I think devus is absolutely correct in such a case. And please don't use lasu nin to translate English/German idiomatic let's/lass(t) uns ...

darkweasel:I think devus is absolutely correct in such a case. And please don't use lasu nin to translate English/German idiomatic let's/lass(t) uns ...

You're right, darkweasel. I already corrected my message before you responded.

Why don't you English or X-language speakers "EXPLAIN" your idea in Esperanto (Elaborate the idea) rather than finding exact equivalent for your NATIVE words...
Again take this example: " Laugh my ass off". You simply can elaborate the idea rather than trying to translate it word by word... (word by word translation of that example doesn't make sense for others)!!!!
The same thing is true about Should and Must...
Those terms have different meanings in different statements... Why don't you ELABORATE the ideas behind those statements rather than trying to modify and adjust Esperanto!!!... If you do not Elaborate doubtful terms in Esperanto then you just trading and ex-changing some new words for your Native words....
Same happens when you translate French or Persian poems to English.... You "Should" you "Must" you "Have to" ELABORATE them! Word by Word translation doesn't work their.. why do you insist to make it otherwise in Esperanto?
Again, is Esperanto a self-proved language or it is just a manner of exchange of terms?

Roberto12:

horsto:

Roberto12:
I mean "ought to".

As you said "YOU MEAN ought to"... You meant that... .Okay! Why don't you simply explain your hidden ideas which are embedded in English or any other languages in Esperanto?
Why do you insist to PUT YOUR NATIVE TERMS IN ESPERANTO TONGUE?
I can't believe my eyes.. I am new to Esperanto but the way you are dealing with it, it says that Esperanto is not stand-alone language! And if it is so, why should bother to learn it at all?!?

I always think that there are a lot of things similar in Esperanto and german
, but perhaps people from other languages have the same feeling.

Why are you looking for similarity? Why do you reduce the Esperanto to a toy for playing around with?
Is Esperanto Esperanto, or it is something similar to something else?
Shit! I thought Esperanto was a language BY ITSELF with no absolute need to be proven by other languages or a need to be similar to any of them!
Seems I was wrong.

ka_veh:Shit! I thought Esperanto was a language BY ITSELF with no absolute need to be proven by other languages or a need to be similar to any of them!
Seems I was wrong.

Or you missed the point, were not doing a word for word translation, we are trying to explain how the English concept of should and must works within Esperanto, and only way you can do that is by giving examples. Once someone wraps their head around the fact that the root 'dev' means multiples things in Esperanto then they can start to form it naturally, until that time they use translations. For instance I've memorised Devintus as a separate word that means "should have" because atm I still can't quite get my head around its formation. And why are we looking for similarity? Well you have start somewhere, Once you know what’s similar then your able to use this to your advantage, afterall would you say “Don’t memories the word Kato by using its similarity in spelling and sound to the English word Cat!” The fastest way to learn any language is through looking for similarities.

If you search the corpus at tekstaro.com with devas/devis/devus and then try to translate the sentences back into English you will find that the natural translation in English may be 'should', 'must', 'have to' 'supposed to' 'ought', 'would have to' etc.

If you look in PIV2005 under 'devi', you find that the definition encompasses devoj pro materia neceso, pro praktika bezono, pro moral leĝo, pro fremda sintrudanta volo, pro logike probabla kondiĉo.

In other words the semantic scope of 'devi' is quite broad (from an English point of view).

So the answer to the question as to how you distinguish between 'should' and 'must' in Esperanto is that often you don't.

However if the meaning is insufficiently clear in context you can always be more precise by rephrasing or using some qualifying adverb.

Anyway, 'devus', can often be used when the devo is recognized but not acted on. There are plenty of examples of this in the corpus at Tekstaro.

This is not its only use however. It may be used as a hypothetical conditional as in 'Se mi ĉiam devus tion klarigi mi baldaŭ tre laciĝus'.

Evildela:
Or you missed the point, were not doing a word for word translation, we are trying to explain how the English concept of should and must works within Esperanto.

kaveh:
Do you take Imposing your own native idea to another language (Here Esperanto) as explain "within" Esperanto?
Thats for sure that we are all addicted to our own native language but come on, should we impose our addiction to Esperanto and jusify it by "How does it work within Esperanto".
It shouldn't work within Esperanto. It has to be adjusted to Esperanto not Esperanto to IT! Our addiction to our native languages shouldn't change the nature of Esperanto. Otherwise we won't be able to communicate in Esperanto. To you it will become new form of English with some new words and to me Farsi with just new terms.. Again we will have problem to understand eachother.
Do you want to speak English with Esperanto terms or you want to speak Esperanto? Thats my problem.

ka_veh:..t!..

Please avoid using swear words on the forum. Small kids could be reading it.

Esperanto is adequate for international communication. That is not the same as saying that it has exact equivalents for all words in national languages. The English word "should" is an example. Expressions containing it with their context could probably be put differently, though speakers of English have evolved approximate equivalents, like devintus for "should have" (in the past). For example "I should have bought the book" could be Mi devintus aĉeti la libron, but without devintus you could say Mi bedaŭras, ke mi ne aĉetis la libron, La libro vere estis aĉetinda, and so on.

From "La Bona Lingvo" by Claude Piron:

"Esperanto is not a national language, and does not share their aims or functions.
The criterion for judging its merit should not therefore be the extent to which it is capable of doing what national languages do, but the extent to which it fulfils its own function: acting as an intermediary between peoples.[/color] "

The first message I've got when I subscribed to Lernu! (Must or Should or have to)