Grammar of Esperanto
(#187) Does Esperanto really have 16 rules?
It is true that you have to assimilate the 16 rules to speak Esperanto at the
beginner's level, but it's far from enough to be considered an
expert in the language.
It's the purpose of the Exercises ("La Ekzercaro"), to enable you to
better understand the somewhat sketchy rules.
You should be capable of finding out the grammar rules by yourself,
based on the Exercises.
This is the most natural way to learn a language.
Most people dislike learning grammar, and writing a grammar for a
language is particularly difficult when this grammar must be understood
by all people of the planet. The complexity is not coming so
much from the target language, as from the source language.
In summary, the grammar of Esperanto written in English is quite
simple, but written in Esperanto for all possible languages, it is huge.
See online at http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/
You are welcome to try if it's too hard for you to "guess" the grammar
at //http:remush.be/memoru/fundamento/en/index.html
(this is still under development - was tested under Mozilla/Firefox browser).
(#151) Esperanto has complicated grammar.
Who needs an
accusative case? Who needs plural marking? Who needs adjectival
agreement in number and case?
Who really needs
verbal tenses? If the time when something happens is important, why not
use adverbs?
To understand the advantages of the accusative (-n added
to a
complement without preposition), to the agreement in number and case of
the adjective, to verbal tenses, you have to learn Esperanto, and start
translating from English to Esperanto. You will then realise that these
features can be used to avoid lots of ambiguities more efficiently than
in English, which needs more words to do the same.
An Esperanto translation of an English text is shorter than the
original. Read more...
(#276)
Several points of the grammatical system have been particularly
irritating to English linguists. In particular, many are troubled by
agreement between noun and adjective.
Example from the eurojargon
:
EEC: This is the abbreviation for the European Economic
Community – one of three European Communities (see below)
set up in 1957
to bring about economic integration in Europe.
translated to :
- EEK: Mallongigo por Eŭropa Ekonomia Komunumo - unu el
tri Eŭropaj
Komunumoj (vidu sube) starigita(j)
en 1957 por faciligi la ekonomian integrigon en Eŭropo.
In some languages (French, Dutch) they translated set up to starigitaj which is wrong.
In other (German, Polish) they translated to starigita which is correct,
because starigita relates
to "one ...", while starigitaj relates to "three ...".
Obviously the author writing in English did not notice the ambiguity.
Had he written in Esperanto (or in other languages using those markers)
he would not have had to worry. A foreigner would even have more
difficulties to spot all possible ambiguities in English, and find a
way to make his sentence unambiguous. When one sees professional
translators falling into such traps, one can only approve the solution
adopted in Esperanto (and many many other languages).
BTW isn't it even more irritating to mark the singular with an s :
the horse eats an apple ?
See other similar problems in Piron's article
.
(#162) Rules
saying all nouns end in for example o and all verbs i, etc. What a
ridiculous concept, or is that it is easier to remember the difference
between verbs, and nouns, which would assist people of limited
intelligence.
May I point out that the majority of
languages are distinguishing verbs from nouns, adjectives and adverbs
by their endings, but I must agree that it is probably due to their
inferior intelligence. Note that in English some assistance is
occasionally also required.
Compare the noun/verb pairs advice/advise, device/devise,
record/record.
(#035) I
would like to learn more about the Esperanto grammar. Where can I buy a
book about it?
No need to buy a book for just one page. The fundamental rules can be
read at http://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/fundamento/gramatiko_angla.html.
To supplement the grammar, there is a basic vocabulary and a set of
exercises and examples.
A little common sense is necessary to build correct phrases. You will
be amazed by what you will already understand in a normal conversation,
and by what you will be able to write.
If you want to make a
presentation in front of 100 people, and answer their questions or
refute their objections, you will have to reach another level.
That may take as long as it took you to do in English (or at least 6
months).
To become an expert of the Esperanto language, understand why it is
what it is, you could read "Plena analiza gramatiko de Esperanto" [PAGE ].
Actually very few esperantists read this book, but if you have to teach
Esperanto in a University or if you want to make intelligent comments
on Esperanto, it is a very valuable book, even if questionable in
certain aspects. Don't speak about reforming the language until then:
it's pathetic.
(#021) What
is the principle that Zamenhof followed to define the grammar of Esperanto?
The grammar rules are built according to the following principle:
If a natural language uses a simple grammatical
structure to express
something, then this structure has proven to be valid and is a possible
candidate for the constructed language.
For instance: English
proves there is no need to have the verb vary according to the person
(I can, you can, he can (or may, must etc... There is no such example
in French, Polish, etc...).
If the English language was allowed to
evolve naturally, the added -s in "he walks" would surely disappear.
Many foreigners forget it. The past tense is almost always regular in
English. Esperanto generalises this to all tenses without exception.
What the majority of the languages is doing is not relevant for the
grammatical structures, it is relevant only for the new words.
For more information about the grammar, use [PAGE ].
(#022) Nowhere,
are
you told how to form questions and relative clauses, use capital
letters and other punctuation, and so on; you're supposed to know that
by intuition (or perhaps a classical education?).
Zamenhof's failed to consider
this important subject properly.
Reread "La Fundamento". There are examples and exercises to complement
the grammar.
Don Harlow: More specifically read the "Ekzercaro",
which implicitly defines and describes such matters as questions and
relative clauses.
Capital letters and punctuation are not part of the language but part
of the writing system associated with the language, and so are
essentially irrelevant (again, Z, unlike most designers, was aiming for
a spoken language).
The sixteen rules are the strict
minimum speakers of the language must follow. So, you could decide (as
a Japanese Esperantist already did) not to use capital letters;
your text (like his) will still be understandable in writing, as in
speaking.
Zamenhof's idea was that it was a good base on which on which one could
extend.
He trusted the first users of the language to define better what he
left undecided. That is what I would call the real genius part of his
work, and what no creator of artificial languages did understand: the
users have also their say.
Zamenhof left a certain amount of works as an example to follow.
Nowadays there is a huge amount of well written books you could read,
not only those from Zamenhof.
Studying [PAGE ] would not
help you as much as reading good authors. Who ever learned a language
by just studying the grammar, anyway?
