sudanglo:There are many word-order restrictions in Esperanto, Geo, as you will see, as you learn the language. The idea that you can put the words in any order is nowhere near the truth.

Look Sudanglo, I have never said that you could put the words in "any" order. I only noticed that the word order is not fixed, like it is with English. You can move parts of the sentence to show their importance or whatever. The golden rule is to follow the logic.

Mi dormas en la lito - OK
Dormas mi en la lito - OK
En la lito mi dormas - OK
En la lito dormas mi - OK
Lito la en dormas mi - HMM??? Stupid!

ceigered:

Anyway, for me the interesting thing here is that it's not "multaj ĉinaj urboj", but "ĉinaj multaj urboj" - it seems like a delibrate contrast, so that "ĉinaj" is not so much an adjective but a genitive construction (linguistically speaking). Of course Esperanto normally uses "de" in genitive constructions, but that doesn't mean anything using "de" is a genitive construction I guess...

I'm not so sure it's a genitiveish construction: the rule in English is the number goes first, then color, then size, then other adjectives. Obviously Chinese is different in this respect. I see it as just a different word order for "kvin ĉinaj urboj."

sudanglo:On the other hand, I suppose that there are more than 5 southern provinces, though I don't know what the situations is.

I think in this case, whether intentional or not, they are referring to what seems to be a block of "southern provinces" - Guangdong (the bit next to Hong Kong), which ironically is one of the most southern provinces, but it's name literally means according to wikipedia "Wide East" ("wide eastern expanse", and since it is on the coast, I guess the Chinese see it as being "eastern" (just like how South Australia is actually not very south at all, but it's the only part of the mainland that only borders the ocean from the south).

So I believe that "5 sudaj provincoj" acts like a noun phrase as you mentioned here, rather than the alternative of "five (out of a possible 3000) provinces" .

Anyway, that got me too at first which is why I almost called it purely strange until I saw what seemed to be a pattern.

"5 sudaj provincoj ĉinaj" seems pretty equal to "Ĉinaj 5 sudaj provincoj", since you're still splitting up the adjectives. "La 5 ĉinaj provincoj" however seems like a nice alternative if we needed to pick one, although worthy of note is that Chinese lacks a "la" equivalent in normal writing/speaking. (edit: I say "la" because the 5 prementioned provinces seem to be a single entity, like e.g. "the south of England" or "the 50billion states of America" and so forth).

- now I'm rather interested to know how common this may be amongst Chinese Esperantists (or any other, but I pick the Chinese ones since there's a lot of them and they speak a dominant world language). It might be interesting to get an idea of how common so we can know whether it's just an individual, or an entire demographic, or just Chinese bigger esperantists, or all of them, or half/half, etc.
Anyone equally interested and reasonably fluent in Chinese?

From PMEG:

PMEG:Antaŭpriskriboj estas ordinaraj A-vortoj: la ruĝa domo, la du grandaj domoj. O-vorto povas havi plurajn antaŭmetitajn A-vortojn: tiuj dek grandaj nigraj Hindaj ĉemizoj. Oni tiam normale metas ĝeneralajn A-vortojn unue (grandaj), kaj specialajn A-vortojn pli poste (Hindaj).

Preceding descriptions are ordinarily a-words [adjectives]: la ruĝa domo [the red house], la du grandaj domoj [the two large houses]. O-words [nouns] can have several A-words placed before them: tiuj dek grandaj nigraj Hindaj ĉemizoj [those ten large black Indian shirts]. One normally puts general A-words first (grandaj), and specialized A-words later (Hindaj).

I think the sentence reads a bit strangely because it puts "ĉina" first; PMEG doesn't explicitly say that it's wrong to put "ĉina" first, but by putting "ĉina" first, you are not making the "ordinary" choice, which is why it hits the ear a little strangely.

