sudanglo:Please translate for me Erinja:

We ain't gonna do it, bruv, innit!

I 'ave monet, said the Frenchman, who was feeling flush. Velly good, replied the Chinaman.

I hesitate to use the 'c' word or other really taboo words, there may be minors reading the forum - so just mild examples of uncouth language - Shut your trap, bitch!, Fan-bloody-tastic!

Illiterate and uneducated -all you need is bad grammar. Ni ne voli fari tio, samidean'. I hear bad grammar all the time in Esperanto. It makes you sound uneducated even if you are (the same way that someone who speaks a low class dialect might actually be very well educated and speak the normative language when necessary -- a very common situation, it's called code switching.

Your examples of foreign speech are nothing but writing someone's accent in words. I have seen it done many times in Esperanto, for example, using ĥ in the place of r to indicate a 'French' r.

And I could write something very crude but actually we don't allow profanity here so I won't. Suffice it to say that no woman wants to be called a putinaĉo.

And I wouldn't use the word chinaman if I were you. It's offensive. Maybe things are different in the UK but I doubt it slightly.

captainzhang:Does anyone know any patterns that one could recognize to help infer if a verb is transitive or intransitive? It's really the only aspect of Esperanto that I don't like, the accusative doesn't bother me at all, in fact, I think it's nice.

Inside some German Interlingua teach book that matter is described that way:

'... Nichtzielende Zeitwörter (intransative) = Not-sighting verbs *

Not-sighting verbs are words, which can not receive accusative objects * *. Because of that these verbs can not be set into accusative state (passive state)...'

* 'to be capable to pin point strike attacks'
* * complement inside 'Whom-case?'

So, action and state determines transitivness or intransitivness?

spreecamper:

captainzhang:Does anyone know any patterns that one could recognize to help infer if a verb is transitive or intransitive? It's really the only aspect of Esperanto that I don't like, the accusative doesn't bother me at all, in fact, I think it's nice.

Inside some German Interlingua teach book that matter is described that way:

'... Nichtzielende Zeitwörter (intransative) = Not-sighting verbs *

Not-sighting verbs are words, which can not receive accusative objects * *. Because of that these verbs can not be set into accusative state (passive state)...'

* 'to be capable to pin point strike attacks'
* * complement inside 'Whom-case?'

So, action and state determines transitivness or intransitivness?

I think I understand, are you saying to recognize trans/intrans verbs in context by whether or not they take a direct object? If so, what if the writer makes grammar mistakes and uses some trans verbs in intrans position and vice versa, would there be any way to distinguish them then?

By the way, thanks for your input.

captainzhang:
A bit off topic but Esperanto verbs are really a pain and sort of contradict the regular and easy theme of Esperanto which the ending of the main category of words fit so well, e.g. noun-o, adjective-a etc... Does anyone know any patterns that one could recognize to help infer if a verb is transitive or intransitive?

I think you just have to practice and memorize. Esperanto nouns do not have arbitrary gender like the nouns of German or French, but the verbs do have slightly unpredictable transitivity. A few can go either way. Ludi, for example, can be trans or intrans.

Sylvan Zaft wrote this:

The most common errors which Esperantists make… are errors involving the accusative ending and errors involving the transitivity of verbs. Bernard Golden has pointed out that this latter kind of error is committed not only by ordinary Esperantists but also by experts, by authors of books on teaching the language and by members of the Academy of Esperanto. There are at least many hundreds of verbs in the language. Because of this, it is no wonder that Esperantists have trouble keeping the transitivity of each individual verb in mind.

Rikat:

captainzhang:
A bit off topic but Esperanto verbs are really a pain and sort of contradict the regular and easy theme of Esperanto which the ending of the main category of words fit so well, e.g. noun-o, adjective-a etc... Does anyone know any patterns that one could recognize to help infer if a verb is transitive or intransitive?

I think you just have to practice and memorize. Esperanto nouns do not have arbitrary gender like the nouns of German or French, but the verbs do have slightly unpredictable transitivity. A few can go either way. Ludi, for example, can be trans or intrans.

Sylvan Zaft wrote this:

The most common errors which Esperantists make… are errors involving the accusative ending and errors involving the transitivity of verbs. Bernard Golden has pointed out that this latter kind of error is committed not only by ordinary Esperantists but also by experts, by authors of books on teaching the language and by members of the Academy of Esperanto. There are at least many hundreds of verbs in the language. Because of this, it is no wonder that Esperantists have trouble keeping the transitivity of each individual verb in mind.

Deep down I knew this to be the case but didn't want to admit it to myself. If I have no choice but to memorize them then does anyone know of a good Esperanto-English dictionary that lists the verb type as well. I have a good English-Esperanto dictionary that lists the transitivity of the verb but it isn't much use for translating from Esperanto to English. Thanks.

captainzhang:

Rikat:

captainzhang:
A bit off topic but Esperanto verbs are really a pain and sort of contradict the regular and easy theme of Esperanto which the ending of the main category of words fit so well, e.g. noun-o, adjective-a etc... Does anyone know any patterns that one could recognize to help infer if a verb is transitive or intransitive?

