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Olda and oldulo?

door lavagulo, 28 maart 2010

Berichten: 13

Taal: English

lavagulo (Profiel tonen) 28 maart 2010 23:01:51

I noticed the word 'oldulo' in a recent thread. So I leafed through my new dictionary and found, to my surprise, that the word was legitimate. 'Olda' and 'oldulo' are real words in Esperanto and mean 'old' and 'old man'? How did these creep into Esperanto? It seems to me that they are too "English" and the Esperanto words 'maljuna' and 'malnova' would be better used. They must be annoying to non-English speakers.

Mi traduku esperante por ekzerci min: Mi rimarkis la vorton "oldulo" en antaŭnelonge fadeno. Do mi foliumis la novan vortaron de John C. Wells kaj trovis, je mia surprizo, ke la vorto estis aŭtentika. 'Olda' kaj 'oldulo' estas aŭtentikaj esperantaj vortoj kaj signifas 'old' and 'old man'? Ŝajnas al mi ke tiuj vortoj estas tro anglaj kaj la esperantaj vortoj anstataŭe devus esti uzataj . Kial ne uzu la vortojn 'maljuna' kaj 'malnova'?

erinja (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 02:46:38

The root word old/ has an interesting past.

I believe it is a loan word from Ido. I don't know whether the Ido meaning corresponds to maljuna or maljuna - or both. In any case, it is an Ido word that was brought into Esperanto. But it never replaced maljuna and malnova. Rather, it evolved to take on a different meaning. In modern usage, it often means "old" with a connotation of out-dated, not in keeping with the times, etc. An "oldulo" would therefore be an old person who is resistant to change. It's a pejorative, akin to calling someone an "old timer" or perhaps an "old fart" in English. Normally it is applied to older people within the Esperanto movement who exhibit these characteristics.

I have seen some citations of its use to mean a simple old man (Hemingway's "The old man and the sea" seems to have been translated with oldulo - or else, is this the old fart connotation as well? I have not read it, personally). I have seen some asian uses of it that seem to indicate not just an old man, but an elder. In any case, the connotation is somewhat different than a simple man who is old.

It's not a commonly used root. Feel free to stick to maljunulo when talking about old men, it's really the most common choice.

Timtim (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 06:59:58

erinja:In modern usage, it often means "old" with a connotation of out-dated, not in keeping with the times, etc. An "oldulo" would therefore be an old person who is resistant to change. It's a pejorative, akin to calling someone an "old timer" or perhaps an "old fart" in English.
That's interesting. The older people (young at heart, long-time speakers from the UK) that I spoke to about this refer to themselves as olduloj. When I asked them why maljunuloj didn't work for them they gave me the opposite response to yours; they thought that maljunulo came across as pejorative (since it's centred on their no longer being young) and that olduloj gave them a sense of equality, since they had their own label, instead of a morph of someone else's.

Maybe this is an example of different interpretations across cultures. It's a shame that PIV only gives maljuna as its definition for olda, as does Wells's recently updated dictionary.

Evildela (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 09:39:26

This is rather intriguing; I would like to know what it means to the majority of people. As I love new words that have a culture twist rather then a direct translation, but then again I don't want to use it and offend some old timer. lango.gif

lavagulo (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 12:11:40

This is both interesting and informative. Personally, I don't consider any of the three words ('old timer', 'old fart' or 'maljunulo') as pejorative. If you read a lot, 'old timer' is a common word and doesn't come across as pejorative. Many societies honor the old. When I do something particularly nutty (as we all commonly do), I'll sometimes call myself a 'nutty old fart'. I'm not flattering myself but I'm also not being pejorative. And 'maljunulo'? That, to me, is just a common Esperanto word built from a root, an ending, a suffix and a prefix. What is pejorative about that?

'Olda', though, is a new one for me. I had never seen it before and never noticed it in the dictionary. Now that I'm aware of it, I see that both Wells and Butler have it in their dictionaries -- but only as a one-liner. Thanks for the info. I think I'll stick to using 'malnova' and 'maljuna' whenever possible, though.

Miland (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 13:06:51

The examples of oldulo from Monato in the tekstaro are not derogatory, though their number is small. Olda may be like many adjectives, created (or imported) in order to avoid using the prefix mal, particularly by poets, and the debate over such neologismoj is continuing. There is a useful list in PMEG (last but one box on the page, which follows the heading Alternativoj al MAL-vortoj).

ceigered (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 13:56:28

I wish they'd just choose all these neologisms which are related to each other from the same language lango.gif

qwertz (Profiel tonen) 29 maart 2010 17:54:15

Hhm, I don't no why, but I dislike using the mal- prefix. Yes I know it's quite handy. But it looks somewhat ugly. Or maybe it's boring me at the dictionary due to its often appearing in the beginning of the regarding words. One day I will find out excacly why. One day ...

mrdeano (Profiel tonen) 1 april 2010 20:18:16

What's wrong with it being too English?

Scalex (Profiel tonen) 1 april 2010 20:26:02

mrdeano:What's wrong with it being too English?
Usually, Esperanto words are taken from words which exist in multiple languages, and spread across a large area - juna is related to the German, French, and Spanish (from a quick check in lernu's vortaro), whereas "old" is primarily English.

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