3rdblade:It's old-fashioned Australian; ever since the invasion of the espresso machines, people don't say it much anymore. (It's 'flat white' now).

Then there's simple folks like me who use "coffee with milk", or forget to specify and tell the person to put "whatever you want" in there .

Interesting note about the German word 'hof'. In Korea it's a loanword but it means a tavern, not a yard. Perhaps it came from 'Bierhof' if there is such a thing..?

Maybe a more exciting take could be that "hop" is from "pub", but p lenited to ph and became "h" and b devoice ....... No one likes that idea? Thought so

Back to the subject, to whomever was asking, don't get mislead into thinking that "gxardeno" and "gardeno" carry the same nuances. In English, we have this weird thing going on because we have so many words for the same thing from different roots (e.g. Liberty and Freedom - you'll surely get people arguing that the two are different. I'm yet to be convinced that there are any differences though). Esperanto, however, tends (except with many greek neologisms) to have only one root for all these different nuances. So, if you want, rather than translating in your head "gxardeno" to "garden", translate it to "yard" or "soil out the back" or whatever you want.

3rdblade:

I have never heard of a "Bierhof".

Thinking about this today I wondered if it was as simple as 'hof' when pronounced/written in Korean is 'hopu' (호프), which sounds like hops, which is in beer. Plus hof is vaguely a 'place', and is a German word, and Germany is famous for beer.

Maybe you mean a "Brauerei-Innenhof"/ "bierfarejo malantaŭa korto"?. You could call it check-in/check-out area for the trucks/lorries, too. But probably they will use a ramp and not a malantaŭa korto.

Czech republic should be famous for beer, too. Pilsner

"Hop" is "Hopfen" (Text-to-Speech) in German.

When I inquired about a possible translation for the word "yard", I never dreamed that it was going to generate such passion, either in myself and in others.

erinja, I understand what you are driving at. I really do. And Alciona, I especially like your post. My objection to using "ĝardeno" to describe every plot of land that a house sits on, regardless of size or quality, is that it is so "tame", so "generic". My yard is not tame or generic, nor is it carefully cultivated. It is unique to my personality because I built it. It is "wild" in the sense that it needs constant attention: armidillos dig holes in it; deer have an annoying habit of eating my lily plants; raccoons and stray dogs get in the trash if I'm not careful, etc.

Imagine, if you will, putting a pumpkin, an apple and an olive on the table. Then you stand back and say "Jen! Tri olivoj!" But a pumpkin is not a large yellow olive, nor is an apple a mid-sized red olive. They are three different objects. And "ĝardeno" is obviously an inadequate word for trying to describe all shapes, sizes and qualities of yard/garden/lawn/plot of land, whatever.

Alciona, you spoke of words having nuances that make them unique, and you point out that when using Esperanto you are going to lose many of those subtleties in translation. You are so very right!

I fully agree that Esperanto is a living language. But "living language" implies growth. Esperanto is rather stagnant. If we could compare the Esperanto language to a large pot of soup simmering on the stove, I'd say that it needed seasoning. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, maybe a pinch of something else to give it more flavor.

We just need to be careful who we listen to when we begin to season it. And that does NOT mean allowing every beginner that comes along to change the grammar. That would simply destroy the language.

lavagulo:Alciona, you spoke of words having nuances that make them unique, and you point out that when using Esperanto you are going to lose many of those subtleties in translation. You are so very right!

That's true, if you begin by assuming a one-to-one equivalence between words in a different languages. But as you've shown very clearly with the example of 'yard', that equivalence doesn't exist even between US and British English.

If I were to visit your house, I'd call your yard a garden. If you let me stay with you a few weeks, I know from experience that I'll eventually start calling it a yard, but it won't come easily and I'll revert back to British usage as soon as I return to Blighty.

But neither word really says anything about the size or nature of the ground around your house. Whatever you call it, you still have to describe it for me to get any sort of picture of it in my mind.

I know so many people here in the near DC suburbs, who have a very small yard, not necessarily well-cultivated, who have problems with deer or rabbits eating their plants and raccoons or possums getting into the trash. It's still a "ĝardeno", regardless.

You complain of using just one word to describe too many different things. Yet you are happy to use the word "yard" for the guy from Phoenix with a big patch of sand and cacti, and for the person in Maine with a half acre or so of grass and bushes in the clearing of a forest, and for the McMansion owner with three acres of nothing but grass, and also for the townhouse owner in the inner city who has so little grass that it can be cut with a weed whacker. A yard can also be a big dirt area where livestock are collected, and it can also be a place where trains are kept, and it can also be a measurement slightly shorter than a meter. And you are complaining that ESPERANTO has too many diverse meanings for just one word?

