Read aloud the following sentences. If you don't understand all but the last, go back and review previous lessons as required.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj. Ĉiu el tiuj ĉi elementoj parolas apartan lingvon, kaj neamike rilatas la aliajn elementojn.
The last sentence should be easy enough to pronounce, since we have no new letters/sounds in this lesson (and only five left that haven't appeared so far). Just in case, though, here's an idea of how you might want to pronounce it:
CHEE-oo ehl TEE-ooy CHEE eh-leh-MEHN-tohy pah-ROH-lahs ah-PAHR-tahn LEENG-vohn, kahy neh-ah-MEE-keh ree-LAH-tahs lah ah-LEE-ahyn eh-leh-MEHN-tohyn
Okay, this lesson's sentence is:
Ĉiu el tiuj ĉi elementoj parolas apartan lingvon, kaj neamike rilatas la aliajn elementojn.
Here we get our first look at what happens when we show that a word shows not only more than one object (plural) but also that it is the direct object of a sentence (not what's doing the action, but what the action is being done to). You remember that the first is shown by the ending -J and that the second is shown by the ending -N. So we have elemento = an element -> elementoj = elements (more than one) -> elementojn = elements that are having something done to them. Note also (as was pointed out a couple of lessons ago) that alia elemento = another element does not become *alia elementojn when you add these endings, but aliajn elementojn, since in Esperanto a word that describes something takes the same endings as the name of what it describes. (The little asterisk at one point is a marker to show that this example is wrong.)
We also have a totally new grammatical ending: -E. Just like the -A-words (adjectives) describe things (nouns), the -E-words describe the conditions or situations in which actions or descriptions take place.
What does this mean, exactly? Let's look at a couple of examples:
tute infana = completely childish. Basically this answers the question How is (whatever it is) childish?
frue aperas = appears early. This, in turn, answers the question When does (whatever it is) appear?
The -E-words are those that answer questions like when, where, how ― the questions that want to know what is the situation in which something can happen? This is unlike the -A-words, which answer questions of the sort what kind? what is it like?.
There's another big difference in how you use these words. Remember (we pointed it out above) that the -A-words take the same endings as the -O-words with which they're associated. What this means is that these words really have four different endings, and if several of them appear in the same sentence, there's not much chance of confusing yourself about where they belong. So, in fact, they can come before the -O-words they're associated with (as in English), or after them (as in French), or even moved away from them completely (though this is not necessarily recommended anywhere except in really bad poetry), without causing problems. On the other hand, the -E words don't have any additional endings, and, since they can describe conditions or situations for verbs (the -AS and -IS-words), -A-words and other -E-words, of which there will often be a few in any given sentence, it's generally best to put the -E-word directly before the word with which it's associated. This is not always necessary ― if you only have one associatable word in a sentence (as in, for example, Ĝi aperas), you can put the -E-word anywhere you please, since there's not any danger of confusion (Frue ĝi aperas, Ĝi frue aperas, Ĝi aperas frue). But for the most part, it's best to place the -E-word right before its associated word (Ĝi frue aperas).
If you see a -LY or a -WISE on the end of an English word, more often than not this will correspond to the Esperanto -E But, warning, not always!!!
We have six new word roots in this sentence.
ali'. This actually has two common meanings: another, a different individual or another kind of. How would you say in Espernato another Russian? another kind of element?
amik' = a person who has a close personal relationship with someone else, a friend. Try saying, in Esperanto, various friends, a friendly child. (Warning: remember that -LY isn't always the same as -E, and this is a very common one of those situations!)
apart'. This doesn't mean quite the same thing that apart does in English; it is, perhaps, closer to different, something that stands outside the group, though usually on the same level. It can also serve as a translation of particular or special, when by these we are not trying to set it above or below the things it's being compared to. How would you say, in Esperanto, a special friend?
lingv' = language, when used to show a particular set of rules and words that are different from any other set of rules and words. (In English, the term language is often used to show particular usage that differs from that of the norm within a certain language ― e.g. in "Watch your language!" Esperanto does not do this.) How would you say a childish language (of children)? How would you say linguistically different?
parol' = a general term for uttering sequences of sounds that have meaning: to speak. How would you say The German speaks (is speaking)? Take a guess at a spoken language.
