darkweasel:(tommjames, you know whom I'm talking about, don't you? )

I beleive I may do Is this the same person who is so troubled by the mavaj vortoj?

tommjames:

darkweasel:(tommjames, you know whom I'm talking about, don't you? )

I beleive I may do Is this the same person who is so troubled by the mavaj vortoj?

I think so, yeah!

I'd like to make a comparison between the lernu forums and a Linux forum.

I am writing this using Windows 7, the latest MicroSoft OS. Now I am no fan of MicroSoft. It is bloated, expensive, and constantly trying to make the user do things its way. But I, the computer user, have the unreasonable notion that I'd like to do things MY way.

I also have Ubuntu Linux vs. 9.10 on another computer. I like it. Pure and simple, I like it. I have the unorthodox notion that, after you get past the rather steep Linux learning curve, Ubuntu is better than Windows. This will start another war because Linux has a large number of distributions and some people like one distro and some like another. I have found Ubuntu a pleasure to work with.

Ubuntu brings out a new version every six months. About a year ago, I was having trouble with multimedia on the version that I was then using. I went to the Ubuntu forums and posted my questions. I got help! Real, valuable, top of the line help! Someone on the forum spent more than an hour with me getting it straightened out and at the end, I was watching videos and listening to music. Needless to say, I was happier than a horse loose in a corn field.

The lernu forums are also helpful but not to the same extent. There are too many dabblers and dilettantes on this forum who are interested in just about everything BUT the Esperanto language. There are a small handful of experienced Esperantists on the forums and they really put themselves out for us less experienced users. Who cares, though, if Esperanto is trying to take over the world. It isn't, although if someone tried to force me to learn Esperanto, I'd promptly forget everything I had ever learned about it. Who was it who said that you can't herd cats? Some people just jump feet-first into the Esperanto movement and forget that Esperanto is a practical working language and like any working language, it takes time and effort to master.

I recently posted something about the word 'zorgi' on another thread. It didn't go anywhere much. It's too bad that this doesn't work like the Linux forum. For some reason I have a real problem with the root 'zorg-'. It would be nice to be able to master it. I'd like to get a couple of English speaking correspondents who really want to learn Esperanto. We could, maybe, use Esperanto for 75 or 80 percent of our writing, and use the rest to help each other with questions and uncertain points. And, of course, lernu for bigger questions. Non-English speaking correspondents would be even more of a challenge.

lavagulo:I recently posted something about the word 'zorgi' on another thread. It didn't go anywhere much.

For what it's worth lavagulo, here's my opinion on that.

The distinction between "zorgi pri" and "prizorgi" as correctly explained by Erinja is I beleive a useful one and I have seen the two forms used in this way many times. However I have some doubts about how widespread and concrete a distinction this is in the minds of speakers within the community as a whole. Your quotes from being Colloquial in Esperanto appear to blur the distinction and imply that either form can be used for either idea, and I've seen it suggested similarly in other dictionaries. However, it is my noticing that such a situation applies to several other words and expressions in Esperanto, such as for example the distinction between "sola" and "nura", where several dictionaries and grammar books advise on the correct usage in a way that isn't completely reflected by real world usage by speakers today. This I would think is a natural result of the fact that Esperanto isn't very widely spoken, and thus it can sometimes be difficult for a unanimous consensus opinion to emerge on the exact meanings or nuances of certain words or phrases, as might be more the case in a national language. So my view would be use prizorgi and zorgi pri in the way Erinja suggests, and don't be too worried if you see usages and definitions that depart from that interpretation in some way.

If your Esperanto is up to it there is a section in PMEG that explains the effect a prefixed "pri" can have on verbs and other parts of speech, here: http://bertilow.com/pmeg/vortfarado/afiksoj/afik.... Hopefully this will assist you on your journey towards full mastery of zorgi

darkweasel:
The user I'm talking about (tommjames, you know whom I'm talking about, don't you? ) misbelieved that Esperantists wanted to remove the existence of nations, and that homaranismo was a part of Esperantism. Which of course isn't the case.

I had a feeling it was something silly like that. That kind of thing can be easily dismissed.

I once attended a church where I was good friends with the minister. She used to get complaints from members about the character of other members and how "they wouldn't want to attend a church where the other people acted in 'such a way', etc". Her response to such complaints was always, "Well, if you don't need us to make you a better person, then perhaps the church needs you to help make us a better church". This logic always made sense to me. No movement, especial one that deals in idealism, is ever going to be perfect. But, you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you feel the movement has flaws, you can't improve it by dropping out of it.

Demian:I'd compare Esperanto with the Catholic Church or Communism or World Politics or any other cult one can think of! They've all got just one thing in common: Keep the folks busy dreaming about a better tomorrow! Dreaming is not bad but I suspect if any of the cults do more good than harm!

There is something similar in Esperanto - it just captures your imagination so much that it becomes hard to live in the manner one lived before he/she didn't know about Esperanto. One gets addicted! I hate the language but hardly a day passes when I haven't read a page or two in Esperanto! It is a cult! I believe I need to see a doctor or consult some deaddiction centre!

Until now I didn't react but now it's enough. I'm an atheist and I don't accept that you mix things like that. You are confusing things: the fact to learn/speak/enjoy esperanto and the fact to support it. In some extreme case *some* people can be viewed as preachers, and *some* of them directly attack english. Now PLEASE don't put me in the same bag with that guys, I'm not one of them and I don't accept that you say esperanto is a religion or something like that. It's not a doctrine or an ideology, but a community, with people that have very different way of thinking, and you noticed only the most visible ones without going in depth.

