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Do you know the difference?

de sudanglo, 2012-septembro-12

Mesaĝoj: 20

Lingvo: English

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-12 10:48:10

Toying with ideas for the programme of the forthcoming Brita Kongreso in Ramsgate (see Britakongreso.org), I have been entertaining thoughts about a conciousness-raising item to improving self-awareness of level in Esperanto.

Do you, for example, know the difference between:

Stulta and stupida
Respondi, responsi, and repliki
Klarigi and eskpliki
Atendi and ekspekti
Peni, provi and klopodi.

Everybody, I imagine, learns the difference beween trinki and drinki, and cigaredo and cigareto at a very early stage.

I sometimes wonder what it was like to be an Esperanto speaker in the 1920's and the 1930's when the rootstock of Esperanto was so much more limited, and there was no PIV or NPIV to give guidance. I think that there must have been a lot of idiosyncratic invention, or highly context dependent communication.

creedelambard (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-12 18:29:56

This sounds like a good idea. Mark Twain once said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug, and I often find myself casting about to find just the right word to say what I mean (in English as well as Esperanto).

Richardson mentions a few such word pairs, including kopio and ekzemplero which aren't on your list (I know, you could make a full time career out of coming up with such word pairs). One that particularly caught my eye was peni / klopodi / provi where he gives these examples:
La knabo penas movi la ŝtonegon - we see him with his shoulder to the boulder, sweating and straining to move it

La knabo provas movi la ŝtonegon - we see him making a tentative effort to move it and wonder if he will succeed

La knabo klopodas movi la ŝtonegon - causes us to imagine him arranging a lever and fulcrum, hiring a crane, petitioning his congressman or taking up a collection to get the job done
The reason this caught my eye is because I have in my collection a children's book from China called Klopodoj de simioj por elakvigi la lunon. It's a cute story but I always wondered at the use of the word klopodo in a book for preschoolers. Apparently some editor or another agrees with me; the E-USA LibroServo currently offers the same book under the title Simioj provas elakvigi la lunon.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 09:35:54

La klopodoj de la simioj produces in my mind a much more entertaining image, CL.

Anyway, apart from fine distinctions in meaning, another area in which your average kongresano could be challenged is in the naming of things.

For example, how many things can you name (in Esperanto) which you would typically find in a woman's handbag? Have a go.

Evildela (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 09:37:33

sudanglo:For example, how many things can you name (in Esperanto) which you would typically find in a woman's handbag? Have a go.
Hell, I can't do that in English...

Vestitor (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 09:53:08

Parfumo, lipruĝo, monujo, plumo... That's as far as I got. It's all guesswork, the only woman's handbag I've ever looked into was my mother's and that was around the time all telephones still had dials.

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 10:18:17

What about sanitary towels, birth control pills, credit card, parking ticket (date and time, not fine), house keys, car keys, library card, receipts (from shops), eye-liner, bike lock, paperback. hairspray, sunglasses, smart phone, plasters, pen-knife, spare tights, handkerchief, tissues.

Edit: If you would prefer a more male-orientated question, then name (in Esperanto) things that you might find in a garage (dom-aŭtejo). I'll start you off with Lawn-mower.

creedelambard (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 14:30:19

In my garage? Fatraso. In my wife's purse? Libro. She never goes anywhere without one. Were she an Esperantist she would call it something like her vicatendilo.

This is one thing I would love to find. Illustrated posters or large pictures showing groups of related things with their Esperanto names. Barnyard animals, kinds of trees, parts of the body, furniture, parts of a computer, parts of an auto, that sort of thing. I've seen books with similar content that were aimed at young children and posters like the ones I've described aimed at those learning, for instance, French. Doesn't seem like it would be all that difficult to either relabel existing posters geared toward another language, or just make new ones.

Sadly it would probably be prohibitive to translate some of Richard Scarry's books into Esperanto. He's a well known children's author over here who did books with busy scenes and easy-to-read captions of either the names of the things in question ( "watermelon truck" ) or a short phrase ( "Miss Cat wears a hair ribbon" ).

sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 20:38:51

Redzin, stupida gets 5 hits in the Tekstaro and just before my post I had seen it in a 1998 book.

The difference is that stulta ranges from silly and foolish to thick.

Stupida appears to mean actually stupid, vacant, devoid of mental agility.

I am not sure of the currency of ekspekti but the problem it solves can be illustrated by waiting for the bus in the country on a Sunday but without much expectation that one will actually come which leads to the paradox ke vi atendas la alvenon kaj samtempe ne atendas la alvenon.

CL, I have two colour picture dictionaries of the type you mention in my personal collection - Praktika Bildvortaro de Esperanto pub. OUP 1979 and Mil Unuaj Vortoj en Esperanto pub. EAB (date unknown). There is of course the Esperanta Bildvortaro based on pictures from the Duden series (cirka 1950?).

All such dictionaries that use existing illustration sets suffer from the same problem that they are were designed to illustrate the words of another language, are out of date in terms of the items illustrated by the time the Esperanto version appears, and may not illustrate items that present difficulty in Esperanto, whilst illustrating many 'easy' words that you could find with any bilingual dictionary.

creedelambard (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 21:18:38

sudanglo:All such dictionaries that use existing illustration sets suffer from the same problem that they are were designed to illustrate the words of another language, are out of date in terms of the items illustrated by the time the Esperanto version appears, and may not illustrate items that present difficulty in Esperanto, whilst illustrating many 'easy' words that you could find with any bilingual dictionary.
It almost seems like I've seen a colo(u)r dictionary of that type, perhaps when I visited the Centra Oficejo de UEA back in the late 70s; but I couldn't tell you which one it might have been. As for words presenting difficulty, that's not necessarily the point. Sure a list of farm animals might have plenty of words you recognize (ŝafo, bovido, ĉevalo, ktp) but suppose it's a farm scene. Do you know the word for "barn" or "tractor" right off the top of your head? In the parts of the USA we travel through such words come up a lot. And it goes more to the point when you have, say, a picture of a lorry and want to quickly find the word for "engine" or "headlight."

The more ways we have available for people to learn, the better, miaopinie. Some people (like my granddaghter) are just good visual learners.

creedelambard (Montri la profilon) 2012-septembro-13 21:20:09

sudanglo:Redzin, stupida gets 5 hits in the Tekstaro and just before my post I had seen it in a 1998 book.
It's not in lernu's dictionary over there -------------->

Maybe it should be if it has any sort of currency at all.

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