Finally, rilat' = relates (to). This generally has to do with non-familial relationships. How would you say, do you think, a friendly relationship? How about the Russians have a relationship with the Poles? (Notice how this works in our lesson sentence.)
Here's our sentence again. With a very few exceptions, you should mostly understand it now:
Ĉiu el tiuj ĉi elementoj parolas apartan lingvon, kaj neamike rilatas la aliajn elementojn.
This sentence contains an unconscionable number of particles and correlatives. As quickly as possible:
ne = no (when used by itself) or not (when part of a sentence).
Mi dediĉis mian vivon = I dedicated my life
Mi ne dediĉis mian vivon = I did not dedicate my life
ne is one of half a dozen words which, in English, we call adverbs, but which are actually even more versatile than adverbs: they can describe not only conditions or situations, but also they can select nouns or pronouns. Consider the following set of sentences:
Mi ne dediĉis mian vivon = I did not dedicate my life (I did something else)
Ne mi dediĉis mian vivon = It was not I who dedicated his life (somebody else did)
Mi dediĉis ne vivon mian = It was not my life that I dedicated (it was something else)
Mi dediĉis vivon ne mian = It was not my life that I dedicated (it was somebody else's)
Notice how we put ne immediately before the word to which it applies. For -E-words in general, we recommend this. With ne ― and three or four other little particles of the same type ― you must do this to make sure that you are not misrepresenting yourself.
In this lesson, we also use ne as a prefix. This is very common with many of the particles, and you should get used to seeing them attached to other words. Here, ne has been attached to amike = in a friendly way to mean in a not friendly way. This means a cold shoulder, but not outright enmity ― there's another word for that, much stronger, which we'll encounter in the next lesson.
At this point, I'd really like to talk about the little particle (sometimes used as a prefix) ĉi. But I won't. It was originally intended to be used only with certain correlatives (as it is in this sentence), but its usage has expanded over the years. However, let's do the correlatives first.
Remember how neni- in the beginning of a correlative meant none or not at all? And how ki- meant which or what? Well, now we have two more. Ĉi- in the beginning of such a word indicates that this is a universal ― it means every or all. And ti- in the beginning means that, that particular one that I'm pointing to. So if you attach the two endings we have already (-am = time, -es = belonging to), you can get ĉiam = every or all time, always, and ties = belonging to that one, that person's.
Quick exercise: How would you express everybody's in Esperanto? How about then (at that time)?
As you can see in our sentence, we have here the correlative ending -u, which means basically one out of a set. Putting this together with our two new beginnings, we get ĉiu = each, every, and tiu = that particular one, that.
Quick exercise: What are the Esperanto words for which and none, not any?
Two points of interest here:
(1) The words ending in -u generally go with a name: kiu lingvo = which language. If no name is associated with the word, it is understood that the word refers to a person: kiu? = who? (which person?).
(2) You'll notice in our sentence that we don't use tiu here but tiuj. The words ending in -u take exactly the same endings as the naming words (nouns) and descriptive words (adjectives). So ĉiuj = all, as opposed to ĉiu = each, every.
And now for that little particle ĉi, which is not the same as the correlative beginning. This little particle simply means: over here, near to the speaker; it serves to show that the word associated with it (which it can precede or follow) is something close by. It's usually used with the ti- correlatives: tiu = that, ĉi tiu or tiu ĉi = this.
Does the sentence make sence now? Read it aloud again and make sure that you understand it.
Ĉiu el tiuj ĉi elementoj parolas apartan lingvon, kaj neamike rilatas la aliajn elementojn.
Next lesson: a long sentence, three of our last five sounds, our last correlative beginning, three affixes, and a whole bunch of word roots. Screw up your courage.
Read aloud the following sentences. If you don't understand the first two, go back and review previous lessons.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Here's a quick and dirty attempt to show an English speaker how to pronounce this last sentence:
en byeh-loh-STOH-koh lah loh-jahn-TAH-roh kohn-SEES-tahs el kvahr dee-VEHR-sahy eh-leh-MEHN-toy: ROO-soy, POH-loy, gehr-MAH-noy kahy heh-BREH-oy.
