Jouko Lindstedt

Jouko Lindstedt is a Finnish linguist and a professor at the University of Helsinki. Lindstedt is a member of the Academy of Esperanto and was nominated as the Esperantist of the Year in 2000 by The Wave of Esperanto.

History

Lindstedt received his Bachelor of Arts in 1981, Licentiate of Philosophy 1983 and Doctor of Philosophy 1985 at the University of Helsinki. In 1986 became a professor of Slavonic Philology at the same university.

The number of Esperanto speakers

In 1996 Jouko Lindstedt estimated the number of speakers of Esperanto, saying:

1 000 have Esperanto as a native language.
10 000 speak it fluently, as if natively.
100 000 can use Esperanto for effective communication.
1 000 000 know the elements of it.

Lindstedt explains that these are very imprecise figures; they mean, for example, that "if it is estimated the number of native Esperanto speakers only in hundreds, it may be too little, but there is not many thousands of them." According to feedback from Lindstedt, Edmund Grimley Evans has modified the scheme by adding

10 000 000 have at some time studied Esperanto a little .