Butler translates disrabi by "loot, sack".

I wondered about the reason for PIV 2005 defining disrabi as "to divide the stolen goods among themselves". Their reason appears to be a citation from the Zamenhofan Old Testament: Disrabu arĝenton, disrabu oron.. (Nahum 2:9). But the RSV translates the Hebrew original "Plunder the silver, plunder the gold!" while the REB has "Spoil is taken, spoil of silver and gold..".

The rendering in PIV 2005 therefore appears to be based on its misinterpretation (not Zamenhof's) of the meaning of this verse.

geo63:

ceigered:Phew... thank god I can (sorta) handle stress....

I'm guessing (probably badly) that the stress difference is mi JAJka LIŻ vs. MIjaj KAlisz? (totally just putting Esperanto stress into Polish there)

You're good at it, man! That's right - Polish stress is exactly the same as in Esperanto - that's the reason for the latter, isn't it? But it's nothing compared to Chinese with four different tones....

Whoohoo, yay for Esperanto allowing me to guess stuff in Polish .

I think it's safe to say though that it's good Esperanto's complexity lies mostly in word making like what's going on here rather than in anything to do with stress or tone (anyway good luck with Chinese!)

---

To a slightly more relevantish topic, I might add - since Esperanto's word-making system is a more regularised version of Greek and Latin, and since many acceptable terms in English and other European languages came from them, perhaps one way of "checking if a word is good or not" can be seeing if a greco-latin cognate exists (I say this since I assume most Esperantists are already fairly familiar with those two, even if it's only because of Esperanto).

Miland:Butler translates disrabi by "loot, sack".

I wondered about the reason for PIV 2005 defining disrabi as "to divide the stolen goods among themselves". Their reason appears to be a citation from the Zamenhofan Old Testament: Disrabu arĝenton, disrabu oron.. (Nahum 2:9). But the RSV translates the Hebrew original "Plunder the silver, plunder the gold!" while the REB has "Spoil is taken, spoil of silver and gold..".

The rendering in PIV 2005 therefore appears to be based on its misinterpretation (not Zamenhof's) of the meaning of this verse.

Perhaps this is an acceptable meaning though, since the historical sense of a sacking or looting or plundering seems to involve the idea of doing so for the sake of a tribe or nation, and thus some level of sharing being assumed.

It's true - the Tekstaro does indeed seem to support the use of 'disrabi' in the sense of plunder or loot or pillage.

But comparing it with other uses of 'dis-' as in 'dispecetigi' or 'disĵeti' or 'dismeti' or 'dissemi', it seems rather strained.

Perhaps it works if you want to emphasize the stock of goods was carried off in all directions.

Edit: Wells offers it as a translation of 'pillage', but not 'loot'. I think this works for me as this seems to fit with my lingvosento about 'pillage' which I associate with widespread destructive looting by invading hordes, and having a rather archaic feel to it - as does 'disrabi' for that mattter.

Anyway, thanks Erinja for pointing out this usage.

Looting of shops (as opposed to just stealing a few things) looks like widespread destruction to me. I think that invading hoardes are a good analogy for the wanton destruction and groupthink mindset that you see with looters. Crowds do things that individuals wouldn't do.

erinja:Looting of shops (as opposed to just stealing a few things) looks like widespread destruction to me..

This reminds me of a news report of a visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to a shop in Birmingham, where the owner said that his shop had experienced a "tsunami of looting". Arguably, tsunamis destroy first and the looters follow, but I wouldn't make much of a distinction in riots between those who kick doors and windows in, and those who follow to take stuff away.

erinja: and groupthink mindset that you see with looters. Crowds do things that individuals wouldn't do.

Somewhat off-topic. Seems to be that most English words should not be put together, which contrary is very common in German language. So I was wondering that groupthink without "-" like "group-thinking" is listed at Ask Oxford, too. I'm even suprised that "think" could have an noun form without "-ing" marker. The German word is Gruppendenken. Very interesting.

Regarding "groupthink": At German information technology focused magazines (i.e. Heise.de) I casually read the term "Schwarmintelligenz"/Swarm intelligence. If I got that correct, its an term to describe the well-coordinated acting i.e. behind the Internet attacks of Anonymous.

(Its also interesting that I would need some more context to find out the diffence between spoken "groupthink" and "group-sink". )

Interestingly though it seems that looters also have some sort of group identity, and don't seem to interfere with each other greatly.

@ Qwertz, the reason we have "think" without -ing is similar to why you guys have "denken", our "think" is technically the same as using a german infinitive verb as a noun, only our "-en" got so light in pronunciation that by the time early modern English was written, we only still pronounced it in some older dialects as a little "uh" sound (similar to the direction Dutch is heading in, with their -n's being hard to hear at the end of words).

I think it differs from person to person, but also another thing is that English speakers like to think of entire phrases/sentences as if they are sentences, like "I saw the "let's run around in circles" gym coach the other day, he's soooo boring". I don't know if you guys do that in German or not, but we tend to do it a lot in English at least. Maybe this strange liberal view on describing nouns led to larger noun combinations falling into disuse. Anyway, English speakers tend to be fine with two words being stuck together as long as it "makes sense".

That sometimes means that we like to use more precise words that "thinking", e.g. we'd say "group-mentality", because the idea is that if we're going out of our way to make a phrase even more precise by adding "group" to the word, we might as well describe as accurately as possible what we're talking about so we use "mentality" instead. Somehow mentality is more precise, I don't know because I never remember to check what it means in the dictionary, I just go with the meaning in my head

But anyway, that's caused by English having so many words with so many shades of meaning stolen from Latin and French, and then us going "OK, this word now has this meaning because otherwise it's dead weight" (like liberty, which doesn't mean much more than "freedom").

EDIT: Swarm intelligence is

Thanks ceigered: Gruppenmentalität is also used in German. I feel group mentality more clear detailed in the sense of statistic. Contrary "groupthink" seems to be more abstract.

Miland:Butler translates disrabi by "loot, sack".

I wondered about the reason for PIV 2005 defining disrabi as "to divide the stolen goods among themselves". Their reason appears to be a citation from the Zamenhofan Old Testament: Disrabu arĝenton, disrabu oron.. (Nahum 2:9). But the RSV translates the Hebrew original "Plunder the silver, plunder the gold!" while the REB has "Spoil is taken, spoil of silver and gold..".

The rendering in PIV 2005 therefore appears to be based on its misinterpretation (not Zamenhof's) of the meaning of this verse.

That is interesting, in Polish dis- translates as "roz-". So:

rabi - "rabować"
disrabi - "rozrabować", and this means in Polish that same as PIV 2005 states.

Other staff:

bati = "bić"
disbati = "rozbić"

doni = "dać"
disdoni = "rozdać"

... and many, many other...

Don't you think this comes after Polish? After all Zamenhof was partly Polish.