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From: rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen)
Subject: Re: Great Esperanto literature (was: Re: Esperanto? The EU?)
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Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 23:21:14 GMT
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In article <xu7bcO1.padrote@delphi.com> John <padrote@delphi.com> writes:
>   This is exactly the point I was trying to make when I asked what a
>prostitute says in Esperanto when she's trying to pick you up. I was given
>several examples which I'm sure are theoretical, since I doubt that the
>prostitutes of the world find they can attract customers by shouting Cu vi
>volas fiki, the way they sometimes can by shouting similar things in English.
I don't quite agree. "Chu vi volas fiki" would certainly have an emotional 
bearing on me, if it were only that it would be very remarkable to hear it 
from a prostitute.
> 
>   Words have an emotional content which cannot be assigned by committees.
>An Esperantist, hearing the work fiki (or whatever it is), just will not
>have the same reaction as an English speaker who hears the word "fuck". 
To me, it has an even stronger emotional content, because it reminds me of 
both English "fuck", and German "ficken", and even Dutch (my native language) 
fokken, which is a very neutral word that means "breed". (used of cattle, 
dogs etc).

>A small example, but when you see the word "thou" you know you're reading
>something written a long time ago, and you may think of Shakespeare,
>Elizabethan England, and things along those lines. Esperanto apparently
>needed such a word, so someone - perhaps Zamenhof - invented one. The word
>is "Ci". This is an "archaic" pronoun, in a language which has no archaic
I don't know if "ci" is only intended to be archaic? I thought it could also 
be used as a very personal address of very special people, i.e. people whoa re 
special to the speaker.

