sudanglo:Follow this link for a pdf of the Esperanto of MOTOE.

Try comparing it with the English version here - see how much you can understand. before you use the crib

I actually have this already, and in fact I sat down the other day--with my almost non-existent beginner's Esperanto skills--and tried to translate the first page with the help of a dictionary. I haven't yet compared it to the English because there are still some portions that I'm trying to figure out and want to do that before making the comparison, but I think I've probably got it about 75% correct.

I'll give you an example of one section that is giving me trouble though:

Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa. Poste certaj okazintaĵoj!

So first I try to break this down by vocabulary:

Sekvis = followed, succeeded
semajno = week
kurioze = as best I can tell, this means "curiously" or "interestingly'
streĉa = tight, strict, tense

So I can't really make heads or tails of this. The best I can come up with is "A week followed that was curiously tight," but that just sounds like gibberish. I have no idea what the sentence is saying.

Then we have:

Poste = afterward, behind, next, subsequently
certaj = certain, sure
okazintaĵo = event

So the best I can make of this is "Afterward/after/next certain events!" Which again is just gibberish.

Can you shed any light on the grammar here?

There had been a week—a week of curious tensity. And then certain things had happened (original English text). I thought that 'tensity' must be a misprint for 'intensity' but my dictionary says that it is a rare form for 'tension'.

Anyway, to the grammatical analysis of Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa. Poste certaj okazintaĵoj!

Since in Esperanto the grammatical functions are explicitly marked, this offers a greater freedom of word order than in English. so we can say semajno sekvis or sekvis semajno (according to stylistic considerations) and we have no doubt about semajno being the subject of the verb sekvis.

In English if we wish to invert then we have to say 'There followed a week' - as it were sticking in a dummy subject.

Also in Esperanto (again according to stylistic considerations) we can make the adjective(s) follow the noun, whereas in English this can often sound bizarre - compare 'get in the red car' with 'get in the car red'.

So Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa is perfectly acceptable Esperanto, which we might translate into English as a 'A curiously tense week ensued',

What is a little strange is making a new sentence of Poste certaj okazintaĵoj, which as a new sentence seems to lack a verb.

In English we would prefer to join it on to the preceding text, so 'and then later certain incidents'. By the way okazintaĵoj has to my ear an archaic ring. I think okazaĵoj might be preferable here.

In the French version of MOTOE that I have, the translator has taken it upon himself to provide a more expansive rendering.

Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa. Poste certaj okazintaĵoj! becomes (my translation, as you may not know French) 'His stay had only lasted a week, a week marked by a strange tension, and finished with unusual events'

Nothing says that you can't improve on the original if it makes the translation more readable!.

sudanglo:There had been a week—a week of curious tensity. And then certain things had happened (original English text). I thought that 'tensity' must be a misprint for 'intensity' but my dictionary says that it is a rare form for 'tension'.

Frankly, even in English "And then certain things had happened" comes off as perhaps not

Anyway, to the grammatical analysis of Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa. Poste certaj okazintaĵoj!

Since in Esperanto the grammatical functions are explicitly marked, this offers a greater freedom of word order than in English. so we can say semajno sekvis or sekvis semajno (according to stylistic considerations) and we have no doubt about semajno being the subject of the verb sekvis.

In English if we wish to invert then we have to say 'There followed a week' - as it were sticking in a dummy subject.

Also in Esperanto (again according to stylistic considerations) we can make the adjective(s) follow the noun, whereas in English this can often sound bizarre - compare 'get in the red car' with 'get in the car red'.

So Sekvis semajno kurioze streĉa is perfectly acceptable Esperanto, which we might translate into English as a 'A curiously tense week ensued',

What is a little strange is making a new sentence of Poste certaj okazintaĵoj, which as a new sentence seems to lack a verb.

In English we would prefer to join it on to the preceding text, so 'and then later certain incidents'. By the way okazintaĵoj has to my ear an archaic ring. I think okazaĵoj might be preferable here.

Thanks for that breakdown. It is somewhat comforting to know that I wasn't totally off-base in finding "Poste certaj okazintaĵoj" confusing.

Now that I look back at my translation of "A week followed that was curiously tight," I realize that if I just sub in tense for tight then I'm starting to get close, so it wasn't quite the gibberish that I thought it was after all.

I think it's going to take time, and a lot of exposure to examples, of strange word orders to really get used to that. I knew, for instance, that the adjective can come before or after the noun, but it still seems like on most sentence the word order is pretty English-like. And yet, just when I get used to that rhythm, something like this comes out of nowhere that shatters it.

Regarding your translation of "a curiously tense week ensued," I'm not sure if I'd have ever gotten there on my own, with the word order that exists. But if it were re-ordered like "Semajno kurioze streĉa Sekvis" then I don't think I'd have been nearly as tripped up.

Lastly, you mentioned that okazintoĵoi has "an archaic ring" to it. I have read other things where people will talk about archaic words in Esperanto and, I have to say, that's a bit disconcerting. To my understanding the intention is that the language always conform to the rules laid down by Zamenhof. I know that vocabulary are not rules, but it seems like old words shouldn't get replaced by new words that mean the same thing for no good reason. That seems to me to muddy the waters for a language that is supposed to be as streamlined, simple and elegant as possible. And considering that it's barely more than a hundred years old, isn't it a little early to be talking about "archaic" words?