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Језик: English
miamaslegi (Погледати профил) 25. октобар 2011. 20.28.17
I'm new to learning Esperanto and I have a request, if I may...
I'm making pretty good progress using several different books and websites (including Lernu!), but I'm really stumbling over one thing at the moment - the correlatives.
Just seeing that table of 57 gajillion words that all look disconcertingly identical sends me into fits.
Has anyone come up with (or does anyone know of) a trick to memorizing them? I've been trying to think of some sort of mnemonic device or anything that will help me get these down, but my brain isn't producing anything. If it's a drill-it-until-you-know-it situation, I'll just suck it up and do it, but there has to be an easier way - I hope!
Also, is there anywhere that has a clear, in-depth explanation of using the correlatives? Various tidbits of information from different sources are floating around in my head, but I'd like to find something that spells out, "You use this in this situation. This can have a -j ending." etc.
Thank you all so much - I'm really looking forward to learning as much as possible!
Mustelvulpo (Погледати профил) 25. октобар 2011. 20.57.19
Evildela (Погледати профил) 25. октобар 2011. 21.01.55
Correlatives starting with Ki- are (what) words
Correlatives ending with -O are (noun) words
Correlatives ending with -A are (adjective) words
ktp,
Thus,
Ki-o = What noun, or more simply. What thing.
Kion vi faras = What thing you doing / making?
Ki-a = What adjective, or more simply (This is my way of remembering it) 'what describe' it
Kia estas la hundo? = Describe (its adjective qualities) the dog
Kia bela cxielo! = What a beautiful sky!
And it goes on pretty much like this through the whole table.
erinja (Погледати профил) 25. октобар 2011. 21.30.14
o-correlatives can never be followed by a noun, because a noun can't describe a noun in Esperanto. If you feel tempted to put an o-correlative with a noun, use a u-correlative instead.
This might seem arbitrary but in fact it has a close analog in English with the use of every (ĉiu) and everything (ĉio), and the use of no (neniu) and nothing (nenio).
Therefore when we say "every person", we have to say "ĉiu persono" and not
So if you wanted to say "what person", you would certainly not say
The distinction between kio and kiu, tio and tiu, can be tricky. But if you remember that kio and tio can't be followed by a noun, that helps.
Kio (all alone) means "what"
Tio (all alone) means "that"
"what [thing]" would always be "kiu [thing]"
"that [thing]" would always be "tiu [thing]"
But "tiu" used all alone would normally be translated as "that one" or "that person" in English; "kiu" used all alone would mean "who" or "which one".
This general (-o ending) versus specific (-u ending) distinction can seem tricky but in time it will come naturally to you, and the difference will seem so obvious to you that you have difficulty explaining to beginners how to do it right!
tommjames (Погледати профил) 25. октобар 2011. 22.30.37
erinja:o-correlatives can never be followed by a noun, because a noun can't describe a noun in Esperanto.One exception being ĉio tio, which seems fairly common. Quite a few hits for that in Tekstaro with ĉion? tion?\\b
darkweasel (Погледати профил) 26. октобар 2011. 08.24.05
erinja:The -o correlatives are never plural.Some disagree.
PMEG: Tabelvortoj je O kiel ordinaraj O-vortoj
Diversaj ioj
However, such forms are extremely rare, so a beginner really shouldn’t worry about the possibility of pluralizing O-correlatives.
sudanglo (Погледати профил) 26. октобар 2011. 10.33.17
The analysis of tio as ti+o seems to me to be problematic as 'ti-' is not a productive root. Perhaps better to see the 'o' as an aide-memoire.
In the case of 'nenio' however, 'neni' is productive - neniigi, nenifarulo. ktp.
darkweasel (Погледати профил) 26. октобар 2011. 10.41.07
edit: You might also find two previous threads on this very same topic interesting:
Stuck at Correlatives
Learning correlatives and affixes
tommjames (Погледати профил) 26. октобар 2011. 12.03.40
sudanglo:Except, Tom, that you could say tio isn't a noun, but a pronoun.Yes I guess you could, but I think that's at the fuzzy end of grammatical classification in Esperanto. PMEG describes the O-correlatives as "pronomecaj" (pronoun-like), but stops short of calling them actual pronouns.
sudanglo:The analysis of tio as ti+o seems to me to be problematic as 'ti-' is not a productive root. Perhaps better to see the 'o' as an aide-memoire.I'm not sure that analysis is necessary. Of course a word having the formal property of an O-finaĵo must necessarily be a noun, but I don't think that means a word must be thus formed to be classed as one; plenty of particles are classed as adverbs without an -E ending, for example.
Miland (Погледати профил) 26. октобар 2011. 17.03.56
miamaslegi:Has anyone come up with (or does anyone know of) a trick to memorizing them? .. is there anywhere that has a clear, in-depth explanation of using the correlatives?Saluton! Welcome to lernu.
Here's a link to a helpful short text by Sylvan Zaft on this subject, that can be troublesome to beginners.
On learning them: take it easy, and learn the most common ones first. Which ones, you might ask? The ones that you find most often in the courses on this lernu! website, of course! I suggest that you begin on the course Ana Pana ASAP and go through it carefully, as it has online tutorial help, and will give you a good first impression of the language, including the correlatives that are most frequently used.