New questions:

1. Well I have made it to the back of the Kurso and started lesson 7 today. It gives me a definition of ĉe as "at the house of." Can anyone explain this? I understand it meaning "at" and I think even "next to" (though that raises the question of if it's any different from apud), but how can it stand alone to me "at the house of"? I mean, can you say: "Mi estas ĉe Marko" to me "I am at Marko's house"?

2. I am told that "de" can refer to an action someone performed. The example given is: "libro legata de Panjo" or "a book read by mom." Can someone provide some more insight on this and give a few more examples? That's kind of confusing.

3. I am having trouble with the verb "restis" and its definitions are pretty confusing. What does it mean exactly?

4. Is there any way to know when to insert a "la" and when not not to? It seems that a lot of times there's a "la" that's just there, as far as I can tell, "just because that's the way it's done. For instance: "Ni portis sandviĉojn por la tagmanĝo." The la there strikes me as arbitrary and unnecessary. Is doing a lot of reading just to gain exposure the the conventions of the language the only way to know about situations like this where a "la" is customarily used, or is there some kind of rule?

I mean, can you say: "Mi estas ĉe Marko" to me "I am at Marko's house"?

Yes, you can and yes, one does. Compare German "bei", French "chez", Italian "da".

2

With passives like "legata" the Esperanto "de" functions as the English "by". A book written by Shakespear = libro verkita de Shakespear.

3

Take a look here.

4. Is there any way to know when to insert a "la" and when not not to?

No, there isn't.

nornen:
Yes, you can and yes, one does. Compare German "bei", French "chez", Italian "da".

Weird. That's going to take some getting used to. I would totally read "Mi estas ĉe Marko" as "I am at Marko."

PrimeMinisterK:

nornen:
Yes, you can and yes, one does. Compare German "bei", French "chez", Italian "da".

Weird. That's going to take some getting used to. I would totally read "Mi estas ĉe Marko" as "I am at Marko."

Could we translate "Mi estas ĉe Marko" by "I am at Marko's"?

2.

PrimeMinisterK:
So is multe always used with da, as the combination multe da, and never by itself?

What if I simply want to say: I read a lot of books/I read many books. As in, just as a matter of course, I do a lot of reading and knock out books frequently.

Would you say, "Mi legas multajn librojn"? Or "Mi legas multe da librojn?"

Does either work in this case? Or am I totally wrong and neither of those are correct?

First a correction. I wrote erroneously, it's "multe da libroj" (without n in the end).

You can say

• Mi legas multe : I read a lot.
  
• Mi legas multajn librojn : I read many books.
  
• Mi legas multe da libroj : I read a lot of books.

3. (I warned you: this is an advanced topic) I'm not even myself sure which one to use in which case. Somewhere (in Stack Exchange?) I came across an example

Mi suspektas, ke mia najbaro faras iun kontraŭleĝan. Ĉi tial mi vokos la policon.

where according to some "ĉi tial" is wrong, because calling the police is a consequence of my suspicions, not a cause, i.e. it should be "do". (A side note: "voki" means to call by shouting etc.; "telefoni" is to call by a phone.)

An example from Tekstaro

Dua Libro de l’ lingvo Internacia, Zamenhof, 1888:
Respondi je ĉiu letero aparte estas por mi ne eble, kaj tial mi decidis respondi publike je ĉiuj demandoj kaj proponoj…

I *think* that the reasoning goes this way: "Because answering every letter…, that is why I decided…". Maybe it's just me, but I don't see much difference between these two excepts. And I suspect that I'm not alone with this matter.

For me you could well say "…kaj tial Usono eniris la militon".

6. You hear "parenteze" a lot in speech. less in texts, because they are (usually) more thought-out.

7. When writing science you need precise, unambiguous words ("The temperature dropped below freezing point of water during the night"). For daily use and fiction you need duplicates ("The night got chill and cold"). Especially descriptive words are quite often fuzzy and vague, vanta or frivola (and their derivatives), what's the difference. They form like a non-discrete scale. English has its scale, Esperanto its. Translating between these scales so that it sounds natural in both languages is the reason, why we should pay for professional translators.

PrimeMinisterK:
4. Is there any way to know when to insert a "la" and when not not to? It seems that a lot of times there's a "la" that's just there, as far as I can tell, "just because that's the way it's done. For instance: "Ni portis sandviĉojn por la tagmanĝo." The la there strikes me as arbitrary and unnecessary. Is doing a lot of reading just to gain exposure the the conventions of the language the only way to know about situations like this where a "la" is customarily used, or is there some kind of rule?

Hey, compare this to English. When to use "a", "the" or not having an article at all 😮 for a speaker of a language where there are no articles at all!

Use 'la' then you use 'the' in English.
With some excepions, e. g.:
la nova = new one

Zam_franca:
Could we translate "Mi estas ĉe Marko" by "I am at Marko's"?

I mean, maybe Esperanto's just weird like that, but it seems that there needs to be some indicator of a possessive. Ĉe being translated as "at" (at anything . . . at the bus stop . . . at the restaurant) but also being translated specifically as "at the house of" seems very random to me.

Metsis:
3. (I warned you: this is an advanced topic) I'm not even myself sure which one to use in which case. Somewhere (in Stack Exchange?) I came across an example

Mi suspektas, ke mia najbaro faras iun kontraŭleĝan. Ĉi tial mi vokos la policon.

where according to some "ĉi tial" is wrong, because calling the police is a consequence of my suspicions, not a cause, i.e. it should be "do". (A side note: "voki" means to call by shouting etc.; "telefoni" is to call by a phone.)

An example from Tekstaro

Respondi je ĉiu letero aparte estas por mi ne eble, kaj tial mi decidis respondi publike je ĉiuj demandoj kaj proponoj…

I *think* that the reasoning goes this way: "Because answering every letter…, that is why I decided…". Maybe it's just me, but I don't see much difference between these two excepts. And I suspect that I'm not alone with this matter.

For me you could well say "…kaj tial Usono eniris la militon"

I wonder if this level of technicality is only applicable to language geeks who want to argue about the stuff. Meaning, in regular, everyday Esperanto either word is acceptable and wouldn't be questioned by the common speaker.

Metsis:7. When writing science you need precise, unambiguous words ("The temperature dropped below freezing point of water during the night"). For daily use and fiction you need duplicates ("The night got chill and cold"). Especially descriptive words are quite often fuzzy and vague, vanta or frivola (and their derivatives), what's the difference. They form like a non-discrete scale. English has its scale, Esperanto its. Translating between these scales so that it sounds natural in both languages is the reason, why we should pay for professional translators.

One thing you're definitely right about is that for literature we need synonyms. You just can't repetitively use the same word over and over. The other day I was actually trying to translate something into English and the text used the same word twice--leviĝis--and in my translation I used "arose" the first time and "rose up" the second, purely due to aesthetics.

BTW (is there I could use "parenteze?"), did you have any thoughts on my question about so-called archaic words in Eo?

sergejm:Use 'la' then you use 'the' in English.
With some excepions, e. g.:
la nova = new one

lt's the exceptions that I'm talking about. Consider the example I used earlier:

"Ni portis sandviĉojn por la tagmanĝo."

In English we would never use "the" in an instance like this.