nw2394:
They can't be an object because they are not nouns or adverbs or any other kind of word other than what they are - different.

Who said only nouns and adverbs can take the accusative?

nw2394:
I fail to see what you lot think is so logical about your, it seems to me, indefensible point of view.

Funnily enough, I can't understand what you think so illogical about this specific aspect of the language I never had a problem with changing the case of relative pronouns; maybe it's because I studied Latin in school, and that language uses the accusative identically in this case.

Even English uses the accusative case in this situation - albeit very, very rarely! Consider: "Who is standing beside the car?" ("Kiu staras apud la aŭto?") But: "Whom did you see at the concert?" ("Kiun vi vidis ĉe la koncerto?")

nw2394:
When I started studying E-o I read web pages suggesting that English speakers might not like the accusative. I didn't mind. I was already familiar with it from Russian. And, in any case, though it may be difficult for English speakers (or so I thought), I figured that maybe lack of an accusative would be harder for those used to it in other languages. So I took the attitude "you win some, you lose some". But having tried to come to grips with the implications the accusative appears to be having for E-o and the way E-o forces one to remember transitivity, I have come to utterly hate this case. I really resent it. It has totally got up my nose and is putting me off the language.

Sorry, but it is just too flaming alien.

Nick

Don't be too put off. You seem to be taking the bull by the horns, and I'd say you'll get past some of these challenging topics soon enough

nw2394:

awake:Consider the sentence
kio cxasas vi?

This is very ambiguous.

Really? Only because of the unnatural word order. I don't think it really is ambiguous. "Vi" is nominative. So it means "What are you chasing".

It doesn't though. That would imply that "what" is the object of the sentence. Since "kio" is in the nominative, however, it must be doing the verb, and must therefore be the subject. It cannot be the thing being chased. The sentence would be meaningless (or at least untranslatable - trying to work out a translation makes my brain hurt ).

nw2394:
kio ĉasas vin, means what is chasing you as vin is accusative.

Messing with changing kio to kion in one question but not the other is completely superfluous.

Nick

But you agree that "What is hunting you?" would be "Kio ĉasas vin?"; why don't you accept that you can switch this around to make "Kion vi ĉasas?" ("What are you hunting?")

The accusative never bothered me. My biggest stumbling block are the correlatives...they are too similar! For example, in Spanish we have Que, Quien, Donde, Porque, Cuando...In E-o we have kio, kiu, kie, kial, kiam. They are TOO similar for me. I still confuse kio and kiu and I've been using E-o for years!

Don't worry though. Read good Esperanto literature and you'll be fine!

Kwekubo:Funnily enough, I can't understand what you think so illogical about this specific aspect of the language I never had a problem with changing the case of relative pronouns;

Well, relative pronouns, though they may use some of the same words, are not the same thing as interrogatives - not to me they are not.

I can do case endings for relative pronouns. Just. It does not come naturally despite the fact that I can do the exercises. I kind of pass the exercises, but do not feel any the wiser.

maybe it's because I studied Latin in school, and that language uses the accusative identically in this case.

Well, I did Latin at school too. It was easily the worst experience of any course I've ever taken. Worse was that they never actually taught *any* grammar. The course consisted of reading Latin and somehow figuring what it meant entirely from vocabulary alone. I passed the exam by parrot learning the set text. An utter waste of time and tax payers money.

I also did Russian too - which was a far better course. It also has an accusative. It is years and years ago now and I could be wrong, but I do not recall changing the Russian "what" (shto using Latin characters) despite the fact that it has half a dozen cases including the accusative.

Maybe Russian does change shto according to context - but if it does I must have gone utterly blank on it for 5 years because I don't recall it.

Even English uses the accusative case in this situation - albeit very, very rarely! Consider: "Who is standing beside the car?" ("Kiu staras apud la aŭto?") But: "Whom did you see at the concert?" ("Kiun vi vidis ĉe la koncerto?")

I never use whom. Nobody I know ever uses whom. I have heard fuddy duddy professor types on the TV complain about people not using whom these days. But I have never usderstood when and when not to use whom. It might as well be a word from another language to me.

Nick

Kwekubo:

nw2394:

awake:Consider the sentence
kio cxasas vi?

This is very ambiguous.

Really? Only because of the unnatural word order. I don't think it really is ambiguous. "Vi" is nominative. So it means "What are you chasing".

