Ujumbe: 56
Lugha: English
tommjames (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Januari 2012 10:48:13 alasiri
RiotNrrd:Here's some perspective: I don't object to "arbaro" meaning "forest", or "akvumi" meaning "to water". If you think that's what I'm saying, then you haven't read what I've written very carefully.Thank you for the clarification, but I'm quite aware you don't object to using arbaro and akvumi for the meanings they actually have in Esperanto. Indeed it would be quite strange to object to a word meaning something that it does mean.
You started out by saying something like "if we have imbued -um words with static meanings we must stop that right now". I'm just saying, and it is only my opinion, that there's no reason to be so troubled by this because such words have always been quite normal in Esperanto. The examples with other suffixes do serve to illustrate that point, even if, admittedly, they are in general less context-dependent than -um.
I also think your average Esperantist will be savvy enough to understand that if an -um word has acquired a somewhat fixed meaning (to be confirmed by looking in a dictionary), it doesn't necessarily follow that absolutely no other usage of that word is permissible just because the dictionary doesn't mention it. And if they did draw that conclusion, well I think that would say more about their own competence in the language than the supposedly detrimental effect of fossilized compounds.
darkweasel (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Januari 2012 10:57:51 alasiri
tommjames:Indeed it would be quite strange to object to a word meaning something that it does mean.Strange, yes. Unusual, no.
(This posting is not supposed to get the thread off-topic!)
tommjames (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Januari 2012 10:59:29 alasiri
sudanglo (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Januari 2012 11:25:33 alasiri
Kirilo81:Just my two Eurocents.The English idiom is just my two penn'orth.
I wonder what the Americans say, Erinja? And why was the sum of tuppence singled out?
I believe it was the standard cost of a phone call in the UK for a number of years, in the era when they had Buttons A and B in the phone boxes - but this may have nothing to do with it.
erinja (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 7 Januari 2012 11:40:50 alasiri
sudanglo:We say "just my two cents"Kirilo81:Just my two Eurocents.The English idiom is just my two penn'orth.
I wonder what the Americans say, Erinja? And why was the sum of tuppence singled out?
It would be interesting if the origin were the two pence required to make a phone call, because we have a US idiom based on the old-time cost of a pay phone call.
The saying is "to drop a dime on someone", or alternately, "to dime someone out". It means to snitch, to turn someone in for doing something bad or illegal. I believe it comes from times past when pay phone calls cost a dime (10 cents), and someone would put a dime in the pay phone to call the police.
Keeping this somewhat on topic, would the Esperanto translation be "dekcendumi iun"?
robbkvasnak (Wasifu wa mtumiaji) 8 Januari 2012 12:07:32 asubuhi