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Laughing
Robin Fairbridge Gaskell (Robin Fairbridge Gaskell <drought-breaker@...>) on July 20, 2005
Saluta Plu Amika, I follow Konstantin’s comments about Planned Languages NOT being nationally biassed, and the difficulty that speakers of Russian have with English-Language constructs such as “ … do laugh … “ and “ “ … give a laugh … “.
~ridi~ = ‘laugh’ to laugh - ridi ; do laugh - akti ridi ; he laughed
- an pa ridi ; give a laugh - don u ridi ; the laughing man - u ridi andro ; she told it laughingly - fe ridi dice id
“akti ridi”, “don u ridi” are good examples.
Yes, it is similar to “do laugh” and to “give a laugh”, but in my native lang there are no such speech tokens, so they couldn’t understand this without knowledge of English. In Esperanto it is called “anglismoj”. I’ve just asking my co-workers (their native language is also Russian) to translate the phrases “do laugh” and “give a laugh” - and they are at loss of it in despite of >10 years of studying English.
It would be possible to agree with those and similar to them idioms but we are speaking about the international auxillary language. It must be culturally neutral! Why they simply do not have similar problems of understanding in Esperanto?
One thought that struck me was that in using English to give a word-translation of a sample of Glosa, I am not inferring that the Glosa is following an English construction, but that Glosa words can be used to create compound concepts, and that here were English-Language renditions of such concepts.
An idea that has taken up some of my thought is the one about speaking, and thinking in, 'native' Glosa. In short, I feel that a person is probably doing Glosa well when they are 'thinking in Glosa" rather than mentally translating from English to Glosa, and then back through English again. Have you ever had the thought that in using Glosa you might be able to express ideas that are not in English (or Russian)? I know, for a fact, that Esperantists are proud that they can express things in Esperanto that are not directly expressible in their native tongue. While Esperanto achieves this mainly through the use of inflections, Glosa gets a similar result through the close association of words, and through using words in unusual syntactic relationships (as parts of speech they are not normally used for).
Concerning the odd English usages above, were they hard for Russian speakers to define in alternative English usages or to express in a Russian-Language translation, or both?
While you did not mention understanding the concepts as valid Glosa constructions, did you try to come up with Esperanto constructions that were valid in Esperanto, and which could legitimately be used in sentences in that language?
EG ~Kron an dice plu joko, place akti ridi ad an plu joko!~
(glos) when he say(s) [plural] joke please do laugh towards his [plural] joke
"When he tells jokes, please (do) laugh at his jokes!"
~Seqe akusti u-la humoro histori pro bi-ze tem, mi ne pote don u ridi.~
(glos) after listening to that humour(ous) story for two-zero time(s) I not can give a laugh
"After listening to that humorous story for twenty times, I can't give a laugh."
Saluta,
Robin
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