Mesaĝoj: 29
Lingvo: English
Pharoah (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-17 19:37:11
Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-17 19:59:24
Pharoah (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-17 20:12:23
Rogir:I disagree, there are enough prepositions and they are all useful. However, using 'je' is a good habit when using prepositions in combination with a verb.Don't most cases of preposition use involve a verb?
nshepperd (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-18 12:15:31
darkweasel:Try to explain Esperanto "baziĝi sur" (actually the same illogicality is present in English and German, with "to be based on"/"auf etwas basieren").Actually, suddenly "to be based on" seems to make a lot of sense to me now. How do you build a tower? Each level's base is on top of the previous! You just need to interpret it literally!
Although "I believe in God" is still hard to explain. Maybe we just randomly picked a preposition that could not be confused since it has no actual meaning in the context, as some sort of je-equivalent.
russ (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 12:36:57
Pharoah:Not that I want to sound like some sort of idist or anything, but I really think Esperanto should have fewer prepositions. As a Spanish student, I have devoted a significant chunk of time to learning which prepositions go with which verbs under which circumstances, and it seems a bit silly. My guess is that this is a feature of European languages.As mentioned, prepositions are hard when learning any language because of so many different models and expressions.
You will find it easier to learn if you don't think in terms of simple translation to English (e.g. "por=for") but rather learn the actual MEANING and usage of words. A single English word is not usually a reliable meaning of an word in another language.
Similarly, you will get into trouble by only learning a one-word English equivalent when you learn the Esperanto roots "ĝeneral/" and "general/" - they're both translatable as "general" in English, but what do they MEAN? Or you learn the Esperanto verb "droni" = English "drown" and then make errors because in English you yourself can drown (intransitively, as a subject), and you can drown a cat (transitively, as an object). Much better to learn how to actually use words and what they mean, instead of focusing on what English word they are (supposedly) equivalent to. (This advice is true about learning any language - it's nothing special about Esperanto.)
Anyway, I personally wish Esperanto had a few more prepositions to split up the too many different senses of "de": e.g. "la libro de Zamenhof de mia amiko de la breto" (my friend's book by Zamenhof from the shelf)...
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 12:43:07
russ:Anyway, I personally wish Esperanto had a few more prepositions to split up the too many different senses of "de": e.g. "la libro de Zamenhof de mia amiko de la breto" (my friend's book by Zamenhof from the shelf)...I'd be almost tempted to make up a preposition, such as 'del'
not a very good preposition though as it would not be noticeable in 'del la' vs 'de la' :-/
Pharoah (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 13:13:42
What I'm talking about is finding minimal pairs of prepositions, and coflating the others. For example, is there really any case where changing "el" to "de" would actually change the meaning of a sentence? I don't think there is, since Spanish gets along fine with just using "de" for both meanings.
Here's another question. When do I use en, and when ĉe? I've basically been using en for every sense of at, because it feels a bit more natural.
jchthys (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 13:26:13
ceigered:Actually an older form of de la, still used in poetry, would be de l’. No luck there.russ:Anyway, I personally wish Esperanto had a few more prepositions to split up the too many different senses of "de": e.g. "la libro de Zamenhof de mia amiko de la breto" (my friend's book by Zamenhof from the shelf)...I'd be almost tempted to make up a preposition, such as 'del'
not a very good preposition though as it would not be noticeable in 'del la' vs 'de la' :-/
Ido uses di for “of” (la libro di Johano, “John’s book”), de for “from” (la libro de Johano, “the book I got from John”) and da for “by” (la libro da Johano), “the book John wrote”).
By the way, does anyone else agree with me that nam is better than ĉar? Not to sound to Idistic, but I do think so. And the word tante is nice, too.
Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 14:27:09
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-aŭgusto-19 15:40:30
jchthys:By the way, does anyone else agree with me that nam is better than ĉar? Not to sound to Idistic, but I do think so. And the word tante is nice, too.Nam? I have to admit I always used 'pro' and 'pro ke' but now that I know of this new word I shall use it more when dum me parolas ide
From http://davidmann.us/ido/dictionaries/eo.htm
of: (marking possession) di; (origin, derivation, starting point, quantity, dimension, size) de; (indicating material made of) ek; (“out of”) ek; (concerning) pri; (agent, authorship) da; of late: recente, de kurte tempo; of course: kompren-ende, -eble; it is very good of you: vu esas tre afabla; the people of old: la popula anciena od olima od di la anciena tempo.It appears that 'de' in Ido is the same as Eo's 'da' with a few extra functions from Eo's 'de'.
Da is a word in Ido, but I'm not sure how one would use it:
http://davidmann.us/ido/dictionaries/id.htm (FIRST ENTRY)
I think it kind of is the Ido equivalent of 'per'
One language that prepositions are a bit harder after learning them in Esperanto is Lingua Franca Nova:
http://www.lingua-franca-nova.net/lfn9.html
You expect there to be seperate prepositions for everything, but rather many prepositions have shared meanings, e.g. a = cxe/al, con = kun/per, heck the list goes on
But thats more of a romance creole than Esperanto so that's komprenebla