Al la enhavo

How much do you improvise?

de VocabGuy, 2015-julio-10

Mesaĝoj: 15

Lingvo: English

yyaann (Montri la profilon) 2015-julio-11 11:32:47

sudanglo:quite often the term in English will be created by two (or more) words rather than a single word - book shop (librovendejo); bus stop (bushaltejo); dining car (manĝvagono); dining car attendant (manĝvagonisto).
That one difference is more graphical than anything though because you could very well argue that book shop and dining car are just single words with a space in between their compounds. In fact they are treated as such in the Cambridge dictionary.

Christa627 (Montri la profilon) 2015-julio-13 13:05:57

orthohawk:
erinja:except for the odd word that can parse in more than one way, or that is a root that looks like a combination of root and suffix. (fekulo. Starch, obviously! okulumo.gif fekul/o)
Oh, dear.......that one's rather.....awkward okulumo.gif
Or "forfikulo" - an earwig, not a "for-fik-ul-o"! Another amusing false entomology, I mean, etymology.

As you see, Esperanto isn't syntactically unambiguous; developing one that is could believably take longer (pardon my off-topic reference to an off-topic in another thread).

Christa627 (Montri la profilon) 2015-julio-13 13:16:08

VocabGuy:
DuckFiasco:I find the word-building to be very freeing in spontaneous expression. And because you're using existing roots and elements, your "new" word will likely be understood with ease.
I guess it's just something that I will have to get used to. It seems so unusual to me that I haven't thought of it as "freeing" yet. That's a good way to look at it though!
Oh, it is freeing, believe me! Incredibly so. And whenever I speak English, I really miss this word-building capability... malgajo.gif

Although "maldekstramanulino" still strikes me as a little much! ridego.gif

DuckFiasco (Montri la profilon) 2015-julio-13 16:16:51

Christa627:Or "forfikulo" - an earwig, not a "for-fik-ul-o"! Another amusing false entomology, I mean, etymology.
Wowee! Nearly a decade with Esperanto and I hadn't come across that one. It might actually be easy to remember if someone really doesn't like earwigs... I don't think they're that bad, personally lango.gif

It looks like it's just a straight borrowing from the Latin family Forficula. That's how a lot of botany/insect words get into Eo.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2015-julio-13 20:04:59

Most animal names for specific animals (say, "hawk" versus generic "bird" ) come from the Latin name.

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