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Adult children

viết bởi Mustelvulpo, Ngày 25 tháng 4 năm 2012

Tin nhắn: 14

Nội dung: English

darkweasel (Xem thông tin cá nhân) 20:22:42 Ngày 26 tháng 4 năm 2012

acdibble:Speaking of which, the only translation "ido" has on this website, in English at least, is "Ido".
I’ve added other translations, thanks for this comment.

erinja (Xem thông tin cá nhân) 23:17:04 Ngày 26 tháng 4 năm 2012

acdibble:
erinja:Idoj in reference to people, as I said, usually has something to do with a title (reĝido etc) or a very formal or scientific situation (like the Izraelidoj in the Bible).
Yes I could see why that is, but I think that "offspring" is too formal a translation for "ido", but we don't really have an equivalent informal English term. Speaking of which, the only translation "ido" has on this website, in English at least, is "Ido".
acdibble, in your time in Esperanto, have you met a lot of experienced speakers who use "idoj" to refer to their children? And if so, what countries were they generally from? Because I've seen very little use of "idoj" in that sense. None at all in people I've met, and only a little bit in the Tekstaro database, often coming from magazines that are known to contain strange usages from time to time.

Incidentally, "offspring" is also defined as "a person's child" or "the young of an animal or plant", so in fact, it's a perfect translation for "ido", in the sense that it can be used to refer to a person, a plant, an animal, whatever.

So if you want to call people's children "idoj" because the dictionary says you can do it, sure, go ahead, and why not call a person's children "offspring" in English, while you're at it? Because the dictionary also supports that. But if you don't call people's children "offspring" in English (because it isn't really done - although the dictionary definition allows it and doesn't explicitly restrict it to scientific and literary usage) then I wouldn't really suggest it in Esperanto, either.

acdibble (Xem thông tin cá nhân) 03:41:28 Ngày 27 tháng 4 năm 2012

I'm not saying you're wrong. What I'm saying is that I think people too closely associate their native language's vocabulary with Esperanto's at points. I think because "offspring" means "ido" and "offspring" isn't a common word in our language, it is used less in Esperanto.

erinja (Xem thông tin cá nhân) 11:52:24 Ngày 27 tháng 4 năm 2012

acdibble:I'm not saying you're wrong. What I'm saying is that I think people too closely associate their native language's vocabulary with Esperanto's at points. I think because "offspring" means "ido" and "offspring" isn't a common word in our language, it is used less in Esperanto.
We English speakers, and Americans in particular, are used to thinking of ourselves as very influential, aren't we? But this isn't the case in Esperanto. I might agree with you on this point if there were more native English speakers in the Esperanto world, a large enough community that word choices made by English speakers would exert a serious influence on Esperanto.

However, that's not the case. Native English speakers constitute a relatively small percentage of Esperanto speakers, both in the past and today. Many Esperanto speakers can speak English as a second language, of course, but they aren't native speakers so it wouldn't influence them in the same way.

Continental Europe is the driving force behind Esperanto usage, and in my opinion, the widespread use of "gefiloj" rather than "idoj" is firmly rooted in European languages. Every language I can think of uses either its equivalent of "infanoj" or its equivalent of "gefiloj" (usually the word "sons", understood to mean both genders) to talk about people's children. Most of these languages have a different word that is used to refer to plant and animal offspring - often a version of young, progeny, or offspring.

I think that it's common for people to distinguish between their own children and the offspring of their plants and animals.

I think that distinguishing also gives us more flexibility in literature. If we don't treat "idoj" and "gefiloj" as strict equivalents, it gives us more ability to vary our literary style by choosing one or the other, and I think that's a good thing.

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