This lesson's sentence, as you have guessed, is:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
We already know four of Esperanto's eleven endings. -is shows that the word is an action that has already happened. -o shows that the word is the name of something. -a shows that the word describes something. -n shows that the word is the object of an action (direct object).
Now here are two more.
-as, which you see on the end of konsistas, is very closely related to -is. But where -is shows that something has already happened, -as shows that it's happening right now. -as says nothing about when the action began, or when it will end (maybe it's been going on since the beginning of the universe, and will keep going on until judgment day), only that it's happening at this moment. Grammarians call this the present tense.
-j, which you can see on the end of each of rusoj, poloj, germanoj, hebreoj, is simply the mark of the plural. If you don't know the word, it simply means more than one of whatever I'm attached to. So, for instance, we know that infano means child; then infanoj means more than one child, or, if you prefer (and I'm sure you do), children.
Four points to remember about this ending:
(1) The Esperanto letter j, as we've discussed, is always pronounced like the English letter y. So -oj is always pronounced like the oy in boy, never like the odg in Blodgett.
(2) The English equivalent of -j, showing the plural, is usually written -s. It can, however, be pronounced in two ways, like the s in books or like the s in dogs (which sounds like a z). The Esperanto -j is always pronounced the same. Furthermore, there are often some other changes that have to be made; for instance, if you want to give the plural of story in English, you have the change the final y to an i, then add an e, before you attach the -s: stories. And in many cases, you have to add a different ending (child -> children), add no ending but change the spelling of the word internally (man -> men), or not even do that but just keep the word the same (sheep -> sheep). We won't even talk about words like cattle, which exist only in the plural, and for which you have to add something to make them singular (showing only one): a head of cattle. In Esperanto, all names of things show there plural by adding the -j. There are no exceptions.
(3) One big difference between English and Esperanto is that in Esperanto, when you add the -j to the name of something (noun), you always add it to any accompanying descriptive words (adjectives) as well. So, for instance, mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon = I dedicated my whole life might become, if we are talking, for instance, about a Pharaoh having his pyramid built, mi dediĉis tutajn vivojn = I dedicated entire lives.
(4) Finally, when you add the -j to the direct object (no examples in this lesson, I'm afraid), while you put it after the -o (or -a, if the word is an adjective), you always put it before the direct-object -n. Why? Best reason in the world: it sounds better that way.
Once again, read the sentence aloud. Does it make a little more sense now than at the beginning?
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Eight new word roots in this lesson: a record! Four of them should be really easy. These are:
rus' = Russian, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the Russian language. (Note that not everybody who lives in Russia is Russian ― just ask the Chechens.)
pol' = Polish, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the Polish language.
german' = German, a member of the ethnic group that natively speaks the complex of dialects that we generally refer to as German (and lives in Germany ― Austrians, for instance, might not prefer to be included under the rubric german', though they speak German natively).
hebre' = Jewish, a member of the ethnic group that practices the Jewish religion.
(Or doesn't, as the case may be. How can you tell if an individual person falls into one of these categories? The only real answer is: ask them.)
Additional note: Zamenhof regularly used the root hebre' for the Jewish ethnic group, to which he belonged, but today the more common root is jud'; hebre' is largely reserved for the language Hebrew.
element' should also be easy; it means, of course, element, one of the basic units (not necessarily identical) of which something is made up. Which brings us to ...
konsist', also like our English word consist; this has to do with describing the parts of which something is made up (consists).
And divers' also has its English cognate: divers(e), meaning widely different. Another translation is various, which can be misleading later on (there's an Esperanto root vari', which refers to changes in appearance or consistence, as does the English to vary; but varia, of course, retains this meaning, and does not mean the same as various, which for some reason has nothing to do with changing and hence varying).
Finally we come to loĝ'. This is usually translated as to live, but perhaps a better translation (though not very colloquial) is to reside; it refers to inhabiting a certain location (see the English words lodge and lodgings), not to having a beating heart and pumping lungs (for which Esperanto has the separate root viv').
This should really help with the sentence. Read it aloud yet again and see how well you understand it.
