collect data about the visitors of the most used online Esperanto dictionaries, we may be able to deduce some information about the number of Esperanto speakers online.

Answer 3

Physical census of Esperantists worldwide is impossible in the near future. Survey-like census online will not be reliable as there will be little motivation for Esperantists to register there (hence only a few will do it) and because many Esperantists will never know about this survey). The only way to count Esperantists is to create a social network specifically for Esperantists. Almost all Esperantists will register there if 3 conditions are met: (1) it has features necessary for Esperantists but absent in popular social networks (e.g. possibility to see number of speakers of Esperanto, find Esperanto speakers and their number in a city, filter results by level of Esperanto, interface only in Esperanto, etc.); (2) it does not violate privacy of members (no aggressive ads, no precise location unlike in Amikumu, no unwanted trash feed unlike on FB and Amikumu); (3) profiles of inactive users are closed automatically after a certain period of time. If these conditions are met, any person who uses internet and is interested in Esperanto will register there. We will have detailed statistics how many people speak Esperanto at what level in what locations. Only those will not be covered who are non-users of internet and those who are not interested in Esperanto and therefore do not register in the social network. No such social network has ever existed. Those three that exist now do not meet even one of the conditions. Here is review of existing Esperanto social networks: https://discoverfuture.blogspot.com/2014/03/esperanto-social-network.html Until we have such a social network, the best way to count active Esperantists is to ask vortaro.net how many unique visitors they have every 3 months.

Answer 4

I was writing this as another question but I think it will work better here.

I may be an optimist but in my eyes a single, direct, official, worldwide Esperanto census built specifically for that purpose should work: one that would be advertised well in advance (~1 year) in all the big congresses, people would be instructed to tell everyone in their local groups, learning resources and electronic dictionaries would show a reminder to their visitors, it would be heard of. It would be made clear that every reply counts. There's one big advantage that separates Esperanto from other world languages and that is that Esperantists tend to be proud of their heritage and as such most who get the word would make sure that they don't miss out. Also they quite necessarily have some connections because they needed (or their relatives needed) to learn the language at some point, at least, which would be a way of reaching anywhere. So while it's being claimed that it's impossible to use such methods with other languages I believe Esperanto would be an exception. The accompanying questionnaire would presumably contain all the questions about background and level so the results wouldn't be biased towards active users only or towards beginners or towards online courses, and would allow filtering on any set of conditions.

To contrast with the information from the other answers here and in the number 1 question and from Vikipedio, what I mean would not be and would not encompass

• a part of any larger census, targeted at a general population,
• a survey of any sort, targeted by design at a sample,
• a poll on Facebook or any other independent website,
• passive user counting on any "common" Esperanto resource,
• a study made for any other purpose like comparison with other languages.

It would be

• a direct study aiming specifically to be immune against the flaws inherent to the above methods,
• a dedicated website designed with cooperation with the leading bodies, open for entries in a pre-determined period and offering the results after that (re-opened every 5 or 10 years),
• aiming at reaching the most Esperantists possible, and trying to ask each of them personally (via connections) to participate,
• designed to be inviting, straightforward, and easy to participate in, with interface available in several world languages besides Esperanto,
• having people assess in several questions their own use of the language, experience and proficiency, as well as other relevant information to account for where anyone using the results could be interested to draw the line for "speakers" / "non-speakers".

I believe some of the earlier research topics (like what people think of Esperanto, what resources they use, or what other languages they speak) would be valuable points as part of this questionnaire, but entirely optional. The core must not be intimidating in any way, especially in raising fears of wasting too much time on answering.

Answer 5

I would do the following

• Make a list of all the Esperanto associations. Ask them how many unique members they have ever had.

• Try to get statistics on how many people in China graduated with a degree in Esperanto. Also, find out how many people took Esperanto in school in Hungary.

• Find the number of magazine subscriptions.

After that, I would estimate as best as possible.

This should be done sooner rather than later because more and more people are using the net to learn. It will be impossible to know how many people on the internet are learning Esperanto.