Did Luther wrote a preface to his Bible explaining what was the grammar
of the language he invented? He constructed modern German on the base
of a few dialects he knew, without feeling the necessity of even
explaining what he was doing.
Zamenhof could have done the same.
Just publish his translation of the Bible and let us find the rules.
Well, he decided to help us a little and gave 16 rules that are the
framework of Esperanto.
So, Zamenhof did consider this subject properly, the real question is:
why didn't he say so in his grammar?
I think I answered.
(#026) Esperanto
grammar contains many grammatical usages which are non obvious,
unstated, inconsistent or illogical.
These
provide plenty of opportunities for ambiguity or unnecessarily fine
subtleties of meaning, and there are aspects of the grammar which
Esperantists disagree over.
I could probably give
more examples of phrases that are ambiguous in English than in
Esperanto. French is less ambiguous than English as well. It was used
very long in diplomatic relations because of its accuracy. However,
somebody who masters his own language well, is capable of expressing
anything unambiguously, if he wants to.
When you learn
Esperanto, you acquire another view of what is logical or not in a
language. Compared to Eo, the natural languages are totally illogical.
Esperanto is very logical relatively to Indo-european languages. It
contains enough features and constructions to remove the undesired
ambiguities when you wish to be precise.
Give me a phrase in
any language that is ambiguous, I am sure that somebody will be able to
make it unambiguous. Example : "They saw the girl with binoculars." You
could use the Esperanto translation to make things clear (Ili vidis la knabinon per binoklo. Ili segis la kun binoklo knabinon. Ili vidis la kun binoklo knabinon. Ili segis la knabinon per binoklo).
There are two meanings that you could easily eliminate, but a
computer would have difficulties to do it.
I would like to know how often an ambiguity is found in an English
document during the translation process, and how often the original
text has to be corrected. How often does it happen in French or German?
One should not confuse the language with the skills of the person using
it.
(#051) The
accusative case is without doubt one of Esperanto's least necessary
features,
and
thus one of the most heavily .criticised It seems to exist principally
as a concession to classical grammar (and thus to boost Zamenhof's
credibility with nineteenth century academics?), but the language would
be far better off without it. It's supposed to free up word order which
according to apologists is important for poetry and literature; but
surely basic ease of communication, without having to worry about the
finer points of grammar, matters more? Distinct accusative inflections
have disappeared from many languages in the past; even in German, only
masculine singular nouns have them; and neither the Chinese poets nor
Shakespeare had any problems without them
Criticised
it was indeed, but nevertheless it held up. It is now more interesting
to analyse why is was kept, in spite of all attacks, than why it should
be removed. This discussion is over.
Classical grammar has
nothing to do with it. I doubt credibility was one of Zamenhof
concerns. This is unsupported speculation as the ? rightly indicates.
About free order : hundo mordis viro (a dog bit a man). It
looks obvious that the -n could be removed.
If one need to say: Viro mordas hundon, one could remove the -n
as well. Hundon mordas viro: here the -n
would be mandatory. Don't say the example is silly, on dutch television
there is a program full of strange things named like that (Man bijt
hond).
So the new rule would be : when the direct object is in
front of the subject (or when the subject is left out) you must put the
-n, otherwise you do what you want. It reminds me of such a rule in
French, when the direct object is after this, you must do that, when
before you must do something else.
I fail to see the simplification compare with : you must always do that.
Free word order is essential. A language like dutch is difficult
because the word order is not the same as in English. If you put the
words in some other order than in English, it is still unlikely that
you sentence will be correct.
Esperanto word order is not totally
free, but much more flexible, just because of this -n. A speaker can
start a sentence as he wants, and go on putting words as needed. To be
totally flexible would require cases. This was a choice that Zamenhof
rejected. So there are no cases in Esperanto.
-N is just a
mark for a complement without preposition. People knowing Latin, Greek,
polish, Russian, German, etc... would call this -n:
accusative case, but it is not used at all like in those languages.
Don Harlow: The -N
ending (which is far more than a simple Latin accusative) is one of the
features in Esperanto most criticised by beginners and those who have
not even begun. It has, however, expanded its role in the hundred years
the language has been around, through simple evolution (e.g. nowadays
we say "paŝon post paŝo" where Z would have said "paŝo post
paŝo"; you will also often find it used after the prepositions "krom"
and "anstataŭ",
which Zamenhof would never have done -- at least in those cases where
they actually function as coordinating conjunctions rather than
prepositions.
Obviously, speakers of Esperanto like it. And that's what matters.
(#052) What
are "the other cases" referred to in rule 2, how are they used, and why
are they important enough to deserve a mention?
The
usual answers ("the genitive is expressed with de", etc.) betray what
seems to have been a nineteenth-century assumption that classical
grammar is a constant of nature, rather than a fluid and more or less
accidental convention; grammatical case is no more necessary than
grammatical gender.
Don Harlow:
"Case" appears to be a fundamental description of the usage of nouns.
How it is expressed grammatically is something else. In English we use
Esperanto's method for a few of our pronouns in the accusative, and fix
word order for nouns; for other cases, we -- like Esperanto -- use
prepositions.
Rule 2:
Substantives are
formed by adding o to the root. For the plural, the letter j must be
added to the singular. There are two cases: the nominative and the
objective (accusative). The root with the added o is the nominative,
the objective adds an n after the o. Other cases are formed by
prepositions; thus, the possessive (genitive) by de, „of”; the dative
by al, „to”, the instrumental (ablative) by kun, „with”, or
other preposition as the sense demands. E. g. root patr,
„father”; la patr'o, „the father”; la patr'o'n, „the
father” (objective), de la patr'o, „of the father”; al
la patr'o, „to the father”; kun la patr'o, „with
the father”; la patr'o'j, „the fathers”; la patr'o'j'n, „the
fathers” (obj.), por la patr'o'j, „for the fathers”.
When Zamenhof wrote his book, he assumed that educated people would be
able to understand this rule. Latin was still important in those days.
So references to cases are just there to make things simpler to
understand. Nowadays, we would have to rephrase that rule so that
everybody understands it. It is useless to speak of cases, because this
is what Zamenhof wanted to avoid.