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
This lesson's two particles, el and kvar, should also be very simple.
kvar = 4 (English four).
el = of, from. It generally refers to motion out of some place (not simply away from some place). It's also used to show the place or places from where something was taken, as here: el kvar diversaj elementoj, out of, taken from four different elements.
This should almost cover everything. Read aloud again:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Still confused by the word loĝantaro? You may have guessed that it has a suffix on the end. Well, actually it has two.
-ant- is closely related to -as, which we learned earlier. It basically says: the action shown in that part of the word that comes before -ant- is going on right now. In effect, loĝanto is someone who is residing (somewhere). A word to which this ending is attached, incidentally, is called a participle by grammarians. There are several different participles, and they will call this one the present (because it refers to something happening right now) active (because it shows what something is doing, not what is being done to that something) participle. You can almost always translate that -ant- into English as -ing, but you should probably not take that rule too seriously. First, there are words in English, taken from Latin, which tend to use the old Latin ending instead of the English one, and this is such a case: loĝanto is perhaps best translated as resident, though the adjective form, loĝanta, can be translated as residing (or resident, if you prefer). Second, while -ant- is usually -ing, -ing is not always -ant-, since the English ending -ing plays not one but three different roles in the language.
Well, enough about -ant-; you should be able to at least use it. What about that final -ar-? That's what's called the collective suffix; it takes a bunch of whatever is described by the part that comes before and turns them into a group. This is related to the -j ending, but is not the same; the -j simply means more than one, but doesn't imply any relationship between those individuals, whereas the suffix -ar- says: These are somehow related, and although there are more than one of them, they make up a single unit. A good English example of this distinction would be trees vs. forest; trees in Esperanto, for those interested, are arboj, but forest is arbaro.
So, finally, loĝas means lives, resides; loĝanto is someone who is living (somewhere), a resident; and loĝantaro means a group or collection of residents (of a particular place), a population.
Once more, with feeling:
En Bjelostoko la loĝantaro konsistas el kvar diversaj elementoj: rusoj, poloj, germanoj kaj hebreoj.
Next lesson: two more correlatives (or, actually, eight ...).
Read the following, out loud. Make sure you understand the first sentence; if not, go back to the previous lessons and figure out what you don't remember. The second sentence ... well, do the best you can with it.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
You should immediately recognize the meaning of the new sentence as: I did [something] in [something].
There are two new sounds/letters in this lesson. The obvious one is b, which sounds very much like the usual English b. This is an explosive sound, in which you close your lips, let air pile up behind them, and then let it out in a single fast pop. It's not like the b we sometimes hear in Spanish, which ― to the American ear ― often sounds like our v.
Notice that in Bjelostoko, the Bje is a single syllable, not two. Pronounce it like byeh.
The other new letter, ĝ, is the soft g of gem. This is often written j in English (just, jewel).
The entire sentence can be pronounced (in our fake transliteration):
mee nahs-KEE-jees ehn byeh-loh-STOH-koh
Read it aloud again (at least once), just to make sure that you can:
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
Two new word roots in this lesson. One of them, we can pass over very quickly. Bjelostok' is simply the name of a city in what is now northeastern Poland, but was, in Zamenhof's time, western Russia (national boundaries have had a tendency to migrate over the centuries in that part of the world). In English we generally refer to it as Bialystok.
The other is nask', which describes the action of giving birth. Don't confuse this action with the one of being born, which we'll see in a few moments.
Read our new sentence again:
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
You can see now that the meaning is: I did [something, having to do with giving birth] in Bialystok.
The missing part is the -iĝ- in naskiĝis, which takes the root nask' and changes its meaning to a related one. What might that related meaning be?
There's a clue in the form. In our last lesson we learned about -ig-, which means, basically, cause to happen. -iĝ- is closely related and equally important (remember what I said about -ig- being one of the most important suffixes in Esperanto?); basically, it means become; or, less succinctly, that whatever action this suffix is attached to, happened to the subject of the verb.
Let's take an example. Zamenhof said, in the first sentence: mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon... We see here that mi did something (dedicated), and that mian tutan vivon had something done to it (dedicated). In Esperanto, we can turn the mian tutan vivon into the subject (dropping the -N along the way) and say: Mia tuta vivo dediĉiĝis, My whole life became dedicated.
