darkweasel:

sudanglo:
But a foreigner who knows that the meaning of 'small' is malgranda and thinks that he can go into a pub and ask for 'two small beers' is due for a shock. And he will sound even more comic, should he request two tiny or little beers.

Just out of curiosity: What is the proper expression in English?

"Two small beers".

The joke is that Europeans drink everything in such little glasses that what Europeans call a "small" beer doesn't even exist on the menu of a country like the UK or the US.

erinja:

qwertz:idolinguo.org.uk: "...The Esperanto movement had built up a fervour which gave it a quasi-religious quality. The basic grammar and vocabulary of the language were treated as 'untouchable', and anybody who questioned their sanctity was regarded as a heretic!..."

Does it describe the past or is it still on issue?

Thanks erinja for your comments.

erinja:
It depends on what you call an issue.

Mainly that criticism of "fervour of quasi-religious quality". I'm an atheist and I wanna be remain that. At the four European Espo youth events I took part, I didn't encounter any "fervour of quasi-religious quality".

erinja:
The basic grammar and a core vocabulary of Esperanto are considered untouchable. That is still current. The meaning is that we consider the basis of the language to be fixed. We will no longer accept changes to certain basic aspects of the language.

Hhm, I again and again get bellyaches reading that "We will ..." super power statements. But, its fine. Apart some very small Espo slang fooling, I don't have any motivation to change any language.

erinja:
A heretic? Not really. A few people want to change the things that are considered unchangeable. But their changes are not accepted as normal Esperanto. The changed language is not "new Esperanto" or "improved Esperanto"; rather, it is a new language based on Esperanto.

And they first have to initiate same culture heritage like Espo already has. Even if it could need some more creativity.

erinja:
Incidentally, Ido is also closed to changes. Maybe they don't speak too loudly about this, but you can't go and change the core of Ido today either.

Reading slogans like "Linguo Internaciona Ido" they also seem to have some "World Movement" intentions, which I don't like.

erinja:
For practical purposes, I believe that Ido is now as fixed as Esperanto is.

Currently I try to find out what language could give me most "propedeutic value" to learn other natural languages: Esperanto(Interesting language concept), Ido(same like Esperanto, but without mal- and "-j" markers I highly dislike), Interlingua("Simplification without artificiality.)

Hhm.

darkweasel:

BTW - citing correctly may less confuse the readers of your message.

.

Sorry, thank you. Corrected.

And one more thing. I think there's an easy explanation for this tendency to correct esperanto texts. This is the lack of a point of reference, the lack of native speakers, the lack of a tangible someone to rely on, which never occurs in the case of national languages. Any problems with Polish? Ask me. Problems with German? I'll ask you.

erinja:

darkweasel:

sudanglo:
But a foreigner who knows that the meaning of 'small' is malgranda and thinks that he can go into a pub and ask for 'two small beers' is due for a shock. And he will sound even more comic, should he request two tiny or little beers.

Just out of curiosity: What is the proper expression in English?

"Two small beers".

The joke is that Europeans drink everything in such little glasses that what Europeans call a "small" beer doesn't even exist on the menu of a country like the UK or the US.

Ah, OK. I thought it was a linguistic issue and wondered if in English you really don’t say "small beer", which I would well have used.

darkweasel: I thought it was a linguistic issue and wondered if in English you really don’t say "small beer", which I would well have used.

If my memory serves me well I once came across this usage of "small beer" which is identical to Polish "małe piwo" = an easy, unimportant matter. ie. "Translating this sentence into Spanish is a small beer (małe piwo) for me."
Let the native speaker of English put me right on this.

Solulo:Sorry for this double massage. I really am a computer idiot. How do I remove massages on this forum?

You are not a computer idiot because of that, that has been asked by other users too. (And neither are you a computer idiot because you’ve produced a double message, that has happened to me, too - and at least according to my own judgement I am not a computer idiot, though others may disagree .)

You cannot remove postings yourself, but you can edit them and replace them with something like "please remove" and then click the spam report button so that an administrator sees it and can remove it. (However, erinja has said that in the English-language subboard it is not necessary to click the spam report button because she reads all the messages anyway and removes them if she finds a "please remove" message.)

Solulo:

darkweasel: I thought it was a linguistic issue and wondered if in English you really don’t say "small beer", which I would well have used.

If my memory serves me well I once came across this usage of "small beer" which is identical to Polish "małe piwo" = an easy, unimportant matter. ie. "Translating this sentence into Spanish is a small beer (małe piwo) for me."
Let the native speaker of English put me right on this.

I'm not an English native. But you probably mean: "Translating this sentence takes very less efforts."

Idiom (en.wikipedia.org)

===

Also, Libera Folio, September 05/2011: "... Malgraŭ la evidenta kolapso de la tuta organzita Esperanto-movado, ..., estas fundamenta kaj profunda kontraŭado kaj malamo al iu ajn kiu proponas ŝanĝojn ..."

qwertz:
I'm not an English native. But you probably mean: "Translating this sentence takes very less efforts."

"Very" shouldn't be used before "less" here, because "less" in this context is a determiner, and the adverb "very" can't describe a determiner. It's like saying "Very the effort" or "very some effort".

And because we're talking about effort as a concept, rather than discrete efforts, you'd use "effort" singular.

You want more like: "Translating this sentence takes very little effort."

Or: "Translating this sentence takes much less effort." (more like a comparison).

If you want an equivalent English idiom, you might say:

"Translating this sentence is a piece of cake"

or:

"Translating this sentence is nothing"

I think..

@EldanarLambetur: Thanks.

qwertz:Also, Libera Folio, September 05/2011: "... Malgraŭ la evidenta kolapso de la tuta organzita Esperanto-movado, ..., estas fundamenta kaj profunda kontraŭado kaj malamo al iu ajn kiu proponas ŝanĝojn ..."

However, the article is not talking about changes to the language. It is talking about changes to the way that the Esperanto movement functions.