I could say : in Esperanto ,
there are no cases. but people would wonder what cases are. I would
have to explain that in English in a phrase like : I gave him (or her)
a book, him/her is a case of he/she. I can't say I gave he a book, to
give people an idea. Why not? Because it is like that.
Nowadays we
would say that in Esperanto when you have a complement without
preposition, you must add -n to the complement. To avoid confusion, you
can only have one such complement.
In other words : In Esperanto
all the complements must be preceded by a preposition. You may suppress
one and only one preposition (if the meaning is clear without it), but
you have to add an -n to the complement. Why? Because! You'll
understand when you grow up!
Examples:
- I gave him a book: mi donis je libro al li;
mi donis libron al li. mi donis lin je libro. Do not
forget je or -n or other preposition and keep the
same word order as in English (or French).
- The mouse jumped on the table. La muso saltis
sur la tablo. (it was on the table already). You cannot remove sur
because people could guess wrongly.
- The mouse jumped on the table. La muso saltis al
sur la tablo; la muso saltis sur la tablon (from the ground,
in the direction of the table, with movement towards the table).
Note in this example that al was replaced by -n and the
meaning is still clear (what is not the case in English)
(#053) Rule
13 would be unnecessary if the uses of prepositions had been better
thought through;
See previous note : What are "the
other cases"
Rule 13:
In phrases answering the question „where?”
(meaning direction), the words take the termination of the objective
case; e. g. kie'n vi ir'as? „where are you going?”; dom'o'n,
„home”; London'o'n, „to London”, etc.
Don Harlow: -N simply shows the target of an
action or the destination of a motion.
When you add the -N to a noun after a preposition (of location), you're
simply showing that that phrase is no longer a place in which something
happens, but a place towards which something is happening. Nothing
could be simpler.
The -n is replacing al: mi iras al la domo (French: je
vais à la maison), mi iras al Londono (je vais à Londres).
Note that in French as in Esperanto domo (maison) means house
(Spanish casa) but if not specified otherwise, it means home, in this
context.
The correct word would be hejmo.
So: mi iras hejmon is more clear.
Or even mi iras hejmen, mi hejmen iras, mi hejmeniras
(this is for languages that have one word to say it).
(#054) You
can't say both la domo brulas "the house burns" and mi
brulas la domon "I burn the house",
since
the verb is intransitive (i.e. taking no object) in the first sentence
and transitive in the second. Instead, since the root brul- is
intransitive, you have to make it transitive by adding the suffix -ig-,
regardless
of the fact that the very presence of an object - marked,
moreover, with the mandatory accusative suffix - is doing just the
same: mi bruligas la domon.
Exactly: you have to say like that. You should always do what a good
teacher says when you learn, later you'll understand why.
Later, you'll write a story for children in which objects speak and
have a personality. You also will master what you don't understand very
well now: the "accusative" (replacing a preposition).
For the moment, follow the rule, you will not get into trouble.
Note that it would be better for you not to use the word accusative,
you seem quite confused by it (probably due to your classic education):
simply use the -n grammatical suffix. This has nothing to do
with the direct object.
Don Harlow: The reason for the complaint is that in
English (and some other languages) many words have two
meanings, one transitive and one intransitive. If the student learns
that "bruli" means "to burn", he will immediately assume that
both the quoted sentences should be correct, and there is
something wrong with Esperanto because one of them isn't. (If, of
course, he learns the real meaning of bruli, i.e. "to
become converted to a gaseous substance through oxidation", the problem
will be less likely to arise.)
"The very presence of an object"? There is no rule that I know of that
insists that an object even has to be present. "Kion vi ŝatas fari
en la vespero?" "Mi bruligas." If no object is present, you
can't add an -N to it ...
English is very inconsistent about its own use of double-meaning forms.
You can say "The wood burns" and "I burn the wood", or "The cats
drowned" and "I drowned the cats", but you can't then go and say "The
cats died" and "I died the cats" or "The tree falls" and "I fall the
tree" (though you can say "I fell the tree" in the present tense --
"fell" is sort of a transitive equivalent for "fall", usable in some
situations).
(#055) Mi
blankas la domon is perfectly intelligible as it is; why must I
say mi blankigas la domon?
What is the difference between blanki,
blankiĝi and blankigi?
Liaj haroj blankas = liaj haroj estas blankaj: his hair is white.
Liaj haroj blankiĝas : his hair is whitening
(suffix -iĝ means to become)
Li blankigas siajn harojn : he whitens his hair.
(suffix -ig means to make)
The root very often indicates what the word means exactly, but in some
cases (depending on the language you speak), you could guess
wrongly. So, you should learn what the three forms mean (if they exist)
for every word. This is the biggest difficulty of Esperanto. Be
careful, some dictionaries are not indicating this.
examples:
aer/o (air); aeri: to pump air into (a tire)
ag/i (to act); agigi : make (somebody) act.
fum/o : fume; fumi : means to smoke (both
senses); fumiĝi : start smoking (leave out smoke).
aktiv/a : active; aktivi: to be active; aktiviĝi:
to become active.
akv/o (water), akvi: to give water.
ali/a (other) : alii: be different; aliigi=to
change (to modify, to make different); aliiĝi: to change (to
become different);
Estus bone ĉi tie doni liston da vortoj kiuj estas problemaj, sed mi ne
regas sufiĉe la Anglan. Ĉu iu povas helpi?.
Don Harlow: The problem, again, has to do with learning
equivalent national-language words instead
of meanings. Once you've learned that "ag'" refers to
some kind of action, that "aer'", "fum'" and "akv'" are things,
and that "aktiv'" and "ali'" describe those things, you
shouldn't have any problem.
(#058) What
is the correct word order in Esperanto?
There isn't a correct word order, but a most common word order.
Subject verb complements
complements = object without preposition, objects with preposition
adjective in front of substantives.
adverb in front of verbs
subjects, verbs, objects, adjectives, adverbs are optional.
Others are perfectly permissible, and far from uncommon. Also,
adjectives may either precede or follow nouns, or (primarily in poetry)
be separated from them by other words.
