Berichten: 4
Taal: English
yyaann (Profiel tonen) 31 januari 2010 23:58:10
while learning the fine points of Esperanto grammar, I came across the sentence «Vi farbas la domon rugxa» (You're painting the house red).
Now, would that mean, much to my delight, that as handy a phrase structure as «He slid the door open» could be used as is in Esperanto?
If so, how would you go about to translate the aforementioned sentence? Maybe something like «Li glitigis la pordon malferma»?
Thanks in advance for your help.
erinja (Profiel tonen) 1 februari 2010 01:21:17
Also because "gliti" (to glide) is an intransitive verb. So even if we use the wording you suggest, it would have to be "Li glitigis la pordon malferma".
But I wouldn't really recommend that kind of wording. It is grammatical but it doesn't sound very nice to my ear; Esperanto values elegant economy of words.
yyaann (Profiel tonen) 1 februari 2010 17:00:24
erinja:Also because "gliti" (to glide) is an intransitive verb. So even if we use the wording you suggest, it would have to be "Li glitigis la pordon malferma".Uh? Isn't "glitigis" precisely the word I used? What's the difference between my sentence and yours?
erinja:I'd use a compound word to get a meaning like "He slid the door open". For example, I might say "Li glitmalfermis la pordon".I see. It's interesting that Esperanto can get even less verbose than English, at least in that one case. Thank you Erinja.
erinja (Profiel tonen) 1 februari 2010 17:24:07
yyaann:I'm so sorry, I was evidently paying zero attention when I wrote my sentence. I had in my mind that you'd said glitis, obviously I wrote my response without looking back at your sample sentence to confirm what I thought!erinja:Also because "gliti" (to glide) is an intransitive verb. So even if we use the wording you suggest, it would have to be "Li glitigis la pordon malferma".Uh? Isn't "glitigis" precisely the word I used? What's the difference between my sentence and yours?
In any case, the rest of my comment regarding elegance still stands.