sudanglo:And what do you say for hairpin bend? Harpingla ĝirejo!

You could say 'harpingla kurbiĝo' in this case.

Ĝiri in the sense of change direction separately defined for cars, boats and polarization was in PIV in 1970 and also appears in NPIV with a number of illustrations for ĝirejo (harpingla, blinda, danĝera) to do with alteration in the direction of roads.

In addition ĝirlampo is on the car page in the Praktika Bildvortaro de Esperanto (OUP1979) and ĝir- in numerous places in the Esperanta Bildvortaro - a heroic translation of the DUDEN Bilwœrterbuch produced by international collaboration between contributors from 25 countries over some 20 years

Searching the Tekstaro and CorpusEye produces no hits for turnindiklo or ĝirindikilo.

No surprise there, since we know that there are certain fields where Esperanto is rarely used.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't develop Esperanto's vocabulary for subjects that the Esperantists rarely discuss (unless you are of course some sort of Raŭmisto)

Perhaps you think that turning right (ie leaving the road you are on and joining another one) and bearing right (which keeps you on the same road) is not an important distinction. Perhaps you don't do much yachting in Esperanto either.

Honestly folks, I'm flabbergasted.

NJEsperantist. Does your GPS device allow you to select say French or German? Could you list how the instructions are dealt with in other languages.

sudanglo:Perhaps you think that turning right (ie leaving the road you are on and joining another one) and bearing right (which keeps you on the same road) is not an important distinction.

For what it's worth I think the distinction is useful. Though I'm not sure we need a special word for that meaning. To have a straight equivalent of "bear" would be nice, but I could imagine saying something like "direktu vin maldekstren" or "restu en la maldekstra koridoro", if I wanted to suggest keeping to the left and following the road rather that making a left turn. If ĝiri has indeed acquired the sense of turning a vehicle, as various sources suggest, then I think I agree with erinja that it's probably not the best choice for the idea of bearing in a certain direction. But as I said I have no experience with that verb, so that's just a humble opinion.

sudanglo:Ĝiri in the sense of change direction separately defined for cars, boats and polarization was in PIV in 1970 and also appears in NPIV with a number of illustrations for ĝirejo (harpingla, blinda, danĝera) to do with alteration in the direction of roads.

As I already said, PIV is the source of many dubious words, so the presence of a word in PIV doesn't mean "woo hoo, let's use it!". PIV is a lowest-common-denominator dictionary, in the sense that if ANYONE uses a certain word, it is probably in PIV. I would expect that if you were to look up "ri" in PIV, you would find it.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't develop Esperanto's vocabulary for subjects that the Esperantists rarely discuss (unless you are of course some sort of Raŭmisto)

Perhaps you think that turning right (ie leaving the road you are on and joining another one) and bearing right (which keeps you on the same road) is not an important distinction. Perhaps you don't do much yachting in Esperanto either.

As I already said earlier in this thread, there are ways to describe "bearing" towards a direction without using the word ĝir/.

I'm fully in favour of developing vocabulary to describe every aspect of life (though I am not sure why you link this to finvenkism/raumism, because I don't see a link). However, I also agree with many 'bonlingvist' ideas, so I would prefer to exhaust our supply of existing roots and using Esperanto's word building system, rather than taking roots with a totally different meaning and re-defining them for a new use.

Ĝiri is already commonly used in Esperantujo to describe bank transfers. I see it frequently when talking about transferring money to pay for a subscription, registration fee, or other payment.

And I think Esperanto has plenty of directional words. You want to distinguish between "to turn" and "to bear"? How about turnumi? How about "irumi"? "Celumi"? "Navigumi"? In fact, "to bear" has a number of meanings in English, and there is more than one correct Esperanto translation, depending on the situation. This is true even if we are talking only about the directional sense of "to bear", and ignoring bearing a load, or bearing children.

Bear north when sailing in the ocean? Direktiĝu norden. Navigumu norden.
Bear north when following a road? Laŭu la vojon norden.

If you believe that "ĝiri" is to turn as in a hairpin bend, then you shouldn't be using "ĝiri" to describe a bearing for nautical purposes. It seems that you are eager to use "ĝiri" as a catch-all word for everything having to do with turning, and I see zero need for that. Esperanto is already very well equipped for describing directions. And even if it weren't, I would be totally against re-defining an existing word. It would be better to make up a brand-new word than to take a word that describes financial transactions and re-defining it to talk about navigational commands.

Can we... turn 'dekstra' into a verb and just say "Dekstr(iĝ)u post 300 metroj."?

I'm mentioning this mostly for the sake of discussion and can't really say if that would be clearer/unclearer than 'turnu'.

I like the idea of using a verb based on the kurb- root. I agree that it seems that ĝiri seems to have been used incorrectly as a false friend to the Italian word, and has nothing to do with the original Esperanto root.

jefusan:false friend to the Italian word

Interessantemente, nel dizionario italiano-esperanto il nostro qui, c'è questa definizione per "ĝiri":
"girare [denaro]; girare [detto di navi, auto]"
Non capisco bene perché sono inglese di Gerrards Cross, ma penso che "girare" in inglese significa "to turn over money, to turn a boat/car".

And no, I won't talk about whose definition's better than whose. We're not up to comparatives yet!

Edit: This entire message is a pythonesque joke for those who know the skit. Those who can't understand can just look at the text inbetween """'s and figure out what my point is .

jefusan:I like the idea of using a verb based on the kurb- root. I agree that it seems that ĝiri seems to have been used incorrectly as a false friend to the Italian word, and has nothing to do with the original Esperanto root.

Yes, it's one thing to import a needed word from another language, but when that word collides with an already official Esperanto word, it seems like a bad choice. This is one way that the "dialecticization" that Esperanto critics like to predict can actually happen.

And the paronima verb giri just isn't the right concept.

Restu maldekstre = keep to the left.

Turnetu vin maldekstren = turn slightly to the left.

Emu maldekstren = tend to the left.

sudanglo:NJEsperantist. Does your GPS device allow you to select say French or German? Could you list how the instructions are dealt with in other languages.

My Tomtom came ready to speak English, Spanish and French. Unfortunately, I only know English and Esperanto. I don't know if there's a way to get the text of the command list in other languages.