讯息： 14
语言: English
AmericanBull (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日上午3:33:55
orthohawk (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日上午3:43:01
AmericanBull:I find that when I read a sentence that starts with "ĉu", I have to read the rest of the sentence, and then go back and interpret what "ĉu" is. Is there a rule of thumb way of quickly translating "ĉu" so I don't have to rely on reading the whole sentence and go back?Technically there is no "translation" of cxu. it's simply a spoken question mark put at the beginning of the sentence.
Try to think in Esperanto instead of translating into English. it's hard at first but it gets easier.
Tempodivalse (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日上午4:26:31
Other questions (what, when, where etc.) are formed using the interrogative ki- correlatives (find a table of correlatives to figure out what I'm talking about, like this one).
AmericanBull (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日下午12:54:46
Tempodivalse:Ĉu simply indicates the presence of a yes-no question. In English we rely on word order and intonation to express this.Can it be used to ask simple questions, such as "Ĉu la mapo estas lia aŭ ŝia?", that are other than yes/no answers?
orthohawk (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日下午1:21:39
AmericanBull:In a word, yes. When asking a question, if there is no "ki-" word, then use cxu.Tempodivalse:Ĉu simply indicates the presence of a yes-no question. In English we rely on word order and intonation to express this.Can it be used to ask simple questions, such as "Ĉu la mapo estas lia aŭ ŝia?", that are other than yes/no answers?
Tempodivalse (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日下午1:57:49
Can it be used to ask simple questions, such as "Ĉu la mapo estas lia aŭ ŝia?", that are other than yes/no answers?I would say that technically, your example sentence is still yes/no - you've just combined two yes/no sentences into one. Expanded, it would be: "Ĉu la mapo estas lia, aŭ ĉu estas ŝia?"
In informal speech, sometimes the ĉu is dropped for very short questions, or to ask for confirmation (or express disbelief).
-Ni alvenos por la festo fruvespere.
-Kiam? La sesa?
-Min ĵus telefonis la Gubernatoro mem.
-La gubernatoro?! Kio diable!
It's a bit of a grey zone whether this is 100% kosher, but you see it a lot, and even in literary dialogues. For any longer yes/no questions, though, I'd definitely say use ĉu.
Fenris_kcf (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日下午3:06:40
AmericanBull:Is there a rule of thumb way of quickly translating "ĉu" so I don't have to rely on reading the whole sentence and go back?You could insert "is it true that". The more exact representation would be "whether" or "if".
Breto (显示个人资料) 2015年8月1日下午6:14:53
AmericanBull:I find that when I read a sentence that starts with "ĉu", I have to read the rest of the sentence, and then go back and interpret what "ĉu" is. Is there a rule of thumb way of quickly translating "ĉu" so I don't have to rely on reading the whole sentence and go back?I believe ĉu means "whether", though it obviously gets a lot more use than whether does in English. While this isn't technically correct, my brain likes to read it as "do" at the beginning of a sentence, echoing English's own question-starting dummy-word.
Ĉu vi scias? "Do you know?"
That said, it's only a translation shortcut, the mental equivalent of doing math on my fingers. As others have said, the ideal would be to simply think in Esperanto and forego any translation.