It doesn't though. That would imply that "what" is the object of the sentence. Since "kio" is in the nominative,

If you insist on kio being a noun, then I accept that it is in the nominative. However I do not accept that kio, used as an interrogative, is a noun. It is simply an interrogative. A different sort of thing altogether akin to the particle ĉu. Also akin to "se"/"if". In fact I don't understand why they are not in the table of correlatives. To me if, then (as in it follows that), true/yes, false/no and maybe/unknown are a completely missing row from that table.

however, it must be doing the verb, and must therefore be the subject.

That is only true because you seem to have somehow accepted E-o's obsession with transitivity and think that just because a verb is transitive, therefore it MUST have an object. I do not know of another language that is obsessed with transitivity in the way that E-o is. Could be wrong there of course.

In English verbs, many of them anyway, can be transitive or not. The verb gets an object if it has one. The subject of whether a verb is transitive or not is simply not an issue. I resent being made to think about transitivity and having to remember which ones are and which ones are not. It is a chore I don't have in English. I do remember having to change endings in Russian for the accusative - but I don't remember having two sets of similar verbs - one for the transitive usage and one for the intransitive.

Nick

But you agree that "What is hunting you?" would be "Kio ĉasas vin?"; why don't you accept that you can switch this around to make "Kion vi ĉasas?" ("What are you hunting?")

Because I do not accept an interrogative as a noun - or as an adverb - or as an adjective. They are a different thing to me. A question begins with an interrogative. Using the plain English definition of "subject", not the grammarians definition, the subject of the question is denoted by the interrogative. Making it an object is completely non intuitive as far as I am concerned.

On top of that there is the subject of word order. It seems that people almost all the time (even E-o people), lead the question with the interrogative. Then there is the matter of who is doing what to what. Then you go, "ah, verb, oops, it was transitive, I should have changed the ending of the interrogative - but too late, I already said it without the ending". I can't have that burden in my thought process. Or at least I do not want it. It means thinking out the whole sentence before saying anything - which is not how I speak English.

Nick

Ultimately, however much it doesn't reflect the way it's done in other languages, the correlatives that end in vowels take the accusative, and the ones that don't, don't.

As I'm a programmer, I tend to think of them as variables. They "stand in" for the words they represent. If the words they stand in for take the accusative, then the correlatives take the accusative. It's an easy rule, and one that I have no difficulty remembering.

English doesn't do it that way? So what? Russian doesn't do it that way? So what? Esperanto DOES do it that way, so if you want to speak Esperanto (correctly) then that's the way you need to do it. Esperanto is not a direct parallel of English (or Russian, or Aleut, or Malay, or...). It's got its own rules, and to properly speak it one just has to simply memorize them. Just like with any other language.

"But it's not perfect!", one might exclaim. But Esperanto was never intended to be a "perfect" language. It was just meant to be an easy one, even if "easy" is sometimes more subjective than objective. If you want perfection, learn lojban. You won't have very many people to speak it with, but it certainly is a logical language (kinda by definition, as it turns out).

I've never heard that Esperanto has interrogatives. It has correlatives that can FUNCTION more or less as interrogatives, but they are not strictly interrogatives. Just because they don't fully map directly to some other language is somewhat irrelevant. The fact that they can take the accusative has worked well for nearly 120 years. Likely, it's not going to change anytime soon, so you might as well just get used to it.

@nw – Why do you think that "kio is an interrogative" and therefore "cannot be a noun"? Do you think that it is coincidence that kio ends in o like all other nouns? No, it's not a coincidence, "kio" means "what thing?" not simply "what". Similarly, "kia" means "what kind of thing?" (red? blue? big? small?), so it ends in an a, just like the expected response "blua, granda", ktp. Anyway, thats how it seems to me. So it's quite logical to ask "Kion vi manĝas?" "What thing are you eating", "Mi manĝas tion.." "I'm eating that (unspecified) thing...".

Similarly "Kian muzikon vi ŝatas?" "What sort of music do you like?" "Mi ŝatas tian.." "I like that sort".

And continuing with "Kie vi estas" "Where are you?" "Mi estas ĉi tie" "I am here" "Kien vi iras" "(to) where are you going" "Mi iras tien, mi iras hejmen" "I'm going there, I'm going (to) home".