I would personally say the sentence as "5 sudaj ĉinaj provincoj", or even "5 sudĉinaj provincoj".

ceigered:

Jen, la artikoloj:
Ĉinaj 5 sudaj provincoj suferas de frosta vetero

For me, it sounds ok if the grammar of Esperanto is not wrong, 中国五个南方城市Ĉinaj 5 sudaj provincoj。 It is by using the Chinese grammar. Thus, in Esperanto estas says Espranto has the Chinese grammar for those who learn Esperanto first, learning Chinese is easy as the grammar is similiar.

BTW it is 我有十只猫，只but not 个,只is for animal 个is for thing.

Ne 没有，not 不有。There is no such form as 不有。

orthohawk:

ceigered:

Anyway, for me the interesting thing here is that it's not "multaj ĉinaj urboj", but "ĉinaj multaj urboj" - it seems like a delibrate contrast, so that "ĉinaj" is not so much an adjective but a genitive construction (linguistically speaking). Of course Esperanto normally uses "de" in genitive constructions, but that doesn't mean anything using "de" is a genitive construction I guess...

I'm not so sure it's a genitiveish construction: the rule in English is the number goes first, then color, then size, then other adjectives. Obviously Chinese is different in this respect. I see it as just a different word order for "kvin ĉinaj urboj."

I'm not sure if you know Chinese better than me or not, so forgive me and do correct me if I'm making mistakes here. But from my experience Chinese adjective order is the same, but they do have complications involving numbers and genitive constructions, since "artificial" adjectives (those that are made from nouns) use the genitive marker after them.

Thus my assumption that "ĉina" there could be a sort of pseudo-genitive construction, using -a to translate -de instead of "de ĉinujo" or using "la" instead.

*In regards to how "ĉina" translates to Chinese, there's many ways, but one of the more simpler ways:
Zhongguo = China ("Middle kingdom", although now more "Middle country")
Zhongguode = Chinese

De Ĉinujo:
Zhongguode = of China

So that's my theory for this Ĉina being "ahead of the pack" so to say

EoMy:BTW it is 我有十只猫，只but not 个,只is for animal 个is for thing.

Thanks! I read about that after I did the poll and then decided "Oh well, those cats are people or things or something now" (it's like saying "saya punya sepuluh ekor kucing" yes?) At least it is understandable, I almost wrote "我有十个毛" - that would have been disrespectful of me

ceigered:
I'm not sure if you know Chinese better than me or not, so forgive me and do correct me if I'm making mistakes here. But from my experience Chinese adjective order is the same, but they do have complications involving numbers and genitive constructions, since "artificial" adjectives (those that are made from nouns) use the genitive marker after them.

Thus my assumption that "ĉina" there could be a sort of pseudo-genitive construction, using -a to translate -de instead of "de ĉinujo" or using "la" instead.

*In regards to how "ĉina" translates to Chinese, there's many ways, but one of the more simpler ways:
Zhongguo = China ("Middle kingdom", although now more "Middle country")
Zhongguode = Chinese

De Ĉinujo:
Zhongguode = of China

So that's my theory for this Ĉina being "ahead of the pack" so to say

I learn Chinese by birth though may not as good as those in China. zhongguo is short for 中 华人民共和国

We don't use zhongguo wege nanfang chengshi 中国的五个南方城市，with 的, de, ，is speacial like the in English

Off beat: Look at the sentence 罕见暴雨连续侵袭中国南方多地 , it should be 多个地方，but it is shorten from 4 to 2 words.

more can be search on net

Whatever might be the natural tendency for a Chinese speaker of Esperanto, we can't encourage them to impose certain alien patterns on Esperanto anymore than we should encourage, say, Hungarian Esperanto speakers to import their own variants.

Esperanto, as it is today, has its own is tried and tested 'natural' patterns. There may be experimentation at the margins, but no benefits will accrue from messing with established word order restrictions/implications in basic sentences.

Well, was it quite so alien? I pretty much understood it instantly without even having to recall anything about chinese grammatical patterns, and I normally use a very strict order of adjectives...