Saluton all,

Another small question -- is there a list of the English counties in EO? I can find a couple of them (Cornwall, Devon, Yorkshire etc.) here and there, but not a complete list.

Dankon!
Barrj

Forigite

I have never seen an Esperanto list of names of English counties.

However, most Esperanto names of places are relatively guessable once you're comfortable with Esperanto's system of translating names. Was there a particular county name you were looking for?

erinja:I have never seen an Esperanto list of names of English counties.

However, most Esperanto names of places are relatively guessable once you're comfortable with Esperanto's system of translating names. Was there a particular county name you were looking for?

I was mainly looking for Essex (which I guess would be something close to Essekso, but I'm not sure) and Worcestershire. Idle curiosity led me to wonder about the rest.

I have encountered Kornvalo, Devono and Jorkŝiro. But I can't recall anybody using Esekso. Sounds like some perversion, There's phone sex and E-sex (cybersex).

sudanglo:I have encountered Kornvalo, Devono and Jorkŝiro. But I can't recall anybody using Esekso. Sounds like some perversion, There's phone sex and E-sex (cybersex).

That's what came to my mind as well.

If it helps with the translation, the "-sex" part comes from the Saxons, with the "Es-" meaning east; but I suspect if anyone were to refer to the county as "East Saxon" it wouldn't be instantly recognisable as Essex (unless they enjoyed that part of history).

There's also Sussex, as well as Middlesex and Wessex. (Both of which only really exist now in those that carry the names -- a cricket club, a university, etc.)

Hm, well if we're talking about the participants of "The only way is Essex", the inclusion of -seks- in the root might not be so inaccurate!

Of course there are many British place names ending in -sex, and somehow it doesn't offend our sensibilities in English, so we may as well get over it in Esperanto as well.

I'd call Essex "Esekso". If a place has a community of Esperanto speakers normally I defer to their judgment but "Esekso" is the obvious choice based on normal Esperantization rules. If someone felt strongly about avoiding that -seks- root in the middle, they could, I suppose, modify it to "Esikso".

Esperanto usually makes a compromise between the way a word is spelled versus pronounced in its native language. For example, the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds ends up in Esperanto as "Ĉaŭdefono", though "chaux" would be strictly rendered as something like "ŝo" if you were trying to perfectly capture its sounds.

Obviously this doesn't relate much to Essex but when it comes to Worcestershire, it becomes more important.

If we're giving added weight to pronunciation, then I'd render Worcestershire as "Vusterŝiro". Added weight to spelling renders perhaps "Vorcesterŝiro" (Esperanto Wikipedia names worcestershire sauce as "vorcestera saŭco" - literally Worcester sauce)

A compromise version might be "Vorsterŝiro".

...I would hate to have to start pronouncing all of those -cester's in English words, in Esperanto. The choice on Worcestershire would obviously have repercussions for similar names. Linkonŝiro might be obvious, but do we say Glosterŝiro or Glocesterŝiro.

Foreign Wikipedias may be a good guide. I found "Esekso" used in Lithuanian, and also a couple of Esperanto hits for that. Worcester is "Vusteris" in Lithuanian. (-is is a Lithuanian grammatical ending, so we can safely ignore that for the purpose of using Lithuanian as a model)

Latvian renders Gloucestershire as Glosteršīra.

I would personally be inclined to follow that model - preference to pronunciation rather than spelling. Vusterŝiro or Vorsterŝiro, Glosterŝiro, Lesterŝiro (Leicestershire), etc.

Wow, fantastic -- thanks erinja! Every time I ask a question about EO (I'm trying to hold back and not flood the forum with them), I'm fascinated with the answers and the workings of the language.

"Esekso" feels like the best fit for Essex (quite true what you say about The Only Way is Essex, though the five minutes of the programme made me inwardly scream in horror -- most of the county is nothing like that!), as does "Vusterŝiro". The Welsh counties might prove interesting...

Thanks so much for the wonderful article.

I was interested to note that William Auld rendered Leeds as Lidzo. I've had some occasion to speak of Leeds in Esperanto, and I've always used "Lidso" (choosing the side of spelling versus pronunciation on the s/z issue). It actually didn't occur to me in that particular case to favour pronunciation over spelling, but after such an eminent author has made a different decision than I did, I may reevaluate my choice.

Based on the article, it looks like Vorsterŝiro for Worcestershire (Vorĉestro would produce the difficult-to-pronounce Vorĉestroŝiro, and Vorcestro doesn't make it a lot easier)

Radio~!:Edmund Grimley Evans wrote an interesting article about English place names in La Brita Esperantisto last year.

I just reread it and it concentrates on names of towns rather than names of counties, but you might find some of it interesting anyway

http://www.esperanto-gb.org/lbe/arkivo/970/19.html

Thank you. That's really interesting (a good point about the pronounciation of Wolverhampton!), and it helped with something I was idly looking at (which I've attached) -- a list of the main English counties and what I think they would look like in EO. Additions, suggestions of alternatives and what-not all welcome!