erinja:trinkaĵo

a "trinko" would be a drink in the sense of the action of drinking. "I took a drink" (took a swig of a liquid) - that's trinko. "I took a drink" (picked up a beverage container) - that's trinkaĵo.

Ayayay, that's confusing - this is where esperantos similarities with native languages makes you mistake the logic of those languages for that of eo. I knew I should have done trinkajxo for safety

Thanks erinja!

ceigered:it's hard to mine tin from apples..

Mined tin is stano. Lado is sheet metal or tin plate. That's why "to can" is enladigi. The latter would be my justification for lado.

It's true that the French say une boîte de soupe for a tin of soup, but I just have this feeling that soup or Coke doesn't come in skatoloj.

Interestingly PIV2005 says that a skatolo usually has a lid and is used for containing solids. (This fits with the notion of box.) Though I wouldn't baulk at skatolo for a tin of paint.

I slowly warming to the idea of just a 'lado' - 'o' can be very general and a tin(can) is a lada 'o'.

I see you didn't rise to my challenge, Erinja, to find me a classic ujo whose contents are not replenished.

No offense but I had better things to do than 'rise to your challenge'. The dictionary definition of -uj- is good enough for me. And honestly if your personal definition differs slightly from what I read in dictionaries, that's fine by me. I don't have any particular interest in convincing you that I'm right and you're wrong.

There seems to be a shared logic with French and Italian that while there are boxes and are cans they are all called boites or scatole.

@ Sudanglo: RE you challenge, I present to you a classic ujo whose contents are not necessarily replenished and may but may not be disposable:

Ujo
noun
A vessel, vase, chest, box, or anything else that holds something. A container. Permanency irrelevant.

vessel, vase, chest, box

are all English words, and in each case they describe items whose contents are (or can be) changed from time to time. (Unlike a can which is discarded after opening.)

I may be wrong but I think that the fact that nobody has come up with an ujo word in Esperanto that does not share this characteristic of being essentially refillable rather proves my point.

Anyway as regards the distinction between a bottle and a can, 'ujo' won't do because a 'botelo' is also an 'ujo'.

If the Italians used 'scatole' for both 'box' and 'can', then perhaps a certain breadth of meaning can be applied to 'skatolo'.

The important point here is that if you believe that one day Esperanto will be used for all normal purposes. Then it needs to be ready for shopkeepers and trade in general.

Now suppose you own a corner shop and you are ordering stock by phone and you request a dozen skatoloj. Does this mean 12 cans or 12 cases?. The carboard boxes that cans of Coke come in are definitely skatoloj - aren't they.

Skatolo has a generic meaning more like the Italian meaning than the English meaning. It means more like a container than an actual box.

Esperanto as it stands today could easily be used by a shopkeeper to order stock. First - it is highly unlikely that a shopkeeper would be ordering only 12 cans of whatever. But even if he were, it would be an order of 12 skatoloj (boxes) versus 12 ladskatoloj (cans). At any rate, the Reta Vortaro defines a "skatolo" as an ujeto (small container). I think it's more likely that a shopkeeper would order a "kesto" (large box/chest/case) full of something, rather than a skatolo (small container). In American English at least, you wouldn't order 12 boxes of stock; you would order 12 cases.

This may be a moot point anyway. I have never worked in a shop but I suspect that things are ordered by number and not by box. I suspect that you would order "12 dozen bottles of ginger ale" and they arrive in however many boxes they arrive in.

And from the consumers point of view, if you're outside a vending machine, if you are saying to your friend that you want an ujo of coke while you're next to a vending machine, you're certainly not saying you're gonna buy the entire vending machine. So in that case, ujo works well.

(BTW: Sudanglo, a vessel can be disposable, unless Australian English is so badly contorted that we have different meaning for our words. So might a box. Ultimately, a container in general does not have any other meaning than "container" - thus, ujo does not have any other meaning than "container". It may be used for permanent object holders many times, but I believe it's similar in nature to -ary in English; that is, we say "library" (book place), and have -ary attached to many other buildings or purposeful places, but then we have "diary", with the same -ary, but in this case referring to a book).

@ Erinja:

Who knows, maybe "ero" (I'm assuming that's closest to "unit" in English as possible without neologisms) could be used, e.g. "Ni ĵus ricevis 12 kestoj da 250 koka-kola eroj, Sro!"

I may not have chosen the best specific example in arguing my case, but I think is easy to accept the need to distinguish between a can and a box (which might contain 2 dozen cans).

I'm looking for a way to avoid the term 'ladskatolo' for can/tin which I find far too clumsy for an everyday object.

Looking at the definition of 'kartono' in PIV 2005 I see that it is both cardboard and carton. So perhaps there is no good reason not to use 'lado' in the same way for the material and for the container.

'Du ladojn da dieta kolao, me petas, kaj ankaŭ botelon da hela biero' is beginning to sound OK.

I would be an interesting linguistic experiment to flash picture cards of easily recognisable 'ujoj' (eg jamjar, matchbox, can of Coke, tobacco tin, hat-box, bottle of aspirins, case of wine etc) to a group of Esperantists and get them to write down (without lengthy reflection) what they are.

Such an experiment, would illustrate the difference between Esperanto and the 'real languages'.

With a national language only the demented would not instantly know the right word. With Esperanto there might be considerable disagreement.

sudanglo:I'm looking for a way to avoid the term 'ladskatolo' for can/tin which I find far too clumsy for an everyday object.

It sounds fine to me. I hardly notice the length of it, it's just a word. Anyway, different languages end up saying things a bit longer or shorter. The succinct Esperanto word "skribilo" can be best expressed in English with the clumsy "writing implement", but no one is saying that English needs to make up some kind of new word, or to shorten "writing implement" down to "writimp" in order to remedy this flaw.

With a national language only the demented would not instantly know the right word. With Esperanto there might be considerable disagreement.

Unless you put an Australian, a Brit, an American, a Canadian, a New Zealander, and a South African in the room. Then your answers might differ seriously. And now imagine a language where the speakers aren't a Brit and an American, they're now a Kenyan, a Japanese, a Frenchman, a Russian, and an Argentinian. In these circumstances, I think you would be surprised at how much all of these people would agree upon!

When visiting my UK relatives, I am always on my guard when talking. I try to avoid using words that have different meanings in US and UK English, in order to avoid potential misunderstandings. I know for a fact that misunderstandings are possible, because more than once I have been asked if I wanted something and been surprised at what I was given when I said yes. And I'm coming from a position of pretty good knowledge. I'm not some provincial American who has never left Kansas and doesn't know that a lorry is what we call a truck. I've visited the UK several times. My mom is British and I grew up seeing various British relatives relatively often, usually when they came to see us. I watch a lot (too much) of British television and I read the British print media every day. Yet TV and print news doesn't cover every aspect of life and I still miss things.

This has been a long digression, but I told you that to tell you this - I have never had to modify my vocabulary to talk to Esperanto speakers from other cultures. I speak to people from all different countries without worries about being understood, and without need to remember 'foreign' Esperanto vocabulary. Yet I can't even talk to my own family members, in the native language that we all share, without someone (me or them) learning some additional vocabulary to ensure that we understand one another. So please don't rag on Esperanto for its speakers not being able to agree on the word for something. In most cases where there may be multiple words, they are all perfectly understandable to anyone who speaks the language at a reasonable level. Which is more than I can say for some American who goes to the UK and asks for a bag of chips, expecting to receive a packet of crisps.