Roberto12:
2. The closer something is to perfect, the more prominent the imperfections. Analogy: natlangs are like battered old cars - you accept that they're "old bangers" and don't worry much about them. Esperanto is like a Rolls Royce with a scratch down the side - it's all too easy to worry and obsess over that scratch, and talk about it, when if it had been on the old banger you'd hardly notice it.

I feel like the exemple of the Roll Royce is not really appropriate. Natural language can be a Roll Royce: rich, confortable, beautiful, etc. Esperanto looks like a Smart for me. Small, practical. Some are ashamed that it's not that confortable, that you cannot put big luggage in the back or driving at 160 km/h on the highway.

jan aleksan:

Roberto12:
2. The closer something is to perfect, the more prominent the imperfections. Analogy: natlangs are like battered old cars - you accept that they're "old bangers" and don't worry much about them. Esperanto is like a Rolls Royce with a scratch down the side - it's all too easy to worry and obsess over that scratch, and talk about it, when if it had been on the old banger you'd hardly notice it.

I feel like the exemple of the Roll Royce is not really appropriate. Natural language can be a Roll Royce: rich, confortable, beautiful, etc. Esperanto looks like a Smart for me. Small, practical. Some are ashamed that it's not that confortable, that you cannot put big luggage in the back or driving at 160 km/h on the highway.

I do believe that Roberto was not comparing the beauty of a Rolls Royce with the beauty of a language, but rather the lack of imperfections of Esperanto with the lack of imperfections of a well-looked after expensive car. The analogy he was giving was that because it's "marketed" as being perfect, as soon as there is a minor blemish (e.g. a scratch on a car that's meant to be without fault) people will start complaining. However, if you have a car that's got lots of scratches, another scratch won't matter. It's not so much about the aesthetics (personally, I think Rolls Royces look ugly and dull, I like futuristic looking vehicles, however, I'd expect a Rolls Royce to have no scratches on it, where as my futuristic cars probably will have scratches on them from driving through hordes of zombies, Terminators and whatever else is meant to exterminate mankind in the future, so I won't notice another scratch ).

Let's admit it - there are relatively few natural langauges that are without blemish like a Rolls Royce. But just because he said Rolls Royce is without blemish, it doesn't mean Roberto's saying only Rolls Royces are beautiful. Roberto might think smashed, broken and rusty VW Beetles are beautiful for all we know.

I believe you can put big luggage in the back of Esperanto, and also go 160 km/h on the highway. People just aren't accustomed to doing it, so they think they can't.

The Linux/Esperanto analogy breaks down for me regarding the forum help, though. Linux is programmed in a certain way. In a lot of cases, if you have a problem with it, there is a concrete cause. Someone with Linux experience would likely be able to tell you the possible causes for your problem, and you can try each potential fix, and solve your problem.

This fix will either be right or wrong (it will fix the problem, or it won't).

A grammar problem isn't like that. For any language! Even with English grammar, there are points of disagreement. Some very eminent linguists will tell you that one thing is correct, and some other very eminent linguists will say no, that's not correct. You can't expect anything less of Esperanto. I got started with Esperanto in 1995, and I've been fluent and involved in the community for quite some time now. I can tell you that in my experience, people use this word to mean that. But someone else's experience might be that people use this word to mean this other thing. Who is right? Both of those usages may be considered objectively correct, even though I am not familiar with the usage that someone else reports commonly hearing. It's true of English as well, so you can't say that this is a feature of Esperanto.

Ceigered, I think you overestimate the flexibility that Zamenhof built into Esperanto. This is a weird thing for me to say because I see Esperanto as being extremely flexible. But if you read Zamenhof's early writings, you will see that for the most part, they are remarkably self-consistent, and that they differ little from today's standard Esperanto.

Zamenhof wrote his rules very broadly, as an outline. But Esperanto is more than those rules; that's why Zamenhof wrote a whole collection of texts that comprise the Fundamento. Esperanto grammar is derived from these texts, in combination with the 16 brief rules. So I would definitely not take the brevity of the rules to mean that the Esperanto community has made Esperanto more rigid than Zamenhof intended.

Furthermore, if you really get into the linguistic aspects of it, you will find that people have applied the rules in such a way that in some cases, we are more flexible than Zamenhof probably envisioned, with our use of words.

For the record, I see "sola" and "nura" as different, and I do not use them in the same way.

erinja:For the record, I see "sola" and "nura" as different, and I do not use them in the same way.

Yup, same here. I was referring to the way some people say nura instead of sola, for something like "the only man who came" they would say "la nura viro kiu venis" which PMEG and various other sources mark as incorrect since nura means "mere". Some time ago I investigated this and it seems nura does sometimes get used that way, even by some of the best speakers. I know a certain person familar to both of us who always speaks like that

As for the car analogy, I agree, Esperanto would be something like an F1 car with a trunk the size of a grand piano. That has been my experience and of those with whom I speak every day.

erinja:Ceigered, I think you overestimate the flexibility that Zamenhof built into Esperanto. This is a weird thing for me to say because I see Esperanto as being extremely flexible. But if you read Zamenhof's early writings, you will see that for the most part, they are remarkably self-consistent, and that they differ little from today's standard Esperanto.

While I agree that I overestimate the flexibility of the language, I must ask rather ignorantly - what exactly is that in reply to? Is it on another thread because I'm lost now (is this in relation to the se... -us discussion? Or my accidental-thinking-aloud in relation to slang esperanto and writing hypthetically as if it were reality... if that makes any sense?)

And I agree with your comments about Linux/Esperanto. If you've got a Linux problem, there's nothing the good ol' Terminal can't solve (rather simplistic view, but it suffices for now ). Esperanto though is like programming a system that can communicate with ~2,000,000 different computers with slightly different architectures.