I could go on detailing
the common word order, and what other order is possible, but examples
are easier to remember and imitate. This is precisely what Zamenhof
decided to do, and by watching the results, it looks sufficient.
Read "La Fundamento".
For those who want to cut hair in four along their length, read [PAGE ]
(#059) What
does malamikoj de la urbo mean : "enemies of the city"
or "enemies from the city"?
Without context, it's undecided. Could also be that the enemies of the
city are coming from inside the city a well. It is not clear if the
enemies are enemies of each other living in the same city, or together
enemies of the same city either. Nor does it say how many they are. Or
whether they are male, female or a mixture of both. So it's totally
imprecise.
The context could force one interpretation. If one wants to be clear,
one has to use the right words.
It is often while translating that ambiguities are exposed. Usually the
translated text is longer than the original.
Malamikoj venante el la urbo, or just malamikoj
el la urbo, is one possibility.
Malamikoj al la urbo, is another one, if you are
happy with these two.
(#060) What
does la amo de Dio mean? Is it "God's love" or "some entity's love
of God"?
Ĉu veras ke God's love havas
nur unu senson? Kio signifas "the love of God"?
You could use: la Dia amo (God's love for his creatures) and la amo al
Dio (the love towards God).
I don't think anybody has tried la amo Dion. It's an
interesting use of -n as genitive (for those freaks who know what that
is). There is no copyright on this expression.
Not so good as la Dia amo, you could say la amo fare de Dio. It
would literally mean "the love produced by God", the love on behalf of
God. This expression fare de is more and more often reduced to far
: la amo far Dio.
This is a case of retrocreation of a preposition that did not exist
from a verbal radical. This is not contradicting any rule of "La
Fundamento".
Note that la amo de Dio al Liaj kreaĵoj (God's love for His
creatures) and la amo de Dio far de Liaj kreaĵoj (from His
creatures) are not ambiguous due to the context.
So if I understood well, la amo de Dio al Liaj kreaĵoj must
be translated by: "God's love for His creatures", and la amo
de Dio far Liaj kreaĵoj must be translated "creatures's love of
God". Well English is your language and surely you can correct my
mistakes.
(#061) Esperanto
propaganda
and teaching guides place great importance on the principle
of marking a word's part of speech by its ending,
even
though it isn't followed consistently; for example, numbers and
prepositions have no consistent endings, while pronouns take the same
termination as verb infinitives, and the correlatives have a system all
of their own.
One should not confuses Ido with
Esperanto. There is no "principle of reversibility" in Esperanto, and
there will never be. That means that rules work in one direction and
not the other.
Examples:
in the dictionary [NPIV ]
you find "tranĉ/i
(tr) meaning to cut". This is what you must remember to build words
like tranĉilo, -ilo meaning an instrument to cut, like a knife or
something similar.
" komb/i (tr) means to comb"; combilo would mean a comb
or something similar.
" raz/i (tr) means to shave"; razilo means a
razor or sth similar.
" paf/i (tr) : to shoot"; pafilo means a gun.
" bros/o
: means a brush"; brosilo is a pleonasm, because the term broso already
includes the idea of instrument; I would not be shocked if you used brosilo,
but I won't use it myself, nor the majority of Esperanto speakers.
Rules (because some people like rules even when not
necessary):
- There is a rule that says how the suffix -ilo
modifies the meaning of a root. (La fundamento)
- there is no rule that says that all instruments must
finish by -ilo.
- there is no rule that says that all words finishing
by -ilo are instruments.
- There is an implicit rule that says that you should
make the meaning of
a word clear by adding suffixes or prefixes or concatenate roots
- There is an implicit rule that says everybody is
lazy, and there is no
advantage to add more than is needed to make a word clear, only risk a
typing error.
The suffix -i and all the others
function the same way, one direction; so nowhere is it said that all
words finishing by -i are infinitives. The same for all suffixes like
-in, -ul, -et, -eg, -ec, etc...
Numbers, pronouns, correlatives are handled the same way as any root:
you can modify their meaning using the same tools.
Don Harlow:
the "endings" relate specifically to nouns, adjectives, verbs and and
adverbs. Numerals, correlatives and pronouns are separate subsystems
which reuse some of these endings in "reasonable" ways but don't
necessarily imitate them. Note: the -i on the pronouns is not an ending
(as it is on verbs), but simply a vowel stuck in to make the pronoun
pronounceable. There is little possible for confusion, since while all
verbs ending in -I are polysyllabic, all but two of the pronouns are
monosyllabic. (Theoretically, one could confuse "ili" and "oni" with
verbs, if there were no such thing as context.)
Prepositions are particles, which have no endings of
themselves, but can take the usual endings to turn them into nouns,
adjectives, adverbs, even verbs.
The correlative system is moderately well matched up with the
noun-verb-adjective-adverb system, since -O refers to the name of
something (a noun), -A refers to a description of something (an
adjective). Unfortunately (or fortunately) when it comes to adverbs the
correlatives have a finer sense of discrimination than ordinary
adverbs, so as well as the -E ending (adverb of place in the
correlatives) you have -EL (manner), -AL (reason), -OM (amount), -AM
(time).
(#068) Millidge's
dictionary
claims that "the use of the article is the same as in the
other languages", which is complete nonsense since the uses of articles differ from language to language.
Not necessarily. One must be careful when claiming this or this is
nonsense, when speaking of languages.
I don't have the exact wording of the Millidge's dictionary. It should
say something like : if you use the definite article as you do usually
in your language, it will be OK. I know it is like that in English,
French and Dutch.
Polish does not use articles.
Don Harlow: Zamenhof explicitly allows beginners from
countries where the article is not used
to ignore it. Also, remember Millidge's dictionary was aimed at English
speakers (more specifically, English speakers in England), so when he
says "the same as in the other languages" he is really telling his
readers "the same as in English" (which is also not quite correct).
The language, of course, cannot be blamed for anything that its
speakers care to write about it.
(#069) Articles
are actually pretty rare in the world's
languages.
To name but a few, Finnish,
Swahili, Japanese, Chinese, and most Slavic languages all do without.
This is an interesting remark. As Zamenhof knew Russian and Polish, it
is indeed surprising that he decided to use a definite article and that
he could do without the indefinite article.
