"Post longa batalo, ŝi mortis."
Translation:After a long battle, she died.
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2062
How can you die (morti) without becoming dead (mortiĝi)? Is this some kind of religious thing?
Edit 2017/10/20: Well I’ve been downvoted but no one has answered the important question. To die and to become dead mean exactly the same thing. Therefore there is no obvious logical reason to have both “morti” and “mortiĝi”, unless there is some subtle distinction between the two in Esperanto that does not exist in English.
Since writing the above edit I re-read Fred’s post, that mortiĝi is “usually” to die accidentally. That still seems a strange distinction, especially with the “usually” attached.
I note that “mortiĝi” is not in the Wells dictionary (1969).
Are there other verbs which have all three endings: “...igi”, “...iĝi” and “...i”?
Googling round, I find mortis is mostly use when noting a person's birth and death dates, or mentioning the bare fact that they are dead, while mortiĝis tends to be used when writing a little more actively about them dying. So at the start of a Wikipedia biography, you'll see "mortis la 30-an de majo 1778" and later, you get "Li ne revenos al Parizo ĝis 1778, laŭdata de la popolo post foresto de preskaŭ 28 jaroj. Li mortiĝis 83jaraĝa." (Voltaire) Seems to me here it's more nuance than a big difference in meaning.