Editing Esperanto (section)

==== Native speakers ====
{{Main|Native Esperanto speakers}}

Native Esperanto speakers ({{Langx|eo|label=eo|text=denaskuloj|lit=person from/since birth}}) have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents.<ref name="autogenerated3">{{cite web |url=http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=epo |title=Ethnologue report for language code:epo |publisher=Ethnologue.com |access-date=December 5, 2010 |archive-date=August 22, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090822095633/http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=epo |url-status=live }}</ref> This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language.<ref>{{cite journal
|author=Jouko Lindstedt
|title=Native Esperanto as a Test Case for Natural Language, as part of "A man of measure: Festschrift in honour of Fred Karlsson on his 60th birthday"
|publisher=[[University of Helsinki]]—Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
|date=January 2006
|url=http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1FK60.1.5.LINDSTEDT.pdf
|journal=SKY Journal of Linguistics |volume=19
|access-date=May 4, 2007
|archive-date=July 16, 2011
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716154438/http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/sky/julkaisut/SKY2006_1/1FK60.1.5.LINDSTEDT.pdf
|url-status=live
}}</ref> In 2004, an estimated 2,000 children in about a thousand families use Esperanto as one of their languages.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Corsetti |first1=Renato |authorlink=Renato Corsetti|last2= Pinto|first2=Maria A.|last3=Tolomeo|first3=Maria |date=2004 |title=Regularizing the regular: The phenomenon of overregularization in Esperanto-speaking children |url= https://unstable.nl/andreas/ai/psy/s3.pdf|journal=[[Language Problems & Language Planning]] |volume=28 |issue=3 |publisher=John Benjamins Publishing Company |pages=261-282 |doi=10.1075/lplp.28.3.04cor |access-date=}}</ref> Citing this research, the 2022 edition of ''[[Ethnologue]]'' gives 1,000 first language users.<ref name=e25/>

However, native speakers do not occupy an authoritative position in the Esperanto community, as they would in other language communities. This presents a challenge to linguists, whose usual source of grammaticality and meanings are native speakers.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Miner|first=Ken|date=2011-02-08|title=The impossibility of an Esperanto linguistics / La neebleco de priesperanta lingvoscienco|url=https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/inkoj/article/view/838|journal=InKoj. Interlingvistikaj Kajeroj |language=it|volume=2|issue=1|pages=26–51|doi=10.13130/2037-4550/838|issn=2037-4550|quote=The task of linguistics is to reveal the principles which relate sentences to meanings. One cannot work out these principles if one does not know (1) the grammatical sentences of the language and (2) their meanings. Due to absence of native speakers (the usual source of grammaticality and of meanings), sentence-meanings and grammaticality in Esperanto are radically imprecise in comparison with those of ethnic languages. Due to this imprecision it is not possible to construct linguistic arguments regarding Esperanto: esperantology [sic] is possible, but not a linguistics of Esperanto.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Miner|first=Ken|date=2015-08-04|title=Esperanto: some observations of a speaker-linguist|url=https://hiphilangsci.net/2015/08/05/esperanto-some-observations-of-a-speaker-linguist/|access-date=2022-02-25|website=History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences|language=en}}</ref>