I think you just have to practice and memorize. Esperanto nouns do not have arbitrary gender like the nouns of German or French, but the verbs do have slightly unpredictable transitivity. A few can go either way. Ludi, for example, can be trans or intrans.

Sylvan Zaft wrote this:

The most common errors which Esperantists make… are errors involving the accusative ending and errors involving the transitivity of verbs. Bernard Golden has pointed out that this latter kind of error is committed not only by ordinary Esperantists but also by experts, by authors of books on teaching the language and by members of the Academy of Esperanto. There are at least many hundreds of verbs in the language. Because of this, it is no wonder that Esperantists have trouble keeping the transitivity of each individual verb in mind.

Deep down I knew this to be the case but didn't want to admit it to myself. If I have no choice but to memorize them then does anyone know of a good Esperanto-English dictionary that lists the verb type as well. I have a good English-Esperanto dictionary that lists the transitivity of the verb but it isn't much use for translating from Esperanto to English. Thanks.

You just have to learn meaning of a word properly. Somehow it doesn't surprise you that you cannot die sth/sb.

Reta Vortaro at http://www.reta-vortaro.de is pretty good for looking up Esperanto words; they include example sentences and the definitions are not overly long.

Montagu Butler's Esperanto-English dictionary is my all-time favorite. It's out of print but if you Google PDF archive Butler Esperanto you might stumble across something relevant.

Various dictionaries might disagree about the details of a few verbs. I found this comment on the web: "Another verb of interest is fajfi, to whistle. PIV1 defines it as intransitive, while PIV2 defines it as transitive, both using the same Zamenhofian example: li mallaŭte ekfajfis la arion de Kalĥas! My 1980 edition of the PV defines it as both transitive and intransitive."

Now in English we generally don't have this particular difficulty, because we allow most verbs to either be transitive/causative or intransitive based on context. "The water boiled away" vs "he is boiling some water." The Academy could eliminate this difficulty in Esperanto simply by giving Esperantists the same freedom. Especially in a language that always marks the accusative, that seems like it would be a good fix.

Rikat:Now in English we generally don't have this particular difficulty, because we allow most verbs to either be transitive/causative or intransitive based on context. "The water boiled away" vs "he is boiling some water." The Academy could eliminate this difficulty in Esperanto simply by giving Esperantists the same freedom. Especially in a language that always marks the accusative, that seems like it would be a good fix.

You would lose some flexibility if that were done. Also, "obviously" transitive or intransitive verbs vary by linguistic background. So a verb that for me as an English speaker is "obviously" transitive may be ambiguous or clearly intransitive to a speaker of another language. So if "I leave" is clearly intransitive to me, and it is clearly transitive (or ambiguous) to a speaker of another language, it would sound pretty weird and wrong if the speaker of the other language said to me "Mi foriris min". My answer would be "....huh?"

It's a relatively small subset of Esperanto verbs that have unclear transitivity, for speakers of any particular language. My advice is to learn them as best you can, but also not to beat yourself up if you make a mistake. This is what basically everyone does, and to me "Try your best but don't beat yourself up if you make a mistake" makes it better for everyone than "Give up from the start and don't even bother trying". (This is the same advice I give regarding pronunciation -- try your best to imitate the norm but if you just can't get the r, or whatever, then don't beat yourself up over it).

spreecamper: Phonemic spelling is not unique to Esperanto language only. If there would be some kind of self-defense survival situation then maybe even English would be changed phonemic. Its possible. Solution exists: Shavian alphabet

The Shavian alphabet and all other attempts at producing a phonemic spelling for English all suffer shipwreck on the same rock: Whose English??? The blunt fact is that, with minor differences easily learned by any bright schoolchild in a few minutes, English spelling for good or for ill is almost standard around the world. English pronunciation most definitely is not.

Educated native speakers of various dialects of English can usually understand one another's speech (although sometimes it can be a stretch), but we have no trouble in writing. If we use Shavian or any other phonemic scheme and then each of us phonemicizes his/her own dialect, we can have a big problem.

One advantage of Esperanto is that, supposedly at least, it has a standard, uniform pronunciation, albeit that individual speakers may introduce local "accents" into their personal speech. That is why E-o can be spelled phonemically.

bartlett22183:If we use Shavian or any other phonemic scheme and then each of us phonemicizes his/her own dialect, we can have a big problem.

I've read that analysis of writings in the Deseret alphabet (used by some Mormons in the 19th century; it never really caught on) reveals that the Utah accent hasn't changed a lot in 150 years.