I think my favorite from Proverbaro Esperanta is:

»Kun kiu vi festas, tia vi estas.«

The English equivalent would be, "With whom you party, that's the kind of person you are." or more commonly, "Birds of a feather flock together."

"Celis paseron, trafis anseron"

Yep, I'd say it means unexpected good fortune from effort. If one does nothing, one will get nothing, but if one goes for a sparrow, one might end up with a goose. It's past tense, because often one only realises this kind of thing after it's happened. It's like the author Stephen King says, "The harder I work, the luckier I get!"

Yes, it is a good exercise to think on these proverbs.

acdibble:»Kun kiu vi festas, tia vi estas.«

Ah yeah I use that English equivalent quite often, the birds of a feather flock together proverb I mean, thanks a lot for that!.

As I vaguely remember it, the origin of the Proverbaro was that Zamenhof's dad had the idea of compiling (and actually partly published) a multilingual collection of proverbs or sayings and Zamenhof junior (our Zamenhof) weighed in with the Esperanta Proverbaro as a kind of tribute to his father's work.

I don't think it matters much that some may seem a little cryptic. I think that is often the point, that they are capable of different interpretations.

It seems to me that in modern English we don't make much use of proverbs or maxims, and we prefer to speak more directly, in a less oracular fashion.

That said, Zamenhof's Proverbaro is often singularly poetic and well worth a read.

Since no one else mentioned them, I can recommend the Esperanto terminal proverbs for Ubuntu. Whenever I open a terminal emulator, it has a proverb in esperanto at the top. Some of them leave me scratching my head as to their meaning. I use a laptop with Ubuntu entirely translated in Esperanto, all the menus and system messages in the terminal. Basically they just appear at the top of this whenever it is opened:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ter...

One example I just got:

"Kiom da kapoj, tiom la opinioj."

This one is more ominous, they appear whenever I close and open the terminal:

"Bone kreskas la herbo, sed ĉevalo jam mortis"

The grass grows well, but the horse is already dead.

komenstanto:Since no one else mentioned them, I can recommend the Esperanto terminal proverbs for Ubuntu. Whenever I open a terminal emulator, it has a proverb in esperanto at the top. Some of them leave me scratching my head as to their meaning. I use a laptop with Ubuntu entirely translated in Esperanto, all the menus and system messages in the terminal.

sounds like a great thing. how do you get that, and can it be used with an otherwise non-esperanto interface?

darkweasel:

komenstanto:Since no one else mentioned them, I can recommend the Esperanto terminal proverbs for Ubuntu. Whenever I open a terminal emulator, it has a proverb in esperanto at the top. Some of them leave me scratching my head as to their meaning. I use a laptop with Ubuntu entirely translated in Esperanto, all the menus and system messages in the terminal.

sounds like a great thing. how do you get that, and can it be used with an otherwise non-esperanto interface?

The Terminal is a linux application, a graphical emulator of the basic linux console. In Windows you have DOS, but its not quite as fun as the linux Terminal. I dont know if you are familiar with Linux and its distributions, but Ubuntu is the only version with extensive Esperanto support. It is good for beginners and is easy to install on most laptops. A quick search in the package manager yields numerous Esperanto pkgs, including the "Fortunes" pkg that has proverbs:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

This page shows more about distributions:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/L...

komenstanto:

darkweasel:

komenstanto:Since no one else mentioned them, I can recommend the Esperanto terminal proverbs for Ubuntu. Whenever I open a terminal emulator, it has a proverb in esperanto at the top. Some of them leave me scratching my head as to their meaning. I use a laptop with Ubuntu entirely translated in Esperanto, all the menus and system messages in the terminal.

sounds like a great thing. how do you get that, and can it be used with an otherwise non-esperanto interface?

The Terminal is a linux application, a graphical emulator of the basic linux console. In Windows you have DOS, but its not quite as fun as the linux Terminal. I dont know if you are familiar with Linux and its distributions, but Ubuntu is the only version with extensive Esperanto support. It is good for beginners and is easy to install on most laptops. A quick search in the package manager yields numerous Esperanto pkgs, including the "Fortunes" pkg that has proverbs:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

i already use ubuntu (though with a german-language* interface) thanks for mentioning the fortunes package, i will check that out when i get home!

* with some applications, eg. thunderbird, left in english because i am too lazy to install the language packages lol

darkweasel:

komenstanto:

darkweasel:

komenstanto:Since no one else mentioned them, I can recommend the Esperanto terminal proverbs for Ubuntu. Whenever I open a terminal emulator, it has a proverb in esperanto at the top. Some of them leave me scratching my head as to their meaning. I use a laptop with Ubuntu entirely translated in Esperanto, all the menus and system messages in the terminal.

sounds like a great thing. how do you get that, and can it be used with an otherwise non-esperanto interface?

The Terminal is a linux application, a graphical emulator of the basic linux console. In Windows you have DOS, but its not quite as fun as the linux Terminal. I dont know if you are familiar with Linux and its distributions, but Ubuntu is the only version with extensive Esperanto support. It is good for beginners and is easy to install on most laptops. A quick search in the package manager yields numerous Esperanto pkgs, including the "Fortunes" pkg that has proverbs:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

i already use ubuntu thanks for mentioning the fortunes package, i will check that out when i get home!

Ah! In that case, just search synaptic for the word Esperanto and it will yield all kinds of stuff. Update and install all the EO pkgs and every system message will be translated to Esperanto. I use the terminal for everything, even checking email with MUTT, so it is amusing to have the "fortunes" or proverbs:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/M...

Interestingly even MUTT is translated into Esperanto. It uses the word "skribi" instead of "save". That happens from choosing the Esperanto locale I think.

Found another funny one in my terminal:

Sidi kiel muso sub balailo.

To sit like a mouse below a broom.

I am guilty of doing that one.