"La viro ofte portas mallongan pantalonon en somero."
Translation:The man often wears short pants in the summer.
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Does "mallongan pantalonon" literally mean "short pants", but is used as "shorts". Or is there a word for "shorts" itself?
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Is there a difference between short pants and shorts though?
The word for shorts in my native language literally translates as shortpants.
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I'm not sure if people in fashion would make a distinction between "shorts" and "short pants", but to most English speakers there is no difference, except that " short pants" is old-fashioned.
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But what about like capris or floods? They're not shorts, but they are "short pants".
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I have seen a lot of women wear capris. Do men wear them?
In reply to csi below: lol ! All this time I thought the baggie ones were just long shorts! Many boys like to wear them several sizes too big. I don't think that the jeans ones look that bad.
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Hmmm... good question, never really thought about it... Seems like they do, but shouldn't: http://ca.complex.com/style/2013/05/reasons-why-men-should-never-wear-capri-pants/
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Maybe, 'pantaloneto'? 'Ŝorto' also seems to appear in the dictionary.
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Pantaloneto sounds like spanish Pantaloneta, Which we use for short pants. But I don't think that it is correct in Esperanto, maybe if you are talking about a baby's pants and you want to emphasise that it might be correct.
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I don't know if it can work though, because shorts is a noun and mallongan is an adjective.
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Mallonga pantolono estas mallonga, sed la vortero "mallonga pantalono" estas longa.
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I have to endure that when tourists come to my country. I think I'm a little traumatized
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As one who has touristed to warmer countries during winter; I always feel so odd walking around with shorts and t-shirt while all the locals walk around in their warmest clothing.
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It's the opposite for me when all the tourists from warmer countries come here in the spring wearing thick winter jackets and we're all running around in shorts and t-shirts.
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Really?? Where are you from? The locals don't wear shorts in the summer where you live??
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It states that you need to include "the" before summer, but la is not there, and it is grammatically acceptable to omit it in English.
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Questions normally end with a question mark. I would have assumed that it was just a pointless gripe. If there's a question, please specify and I will do my best to answer it.
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I wrote "The man often wears a short pair of trousers in the summer". Duolingo refused this because of the use of "a" and "pair of". It seems to me that the sentence, although maybe unusual, is not wrong.
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As I understand it, dum might imply "for the duration of the summer", like he put the shorts on in June and didn't take them off until September, which would be a couple of levels of funky.
That or it's just that en somero is one of those idiomatically fixed expressions that just has to be remembered.
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In English we can say both "in the summer" or "during the summer". There is probably a slight difference in connotation but in every day speech, I think it's essentially synonymous. I wonder if it's the same in Esperanto, or if the distinction is more strict.
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I was so excited when I thought it said he wore a sombrero. Now I'm disappointed.
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The Esperanto sentence says "mallongan panatalonon", which is in the singular form. From what I know so far, if there's no article in front of a noun phrase ("la" is the only one I know) then it can either be translated as having no article ("[one pair of] short pants") or having "a" in front of it (a [pair of] pants). So because the phrase is singular and not plural, must the Esperanto sentence given be taken to mean "The man often wears one particular pair of pants in the summer"? If it were plural ("mallongajn pantalonojn") than of course it could mean he wears multiple pairs.
I don't believe we've run into this issue elsewhere so far, because usually we were definitely talking about noncounted verbs, like "Li trinkas kafo.", or a definite amount of a counted verb: "Li portas ĉemizon." or "Ŝi trinkas tazo da suko.".
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One just doesn't wear "a pair of" pants in Esperanto: "unu pantalono" = one pair of trousers. Just as in Dutch a "a pair of scissors" = "een schaar" and "a pair of glasses" = "een bril". The English language defines them as a pair of two objects, Esperanto and Dutch define them as a single object (except "okulvitroj" in Esperanto for a pair of glasses).
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I carefully read the post and found one question:
So because the phrase is singular and not plural, must the Esperanto sentence given be taken to mean "The man often wears one particular pair of pants in the summer"?
Answer: no - no more than "I wear a coat in the winter" means "I wear the same coat all winter long."
I've seen both "la somero" and just "somero". Is there any difference? The meaning seems identical to me.
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Shouldn't it be "dum somero" and not "en somero"? Summer is a period of time, not a place.
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As a general principle, just about anything you can say about place can be said about time. It's a metaphor - and a very basic metaphor to how we think. There are some subtle differences at time, but to have something happen "in" a certain time period is perfectly natural - and Esperanto routinely uses en in this way.
The difference between en somero and dum somero is that en implies that something happens within that time period, while dum suggests an event or condition which lasted the entire time period.
- Mi portis ŝorton en la somero. I wore shorts in the summer.
- Mi portis ŝorton dum la somero. I wore a pair of shorts for the summer.
