Messages : 11
Langue: English
questerlej (Voir le profil) 11 mai 2019 18:45:10
Native English speaker, fluent second-language speaker of Spanish, and a bit of an amateur linguist. I've been intrigued by Esperanto for some years now and have just started dabbling in the "Lernu!" course.
I can definitely appreciate Esperanto's regularity and predictable grammar, but this has left me puzzled about a particular word. Is there any reason why "open" is "malfermita" instead of "apera" for example (in which case "closed" would obviously be "malapera")? I know "fermi" is derived from the French fermer ("to close"), but with many, other adjectives, the "mal" version indicates negativity relative to its opposite ("sana" -> "malsana"; "pura" -> "malpura", etc.), which makes even more intuitive sense given the etymology of "mal" ("bad"). Just seems to make more sense for "closed" to be "unopen" rather than for "open" to be "unclosed."
Would "apera"/"malapera" be understood or accepted as a variant? Does anyone have any clue or insight into Zamenhof's reasoning there? I suppose one of the reasons I have thus far been hesitant to pick up Esperanto is the fact that, as an amateur linguist of sorts, I'm always coming up with little ways I think the language could be modified.
Dankon,
Luke
Metsis (Voir le profil) 11 mai 2019 19:47:54
As you certainly know Ido was meant to be a further development of E-o, but instead the speakers got fortified in their own camps for over a century. Only very recently there has been some sort of smoothing or détente. This smoothing can be seen in that, that currently some words are borrowed from Ido to E-o. I'm aware of two:
ĉipa (Ido) = malmultekosta (E-o)
apera (Ido) = malferma (E-o)
but there may be others.
questerlej (Voir le profil) 11 mai 2019 20:18:50
I'll have to try to find the study you mentioned.
Dankon denove!
Metsis (Voir le profil) 12 mai 2019 11:53:44
sudanglo (Voir le profil) 12 mai 2019 12:22:20
Did you not think to check the dictionary (Vortaro.net)? If you had, you would have found that from the earliest days Esperanto had the word aperturo and later the word aperta.
You would also have found well established the root aper- (head word aperi to appear). So apera would have to mean related to appearances or appearing
Over the years the root stock of Esperanto has grown and the mechanism has been much as in other languages, somebody finds having a word for something useful (or a different word to one that exists) and they use it. This may catch on and be imitated by others, or it may fall by the wayside.
.... I have thus far been hesitant to pick up Esperanto is the fact that, as an amateur linguist of sorts, I'm always coming up with little ways I think the language could be modifiedWrong approach. The job of the linguist is to record, not to suggest modifications.
PS. If you want to see how a word is used (if the examples in Vortaro.net are not sufficient) or you want to trace the the history of usage in Esperanto, then search in Tekstaro.net (the sources are organised chronologically).
Metsis (Voir le profil) 12 mai 2019 14:11:47
Sudanglo,
I just listed two Ido words, which I know and which have been borrowed into colloquial/slang-ish E-o with their Ido meanings. It's not my fault, that they might have some other meanings already in E-o.
MiMalamasLaAnglan (Voir le profil) 13 mai 2019 16:28:09
sudanglo:Apera !!!!.So is it correct that aperta, not apera, means "open", and therefore malaperta means "closed"?
Did you not think to check the dictionary (Vortaro.net)? If you had, you would have found that from the earliest days Esperanto had the word aperturo and later the word aperta.
You would also have found well established the root aper- (head word aperi to appear). So apera would have to mean related to appearances or appearing
Over the years the root stock of Esperanto has grown and the mechanism has been much as in other languages, somebody finds having a word for something useful (or a different word to one that exists) and they use it. This may catch on and be imitated by others, or it may fall by the wayside..... I have thus far been hesitant to pick up Esperanto is the fact that, as an amateur linguist of sorts, I'm always coming up with little ways I think the language could be modifiedWrong approach. The job of the linguist is to record, not to suggest modifications.
PS. If you want to see how a word is used (if the examples in Vortaro.net are not sufficient) or you want to trace the the history of usage in Esperanto, then search in Tekstaro.net (the sources are organised chronologically).
questerlej (Voir le profil) 14 mai 2019 19:21:05
sudanglo:Wrong approach. The job of the linguist is to record, not to suggest modificationsThat is true in the strictest sense. I only meant that as a fluent Speaker of Spanish who can understand all other Romance languages quite well and is rather familiar with the major languages' unique features, development, etc., it struck me as very strange that ferma would be chosen as the base adjective, rather than aperta, hence also my prior references to negative vs. positive connotation, etc. That said, I often think, "That's a little odd. I wonder why it's done that way. I would have thought it'd be something like (insert alternate phrasing here)." Case in point: the correlatives. I wish they'd been derived from existing languages (something I think is done in Ido) as I'm having trouble picking them up. They're predictable and follow a pattern, but as they are unrelated to any words I am familiar with in other languages, I have sometimes found myself wishing they were as that might make them easier to master. That's all I meant.
As far as using the dictionary, I'm only now just starting out and I didn't think aperta would be in there.
Metsis (Voir le profil) 15 mai 2019 06:54:11
When it comes to the correlatives, I think, that the roots are fine and even the endings for the most part. I admit, that it took some time to reach a level, where I get them automatically. Any requirement of being closer to existing ones is subject to the person's native language and thus not universally solvable. For instance in my native language there are two sets of "correlatives", those referring to immediately preceding word or word pair and those referring to the whole preceding sentence. Multiply that by 15 grammatical cases and add demonstrative pronouns with three degrees of proximity (E-o has only two) and so on, and you get a system, which I find extremely intuitive but takes some time to learn for non-native speakers.
sudanglo (Voir le profil) 15 mai 2019 14:52:51
it struck me as very strange that ferma would be chosen as the base adjective, rather than aperta,Actually the base form is not an adjective, it is fermi (to close).
Whether closing or opening is the more negative is not too clear. Opening permits of degrees whereas closing less so (is more definite). That might be an argument.. Or you might argue that you generally can't open something that wasn't previously closed, so that means opening is derivative.
Anyway, that's just the way it is - fermi means to close and malfermi means to open.