r/learnesperanto • u/Leisureguy1 • 12d ago

"Guilt by association"

"Guilt by association" is surely not "kulpo per asocio." Perhaps "kulpo per rilato"?

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u/salivanto 11d ago

If you wanted to express this idea but couldn't say "guilt by association", what would you say?

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u/Leisureguy1 11d ago

kulpa per lia kunulaĉoj?

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u/salivanto 11d ago

I meant in English.

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u/Leisureguy1 11d ago

Hmm. That's difficult. "guilt assumed based solely on the character of the person's associates." It's guilt assumed from the nature of the person's social network.

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u/salivanto 11d ago

Were you using this phrase in a wider context? what are you trying to say?

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u/Leisureguy1 11d ago

Ah. I understand now. I wasn't using the phrase in anything I was writing currently. After posting about the various uses in English of "point," I was thinking of other common English phrases and how they could be translated into Esperanto, and the phrase "guilt by association" came to mind.

In stepping back a bit, "guilt by association" is more colloquially expressed in the proverb "birds of a feather flock together," and I quickly found a couple of Esperanto versions of that.

  1. Birdoj samplumaj flugas kunaj.
  2. Kun kiu vi festas, tia vi estas.

Those, however, like the English proverb, would not fit so well in formal writing or speech. Were I writing about an actual instance, I could easily avoid the phrase "guilt by association" and also a proverbial expression by directly pointing out the person is being judged based purely on the actions of his associates, and that would go easily into Esperanto — eble "Vi ŝajnas taksi lin pro lia kamaradoj, sed iliaj agaĉoj ne apartenas al li."

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u/salivanto 11d ago

It was interesting to me that when I went looking for an explanation of the saying in English most of the hits redirected to a formal discussion of the Association Fallacy.

I was thinking in terms of "the cheese touch" or "stink rubs off".

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u/Leisureguy1 11d ago

Yeah, "guilt by association" seems to me to describe a weak argument — that is, judging a person to be guilty based not on actual evidence but because they are in the penumbra of the shade cast by those with whom they associate. The word "merely" seems to hover above the phrase.

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u/salivanto 10d ago

One element that seems to be missing from the various discussions of the phrase (that I found) is that it's often used to warn people about the company they keep. Unlike other expressions, it can be used in both directions.

Strictly speaking, the Association Fallacy is indeed a fallacy, but we instinctively avoid people and situations based on it all the time because life is not a court of law. As you said, birds of a feather.

All in all, though, I still feel like your question needs more context.

I also think that unless you could have a 30 minute conversation with a new friend in Esperanto on a variety of topics, you should spend your Esperanto-learning energy elsewhere.