Tartalom

Dystopia & dystopian in Esperanto

anarchtea-tól, 2012. február 10.

Hozzászólások: 43

Nyelv: English

EldanarLambetur (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 17:08:18

pdenisowski:Malutopio is unambiguous (and also yields three times as many hits as "distopio" on Google).
Just for funsies:

"mava" has nearly twice as many google hits as "malbona".

But I bet malbona is more common. There is sooo much stuff on google. And they do all kinds of jiggery pokery with your query.

(Though I do prefer malutopio ridego.gif)

tommjames (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 17:13:29

EldanarLambetur:"mava" has nearly twice as many google hits as "malbona".

But I bet malbona is more common. There is sooo much stuff on google. And they do all kinds of jiggery pokery with your query.
I usually find a good way to filter out false hits is to include +kaj or other common words in your searches. That way you can be reasonably sure you're hitting Esperanto rather than some other language.

erinja (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 17:14:59

EldanarLambetur:
pdenisowski:Malutopio is unambiguous (and also yields three times as many hits as "distopio" on Google).
Just for funsies:

"mava" has nearly twice as many google hits as "malbona".
I include the word "kaj" with whatever I'm searching for, whenever I'm interested in frequency. It's a common Esperanto word and requiring its presence will filter out hits for the many associations with the acronym MAVA, or an Indian dessert.
[in the cases of mava, when you include "kaj" as a search term, there are still many hits, but most of them are on the topic of neologisms, and using mava as an example! Very few cases of genuine use of the word, outside of that context.]

Including "kaj" in a Google search yields 1670 hits for malutopio and 92 for distopio.

EDIT:

I see tommjames beat me to the punch on discussing the "kaj" solution!

tommjames (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 17:15:48

Damn, got in there too quick again lango.gif

erinja (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 17:16:48

Curse my inclination to give long explanations rather than short answers! okulumo.gif

darkweasel (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 19:34:13

Actually Google allows you to set what language the search results should be in, and you can select Esperanto there. I’m not sure however if that’s reliable.

pdenisowski (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 19:44:49

anarchtea:Interesting responses, thanks everyone.

I haven't come across anyone who doesn't know what a dystopia, or dystopian society, is.
That says a lot about the kind of people you hang out with. rideto.gif

pdenisowski (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 20:02:16

erinja:malutopio would doubtlessly be understood, so that would probably be my choice, if push came to shove. But I think that many people would correctly understand "distopio" as well.
Well, perhaps many ENGLISH speakers (or Romance Language speakers). Germanic, Slavic, and non-Indo-European language speakers don't have that cognate in their own native language.

erinja (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 10. 21:41:25

pdenisowski:Well, perhaps many ENGLISH speakers (or Romance Language speakers). Germanic, Slavic, and non-Indo-European language speakers don't have that cognate in their own native language.
As I said, I would support "malutopio", if it came down to it.

Although I certainly think "malutopio" is preferably to "distopio", I strongly disagree with you regarding the internationality of a form like "dystopia".

I think that "distopio" would be understood *easily* by Germanic speakers; looking at the Wikipedia article on dystopia, Germanic languagies overwhelmingly use something like "dystopie" for the meaning of "dystopia". Most (but not all) Slavic languages use something like "anti-utopia", and they are the only major outliers. Aside from the Slavic languages (and Chinese), it's a cognate of "dystopia" nearly across the board.

As for non-Indo-European languages that use a cognate of "dystopia", there are many.

Hungarian - disztópia
Finnish - dystopia
Estonian - düstoopia
[that puts us three for three of the major Finno-Ugric languages]
Arabic - ديستوبيا (distopia)
Hebrew - דיסטופיה (distopia)
Turkish - distopya
Bahasa Melayu - distopia
Bahasa Indonesia - distopia
Korean - 디스토피아 (diseutopia)
Thai - ดิสโทเปีย (dít-toh-bpia)
Japanese - ディストピア (deisutopia)

...as these things go, I would say that "dystopia" is more international than practically any other word I can name, with the Slavic choice of "anti-utopia" being the only major outlier (and Chinese, which is not prone to borrowing foreign words in any case).

pdenisowski:
anarchtea:I haven't come across anyone who doesn't know what a dystopia, or dystopian society, is.
That says a lot about the kind of people you hang out with. rideto.gif
Who do you hang out with, pdenisowski, that no one knows this word? Dystopias are common in film and literature. It seems to me that this is a word that would certainly come up on occasion, simply in talking about books you've read or films you've seen.

Then again, I recently called something a Potemkin village and the person I was talking to hadn't heard of it, so maybe some of these literature references are not so common as I thought.

sudanglo (Profil megtekintése) 2012. február 11. 10:19:09

Excellent piece of research, Erinja, I was intuitively convinced that distopio was a truly international word, but couldn't be arsed to look up a lot of languages.

Maybe it's just me, but when I look at malutopio, I get sort of cross-eyed and see it as malut-opio, and wonder what sort of plant is a maluto.

The point about many English speakers not knowing dystopia (if true) is irrelevant.

The question is how many Esperanto speakers would immediately recognize distopio. Your average Esperantist is not your average guy.

'Dis' in international borrowings is not unknown to Esperanto - dispepsio.

Anyway to justify mal-utopio you have to show that a distopio is the malo of an utopio.

I am not convinced. A utopia is a fantasy where everything is wonderful (an unrealistic dream). Dystopia often describes a depressing more plausible reality, doesn't it?

What is the malo of revo?

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