Al la enhavo
Respondi

Who Knew?

de FourSpeed, 2009-oktobro-01

Mesaĝoj: 23

Lingvo: English

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-03 16:38:31

ceigered:Lets say though, on the odd chance that one of us (sal.gif) did happen to make that mistake at one point of time, then had to find out what flax was, surely there'd be no punishment to that unnamed person... right?
I feel confident that should any person ever make that error, they would have learned their lesson and not repeat it. And furthermore, that person would have learned a valuable vocabulary word that would certainly help them immensely if they should ever wish to talk about linen production okulumo.gif

And furthermore, I feel glad for that person that they should have made the error with filino, rather than with [fi/kant/o][fik/ant/o] or [fi/kat/o][fik/at/o]

horsto (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-03 17:14:38

Nevertheless, it's a pity that Zamenhof didn't decide to make the language more unique, that means, that no root begins like a prefix and no root ends like a suffix. That would have made the language more understandable, not only for human beeings, but especially for computers.
Perhaps one reason why he didn't do this was, that he had many more prefixes and suffixes in the beginning, but he deleted one after the other when he found out, that they didn't make the language easier.
The other reason is of course, that he wanted to take the roots from other languages.
Or perhaps he knew, that is's not possible at all to achieve uniqueness, because if you combine roots, then everything can happen.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-03 18:06:00

horsto:Nevertheless, it's a pity that Zamenhof didn't decide to make the language more unique,
He did decide this, and that's the reason why Esperanto doesn't have more of these "double forms" than it would otherwise. There are countless cases where the Esperanto word is slightly modified from its more "international" form, to avoid confusion with a root and affix combination. But with such a flexible language and so many roots and suffixes, you can't avoid them all.

For example, "banquet" has a t in most languages. But it's "bankedo" with a d in Esperanto. Why? Because banketo could be read as bank/et/o (a small bank). There are lots of examples like that.

NiteMirror (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-04 10:09:22

Think I just stumbled upon this kinda thing myself. In exercise 22 of the Fundamento here there's this sentence:

... tiam Nikodemo estas la batanto kaj Jozefo estas la batato.

using lernu's own dictionary, it translates out as "Then Nikodemo (Nicholas?) is the batter and Joseph is the sweet potato."

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-04 11:43:51

NiteMirror:Think I just stumbled upon this kinda thing myself. In exercise 22 of the Fundamento here there's this sentence:

... tiam Nikodemo estas la batanto kaj Jozefo estas la batato.

using lernu's own dictionary, it translates out as "Then Nikodemo (Nicholas?) is the batter and Joseph is the sweet potato."
Sounds like something I would say. What's the batato meant to be in cricket (or baseball) terminology? The bowler/pitcher? or the ball? (after all it's the thing being hit!). Or maybe Nikodemo was lonely and named his sweet potato to make it seem more human...
And furthermore, I feel glad for that person that they should have made the error with filino, rather than with [fi/kant/o][fik/ant/o] or [fi/kat/o][fik/at/o]
Vi ja pravas - from now on I shall refer to shameful musical numbers as 'Fa kanto' lango.gif (actually, I've just noticed, in the lernu dicitonary 'fi' is a verb, therefore you'd think 'fa' would be the adjective form, however I can only find 'fia' (nasty). Am I doing something wrong here?)

Matthieu (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-04 12:10:14

No, fi- is a prefix, or it can be used alone as an interjection to show disgust or disdain. I don't know why the Esperanto-English dictionary in Lernu translates it as a verb.

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-04 12:15:17

Mutusen:No, fi- is a prefix, or it can be used alone as an interjection to show disgust or disdain. I don't know why the Esperanto-English dictionary in Lernu translates it as a verb.
Ah you're right (I just checked the EO-EO dictionary). Does that mean 'fia' is still valid? Nonetheless I guess I should then change that entry in the EO-Eng vortaro (unless someones against that idea?).

Matthieu (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-08 14:40:13

Oh yes, the first time I saw it I analysed it as for·fik·ul·o, and I didn't manage to understand what I was supposed to mean. malgajo.gif

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-08 22:11:36

That's an incredibly offensive earwig.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2009-oktobro-09 07:06:24

I once translated a story by one of my favorite authors into Esperanto; it had to do with people going overboard with political correctness and it had a lot of parts where people tried to remove words from text because they sounded like something objectionable (though they weren't). The word I used in Esperanto was "fekulo" (starch, of course). I think I perhaps came up with one other, I'd have to re-read the story to be sure, but I wish I'd thought of forfikulo!

Reen al la supro