With all due respect, it's myopic to say so. The Esperanto word "ĝardeno" is much more limited in meaning than the English word "yard". So maybe you should come up with some special word to describe your property in English, so that no one thinks that deer eat your plants in the exercise area of your prison (a yard).

And as someone has already noted, the word yard comes from the same root as "garden", so both words really go back to the same source regardless (which means "garden"). We in the US are not so special and unique as we may sometimes wish to be, and truly, our yards differ in almost zero respects from European "gardens" in analogous areas (urban yard with urban "garden", rural yard with rural "garden", etc) The large "garden" surrounding the house of my relatives in small-town England is indistinguishable from a yard of a similar house in the US. It has some areas with flowers and some with bushes, and a vegetable garden, but it's mostly wide expanses of grass, with a small fish pond.

A pumpkin, an apple and an olive are all fruits, and I doubt you would have a problem with referring to them as fruit. Calling all different sorts of gardens and yards "ĝardenoj" is similar to saying that pumpkins, apples, olives, grapes, and durians are all fruits. The difference is that in Esperanto, you'd use an adjective or a compound word to distinguish between types, as opposed to using an entirely separate word.

This enables people to recognize like things, worldwide. You don't have to learn 100 different words to describe what constitutes a "yard" in different parts of the world. As you know, it varies so widely even in the US (yet we call them all a yard). You learn one word (ĝardeno) and add adjectives as necessary.

legomĝardeno, sovaĝa ĝardeno, florĝardeno, bierĝardeno, ludoĝardeno, bestoĝardeno, etc.

erinja:A pumpkin, an apple and an olive are all fruits, and I doubt you would have a problem with referring to them as fruit. Calling all different sorts of gardens and yards "ĝardenoj" is similar to saying that pumpkins, apples, olives, grapes, and durians are all fruits. The difference is that in Esperanto, you'd use an adjective or a compound word to distinguish between types, as opposed to using an entirely separate word.

This enables people to recognize like things, worldwide. You don't have to learn 100 different words to describe what constitutes a "yard" in different parts of the world.

To extrapolate, one might say then "why not have just one word for all the fruits"? But this comes down to the science of classification, and to what we actually see as a fruit vs individual fruits, and gardens vs individual gardens. To be honest, a garden, yard, whatever (ironically I get the sense the US refer to fields-for-backyards as "yards", while Aussies can call whatever's behind their house a "yard"), is like a work of art, and so their aren't two the same - and that's what gardens or yards are, artistically or functionally modified or maintained land belonging to a house. If you want to specify size, at "et" or "eg" to the root.

On the flip side, other things, like fruits, etc, are not so personal, and therefore don't have to be so ambiguous in meaning. Plus, misidentifying a garden isn't likely to kill you, but misidentifying a plant, fruit, electrical cable, etc, could very much kill you .

erinja, you and I seem to share one trait in common; we are both bull-headed, obstinate and stubborn.

I recognize that less-than-admirable trait in myself and try to deal with it whenever possible. But you need to take a look in your mirror. This is my last post on the fiery subject of yard vs. ĝardeno.

Believe it or not, I learned from the exchange. I hope the other readers enjoyed it also. Adiaŭ.

lavagulo, erinja,

I believe you both discussed about an important part of your identity.

Just to mentioned it. Not to fill oil into the fire: I believe an "Schrebergarten" is also quite important for many city people and is cultivated very lovingly. (You probably name it Allotment (gardening))

I'm not sure why anyone is even talking about identity here.

This has nothing to do with identity and everything about the correct translation between English and Esperanto terminology. If someone views it as a cultural identity, in terms of what their backyard is called in Esperanto, then something strange is going on. This is a very straightforward translation, and I can't help but think that if someone is so intensely resistant to calling something by its widely-accepted Esperanto name, this will only be the first of many problems that they have in Esperantujo.

erinja:I'm not sure why anyone is even talking about identity here.

You can name me directly. I can handle that. It was not my intention to blame you or push your matter into something. But that is my personal non-english native speaker point of view. Sorry about. Maybe the German "Identität" has a different meaning as the english "identity" term and I didn't get the quiet tunes of that. I don't know. Sorry about my comments.

Peace, happiness, panecake.

Thanks.