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Eo Words are... Long

de Greyshades, 28 de outubro de 2009

Mensagens: 32

Idioma: English

Rogir (Mostrar o perfil) 29 de outubro de 2009 21:21:19

I play soccer to have fun.
Juego futbol para divertirme.
Mi ludas futbalon por ke amuziĝi.
Wrong. The right translation for that is
Mi ludas futbalon por amuziĝi.

Or, possibly
Mi ludas futbalon, por ke mi amuziĝu.

Note that the imperative must be used in such a phrase (I just looked it up in PMEG).

LyzTyphone (Mostrar o perfil) 30 de outubro de 2009 01:17:36

RiotNrrd:Esperanto words are longer than in English, but its sentences tend to be shorter.

So you lose one way, and win the other.
Good point, and this is also what I was trying to prove in my test.
I'd help if I had a microphone - maybe my iPhone mic will suffice.
Well, I don't really need the reciting of these texts. What I would like to know is the final count you make. I know this will not be as easy as in Chinese (each ideogram is a syllable) and Esperanto (each vowel is a syllable), so I appreciate help I can get here.

Oŝo-Jabe (Mostrar o perfil) 30 de outubro de 2009 04:57:53

RiotNrrd:Esperanto words are longer than in English, but its sentences tend to be shorter.

So you lose one way, and win the other.
I really think it depends on what you're saying.

"Pluvas" (2) vs. "It's raining" (3)
"Pluvegas" (3) vs. "It's raining cats and dogs." (6)
"Mi amas vin' (4) vs. "I love you" (3)
"Estis iu homo en la lando Uc, lia nomo estis Ijob." (19) vs. "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job." (13)

I think Esperanto sentences tend to be slightly longer because they aren't as drop-friendly as in English. Esperanto can still be spoken at a good pace though.

I would imagine that formal English and Esperanto take almost as long to say, as there are less contractions, idioms and dropping.

---
Oh, and I was counting on my hands... but I got 94 syllables for the Lord's Prayer in English.

ceigered (Mostrar o perfil) 30 de outubro de 2009 08:04:10

Oŝo-Jabe:
RiotNrrd:Esperanto words are longer than in English, but its sentences tend to be shorter.

So you lose one way, and win the other.
I really think it depends on what you're saying.

"Pluvas" (2) vs. "It's raining" (3)
"Pluvegas" (3) vs. "It's raining cats and dogs." (6)
"Mi amas vin' (4) vs. "I love you" (3)
"Estis iu homo en la lando Uc, lia nomo estis Ijob." (19) vs. "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job." (13)
Could also be done differently as you've alluded to:

Pluvas (2) vs 'Sraining (2)
Pluvegas (3) vs 'Sraining hard (3)
Mi amas vin (4) vs 'love you (2)
Estis homo en la lando Uc, nomas Ijob (12) vs. There was a man in the land of Uz called Job (12) lango.gif of course neither of them sounded like they should probably have.

@ the general discussion:

Another problem is consonant clusters, because it's not just the vowel in the syllable that takes time to say. In "projekto" vs. "project", to some speakers, it could be like the difference between saying "p'rojek'to" and "pŭo-ĝet/ĝek/something with a gottal stop somewhere. (where ' stand for what might be interpreted to someone as a syllable, esp. CVCV languages).

Greyshades (Mostrar o perfil) 30 de outubro de 2009 15:50:41

http://en.lernu.net/komunikado/forumo/temo.php?t...

I created a thread for trying to communicate with "shorter" Esperanto... it may work, it may not.

mnlg (Mostrar o perfil) 30 de outubro de 2009 18:42:49

niko-tina:(Synalepha) I know it's not very common in English
English is stress-timed, and because of this, unstressed syllables in a word can be shortened, or even almost disappear. Other languages do not allow for this (Finnish, for instance). Not exactly Synalepha, but the final result is quite similar.

LyzTyphone (Mostrar o perfil) 31 de outubro de 2009 01:13:29

Correct me if I erred, but I got 48 for English UDHR Article I.

I used formula (EO-En)/En to assess the length of Esperanto text as opposed to English ones.

Lord's Prayer
(EO-En)/En ~= 0.16
UDHR Article I
(EO-En)/En ~= 0.146

Of course more work should be done to draw a safe conclusion. Further research can be done on
1. Differet kind of texts (Speech, literature, plays, etc)
2. Longer text, diffinitely

But for now we can see that EO text are indeed longer than English ones, but only by a small proportion.

Thank you for your help~

stefanpeterson (Mostrar o perfil) 31 de outubro de 2009 14:14:03

I got the UDHR text to 43 or 44 syllables (being is usually pronounced as if it's just one syllable, but I think it might be two) in English.

Anyway, yes, I think esperanto words are too long. It doesn't bother me in ordinary communication, but it doesn't lend itself well to poetry. okulumo.gif

ceigered (Mostrar o perfil) 31 de outubro de 2009 15:32:12

Being should be worth two syllables - it's pronounced /ˈbiːɪŋ/ which sounds like /biŋ/ (or /bɪŋ/ depending on accents and stuff like that) but is more drawn out and sounds a bit shaky, like the long i in Shanghainese (not that I'm an expert on Shanghainese, I just heard that their 'i's are /iɪ/ rather than /i:/lango.gif)

erinja (Mostrar o perfil) 18 de novembro de 2009 03:04:01

Very true, Novico Dektri, although I must admit that I'd be surprised if anyone told me "Mi kongresenbusis"

But "Mi busis kongresen" is totally believable.

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