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Is Cxu nessasary?

de Alkanadi, 11 de març de 2015

Missatges: 57

Llengua: English

vikungen (Mostra el perfil) 11 de març de 2015 17.16.06

johmue:
vikungen:
Alkanadi:Esperanto, like some other languages, uses a word to indicate that the sentence is a question. It is the word Cxu.

Is this word necessary? Or is rising intonation enough to denote a question?

I was just reading a text and I saw this Ĉio preta? It is a full sentence. Is this a mistake in the text or is it allowed to omit the Cxu?
Short answer: Yes.
Yes to what?

Is "ĉu" necessary? Yes.
Is it in colloquial language allowed to omit it? No.
Up! Fixed it!

sudanglo (Mostra el perfil) 11 de març de 2015 17.30.47

That's actually a case that can be tolerated
Oh! So now your position is that 1. (below) is OK but 2. not.

1. "Ĉio preta?", miris la patrino, kiu bone konis la prokrastemon de sia filo.

2. "Ĉio preta?", demandis la patrino, kiu timis maltrafi la aviadilon.

robbkvasnak (Mostra el perfil) 11 de març de 2015 17.32.57

I agree with Sudanglo - Yes, we do say "Parizon?" in conversation. And of course, one must adapt to the partner in discourse. But in formal language, it is best to use Ĉu whenever things may be unclear. Language is not math. It is communication. There are no "language police" out checking your Esperanto. We all want to be samideanoj, we want to use this tool to understand each other. If I were an airplane pilot and if Esperanto would replace English as the language of air control, I would be pretty sure to want to be clear when talking with the tower and I would want them to be clear with me.
As far as the sugar goes - in my house it would be "Ĉu vere vi volas sukeron?!?!?!? Pensu pri via pezo!" [hahaha]

johmue (Mostra el perfil) 11 de març de 2015 17.52.10

sudanglo:
That's actually a case that can be tolerated
Oh! So now your position is that 1. (below) is OK but 2. not.

1. "Ĉio preta?", miris la patrino, kiu bone konis la prokrastemo de sia filo.

2. "Ĉio preta?", demandis la patrino, kiu timis maltrafi la aviadilon.
2. is definitely wrong.

1. depends on the exact context.

I would accept it in this context:
"Ĉio preta." diris la filo atendante rekompencon de la patrino.
"Ĉio preta...?" ripetis la patrino kun dubesprima vizaĝo, "... ĉu vere?"

Christa627 (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 0.04.12

sudanglo:
That's actually a case that can be tolerated
Oh! So now your position is that 1. (below) is OK but 2. not.

1. "Ĉio preta?", miris la patrino, kiu bone konis la prokrastemo de sia filo.

2. "Ĉio preta?", demandis la patrino, kiu timis maltrafi la aviadilon.
No, 1. is not correct. It should be:

1. "Ĉio preta?", miris la patrino, kiu bone konis la prokrastemon de sia filo.

Sorry, I couldn't resist lango.gif.

Tempodivalse (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 1.26.13

One of the uses of Ĉu is to indicate that the sentence is a yes-no question.

Ĉu vi jam aĉetis tiun libron?

It "cuts" my ear slightly to hear the sentence, aimed as a question, without the particle (even with an intonation that most Europeans would interpret as interrogative):

*Vi jam aĉetis tiun libron?

To a speaker of a tonal language, any "interrogative" intonation here may well be meaningless and result in the sentence being interpreted as a statement of fact.

In spontaneous speech ĉu is often left implied. This doesn't mean that it's actually optional in written texts, although I do see that happen sometimes, with very short utterances, maybe something like the following:

-Metu la skatolon tien.

-Tien? (pointing with a finger)

I didn't check the Tekstaro, but I do recall seeing similar usages in fairly reputable texts. So my verdict is that in a large majority of cases it would be inadvisable to omit the particle, but there seems to be a precedent for dropping it in very short questions (especially when stylistic license is involved).

Suzumiya (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 1.41.23

robbkvasnak:
Ĉu is a wonderful idea. I sometimes wonder how Z came up with such brilliant things ( like je, and -um-).
That's easy, he spoke Polish, Ĉu does come from Polish, czy is used in the same way in Polish, so he didn't come up with a brilliant idea, he simply used something useful from his mother tongue ridulo.gif. The preposition 'je', though, is indeed something useful.

Plus, other languages have very useful things, too, like ka in Japanese. Ka can turn any affirmativate statement into a question without having to change anything. It goes at the end of a sentence, and ka isn't limited to yes-no questions. Esperanto could've used something like that since ĉu is limited to yes-no questions. Thanks to ka the question mark is unnecessary.

In Mandarin ma works in a similar way to ĉu, though it is limited to yes-no questions.

Tempodivalse (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 2.40.19

Plus, other languages have very useful things, too, like ka in Japanese.
Ohh. I just realised where Ido got ka from (the word that replaced Esperanto's ĉu)

Though it is slightly ironic that the Idists, after trying to "Europeanise" their language in so many other ways, would suddenly jump to Japanese of all langauges for this particular little word ...

Or maybe that was just a coincidence.

(End of off-topic commentary.)

Suzumiya (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 3.16.00

Oh, didn't know that. But in Ido it's limited to yes-no questions, so it didn't take the full Japanese usage malgajo.gif. I wonder why they did that. Had they kept the full JP usage they would've gotten something very useful that renders the question mark obsolete. At least it isn't something confusing to half the planet like the Greek question mark which is a semicolon ; and the actual semicolon is an interpunct ·

Eltwish (Mostra el perfil) 12 de març de 2015 4.17.22

Johmue, are you basing your strong opposition to ĉu-less questions on facts of fluent speaker usage, or on a prescription you could cite? I see the PMEG is not nearly as harsh on ĉu-forlaso (see here). If the people you speak with often never omit ĉu, though, then I retract my doubt - I only ask because in my experiece, ĉu-omission in certain contexts (such as "ĉio preta?" ) is quite common.

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