NOTE: a purist will point out that the meanings are not quite the same. Somebody like me will then point out that they are similar enough "for government work," as we liked to say when I was in the Air Force.
So: what do you think, remembering that naskis means gave birth, is the meaning of mi naskiĝis?
Read the sentence aloud again and make sure you understand it:
Mi naskiĝis en Bjelostoko.
That was quick, wasn't it. The next sentence (lesson 7) will be somewhat longer, though probably not as long as a couple of earlier lessons.
As I said last time, today we'll combine all three propositions that we've read so far into a single sentence. Here it is. Read it aloud and try to understand it.
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
The main addition here is the little expression al kies efektivigo, which the author has attached to mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon to hook it in with the rest of the sentence.
We have one more new sound this time, the one shown here by the letter g in the word efektivigo. The letter g in Esperanto is always pronounced like the English g in get. It is never pronounced like the letter g in gem. In other words, it's always hard, never soft.
Say the word efektivigo. An Anglicized spelling might be: eh-fehk-teev-EE-go.
The only new root in this lesson is precisely the one in that new word. But -- surprise, surprise! -- it's not *efektivig', but just plain efektiv' (we'll see where the -ig- came from further down).
One problem with efektiv' ― and one that you'll run across with some other commonly used Esperanto words ― is that it looks very much like the English effective, and in fact came from the same place, but it doesn't have the same meaning. The Esperanto root efektiv' has to do with reality, actuality. The adjective form efektiva means real, actual. Be sure that you understand this.
So, what about that -ig- in efektivigo?
First, a caveat. -ig- is arguably one of the two or three most important affixes in Esperanto. Learn it well. Read and reread this discussion until you understand it.
Basically, -ig- means: to cause to become whatever is in the root. -ig- is always attached to some sort of description; and it causes the situation to change from one in which something is not described in that way to one in which something is described in that way.
Take efektiva=real, actual. Attach -ig- and you get an action: cause (something) to become real or actual, to realize.
Do you understand? Try to translate these concepts into Esperanto.
What? You say that you don't know the words for caused and made? But remember that in this particular context these aren't separate words, but part of the concept embodied in -ig-.
All right, here's what you should have said:
This is what happens when you attach -ig- to a description word (adjective). What happens when you attach it to a name word (noun)? Well, pretty much the same thing. Remember how you can change endings to change meanings? You can, for instance, take infano=a child and, by changing the ending o to a, you can change the meaning from a name to a description: infana=childish, having to do with children. The suffix -ig- makes this change of meaning automatically. infano -> infana -> infanigis: Mi infanigis la ideon = I made the idea childish, juvenile.
Now comes the tough part, and I wish I could skip it right now, but there's no time like the present.
Actions in Esperanto (and also in English) come in several flavors. We've seen two of them. In one of them, the action describes something that's happening to the subject of the sentence (la ideo aperis. There's a special name for this kind of action: it's called intransitive, meaning that the action doesn't go across (trans) to someone or something else, but stays with the subject.
In the other, the action describes something that the subject of the sentence is doing to something or someone else (mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon). This type of action is called transitive, you can guess why.
These aren't, by the way, different kinds of words, just different kinds of actions. But what kinds of actions they are has some bearing on what -ig- does when you attach it to them.
When you attach -ig- to an intransitive word, it basically says: caused that action to be happening or to have happened, and ― maybe as an afterthought ― it turns the sentence into one of the second type (transitive). Consider the following examples:
So far, so good; but note that in the second example, the addition of the -ig- has indeed made the sentence transitive ― and you can tell this by the addition of a direct object, shown by the -N ending, to the sentence. Some authors like to say that every time you add -ig-, you're adding an object.
Which is fine for instransitive sentences, which have no objects; add one, and you've got one, everything in order. But what happens when you have a sentence that already has an object? How can you have two objects? Add -N to each of them, and things might get very confusing. Consider the following three examples:
Oops. Those last two examples look different, but seem to be saying the same thing. Right. They are saying the same thing ... only not quite. This is a cute method of getting around the "two objects" problem ― make one of them an -N object and the other one the object of a preposition. (je is the preposition we use when we can't quite come up with just the right one from our repertoire of other prepositions.) The only question is, which object to show with an -N and which with a preposition, and Zamenhof's answer, when someone plaintively raised this question, was: who cares? Use whichever method you want. The two sentences may mean two different things, but they are actually saying the same thing. Here are the actual meanings, in somewhat stilted English:
There are a couple of suffixes (participles) that allow you to be even more specific, if you must, but Zamenhof basically suggested that that might be overpedantic.
