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Puns and other wordplay

door richardhall, 12 juli 2007

Berichten: 27

Taal: English

richardhall (Profiel tonen) 12 juli 2007 22:26:35

I'm fond of puns and wordplay in English, but haven't come across any Esperanto examples. Does anyone have any favourite Esperanto puns, or other forms of wordplay?

Miland (Profiel tonen) 12 juli 2007 22:39:16

There's a set of puns in the form of riddles, in the April 2007 edition of Juna Amiko on page 43. Here's an example.
Q: Kiu oficisto similas al nekonata melodio? (What official is similar to an unknown melody?) Ans: Sekret/ario!
Here's one I just made up: how do we know that the faces on the left of the 'Add a message' box do not belong to illegal immigrants? Because they came with Viza/gxetoj!

mnlg (Profiel tonen) 12 juli 2007 23:32:07

richardhall:Does anyone have any favourite Esperanto puns, or other forms of wordplay?
Nuo, nuino, genuoj!

erinja (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 00:22:16

There's a well-known sexist one, menstruo = mens/truo

I also heard a children's joke, "Kial ĝirafo neniam estas sola? Ĉar ĝi havas kolegon!"

(kolego/kol-eg-o)

There are also lots of examples of word play, especially with young people. "maltrinki" is slang you sometimes here for "urini". "malfeke!" is slangy way of saying "great!"

Some people take the word "malgraŭ" (="in spite of"; it is a root, not a compound word) and back-forming it to "graŭ" (="thanks to")

There's also a sort of play language called "Esperant'". Some people came up with it some years back. It involves making drastic changes to the way you speak Esperanto, but *without* breaking any grammatical rules. No one actually talks that way but it's just a sort of game to play with the language, a fun thought experiment more than anything.

This is what Wikipedia gives as the rules:
* Subject - 'O' ending is removed. Knabo becomes knab'.
* Plural - 'Oj' ending is removed and replaced with the suffix 'aro' (collection), which changes to ar'. Knaboj becomes knabar'.
* Adjectives - 'A' or 'aj' endings removed and adjectives are combined with the noun they describe. Bela knabino becomes belknabin'.
* Direct object - '-n' ending is removed and 'je' is placed before the word.
* Verbs - Verbal ending removed and used as an action-noun with 'o' ending, which is also removed.
o The verbal ending is moved to the preposition in the sentence, which then acts as a verb. If there is no preposition in the sentence, 'jen' behold is used.

Example: Some boys love the pretty girl.
Esperanto Knaboj amas la belan knabinon.
Esperant' Jenas am' de knabar' je la belknabin'.
Literally Behold the love of boys to the pretty-girl.
Basically you try to use words in the weirdest way possible while still staying within the grammatical rules.

Here is a website written entirely in Esperant'
http://www.geocities.com/miĥil/esperant/esperant.html

I remember one time some years back when I was in a grocery store thinking about Esperant', and I came up with a marvellously convoluted and strange way to say something, but still grammatically correct. Unfortunately I was with a non-Esperanto-speaking friend at the time, so I couldn't say anything, as it would have gone completely unappreciated.

trojo (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 15:21:49

A couple plays on word that I have heard:

kilogramatiko - a grammar book that weighs a lot.

nanco - the ethical handling of money...back-formed from financo, (the prefix fi means "shameful").

mnlg (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 16:03:10

trojo:nanco - the ethical handling of money...back-formed from financo, (the prefix fi means "shameful").
That's a good one!

You know why TEJO is fundamentally catholic? Because its symbol is a papago! (a parrot, or an action related to the Pope)

trojo (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 18:51:53

Oh here's another one I believe I saw on the Esperanto-speaking section of this site:

Horloĝo estas la loĝejo de horoj.

Actually, I wonder if that could be the true origin of that word.

mnlg (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 19:48:42

trojo:Actually, I wonder if that could be the true origin of that word.
No. Horloĝo is "orologio" [oroˈlɔdʒo] in Italian. According to www.etimo.it, its etymology comes from "hora" (hour) and "logion" (from "lego", I read, I compute)

To stay on-topic, this is from one of my former students:

Ĉu vi scias, ke la lokomotivo estas tre demandema? Ĝi ĉiam diras "Ĉu, ĉu, ĉu..."

richardhall (Profiel tonen) 13 juli 2007 19:51:07

trojo:
nanco - the ethical handling of money...back-formed from financo, (the prefix fi means "shameful").
Yes rido.gif That's the ticket!

Do the equivalent of 'cryptic crosswords' exist in Esperanto?

remy_boligee (Profiel tonen) 14 juli 2007 03:31:58

mnlg:
Ĉu vi scias, ke la lokomotivo estas tre demandema? Ĝi ĉiam diras "Ĉu, ĉu, ĉu..."
Great one lango.gif

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