Messaggi: 9
Lingua: English
ash_fred (Mostra il profilo) 22 novembre 2015 06:58:19
I have a question about it, and ĝi.
I know that as impersonal subject is not used in Esperanto one says "Pluvas." or "Estas knaboj."
But I encountered some phrases on Duolingo where there's no subject but its English counterpart wouldn't have an impersonal subject, such as "Adamo taksas, ke estas danĝere." whose translation is "Adam(o) thinks that it is dangerous."
Is there something I'm missing or can ĝi be omitted when the subject is obvious?
Dankon!
sergejm (Mostra il profilo) 22 novembre 2015 14:32:32
sudanglo (Mostra il profilo) 22 novembre 2015 15:37:31
Adamo pensas, ke estas danĝere (ekz. grimpi sur la tegmenton)
Adama pensas, ke ĝi estas danĝera (ekz. la suspekta pakaĵo)
Adamo pensas, ke tio estas danĝera (ekz. propono farita)
So to translate 'Adam thinks it is dangerous' into Esperanto you have to decide what the 'it' refers to.
The meaning of 'Adamo taksas, ke estas danĝere' with no context is that Adam thinks that we are in a dangerous situation or that there is some danger in doing ...
Resti kun leono estas danĝere (from the Ekzercaro)
You would mostly expect 'estas danĝere' to qualify an infinitive or a clause. If not then it needs to be clear from context what is being rated as dangerous.
Vestitor (Mostra il profilo) 22 novembre 2015 20:29:19
sudanglo:There are three possibilities.Now (unless I'm not reading thoroughly enough) I'm also getting a bit bogged down. Even in a general sense there has to be some reference to what is supposed to be dangerous.
Adamo pensas, ke estas danĝere (ekz. grimpi sur la tegmenton)
Adama pensas, ke ĝi estas danĝera (ekz. la suspekta pakaĵo)
Adamo pensas, ke tio estas danĝera (ekz. propono farita)
So to translate 'Adam thinks it is dangerous' into Esperanto you have to decide what the 'it' refers to.
The meaning of 'Adamo taksas, ke estas danĝere' with no context is that Adam thinks that we are in a dangerous situation or that there is some danger in doing ...
Resti kun leono estas danĝere (from the Ekzercaro)
You would mostly expect 'estas danĝere' to qualify an infinitive or a clause. If not then it needs to be clear from context what is being rated as dangerous.
I blame Duolingo for some of these confusions because it has so many of these sentences with no context or reference. Assuming the existence of ĝi in Esperanto is extremely unhelpful to clarity of understanding.
erinja (Mostra il profilo) 22 novembre 2015 20:49:58
Ĝi is a pronoun, meaning it is a word used in place of a noun. Use ĝi only when you are able to name the noun it refers to. Today, we seldom use ĝi to refer to non-concrete nouns, though you see a bit more of this usage in early Esperanto.
La hundo estas danĝera. Ĝi estas danĝera. Ĝi = la hundo
The complicating factor is that in English, we generally don't have any verbs without a subject. To get around this, we use a fake subject "it" as a placeholder. This makes things confusing for English speakers because you want to translate it as ĝi, but in many cases it is not translated at all, it is simply left out. Of course this modifies the rest of the grammar. Without a noun or a pronoun, you are using an adverb for the description, not an adjective.
Leono estas danĝera. Resti [kun leono] estas danĝere.
La vetero estas pluva.
Estas pluve.
Vestitor (Mostra il profilo) 23 novembre 2015 00:39:52
sergejm (Mostra il profilo) 23 novembre 2015 05:12:49
If there are concrete persons, who do, use "ili". If there is no concrete person - use "oni".
sudanglo (Mostra il profilo) 23 novembre 2015 11:15:04
There are 3 ways of translating it's dangerous, BUT if you are only going to express it in two words, then I think most Esperantists would instinctively say estas danĝere not estas danĝera.
To use the adjective seems to require an explicit pronoun or noun.
Sometimes, but rarely, an adjective may be used to qualify a clause. This can happen when two adverbs together may make the meaning uncertain.
Tempodivalse (Mostra il profilo) 23 novembre 2015 18:40:16
It makes sense, though: In Esperanto, adjectives modify nouns and adverbs modify verbs (with some rare exceptions that we don't need to get into at this point). In Estas danghere resti kun leono, we want to modify resti, a verb infinitive, and so we use the adverbial form.