OT: Esperanto again (was Re: why is python better than eg. smalltalk?? )

[Peter Hansen]

aku wrote:

> On 2004-04-08, francois lepoutre <franck.lepoutre at caramail.com> wrote:
> 
>> http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=3A2DD2CA.14A5D7E2%40engcorp.com&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dpython%2520%2522van%2520rossum%2522%2520esperanto%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DN%26tab%3Dwg
> 
> The article talks about Esperanto and says:
> "Still widely spoken in that country"
> 
> This is humor people. there's as many people speaking Esperanto
> here as that are walking on the moon right now.

As the author of that, I have to object slightly.  Yes, it was
humor, but there are most definitely more people in the
Netherlands who speak Esperanto than there are people walking
on the moon, unless my lack of television has led to me missing
a few key events in the world of space exploration in the last
few years...

(Neither, however, is it really fair to say it's "widely
spoken", in the Netherlands, if one equates that to a large
number of speakers instead of merely to diversity of geographic
location...)

-Peter