Messaggi: 20
Lingua: English
roint (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 00:07:39
"I should've brought a tissue."
How would this be expressed? The best thing I could come up with was "Mi estu kunportinta naztukon." but would there be a better or more recognizable way of saying it?
Rogir (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 00:12:47
erinja (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 00:21:09
Oŝo-Jabe (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 03:53:23
Languages don't always "draw lines" the same way as each other. The phrase "I should've brought tissues." is the natural compliment to "I didn't bring tissues." People are so quick to go for the literal word-for-word translation, which while grammatically correct is often somewhat contrived ("Mi devintus porti naztukon", "Mi estu kunportinta naztukon") instead of the idea-for-idea translation, which will not always resemble the original phrase ("I should've brought a tissue" vs. "Mi ne memoris kunporti naztukon.")
Miland (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 11:31:48
roint:"I should've brought a tissue."There is no exact Esperanto equivalent to "should have"; devintus has been mentioned as a commonly used approximation.
Paper tissues usually come in sets, so one possibility might be Estus bone se mi kunportus paperpoŝtukojn.
darkweasel (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 17:34:10
Miland:How exactly is "devintus" no exact equivalent?roint:"I should've brought a tissue."There is no exact Esperanto equivalent to "should have"; devintus has been mentioned as a commonly used approximation.
darkweasel (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 18:53:44
niko-tina:You only argue that you generally don't use this (which isn't true, but we discussed this somewhere else already on this forum). Not that it isn't exact in some way, so my question stays.darkweasel:Because generally you don't verbalize participle forms of words that are already verbs. Except for this one I guess...Miland:How exactly is "devintus" no exact equivalent?roint:"I should've brought a tissue."There is no exact Esperanto equivalent to "should have"; devintus has been mentioned as a commonly used approximation.
Miland (Mostra il profilo) 22 gennaio 2010 19:24:59
darkweasel:Devintus means 'would have had to'. That is a stronger expression than 'should have', which expresses only desirability, not something compulsory.Miland:There is no exact Esperanto equivalent to "should have"; devintus has been mentioned as a commonly used approximation.How exactly is "devintus" no exact equivalent?
Volatile (Mostra il profilo) 24 gennaio 2010 12:47:07
(Also, this verbing of participles is something I've been playing with a lot lately.
It gives one a means of expressing quite complex temporal relationships using rather simple grammar... (Ekzemple la formo "parolontinte"...
) Miland (Mostra il profilo) 24 gennaio 2010 15:16:47
Volatile:Why "devintus" and not "devintu"? It expresses a wish, not a conditional, right?The problem is that should have is neither a wish for something in the future, (for which we would use the imperative -u) nor a hypothetical conditional on something else (for which we would use -us). It is a wish that the past had been different, which is impossible since the past cannot be brought back.
However, given that should have has no exact Esperanto equivalent, we may still ask how Esperantists could express the same thought. Possible ways might be Mi volas ke mi kunportis poŝtukon, or Ve! Mi ne kunportis poŝtukon!, and others which have already been suggested.