Reread the above section. You don't need to know all this stuff right now, but you should at some point, and ― again ― there's no time like the present.
More interesting (except to grammarians, perhaps) is the other new word kies. Kies is our second correlative, like neniam, which we met in the third lesson. Its structure is exactly the same:
Basically, as the textbooks will tell you, ki- is the start of correlatives that ask questions: the ki-words are the who, what, when, where, how (and a few others) of Esperanto. This is the story, though not the whole story, as I'll explain in a moment.
Similarly, the ending -es indicates ownership. So we have kies=whose.
As is usual in Esperanto, these pieces can be put together in different ways to get different results, but the pieces never change. (I might say "like Lego blocks", but to my generation the correct term was "Tinker-toys" ...) You now know two correlative beginnings and two correlative endings ... and two correlative words? No, actually you know four. Tell yourself the Esperanto words for:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Did you say to yourself nenies and kiam? I certainly hope ― and expect ― that you did.
As I said, the textbooks tell you that ki- indicates that the correlative is a question word ― and that this is not the whole story. As in English, exactly the same words are used not just to start a question, but also to link one proposition to something in a sentence as a means of describing that something ― in other words, to establish a relationship (hence the "relative" in correlative). This is, in fact, probably the most important use the of these words, with their "question"-function coming in a distant second. So why do the textbooks concentrate on the latter? At a guess, two reasons: (1) it's easier to explain; (2) English-speakers, who do the same thing in their language, are expected to figure the second, and more important use, out automatically.
To show simple examples of the two uses, look at these two sentences:
In the first sentence, we're simply asking a question (and one I sometimes ask myself): Kiam mi estis juna?, When was I young?
But in the second lesson we're using kiam to use a whole proposition (mi estis juna) to describe something else ― the action aperis: kiam mi estis juna ... tells us the time at which the aperis happened.
So in our sentence we have: La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon..., in which kies (more precisely, al kies efektivigo) serves as a link by which mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon is used to tell us something about la ideo. We could diagram that particular part of the sentence in this way:
La ideo ...
\
\
al kies efektivigo
\
\
mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon ...
where the
\ \ \
is used to tell us that the description below belongs to the word above.
(We might diagram our first, sample, link as
La ideo aperis
\
\
kiam
\
\
mi estis juna
)
Which pretty much brings us to the end of this lesson. A lot of verbiage for three little words! Read the entire sentence aloud again, and make sure that you understand it:
La ideo, al kies efektivigo mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon, aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Next lesson: a whole new sentence, short and simple.
Once again, read the following three propositions out loud. Make sure that you can understand them without translatint them into English. If you have trouble with any of them, go back and look at Lesson 1 for the first line, Lesson 2 for the second line, or Lesson 3 for the third line.
La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco.
Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon.
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
Now we're going to combine two of these propositions into a simple (but somewhat more complex) sentence. Read it aloud and see if you understand it.
La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
First, we have one new letter/sound in this lesson: the letter 'k' which is pronounced (suprise!) just like the 'k' in English. We find it here in the word kaj, which we'll get to in a moment, and where it's followed by -aj, which, being a combination of the a in father and the j which is pronounced like the English y, sounds like the word eye or the ie in lie. (In English, there are a number of ways of spelling this diphthong ― consider the igh in right or, more simply, the i in the identically-pronounced word rite. In Esperanto, it's always aj.)
The little particle kaj, which means pretty much the same as the English and, is called a conjunction, which is Latin for "joining together". kaj does just that. In the simplest case, it can join two words of the same type together. Consider the following two possibilities:
La ideo kaj la infano aperis.
La infano aperis kaj vivis.
In the first sentence, it joins together two different things that appeared (popped up out of nothing). In the second case, it takes one of those things and tells which two actions it performed.
