Mesaĝoj: 59
Lingvo: English
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 11:04:25
So perhaps later in the series he will have something interesting to say about the language.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 14:06:37
sudanglo:It seems to me that what is really important about any language is not so much the specific 'how', but what you can say in that language - that perhaps you can't in some other language. Therein lies the value.English has this quality more than any other language, having thousands of extra words. It may make it more expressive, but a nightmare to learn.
One example I'm looking at now is "Kontrauxstarema", which yields "intractable, refractory, obstinate, stubborn." The four English words have subtle, different meanings, but the EO word is a catch-all for the basic concept. You could affix EO roots together until you get the precise semantics of "obstinate", but such words may prove unwieldy. One might conclude that English is more expressive, and therefore more 'valued' than Esperanto.
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 16:33:27
razlem:One example I'm looking at now is "Kontrauxstarema", which yields "intractable, refractory, obstinate, stubborn." The four English words have subtle, different meanings, but the EO word is a catch-all for the basic concept. You could affix EO roots together until you get the precise semantics of "obstinate", but such words may prove unwieldy. One might conclude that English is more expressive, and therefore more 'valued' than Esperanto.Or, you could just use the Esperanto word "obstina" (a Fundamental root, there from the very beginning) to get the precise semantics of "obstinate".
But I think your comparison is unfair. We all know that English has a huge vocabulary and that of Esperanto is much smaller. But I wouldn't use that to conclude that Esperanto is less expressive. And furthermore, your dictionary comparison is not an accurate measure.
Whenever you look up a word in one language, particularly an adjective, you're likely to find multiple translations. Languages are not one-to-one translations of one another, as I'm sure you're aware. It isn't really fair to use a word's dictionary entry as a measure of one language being more expressive than another.
I looked up "obstinate" in a Spanish dictionary and found six different English translations. I'm certain that you wouldn't conclude, based on that situation, that Spanish is more expressive than English. Words are almost never exact translations. In English we might use "obstinate" in all kinds of situations that would call for different words in Spanish -- and vice versa.
I've had plenty of cases where I was translating an Esperanto text, and I had to think hard about how to render something in English with the same precision and connotation that it had in Esperanto. Sometimes it just wasn't possible. That's how languages work, and how translation works.
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 16:58:27
However it is not suitable for the role that Esperanto claims for itself, and the whole idea that ANY natural language might be suitable for this role was firmly rejected from the very beginning by Zamenhof.
However just in that narrow area of meaning Esperanto doesn't do too badly.
In addition to kontraŭstarema, Esperanto provides, obstina, obstinema, netraktebla, ne-regebla, nebridebla, refraktara, kalcitrema, rezistema, korod-imuna, ne-katenebla, nebremsebla and probably quite a few other shades of meaning that I haven't thought of.
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 17:30:56
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 18:15:13
I suppose it's the nature of Esperanto to be a full language rather than an auxiliary/pidgin. In that case I would accept the quirks. But this makes learning the language much more difficult.
Chainy (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 18:58:38
razlem: As it continues to grow, I predict there will be as many, if not more words than in English.In Esperanto it's better to count the roots, rather than words.
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 19:49:40
Chainy:As in English. Many words have affixes (or were historically affixed). It's just more difficult to pick out the roots in national languages, especially English, because there are many root sources (German, Latin, Greek).razlem: As it continues to grow, I predict there will be as many, if not more words than in English.In Esperanto it's better to count the roots, rather than words.
computer
com (L) + putare (L) + er (G/L)
commit
com (L) + mittere (L)
mission
mittere (L)
missile
mittere (L)
message, messenger, missive
mittere (L)
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-27 23:18:33
The English roots would be like Esperanto roots only if, for example, we were able to use "mit" as in "commit", as a verb, like "I mitted the letter"
Etymology doesn't count as word building. Those words aren't simply grammatical forms of a fixed root.
English's equivalent of Esperanto's word building would be situations like:
basic root: assign
prefix un-: unassign
prefix re-: reassign
suffix -ment: assignment
suffix -ation: assignation
prefix dis-: disassign
prefix de-: deassign
prefix mis-: misassign
...however, English's system isn't like Esperanto's. You couldn't simply use these prefixes on any verb. In some cases it would work, and in some it wouldn't. And in the cases where it wouldn't work, it's not because the meaning doesn't make sense, but simply because "we just don't say it that way".
razlem (Montri la profilon) 2011-septembro-28 01:10:54
And "assign" would have a single entry, and the affixes you listed would have their own as well (rather than having separate entries for "unassign, misassign, assignment", etc.).
That's what I envision with a 'roots only' approach to the number of words in Esperanto. It's certainly less on paper, but it doesn't mean that there are any fewer possible words.