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Another puzzling / embarrassing omission from Esperanto lexicography: ‘holy orders’

de mkj1887, 6 de maio de 2017

Mensagens: 15

Idioma: English

mkj1887 (Mostrar o perfil) 6 de maio de 2017 00:48:14

The term ‘holy orders’ does not exist in Benson, Wells, ReVo, or Sonja. It does exist in Vikipedio, however, but we have to dig a bit to ascertain this. We can tell accessing it from the English side. That is, if you look up ‘holy orders’ in the English-language version of Wikipedia, and then click on the Esperanto version, you get an article titled ‘Ordino’. This Esperanto word ‘ordino’ also exists in Vikivortaro under ‘order’, but, contrary to Vikivortaro’s custom, is not marked specifically as a translation of ‘holy orders’. On the English side we have the further following two facts: ‘holy orders’ exists in Merriam-Webster, but not in Wiktionary. This is a reversal of the normal situation, namely, that it is usually Wiktionary that contains terms that Merriam-Webster does not. So, kudos to Merriam-Webster.

Vestitor (Mostrar o perfil) 6 de maio de 2017 00:58:33

Kudos indeed... Who'da thunk it. It's all going on at Merriam-Webster these days.

mkj1887 (Mostrar o perfil) 6 de maio de 2017 12:23:39

Vestitor:Kudos indeed... Who'da thunk it. It's all going on at Merriam-Webster these days.
Is there a contribution to the discussion somewhere in there?

bartlett22183 (Mostrar o perfil) 6 de maio de 2017 20:09:58

Once again, I think it is far, far, more important to advance the idea of an international auxiliary language generally than to get bogged down squabbling about words and terms that might be used only by a few in restricted semantic environments. Most of the world does not give a **** about IALs in the first place, so promoting that acceptance is far more important than bogging down in abstruse and esoteric terminology.

mkj1887 (Mostrar o perfil) 6 de maio de 2017 21:38:41

bartlett22183:Once again, I think it is far, far, more important to advance the idea of an international auxiliary language generally than to get bogged down squabbling about words and terms that might be used only by a few in restricted semantic environments. Most of the world does not give a **** about IALs in the first place, so promoting that acceptance is far more important than bogging down in abstruse and esoteric terminology.
This is a venue in which anything related to Esperanto is welcome. Nobody is getting ‘bogged down’. Anyone not interested in any given post can simply ignore it. It is my contention that any terminology available in English should also be available in Esperanto, but if you have other priorities, that’s fine. We all have our priorities, otherwise life would be impossible.

edit: 7.May.2017: And remember that ‘having to do with Esperanto’ does not necessarily imply having any interest in promoting Esperanto as an international auxiliary language. For example, one might want to use it as a secret language. A fairly famous (among English-speaking Esperantists) novel was written, by Sylvan Zaft, on this theme: ‘Peter Jameson’s Secret Language’. So: this venue is even for those whose only interest in Esperanto in from the perspective of linguistic inventiveness.

“...la celo estas tute klara kaj ĉiu povas sin tiri al ĝi. Ne bezonante rigardadi, kion diras aŭ faras aliaj, ĉiu povas alporti sian ŝtonon por la kreskanta konstruo. Nenia ŝtono perdiĝos. Nenia laboranto tie ĉi dependas de la alia, ĉiu povas agadi aparte, en sia sfero, laŭ siaj fortoj...”
-- Zamenhof

Vestitor (Mostrar o perfil) 7 de maio de 2017 06:28:16

mkj1887: Anyone not interested in any given post can simply ignore it.
As about 99% seem to be doing. Is that not a clue that what bartlett is saying is basically true?

Your basic principle is fine, noble even, but I don't quite see why you think Esperanto has to mirror everything in the English dictionary (or even things not in the dictionary). Even English itself doesn't need most of the contents of the massive 20 volume OED for the majority of normal and even advanced English usage. Going through picking out obscurities is something you wouldn't even live to complete.

And why English? Must Esperanto then mirror all the peculiarities of every other language too? That really is "getting bogged down". It places a word-meaning creation burden upon Esperanto which is 1) completely unnecessary and 2) a diversion from Esperanto's best uses.

bartlett22183 (Mostrar o perfil) 7 de maio de 2017 19:28:13

Vestitor has it right. Different languages divide semantic space in different ways. Just look at how different languages refer to the color spectrum differently. Distinctions made in some languages which seem obvious and even critical to speakers of one language do not exist in other languages for speakers of those other languages. Why should Esperanto divide semantic space exactly the way of English or language XYZ? Even Rule 15 allows for assimilation but recommends that terms when possible be based on native roots (and in many cases I think that some otherwise esoteric, abstruse, technical, rarely used English terms could be).

Vestitor (Mostrar o perfil) 8 de maio de 2017 23:13:02

The concept 'secret language' seems like an oxymoron to me. Language is something that is shared by its very nature for communication - even if it isn't instant, such as an ancient book being read today. When it isn't being shared, it is no longer functioning as a language, it's just verbal or written representations of a person's thoughts for no audience. If or when you share that, it's no longer "secret".

Frankly I'm a bit unimpressed with the tack you've taken in your edit for the 7th of May. Previously in some thread you accused me of not being a 'friend to Esperanto' implying that I was doing nothing to further it, when you are now indicating an interest in it as some kind of private plaything. Esperanto's function as an international auxiliary language - and by extension a means for sharing literature and other similar culture - is its primary function.
Unfortunately it is too often the province of conlang, hobby esotericists and pseudo-intellectuals. I'm fairly convinced that many of these would actually be unhappy if Esperanto were truly to become universal because then they would lose their secret little club.

The language already functions. People have written technical books in Esperanto, it has proven itself there. People need to just get on with using it. Only then will it really start to be a means of communication.

SallImSayin (Mostrar o perfil) 12 de maio de 2017 19:32:26

"It is my contention that any terminology available in English should also be available in Esperanto, but if you have other priorities, that’s fine."

I don't agree with this. Besides that, you're free to create the word in the language and it be picked up with use. Something like this is pretty easy, it's not even something that would be generally hard to put into words. There are Lingala words that have no English equivalent and there's not necessarily any reason for there to be. If one wanted to make the translations, they're free to. If this needs to be done, it's MUCH easier to logically translate more obscure words and things into Esperanto than any other language I've come across. I think it's unreasonable for there to be translation for every single English word, in Esperanto, when there are English words and concept coming into use and falling out of use, everyday.

Esperanto isn't English. And there's nothing special about English in relationship to Esperanto. So, by that reasoning, there should be no Latin word, without an Esperanto equivalent, no Polish word, no Russian word...etc. Who is supposed to be responsible for that? Like I said, it's easy enough to come up with a logical E word for something, to feel the gap.

mkj1887 (Mostrar o perfil) 13 de maio de 2017 11:11:30

Thanks for your reply.

I think you may disagree simply because you are reading too much into my assertion. I am not saying that everyone – or even anyone – should drop what they’re doing an translate all English vocabulary into Esperanto. However, it should be possible to translate anything (other than things like puns) from English into Esperanto, and that entails having translations for all the entries in, say, the unabridged version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary. For this purpose, we can ignore the handful of words that come and go – there is still a mountain of words to be translated. I’m not saying it has to be a priority for you. I’m just saying that ideally this should happen, and some, such as myself, choose to work in this area.

The only reason I highlight English is because that is my native language. So, yes, the same principle applies to Polish, Russian, ... and Latin.

See you back at the lodge.

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