Berichten: 17
Taal: English
sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 26 februari 2012 11:23:16
The point, Frith, is that there are some ordinary sentences, like the one I gave about the Mayor and the Congress, where it is impossible to disentangle the meaning with 'de'.
If you want a rule, it is use 'de' unless this leads to ambiguity. In those cases, use either 'fare de' or 'far' according to your preference.
you are one of exactly two experienced Esperantists I know who use this word.You are leading too sheltered a life, Erinja
erinja (Profiel tonen) 26 februari 2012 11:32:00
sudanglo:You are leading too sheltered a life, ErinjaMaybe I just don't hang around with linguistic rebels like you might, sudanglo
Seriously, though, I have heard quite a lot of Esperanto from people from a lot of countries, and far is something that I hear vanishingly rarely. How many people do you know who use it?
sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 27 februari 2012 10:33:47
I thinking about the day when legal contracts have to be drafted in Esperanto and the value of 'far' in the avoidance of ambiguity.
I guess, I would, in most cases use 'de' - but not when that could lead to misinterpretation.
In any case, why should one imagine that Zamenhof managed to think of all the prepositions one would need in a fully functioning world language.
Fri would be a good example of that (NPIV classifies it as a preposition).
Edit here's a nice example of the ambiguity of 'de':repago de la vojaĝkostoj de Johano Will John repay or someone else? In a legal contract that would be an important point.
EldanarLambetur (Profiel tonen) 27 februari 2012 13:04:05
Given this, something feels weird about this "de" scenario.
So, use "de" for all of its meanings, until you overcrowd a sentence with it, and find that you can't tell which of its meanings apply. Then here use something else (e.g. "far").
Doesn't that seem weird? It feels like, if this situation can arise so easily, then "de" is covering too many meanings.
If I were an amazing Esperantist, writing wonderful literature, and still felt this way, I might be tempted to ONLY use "far" (or some suchlike) for this particular meaning. So that it has its fixed place, and its meaning then doesn't overlap with "de" which no longer would have that meaning.
darkweasel (Profiel tonen) 27 februari 2012 13:25:43
sudanglo:I thinking about the day when legal contracts have to be drafted in Esperanto and the value of 'far' in the avoidance of ambiguity.Then you can use fare de, which is longer, but standard.
erinja (Profiel tonen) 27 februari 2012 21:40:29
EldanarLambetur:So, use "de" for all of its meanings, until you overcrowd a sentence with it, and find that you can't tell which of its meanings apply. Then here use something else (e.g. "far").Right, that's when we use "fare de"
We do something similar in English. "by" has many meanings. "The book was written by John" is a different "by" than "The book was written by computer"
When there's a potential that something could be unclear, we say "by means of", a longer but clearer expression. We don't make up some new weird English preposition, like saying "The book was written means computer"
sudanglo (Profiel tonen) 28 februari 2012 00:40:15
But Esperanto is different, and there are areas of usage where it has still not been tested. We don't have 500 million speakers of Esperanto using the language day in, day out.
Esperanto is still evolving.