Once upon a time / Il était une fois / Es war einmal all have the idea of once.

Now you could say Unu fojon or Unufoje in Esperanto, but this seems to over-emphasize the singularity of occurrence.

Iam seems quite satisfatory, and looking at the Tekstaro it seem that Foje can be once and also sometimes.

I suppose that Lunde can be on Monday and also on Mondays.

"Once upon a time" is a very genre-specific phrase. What it really means is "The story that follows is a fairy tale". I notice that many of the Fratoj Grimm stories on Lernu begin "Estis iam..." That seems adequate to me.

johmue:I don't understand your problem with that. "plurfoje", "multfoje", "unufoje" (not unuafoje) with and "foje" without quantitative indication.

The problem is yours, not mine. It is you who insist that "foje" implies plural actions (read your first post) which is untrue - it only says that something happened in indefinite time (perhaps more than once, but we are not sure of that - as well it could be a singular action). So use it as you like, but don't suggest that my understanding of it is wrong because it isn't.

hebda999:

johmue:I don't understand your problem with that. "plurfoje", "multfoje", "unufoje" (not unuafoje) with and "foje" without quantitative indication.

The problem is yours, not mine. It is you who insist that "foje" implies plural actions (read your first post) which is untrue - it only says that something happened in indefinite time (perhaps more than once, but we are not sure of that - as well it could be a singular action).

That's what I was saying all the time. My first post was unprecise, as I already said. Maybe you missed that.

Yes Richard, English is stuffed full of phrases with very specific associations.Once upon a time is one of them, and another would be A Long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

The best that Esperanto can do is to use a form of words that parallels the original, or parallels the corresponding parol-turno in a number of languages, or in some other way suggests the desired association.

One of the, almost essential, features of Esperanto is that is not cluttered with the fixed expressions that are characteristic of the national languages. If Esperanto imitated the national languages in this respect it would impose too much of a learning load on the student.

It is not often stated, but the avoidance of idiom and cliché in Esperanto contributes almost as much to ease of learning as the regularity and simplicity of its grammar.

Finding a particular expression in Esperanto that effectively suggests that what follows is a fabelo (or invokes the desired association) is down to the ingenuity of the translator.

The various options permitted by the language just vary in degrees of elegance as a translation. You cannot say that one of them is 'right' in the same way that Once upon a time is 'right' in English or Il était une fois is 'right' in French.

Can't argue with that.