If he had applied his
system, he should have avoided all articles, so it seems at least. It
is probable that he found the definite article the most elegant way to
achieve clarity.
What was his system is explained in What is the principle that Zamenhof followed to define
the grammar of Esperanto?
Anybody knows of a serious study about the way other languages are able
to avoid the definite article and still are able to convey the same
meaning?
Don Harlow: The article is a relatively recent
invention, one which tends to be incorporated into languages that don't
have it.
For the use of word-order in Russian to determine definiteness, see
Pokrovskij, "Lingvaj respondoj", first chapter.
In Japanese, if I remember correctly, the particles "ga" and "wa" tend
to make this distinction.
(#070) No
less an authority than Zamenhof himself is on record as conceding that
agreement between the adjective and noun is unnecessary
("superfluous ballast", in
his own words in 1894), and indeed there's no good reason why you
should have to say grandaj hundoj "big dogs", la hundoj
estas grandaj "the dogs are big", and mi vidas la grandajn
hundojn "I see the big dogs".
You are well documented. Zamenhof knew English enough to know it was
possible to avoid that. I would like to know why he first decided to do
that, and why his proposal to remove that rule was rejected (if he
indeed proposed so). Does anybody have the answer? I know there
are many phrases that are clearer with this rule, but it does not look
a satisfactory explanation. I have the feeling that -aj could be
avoided, but -an not so easily. I guess Zamenhof decided first to say the
cases are the same as in substantives but decided that numbers
and cases would be easier to use. I'll look in my [PAGE ] when I come back home; I don't
travel with it.
Now it's too late to change that.
Rule 3:
Adjectives are formed by adding a to the root. The numbers
and cases are the same as in substantives. The comparative degree
is formed by prefixing pli (more); the superlative by plej
(most). The word „than” is rendered by ol, e. g. pli blanka
ol neĝo, „whiter than snow”.
Don Harlow:
Zamenhof's comments at that time were associated with the proposed
"reform" of Esperanto of 1894, which he devised (and publicly
supported) under financial pressure; his private letters indicate that
he had no great faith in the proposed changes or desire to make them.
As far as English is concerned, the lack of adjective agreement is to a
great extent replaced by the distinction between the third person
singular and plural of the present-tense verb, which adds a certain
amount of redundancy to the language missing due to the absence of
noun-adjective agreement. In fact, some authors have experimented with
removing adjective agreement from the possessive pronouns, by using the
correlative ending -ES instead of the adjective ending -A for the
possessives; the results have not been shown particularly popular among
speakers. (The freedom of word-order also militates against such a
change; a sentence, for instance, such as "Mies gepatroj donis al
fratino mies monon" would be totally, and perhaps painfully, ambiguous
in the second "mies".)
(#071) Which
part of speech do numbers belong to, exactly?
They belong to the cardinal numerals. Why do you ask?
Rule 4.
The cardinal numerals do not change their forms
for the different
cases. They are: unu (1), du (2), tri (3), kvar (4), kvin (5), ses (6),
sep (7), ok (8), naŭ (9), dek (10), cent (100), mil (1000). The tens
and hundreds are formed by simple junction of the numerals, e. g. 533 =
kvin'cent tri'dek tri. Ordinals are formed by adding the adjectival a
to the cardinals, e. g. unu'a, „first”; du'a, „second”, etc.
Multiplicatives (as „threefold”, „fourfold”, etc.) add obl, e. g.
tri'obl'a, „threefold”. Fractionals add on, as du'on'o, „a half”;
kvar'on'o, „a quarter”. Collective numerals add op, as kvar'op'e, „four
together”. Distributive prefix po, e. g., po kvin, „five apiece”.
Adverbials take e, e. g., unu'e, „firstly”, etc.
(#073)
The
numbers up to 1000s are numbers. After that they are nouns. For no
obvious reasons, the syntax of numbers allows the inconsistency of mil
bestoj for "a thousand animals" versus miliono da bestoj for "a million
animals".
This is because Zamenhof never
made up his mind whether or not numbers should be nouns, adjectives or
something else.
In English you can't say a ten animals, but you can say a
hundred animals. Note the difference in meaning between I
have thousand cows, and I have a thousand cows.
In Esperanto you can say: deko da bestoj or dek bestoj; cent
bestoj, cento da bestoj, mil bestoj, milo da bestoj: it does not
mean the same; it could mean I have exactly so many, or I have around
so many.
Zamenhof models that work in one language, according to the principle
that it should work for Esperanto as well. He did not invent rules from
thin air.
In this case he took French (fairly close to English and
others). If you know French I don't need to explain more. If you don't
know French, bad luck, somebody will have to explain it to you.
I don't think anybody would complain if you say dumilion tricent
kvardek kvinmil sescent septdek ok bestoj (2345678). Se jes, korektu min.
Tiu ĉi urbo havas milionon da loĝantoj, by the way
does not mean that this town has precisely 106 inhabitants,
could have 10 thousands more or less.
Note that
miliono = 106
miliardo= 109
duiliono=biliono=1012
triiliono=triliono=1018
kvariliono=kvadriliono=1024
kviniliono=kintiliono=1030
etc...until dekiliono=1060. If you need more use a
notation like dek al sepdek du=1072.
dumilliardo= 1015
trimilliardo=1021
kvarmiliardo=1027
etc... until dekmiliardo=1063
Even if Zamenhof did not made up his mind about it (what he did in this
case), he never felt obliged to have an definite meaning about
everything, as he could trust the Esperanto community. Stop blaming the
poor guy for all the sins in the world, blame the 8 million (more or
less 1 or 2 million) who followed as well. We are all solider.
Don Harlow:
Actually, it's because Zamenhof followed the Western systems, in which
the numbering system is also broken. In English, of course, it's broken
after 99, rather than 999,999; "hundred", "thousand", etc. are nouns,
while all numbers before a hundred are numerals (hence you say "ten"
but have to say "a hundred"). Some Esperanto authors have suggested the
numeral "meg" as a replacement for the noun "miliono", but this hasn't
caught on; and in any case it would still leave the system broken,
though at a higher level.
