Esperanto

"How, Kemo Sabe?" (Lesson 7)

Back in lesson 4 you learned ĉu, a particle used to turn a statement into a question asking for an answer of "yes" or "no" (or, potentially, "maybe"; in Esperanto, that's eble, in case you're interested). At that time I pointed out that there were two kinds of questions: the yes-no question and the one that called on the respondent to provide specific information. For instance, you can ask:

"Ĉu forte ventas?"

and get an answer of "jes" or "ne". But what if you just want to ask how the wind is blowing, a question to which the respondent must answer with, perhaps, an -e word? The answer is the little word kiel ("how") which is used to ask such questions. ⁽¹⁾

"Kiel ventas?"

"Forte!"

There are eight (some might say: nine) other words similar to kiel -- the "who, what, when, where, how and why" of Esperanto. We will get to those later. Right now, you might want to take the words you know and make up some questions using kiel. Be sure to make use particularly of the three affixes that you've already learned: mal, eg and et.

Kiel belongs to a subsystem of Esperanto known as the correlatives (we'll encounter two other subsystems, the counting numbers and the pronouns, later). All the words in this subystem have the same structure. Each one has a zero-one-two-or-three letter prefix that tells you what kind of word it is (a question word, a pointing word, etc.), the letter i in the middle, and an ending that shows what type of material it's relating to (manner or method of something, location, time, etc.). Specifically, the beginning k shows that this is a question word; the ending el shows that we're talking about manner or method. kiel = "in what way", "how".

If you replace the beginning k with a t, you are no longer asking a question but pointing to, or emphasizing, an answer:

"Kiel ventas? Ĉu forte?" ("How is the wind blowing? Strongly?")

"Jes, tiel." ("Yes, so, in that way.")

If you drop off the beginning entirely, you are getting an indefinite answer to your question ("I don't know"):

"Kiel ventas?"

"Forte, malforte ... iel." ("Strongly, weakly ... in some way, somehow.")

On a still day, you might wish to use the prefix nen, which means ... not at all:

"Kiel ventas?"

"Neniel!" ("Not at all, it's not!")

Finally, there is a prefix ĉi, which is used as a "universal". ⁽²⁾

"Kiel ventas?"

"Forte ..." (as a particularly strong gust makes the windows rattle), "... malforte ..." (as the wind dies down for a moment), "... ĉiel!" ("... in every way!")

Remember those beginnings; they are used in the same way all the way through the correlative system.

Where we are

Has this gone too slowly for you? Probably. We've spent seven lessons concentrating on the simplest form of sentence in Esperanto: the one that simply shows that something is happening. What have we learned in that time?

(1) We've learned four "grammatical endings" (as, is, os, e). There are eleven such endings in Esperanto, so we're more than a third of the way through the list.

(2) We've learned three affixes (mal, eg, et), as well as a couple of other particles that sometimes serve as affixes; by this time, we should have some understanding of the way the Esperanto word-formation system works. There are between thirty and forty other affixes to learn, and we will pick them up in later lessons.

(3) We now understand (let us hope) the various beginnings of the correlative system, as well as one of the endings. We have eight (or maybe nine) endings left to go.

Next lesson, let's expand our horizons and look at sentences in which someone is doing something, or something is happening to someone.

---

⁽¹⁾ kiel, like many similar words in English, actually plays two roles, of which the question-asking is perhaps the less important; it is also a correlative, used to combine two parts of a sentence, in which role it means "as" or "like": Ventas kiel tondras, laŭte! ("The wind is blowing like the thunder is rumbling, loudly.") But the "question" function is the easier one to teach, so we usually get to it first, and tend to emphasize it.

⁽²⁾ Another small particle, often used with words like tiel, looks just like this prefix: ĉi It's used to show nearness to the speaker: ĉi tiel, "in this way" (pointing to ground right at feet). Two things about this particle (which you should feel free to use from now on): (1) It is never used as a prefix in the correlative system; (2) use it only when you definitely want to show nearness, not when you're trying to translate an expression like "in this way, in that way", where there's really no desire to indicate nearness, just to distinguish between two different approaches (in Esperanto this would be tiel, tiel).

Posted by Don Harlow at February 28, 2004 12:54 PM | TrackBack