Skip to the content
Reply

Concerning "artistic" writing

by Darzaire, September 16, 2009

Messages: 5

Language: English

Darzaire (User's profile) September 16, 2009, 3:05:26 AM

I like the literature arts. I love to read stories and poems. I've even written some stuff myself. However, I've been thinking thoroughly about languages, and I've noticed something special about English. It has many words for the same definition, but each word carries a different connotation. This is what allows writers to express themselves so well in great literary works.

Now, Esperanto is nice and all, being so simple, but does it suffer from a lack of such word expression? I haven't learned much Esperanto yet, but it sounds like it would be a very bland language, with little to offer in the way of special expression.

vejktoro (User's profile) September 16, 2009, 3:45:02 AM

Fear not!

Because of Esperanto's power system of word creation and license in word order, proficient writers use the language in very expressive ways. Entire phrases can be put to one word, or one word expanded as a phrase.

I, like you, enjoy artistic expression and I have not been let down one little bit by the offerings I've found in Esperanto poetry and literature. And there's lots of it, so you've a wealth of material to discover once your ability increases.

Of course, when it comes to two people of different language backgrounds simply communicating, well, simplicity wins and the most straight forward Esperanto is preferred.

Oŝo-Jabe (User's profile) September 16, 2009, 4:18:33 AM

Esperanto has around 5,000 official root words (although 6,000-7,000 may be in actual, common usage, and the largest fully-Esperanto dictionary PIV has 15,000 head words.) That, plus regular word-building are enough for billions of shades of meaning.

If you get the chance you should read the story Reĝidino Mal. It's an amusing story, and a good example of what a writer can do with Esperanto.

tommjames (User's profile) September 16, 2009, 9:41:24 AM

Darzaire:Now, Esperanto is nice and all, being so simple, but does it suffer from a lack of such word expression?
Having many thousands of words each one with their own unique nuance seems to me just one of many ways a language may be considered "expressive". If Esperanto does suffer from a lack of roots (personally I consider it possible but not especially significant), then as others have pointed out it more than makes up for it with its morphological and syntactic freedom. Personally I think Esperanto is a far more expressive language than English.

russ (User's profile) September 16, 2009, 10:11:49 AM

Read "La Bona Lingvo" by Claude Piron for a good discussion of how much you can do with Esperanto, without needing zillions of roots. Word combinations, flexible word order, ability to verbize nouns and nounize adjectives, etc etc provides many artistic possibilities. A big vocabulary of exotic roots is only one form of expressive power.

Of course if, for you, a big vocabulary of exotic roots is necessary for artistic expression, there are plenty of neologisms and when you gain experience and knowledge you can create your own which might work. But that's not as in the spirit of the language, IMHO.

Back to the top