There's also the problem that for
the larger, less commonly used numbers, using a noun system allows a
certain amount of regularity (according to NPIV,
a common way of expressing these larger numbers is by using the
numerals and adding the unofficial suffixes -ILION- and -ILIARD- them,
e.g. "kvariliono", "kvariliardo"). Numerals would be far less regularly
formed.
(#075) The
verbal system may look straightforward, but the grammar doesn't mention
that you can form no less than 36 compound tenses with the various
tenses of esti "to be" and the participles.
This is far too many.
Rule 6:
The verb does not change its form for numbers
or persons, e. g. mi
far'as, „I do”; la patr'o far'as, „the father does”; ili far'as, „they
do”.
Forms of the Verb:
The present tense ends in as, e. g. mi
far'as, „I do”.
The past tense ends in is, e. g. li far'is, „he did”.
The future tense ends in os, e. g. ili far'os, „they will do”.
The subjunctive mood ends in us, e. g. ŝi far'us, „she may do”.
The imperative mood ends in u, e. g. ni far'u, „let us do”.
The infinitive mood ends in i, e. g. fari, „to do”.
There are two forms of the participle in the international language,
the changeable or adjectival, and the unchangeable or adverbial.
The present participle active ends in ant,
e. g. far'ant'a, „he who is doing”; far'ant'e, „doing”.
The past participle active ends in int, e. g. far'int'a, „he who has
done”; far'int'e, „having done”.
The future participle active ends in ont, e. g. far'ont'a, „he who will
do”; far'ont'e, „about to do”.
The present participle passive ends in at, e. g. far'at'e, „being done”.
The past participle passive ends in it, e. g. far'it'a, „that which has
been done”; far'it'e, „having been done”.
The future participle passive ends in ot, e. g. far'ot'a, „that which
will be done”; far'ot'e, „about to be done”.
All forms of the passive are rendered by the respective forms of the
verb est (to be) and the participle passive of the required verb; the
preposition used is de, „by”. E. g. ŝi est'as am'at'a de ĉiu'j, „she is
loved by every one”.
If you add the other 6 forms, you have 41 possibilities. Still too
many? If you need more detail read [PAGE ]
Don Harlow: there are only three "tenses" in Esperanto:
-IS, -AS, -OS.
To a European, obsessed with the rather peculiar verb systems of the
Western European languages (and it was for Europeans that Z wrote the
above descriptions), it may appear that Esperanto has many tenses. This
is not the case. In the Western languages, such "compound verbs"
consist of a helping verb ("esti" or "havi") + another part of the verb
(the participle). In Esperanto, the "compound verbs" are not really
verbs at all: they are a verb, "esti", followed by an adjective
(Esperanto's "participles" are really adjectives formed from action
roots). If you understand the (regular) meaning of the affixes used to
form them, you simply use them as you use any other adjective:
Georgo Vaŝingtono estis alta, blankhara, lingodenta,
kaj naskita.
This, incidentally, is why Esperanto does not use "havi" with
participles, which is also confusing to some Europeans.
(#076) Consider
the sentence estas ŝtelata la hundo de la viro,
literally "is stolen the dog by/of/from the man". Not only is the
meaning of the preposition de
ambiguous in several ways [TYE 176], but it's not obvious whether the
first two words mean "is being stolen" or "has been stolen and still
is". Thus this innocent-looking sentence can mean at least six
completely different things.
Your are confusing estas ŝtelata with estas ŝtelita.
estas ŝtelata: is being stolen
estas ŝtelita: has been stolen and still is.
estis ŝtelata : was stolen at that moment I am
speaking about
estis ŝtelita : had been stolen at that time (but
may be it was found back now)
The common word order would be : La hundo de la viro estas ŝtelita.
Or la hundo estas ŝtelita de la viro.
To avoid confusion, you could say: La viro ŝtelis la hundon, or
if you prefer to speak according to the word order of your mother
tongue : ŝtelita hundo-la far de la viro estas (verrry poetic
language nice you have!).
Refer to http://www.akademio-de-esperanto.org/decidoj/participoj.html
Ĉu [TYE] estas tiom konfusa? Kion mi
povas konsili al komencanto anstataŭ denove [PAGE ] ?
(#078) If
subjunctives, future tenses and participles are really necessary, why
are there no "subjunctive participles" like vidunta? And is it
a subjunctive mood, a conditional tense, or something else?
-as -is -os -u -us -i -ant -int -ont -at - it -ot are necessary and
sufficient. The proof : it works for more than hundred years already.
It's amazing what you can do with that.
Don Harlow:
There is no subjunctive in Esperanto: you are thinking of the
conditional (-US: something that might happen but probably won't). The
"conditional participles" have been reinvented by writers perhaps a
thousand times in the last century, but unfortunately nobody seems to
feel a real need for them.
(#079) Dutch
and German get along fine without worrying about the distinction
between adjectives and adverbs.
Rule 7:
Adverbs are formed by adding e to the root. The
degrees of comparison
are the same as in adjectives, e. g., mi'a frat'o kant'as pli bon'e ol
mi, „my brother sings better than I”.
German and Dutch distinguish between adjectives and adverbs. It looks
like there is a common form, but adjectives vary, and adverbs don't.
Ex: Hij rijdt snel. Het rijdt met een snel voertuig. Hij is een snelle
rijder.
(#080) In
Esperanto there are some affixes with unnecessarily vague meanings
-ar- creates arb'ar'o
for "forest" ("tree-collection"), which could also mean a line of
Lombardy Poplars. Less forgivable is the misleading word ov'ar'o
"collection of eggs", which pointlessly duplicates the meaning of nesto
"nest".
Don Harlow: sorry, "nesto" is
not a collection of eggs but a collection of twigs glued together to
make a receptacle for eggs and a place to keep a bird's belly warm.
-uj- "container"
really shouldn't be used to make names of countries such as Skot'ujo
"Scotland", nor is -ej- "place" justified in words like lern'ejo
"school" and pregh'ejo
"church". These last two words are literally "learn-place" and
"pray-place", which are too general in meaning; they could equally well
refer to many other things such as "classroom" and "prayer room" in a
school building.
