"She is not as pretty as I am."

Translation: Ŝi ne estas tiel bela kiel mi.

[JackBond]

Think of it more like "She is not so pretty as I am".

Kiel is as/like/how
Tiel is so/like this/this way

[olivia076]

Duo, don't be so down on yourself, you're beautiful.

[fxeyub837]

What's the difference between tiel and kiel here?

[johmue]

When I learned English I asked why it is "as" in both places.

[JackBond]

The English "as" is so flexible. It's a wonder we can figure it out. It definitely makes learning these phrases in other languages difficult.

[ChuckBaggett]

How about "Sxi estas malpli bela ol mi."?
Is that valid Esperanto?

[LisBohnert]

This sentence I believe is to teach the 'tiel... Kiel' constructing

Your sentence is correct and means the same thing but avoids that which is being taught.

[NicolasDaLuz]

The meaning is the same, but the way to say it is different.

Your sentence translates to "She is less beautiful than I" while the sentence to translate was "She is not as beautiful as I".

[twain_ling]

I know that I should not ask these, but I am curious, would "Ŝi ne belas kiel mi belas" mean something similar or am I way off base.

[JackBond]

I would take a guess and say that's something like "She is not beautiful in the same way that I am beautiful"

[LouisSepdekdu]

Don't do that. Use "estas bela", not "belas", if you want to be sure to be understood.

[MichelCant6120]

Isn't pretty = beleta as a diminutive of beautiful = bela?

I translated pretty as beleta and it got marked as wrong !!!

[salivanto]

"Beleta" is a word that you really can't get away with in polite society. I recall Piron used it in Gerda Malaperis, but in the context of someone gushing about his own pretty love interest and how compared to her, every other woman in the world is at best "beleta" - kind of slightly OK looking.

[NicolasDaLuz]

Mmh, I always understood "beleta" as "cute". Does it actually mean "passable" ? :-/

http://vortaro.net/#beleta says:

Neregule bela, sed tamen iel plaĉa

and gives "linda" as a synonym : "Alloge plaĉaspekta." ("attractively pleasing to watch", I think).

In Gerda Malaperis, I thought he was saying "compared to you, others are at best cute".

What are your thoughts on this?

[salivanto]

The little pointy finger does not mean "synonym". It references words which may be related or which may contrast in interesting ways. "Linda" is not a common word.

plaĉaspekta = good looking

[NicolasDaLuz]

Thanks! :-)

[Kayzels]

Would it be wrong to say "Sxi estas ne tiel bela kiel mi?"

[salivanto]

She is "not so pretty" - like me.

[SheilaLind3]

Well, as a woman I don't find a lot of these terms to be all that derogatory; I regularly refer to myself as a "broad" or a "bimbo" and I grant that my squarish jaw and forehead make me less pretty than some, although I am not going to pay to have my skull recontoured, that's for sure! But I noticed that in Esperanto that there are no words to convey the "softer" sense of broad and bimbo; that all the words can be used to mean "slut,whore, bitch...". Any comments about this?

[SheilaLind3]

Similarly I find that the adjective "perky" doesn't seem to have a close Esperanto translation. "Akra" comes close but it has the inferences of "sharp" even "acidic". Somewhat like "pert" in English for a long time had the connotations of "impudent" and "disrespectful".

[salivanto]

My only comment is that I routinely refer to Katie Carr's character in Dinotopia as "Hottie McBigSkull."