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Esperanto word order | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| The Log Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6584 days ago 57 posts - 58 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 3 08 December 2007 at 10:57am | IP Logged |
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I've been flirting with Esperanto and find the way the language works to be very interesting. One aspect that struck me was the extremely flexible word order, and I was wandering do most Esperantists speak with the word order of their native tongue or do most people tend to speak with different word orders to achieve different emphasis?
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| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6640 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 2 of 3 09 December 2007 at 12:36am | IP Logged |
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The usual word order in Esperanto is Subject-Verb-Object. This is not a requirement, it's just the way that the
language has evolved. Most people, even those who come from languages that use different word orderings will default to this as the basic structure of Esperanto. However, you always have the freedom to use a different word order in Esperanto, and people will often do that in order to create a different emphasis in a sentence (as you suggest). So while most sentences will be SVO, you will see people use the language in creative ways and with differing word orderings to create different shades of meaning. Incidentally, another place where the flexible word order of Esperanto is useful is in poetry. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 3 of 3 09 December 2007 at 6:35am | IP Logged |
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When the word order is different from usual, the first word in the sentence always receives particular stress.
For example: Mi amas vin. - normal: I love you. Vin mi amas. - It's you that I love. Amas mi vin. - I LOVE you (more than just liking). Also, generally any word that is "out of place" receives stress, for example in this line from the poem "Parizo" by Leonard Newell: "Sed ravas min nur franca la siren'" - the emphasis is on FRENCH, only the French city is important to him, not London or the others he mentioned before. (la franca sireno = Paris) This free word order can help extremely in getting the point of a poem across. For example, have a look at "Ĉe fenestro de Vagonaro" by Julio Baghy: Vilaĝeto ĉe rivero, verda monto, flora bord', sonoril-son' de l' vespero, benko ĉe la doma pord', ligas min al vi memoro: gaja ludo de infan', la sekret' de juna koro, kiso de l' unua am'... Vilaĝeto ĉe rivero, vin revidi vanas rev', tenas min en mallibero urba vivo, zorgoj, dev'. Because of the free word order, he can start with imagery of his home village rather than "memoro ligas min al vilaĝeto ĉe rivero...". This would also be possible in English because the initial description could be declared a quasi-sentence. However, "vin revidi vanas revo" and especially the last two lines should be hard to render this way in English: of the sentence "urba vivo, zorgoj kaj devo tenas min en mallibero", he says everything BUT the subject first, and the subject is in fact the most important part, even the most important of the entire poem, so it makes a lot of sense to put that at the very end and to end the entire poem on the notion of "devo"(duty). Edited by Sprachprofi on 09 December 2007 at 6:37am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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