Now four vowel endings have been used to make "interrogatives", (a e o u), all of which can take a plural "j" and/or an "accusative" "n", in just the same way as any other word with the same ending... (apart from u of course, which can be considered as a special case of o)... and the answer expected to the question asked, will often have the same ending, which is simplicity and logic beautifully combined.

The other correlatives: "Kial vi faras tion" "Why do you do that?" cannot take an object, because the answer cannot be a noun, or adjective. *Why do you do that? A cat.* makes no sense, but "Why do you do that? Because I saw a cat" does. So *"Kialon vi faras. Katon."* makes no sense. Similiarly, *"Kielon vi faras ? Katon."* or as you would have it: *Kielon vi fartas? Bonan*... even though because of the inherent logic of E-o, the words "Kielo/n, Kialo/n" are perfectly valid, ekz, "Kial vi faras tion" "Mi havas miajn kialojn" - "Why do you do that?" "I have my reasons".

English marks direct objects, mostly by position in a phrase, sometimes just by context, sometimes by adding an extra word: Examples *What eat you?*, incorrect, *What you eat?*, comprehensible, but incorrect, "What do you eat / are you eating", correct, the extra words "do" or "are" and the inversion of verb and subject are the markers that tell us who is eating, and who being eaten. Esperanto is simpler, it just adds an "n".

*Kio vi manĝas* sounds to me, and probably to any other Esperantist, just like the English phrase *What you eat?* sounds to me as a native English speaker, that is, comprehensible, but plain wrong!

Esperanto's system is easier for a non-English-speaker to learn, even if their native language doesn't have an accusative case.

Sorry for the length of this message, but I do think you are missing the point if you believe that the "n" ending in a question word is illogical or unnecessary, when in fact it is quite logical, and absolutely necessary if Esperanto is to preserve its flexibility of word order.

waxle:Honestly, can you be serious?

Esperanto is NOT ENGLISH.

Yes, but it is supposed to be an easy to use international language. Its whole sales pitch is that it is easy to learn.

And, several weeks in now, I am having severe trouble forming simple questions like, "where is the toilet, please".

It is supposed to give the international traveller confidence. Well, it just insn't measuring up to its ideal for me. You can blame English and its lack of the accusative if you want to. You can blame my primitive ape brain. So what. Bully for you and your arrogant, holier than thou attitude. I still find it diffcult regardless of how logical you think it is - or how much you sneer at my language as being idiomatic in even its most simple sentences.

I mean, for god's sake. I am, also, a computer programmer. Primitive languages are my life. I have a MENSA level IQ. I even studied Russian and don't remember this amount of difficulty with the most basic question, despite the fact that it has six cases instead of E-o's modest two. If I can't cope, how does the E-o movement expect my dyslexic 17 year old to cope? How does the E-o movement expect my builder brother-in-law, who is a good, honest but simple man, that I get on very well with, to learn this stuff?! Forget about him even trying. Tell him "accusative" and he is either going to go blank in the face or punch you out because he thinks you're attacking him.

Get real.

Nick

Perhaps you are an anomaly. I myself am a sixteen-year-old, and I understand it perfectly.

nw2394:Yes, but it is supposed to be an easy to use international language. Its whole sales pitch is that it is easy to learn.

"Easy" is not the same as "effortless". Although the effort in remembering that correlatives that end in vowels can take the accusative seems kind of minor, to me. But we are all different, and I suppose even a MENSA level IQ can have a mental block about some things which are easy for others.

Here's what I'm having trouble with. Most of the threads I've read from you have been complaints about the the language. What exactly is your point? Do you expect us to do something about it? Is all that you are looking for just an agreement that "yep, it doesn't make any sense"? Fine - there ARE indeed elements of the language that are irritating to me, or don't make immediate sense. I agree. So what?

The rules of Esperanto are fixed, and have been for over a century. Complaining about them isn't going to change them. Nothing is going to abruptly change them. The time for tinkering with the language has been over for longer than most people have been alive. It's not going to happen.

I'm sorry that you are having difficulty with certain elements of the language, but I don't really know what to do about it. People have been trying to help you by explaining their way of looking at these issues in the hopes that their explanations will clarify things for you, but you don't seem to want their help - instead you just argue with them. Why? What good does that do? If you wish to learn Esperanto, then you will just have to memorize certain things whether or not they make sense to you. Arguing with the people who are trying to help you will ultimately just make people not want to help you anymore. You might want to consider being a bit more gracious towards them.