Our sentence is actually the same as the second of these; it's just that the actions in question are described in a somewhat more complicated way. We might diagram the whole sentence as follows:
aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco
/
/
La ideo -- kaj
\
\
neniam min forlasadis.
So, hopefully you understand this little word kaj (and), which is about all there is in this lesson. Read the following sentence again, and be sure that you understand it.
La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco kaj neniam min forlasadis.
Which leaves one proposition that we've already covered. How does it relate to this sentence? We'll see in the next lesson, when we combine all three into a more complex (but not very complicated) sentence.
La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco.
Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon.
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
Please read the above aloud. You should have no trouble with the pronunciation (there are no new sounds or letters in this lesson). You should also understand the first two lines without having to think of their English equivalents. If not, go back and look at lesson 1 for the first line or lesson 2 for the second line.
Now let's consider the third line:
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
There's only one new root in this lesson:
las' = to leave, to put (presumably permanent) space between two things. (Note: las' also has to do with allowing something to happen.)
We'll see how it works in a few moments.
Try reading the line one more time:
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
Does it make any sense to you yet?
Answer to the question we asked in the note towards the end of the last lesson: when you tack the -N onto mi in Esperanto, you get min, which means me.
A totally new word ― and new kind of word ― is neniam. This is the first of our correlatives. Correlatives are made up of two parts ― a prefix that ends with -i- and a suffix that follows that -i-. The correlatives have to do with the question words who, what, when, where, how, why, etc. The prefix tells whether we're asking a question, pointing out a specific answer, making a negative answer, etc. (there are five possibilities), and the suffix tells us whether the word has to do with things, time, method, reason, etc. Neniam, for instance, starts with neni-, which tells us that this is a negative correlative; the -am on the end tells us that it has to do with time. The English negative word is not and the English basic time word is ever, so we can translate this word as not ever, or never.
Since there are five prefixes and nine suffixes among the correlatives, how many correlative words do you think you can form in Esperanto?
Finally, we have the particle for. For simply means away, at a (great) distance. You can use it by itself (e.g. Mia vivo estas for de la infaneco ― do you understand that? estas = is, de = of or from), but in this lesson it is used as a prefix. Particles can often be used as prefixes (as here) or even as ordinary roots, taking the same endings as regular roots. How, for instance, do you think you would translate la fora infaneco, where for takes the adjective ending -A?
In this case, for is attached to las' as a prefix: forlasis, left at a great distance.
This still leaves one minor problem with this word: why is it forlasadis instead of forlasis?
Read the sentence aloud one more time:
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
If you have guessed that -AD- in forlasadis is a suffix, like -EC- in the first lesson, you're right. -AD- is attached to an action of some sort to show that that action is continuous or (in the case of short, sharp, one-time acts) repetitive. In this case, forlasis is a basic one-time action. A suicide (if he could talk after he was dead) might say: Mi forlasis mian vivon. After all, he only did it once.
Zamenhof, here, is saying that the non-leaving of him by the idea was something ongoing, something that endured, something he put up with forever. Hence the suffix -AD-. Note: in this particular case, you might want to just omit the -AD-, since the neniam imparts the same idea. That's pretty much up to you.
Read aloud once more:
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
Finally, word-order. We've talked about the subject (the one who is doing something), the verb (which shows what's being done) and the direct object (who it's being done to). In English, we distinguish the subject from the direct object by putting the subject before the verb and the direct object after the verb. In Esperanto we distinguish between the subject and the direct object by putting an -N on the end of the direct object but not on the end of the subject. What this means is that, in Esperanto, you don't have to put the subject, the verb and the direct object in some particular order; you can reorganize them to suit yourself. In this sentence, the order is: subject (La ideo), direct object (min), verb (forlasadis).
Why did Zamenhof choose this particular order for this particular sentence? I don't know. Maybe he just felt that it sounded better. This is a good reason, in some cases, for changing the word order.
Now reread the three sentences:
La ideo aperis ĉe mi en la plej frua infaneco.
Mi dediĉis mian tutan vivon.
La ideo neniam min forlasadis.
Zamenhof didn't actually write these three sentences as three simple sentences, but as one single complex sentence. In the next lesson we'll see how to put two of them together.