Don Harlow:
Again (as with "pafilo"), these words in -EJ- generally suffice. That
they don't always suffice is why there are words in (unofficial)
Esperanto such as "kirko", "katedralo", "kapelo", "templo", "sinagogo",
"moskeo", not to mention such more official possibilities as
"predikejo" (where you can sleep if you wish), "adorejo", etc.
-aĵ-, "something made
from or possessing the quality of", is possibly the vaguest; it gives
rise to idiomatic oddities like akr'aĵo "edge" from akra
"sharp", ov'aĵho "omelet", ter'aĵo "soil" from tero
"the Earth", korp'aĵo, "flesh" fromkorpo
"body", and others in [TYE 77-8]. It also creates pairs of words which
pretend to have different meanings but don't; thus both kava
and kav'aĵa are given as "hollow" in my dictionary.
Don Harlow: "edge" is "rando"; "omelette" is "omleto";
"soil" is "grundo"; "flesh" is "karno". The
words you give could be used in special cases (e.g. "Aĉulo,
mi disskulptos vin per la akraĵo de mia klingo!", in which the
speaker wants to characterise the "edge" primarily by sharpness), but
they are not _commonly_ used.
Are you sure that the word "kavaĵa" isn't "kavaĵo"
(something hollow, a hollow)?
What are the affixes with necessarily vague
meaning?
As a qualified linguist, didn't you hear of the theory
of the elasticity of words? What do you make of it?
Words are elastic. They fill in some space between other words.
Suffixes like -ar -uj -ej -aĵ add some more elasticity to the root in
one direction.
The main problem in language leaning, is to know till what point a word
can stretch.
When you speak a language from your young age, you do not realise that.
You imagine that all words have a very precise and fixed meaning, that
they cover a very precise surface. Not so, they don't, in no language
(except perhaps in JAVA?).
Let's imagine the next situation:
You must cross a mountain river. There are stones here and there that
you could use. You must plan yours jumps to be able to cross over to
the other side. Perhaps you won't choose the easiest sequence, and you
might fall in the middle.
A guy living in the mountain knows where
to start and what is the right path. In some places he goes sideways
and back, to be able to choose the safer path. He would cross the river
without thinking, as if it were a solid bridge. For him the stones
touch each other. Stones are elastic for him.
There are experts in
river crossing. It's astonishing what they do; they make impossible
jumps you wouldn't dare to do. They are skillful poets in jumping. You
can appreciate the results, it's efficient and nice;
In any
dictionary, specially in an Esperanto dictionary, they describe the
surface of a word, what it covers, but don't give the elasticity
coefficient. The meaning of a word depends on the context, and the
skill of the author who makes a sentence look as a boulevard. The
breaking point is when the listener doesn't understand, that's as
far you can stretch a word. You must learn to speak as good guide would
let you cross a river. Some places, he would stop, pause for a while so
you catch your breath, and go on. He is easy to follow. Speaking a
language is learning to be a guide, not measure surfaces.
To appreciate the story, it's better to have some experience of the
situation.
If this is not understood, there is no use to answer in more detail to
the rest of the comments. If you understand, you can answer yourself.
Another example for those knowing C++. There are several meanings for *
or &. Is the language ambiguous because of that? No, the context
would define the interpretation unambiguously. You can even give
additional meanings to these signs. But it should not be too far from
the original meaning, otherwise the reader might be confused.
I
give that example to show that even in computer languages; that are
supposed to be the summit of logic, there are ambiguous notations for
the beginner.
The true question is: how long are you a beginner: C++, Java,
Esperanto, when can you say I know the language : 2 years, then
you think and speak the language.
If you say I did better in language x, it's only because the word know
is different for you than me.
Nothing is unambiguous. In fact, you never stop learning Esperanto, to
be honest. Depends on what you want to do with it?
(#081) Esperanto's
vocabulary displays nineteenth-century mechanistic ideology in full
flourish.
The
underlying assumption - inspired by Esperanto's predecessor Volapük, as
Zamenhof openly admitted - is that every word ever spoken in every
language can be converted to an unambiguous and unique combination of
"roots", which express basic meanings, and "affixes", which modify
them; and by keeping the number of roots to a minimum, the memory-load
is kept down, and a careful choice of affixes compensates by adding
expressive power to the system. However, neither Zamenhof nor Volapük's
creator appreciated that meaning - like grammar - is in practice fluid
and largely unpredictable, and unsuitable for shoehorning into such a
rigid system. The English words "silly" and "villain", for example,
once respectively meant "happy" and "farm worker".
I don't understand what you mean by nineteenth century mechanistic
ideology. Please clarify.
What you say after looks largely correct. However read
about elasticity of words.
Note also that words were allowed to evolve unpredictably when there
was no writing, no dictionaries, no grammar books, no education.
Tell me when -s will disappear in he
speaks (as it already did in he can, he must, he may)?
(#082) A
problem with Esperanto's affix system is that, like the choices of
parts of speech and roots, it is based upon an essentially arbitrary
set of criteria.
It's debatable
whether it is possible to choose a universally useful set of affixes on
purely objective grounds; Zamenhof's affixes are idiosyncratic and all
questionable in one way or another. Moreover, a logical system of
derivational suffixing is only really possible with verbs; most of
Esperanto's affixes, by contrast, are principally nominal.
Everything is debatable and questionable or could be
more or less
logical. The fact that Esperanto works, proves that this type of
discussion is sterile.
This kind of reasoning is comparable to the following:
Boats made of wood can float, because wood
floats.
Boats made of zinc cannot float, because zinc sinks.
It is sufficient to have been once on a boat made of iron to know that
there has to be a flaw in the reasoning. It's then easy to find a
better explanation.
Esperanto floats for 100 years, and didn't sink in spite of all the
tempests against it.
(#083) There's
a
fundamental problem with such a vocabulary-building system: any
potential gain in the reduction of the memory-load is offset by the
necessity of having to work out what the words are supposed to mean,
even without considering all the exceptions, irregularities and
idiosyncrasies
A
communication on the auxlang mailing list to a learner a while ago gave
it away: "Don't learn the roots, learn the words". The proof of the
pudding, as they say...
