Messages: 31
Language: English
sudanglo (User's profile) December 13, 2011, 8:32:25 PM
For example: hotelo, hospitalo, horoskopo, horizontala, haringo, harakiri, haleluja, halti, halucino - just to list a few at random I found under 'h' in the dictionary.
erinja (User's profile) December 13, 2011, 11:32:49 PM
I read it as har/ing/o and thought to myself, that one isn't intuitive to a newbie at all, and when would you even use that word??
I guess I've never had occasion to speak or read about herring in Esperanto before!
cFlat7 (User's profile) December 14, 2011, 12:59:58 AM
Group 9 here:
http://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/aktoj/aktoj...
1Guy1 (User's profile) December 14, 2011, 9:37:29 AM
erinja:I guess I've never had occasion to speak or read about herring in Esperanto before!That one will stick with me - I buy fresh herring off the local boatmen on the beach, as my wife loves them. Now I can write about it in Esperanto
sudanglo:In any case, Bemused, you probably already know masses of Esperanto words without realising that you do so.I have wondered why no one has made a list 'the Esperanto you already know'- it would be very encouraging for beginners and I imagine would be easy to memorise.
sudanglo (User's profile) December 14, 2011, 10:41:28 AM
It's not only the wordbuilding system of Esperanto that lightens the learning load, but also the adoption of many international words under Regulo 15.
You could take the idea a little further by composing passages which describe well-known events or ideas using largely international words to teach less recognisable words.
The overall meaning of the passage would be guessable, and thus the less familiar words in the passage would be easily learnt.
Erinja, don't you ever have fumaĵita haringo for breakfast? I have that at least once a week.
erinja (User's profile) December 14, 2011, 2:20:15 PM
sudanglo:Erinja, don't you ever have fumaĵita haringo for breakfast? I have that at least once a week.It's not eaten for breakfast in the US; I've only had it for breakfast on visits to the UK.
It's sold in the US, just not intended for breakfast. People seem to eat it mainly as an hors d'oeuvre, or as a part of a cold buffet, but even that is rare. Herring has only been served to me in the US in a Jewish context, and it's usually pickled.
Vestitor (User's profile) December 15, 2011, 12:02:48 AM
Some time back I had read the Wikipedia article on Interlingua/Esperanto and it compared the use of hospital in Interlingua with that malsanulejo in Esperanto.
Is 'hospitalo' the most common word? And in what way or context is malsanulejo used? The article claims the word is unclear because it could refer to any sort of 'unhealthy' place.
Is this just a bit of sleight-of-hand in the article?
erinja (User's profile) December 15, 2011, 2:13:10 AM
Malsanulejo could technically refer to any place for unhealthy people. But by that reasoning, a "kuirejo" could be any place where cooking is done (not just a kitchen), a "necesejo" could be any place necessary to something (not just a toilet), etc. Any constructed word has more than one potential meaning, but when a single construction gets used extensively for a particular meaning, then when you hear that word, you assume it has that particular meaning, unless context tells you otherwise.
sudanglo (User's profile) December 15, 2011, 10:40:23 AM
Quite a few constructed words have acquired conventional meanings in Esperanto narrower than you might suppose on the basis of the compounded elements, but in certain contexts may be forced to encompass a wider meaning.
This doesn't seem to cause any problems in practice.
On the issue of international word alternatives (legitimised under rule 15), this has the effect that in ordinary conversation you may quickly convey your meaning using whatever form first springs to mind - home-grown compound or an international borrowing - though in careful speech or writing you may recognize some distinction.
This is certainly not alien to native speakers of English, which has borrowed so heavily from other languages that the speaker may often be faced with a 'foreign' word alternative to a more Anglo-saxon expression.
The difference is (and from the point of view ease of acquisition of the language it is an important one) that you can sound distinctly odd if you use one form rather than another in certain contexts in English.
Esperanto carries a far lighter burden of idiomatic usage.
Think how odd it sounds in English to eat a burger in a rapid-food restaurant or to give the command for 10 rounds fast fire.
Vestitor (User's profile) December 15, 2011, 5:49:42 PM
An Esperantist on the learn-any-language forum mentioned that he'd forgotten the word enigmo and had a complete mental block in trying to recall it, so instead he used kapgratia to indicate puzzlement, which seemed to work in context.
I've never had an Esperanto conversation in the form of a casual chat. So how much 'free-form' compounding takes place as opposed to using recognised compounds?