This is the view of an
Idist. Ido was an attempt to go further than Esperanto in the logic of
the language. A big difference between Ido and Esperanto is the
principle of reversibility.
Yes, Ido looks more logical than Esperanto. And Esperanto is
more logical than English (and a lot of others).
It is possible that Esperanto is gaining ground on Ido because our
brains like some elasticity, some imprecision, some ambiguity. We like
to play with words and double meanings.
Esperanto would certainly
not be more attractive if it was harnessed by some more rules. Read If
Ido is better than Esperanto, how come that it has fewer speakers than
Esperanto?
A logical mind, if interested in this question,
would try to find an explanation for this paradox. Unfortunately, we
are all full of passion, and use the logic as reinforcement for the
biases we already have.
Your reference to auxlang mailing list is too vague. I cannot verify
what was said there.
My advice to learn faster : don't learn words, learn whole sentences.
What does that prove?
Don Harlow:
I don't remember reading that particular piece of advice on the Auxlang
list, but then I don't read every message there, I'm afraid. It's
certainly not one I would have given.
In my experience,
learning the roots and affixes -- and, of course, how to use them --
expands one's vocabulary tremendously. It is a remarkable fact that
Esperanto, unlike other "foreign" (i.e., non-native) languages, can
potentially give the speaker a larger active vocabulary than
he
has in his own native language, though it may take some time to reach
this point. This, incidentally, is why so many people find it easier to
translated from their native language into Esperanto than in the
opposite direction, a situation completely the opposite from what we
find with other languages.
Re the Idist opinion: it seems to be based on that which Couturat had,
i.e. that the Esperanto word-formation system actually had no
system -- in Ido he attempted to correct that lack. Unfortunately, as
de Saussure showed, Esperanto indeed had a very functional system; it
just hadn't been well codified. The situation was something like that
with electricity; de Saussure played the role of Esperanto's James
Clerk Maxwell, but that didn't prevent Esperanto's Ben Franklin
(Zamenhof) from getting sparks off a key during a thunderstorm many
years earlier
For more information, read http://denizo.opia.dk/la.trezorejo/tekstoj/libroj.pdf/Saussure-Fundamentaj.reguloj.de.la.vort-teorio.en.Esperanto.pdf
by René Saussure
(#084) Virgulino
means maiden, but has several other possible incorrect meanings,
such as a male gulino
(by analogy with virbovo "bull"), or a hermaphrodite gulo.
It's actually formed from the adjective virga
"unspoiled" - which is also used of, for example, unploughed fields.
virg/a : first meaning: virgin (for person);
unploughed (field), unexplored (land)
virg'ulo : virga viro.
virg'ul'ino : virga virino.
gulo : small bear living in the arctic
vir'gulo : vira gulo (male gulo)
gul'ino : ina gulo (female gulo)
vir'gul'ino has no meaning to my knowledge, but an
artist could probably draw something like that.
virgino could be used instead of virg'ul'ino
because ino already has the idea of ulo.
So vir'gulo and virg'ulo are ambiguous taken out of
context.
What to do to disambiguate them?
In writing vir'gulo, virg'ulo
in speaking : vira gulo, virga ulo.
There are a few similar examples solved the same way.
If you are interested in such word play, you should read Raymond
Schwatz. He sets up situations where the words could be understood both
way. It's not easy.
Note that a coma is said komo in Esperanto (not virgulo
as some French's seem to think)
Don Harlow:
There are quite a number of such possible "ambiguities" in Esperanto; I
remember some discussion in Auxlang, years ago, about the word
"sakstrato", which could be a cul-de-sac ("sak'strat'o") or a bill
delivered to your door by a guy with a long blond beard and a helmet
with horns ("saks'trat'o"). This is the stuff of puns.
Unfortunately, you still have to really work hard to make a pun out
such words as "virgulino", since "vir'gul'in'o" is not likely ever to
occur in ordinary, or even literary, discourse, while "virg'ul'in'o" is
far from impossible or even uncommon.
(Another exchange, probably in another list, had some argument from a
proponent of Interlingua about "insulino", which, according to him,
could be "insulin'o", "insul'in'o" or "ins'ul'in'o". Another toughie
for a pun, since the root "ins'" doesn't exist, and it is not clear
what type of insulo would be an "insul'in'o".)
Again, this
sort of criticism is something that somebody simply invented to attack
Esperanto, and has no bearing on the real world.
(#086) The
dictionaries give many words which aren't built up from Esperantine
roots at all; many of these words are Latin or Greek compounds with
elements which would be more recognisable than their Esperanto
equivalents.
"Astronomy" is thus astronomio
- a form reasonably obvious to everybody - and not the rather ugly
Esperanto compound stelscienco,
Unfortunately the tendency is going towards words like steloscienco.
This is due to our Chinese friends. Chinese (and many others) don't
find steloscienco ugly.
Read [PAGE ]-436 on this
subject.
Don Harlow: this is an ongoing argument in
the Esperanto world. There is an occasional tendency toward
regularity as opposed to historicity; e.g., Akiko Woessink-Nagata's "lingviko"
seems to be becoming more popular at the expense of
the "international" "lingvistiko" (which
is more properly a subscience of psychology which studies linguists).
However, the argument here is that there already exists an
international scientific terminology (though in fact "international"
generally means either "European" or "I speak English") and that
Esperanto should make use of it so that fully accredited scientists
(most of whom don't really care) can read articles written in Esperanto.
According
to a recent BBC program, the meteorological phenomenon known as the
"jet stream" was discovered in the thirties by a Chinese scientist, who
wrote a paper on it in Esperanto, which nobody read, and so the actual
discovery
was put off until the forties, when the Japanese "discovered" it and
used it, e.g. to float incendiary balloons across the Pacific Ocean to
my home state of Oregon. However, there may be some indications that,
while Western scientists of that time ignored papers in
Esperanto, the Japanese weren't quite so finicky, and that their
"discovery" of the jet stream may have been predicated on that paper ...
In any case, check out the currently available Esperanto dictionary of
physics. It is in Esperanto, English and Japanese, and if you look at
the Japanese equivalents for the various terms used in the science of
physics, you can see just how "international" the "international"
scientific terminology really is ...
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