One of my friends pointed out Esperanto to me a few days ago since we were debating cool languages to learn. We've since gotten into it a bit more, and so far it's all making sense. I studied Spanish for 5 years to begin with; I've since forgotten most of the words, but it provided a decent basis to understand language construction I suppose, and my friend is just a smart lady in general. So, so far we've gotten the basics like greetings down, as well as numbers - now I'm looking at slightly more complicated sentence structures. I'm working from the wikibook as well as through the courses offered here, but I thought I'd post to see if we were on the right track?

With numbers, we went about it by looking up individual numbers and piecing together their constructions. So, for "42", it would work out to "kvardek du". Kvar for 4, dek for 10, making 40, and du for 2, finally making 42. For a larger number like "1872", "mil okcent sepdek du".

To get into more complicated sentences, we're translating lines from songs. Probably weird, but as teenagers we know plenty of music.
"Shiny Happy People Holding Hands"
Shine being "brili", so Shiny being "Brile"?
Happy People, "gajaj homoj"? In this case, it's referring to more than one person, so it's literally "Happy Peoples"
Holding - Hold being "holdi", so holding would be "holdas"?
Hands, manoj?

So with this, it becomes:
"Brile gajaj homoj holdas manoj"

So, are we on the right track so far?

Fleath:To get into more complicated sentences, we're translating lines from songs. Probably weird, but as teenagers we know plenty of music.
"Shiny Happy People Holding Hands"
Shine being "brili", so Shiny being "Brile"?
Happy People, "gajaj homoj"? In this case, it's referring to more than one person, so it's literally "Happy Peoples"
Holding - Hold being "holdi", so holding would be "holdas"?
Hands, manoj?

So with this, it becomes:
"Brile gajaj homoj holdas manoj"

So, are we on the right track so far?

(Well, first off, I only just got past the beginner stage, so take this with a 'pinch of salt' as I am likely to be corrected myself).

Anyway, you're sort of, but not quite right. Probably the biggest thing you've made a mistake with is that "holdo" is the hold of a ship. So "holdi", which is a verb you can legally form according to the grammar rules of E-o, would probably mean something like, perhaps, to be in the hold of a ship.

You need the verb teni (from the same root as tenure in English) which means to hold in the sense you're talking about I think.

Then teni is a transitive verb, so manoj needs to be accusative, manojn.

Finally, I would personally think that brile would be better as brila. Brile is an adverb, so technically you're applying the shine concept to the verb - but I think you mean to apply it to the people, so you need the adjectival form.

So, I think it is better said as, Brilaj gajaj homoj tenas manojn.

Some people might think that feliĉa is a more faithful translation of happy, but gaja is probably OK in the context I guess.

Finally, technically a person is persono and homo is a man (generally, a member of the species homo sapiens, not a male person), so people ought to be personoj. But, in the plural, the distinction is far less clear and homoj seems to be commonly used when someone means people. Certainly it is used when you mean people in general. Personoj would be more likely be used to talk to/about a distinct group of individuals.

Hope that helps and I don't get corrected too much myself.

Nick

Thank you very much! I did better than I though, and thank you for your advice...I should probably buy a dictionary rather than relying on digital ones, to get a clearer idea of what the words mean.

Fleath:
To get into more complicated sentences, we're translating lines from songs. Probably weird, but as teenagers we know plenty of music.
"Shiny Happy People Holding Hands"
Shine being "brili", so Shiny being "Brile"?
Happy People, "gajaj homoj"? In this case, it's referring to more than one person, so it's literally "Happy Peoples"
Holding - Hold being "holdi", so holding would be "holdas"?
Hands, manoj?

So with this, it becomes:
"Brile gajaj homoj holdas manoj"

So, are we on the right track so far?

You've already gotten some good advice on this. Keep in mind that what you're trying to translate isn't even a complete sentence, just a noun phrase, so there's no true verb in it.

I'd go with "ĝojaj" instead of "gajaj". So that would give you "Brilaj ĝojaj homoj" to start. As for "homo," as Nick said, it means "human." The word "human" is not an exact synonym for "person," since there could be, and perhaps are, non-human persons (angels, Klingons), but in practice you can pretty much use "homo" when you're not trying to make a philosophical point. But if you prefer "Brilaj ĝojaj personoj" that's your stylistic choice.

However, "Brilaj ĝojaj homoj tenas manojn" would be the sentence "Shiny happy people are holding hands." Since your English original isn't that (or any) sentence, it's not quite what you want. You just want the phrase "holding hands", so I'd go with "Brilaj ĝojaj homoj, tenantaj manojn." Here, "tenantaj" takes the verb "teni" and turns it into an adjective by using the present participle ending, "-antaj".

I'm still not thrilled with that translation, though. I think it would be understood, but I believe the phrase "holding hands" is itself somewhat idiomatic. Directly translated it might suggest to some the rather ghoulish image of simply holding the body parts... I'm thinking there must be a better way to say it. Really, it's about people holding *each other* by their hands, so "tenantaj unu la alian per mano" would do the job.

"Brilaj, ĝojaj homoj tenantaj unu la alian per mano"... Well, it's not exactly catchy, but I think it's accurate. I think you'll find that translating bits of songs is far from easy anyway. Songs tend to use language in highly idiomatic ways. On the other hand, one of the most important things in learning any language is to see through the idioms in your own.

T0dd makes a great point here about translation. As a beginner, there's a tendency to try to do a word for word translation of everything you encounter. However, this can lead to some rather clumsy and contorted constructions. When you translate something, especially idioms or poems, the trick is to translate the meaning conveyed rather than just the words. With poetry (or songs), it's even more challenging if you wish to keep some type of rhyme or meter or other structure that is close to the original. Sometimes that may not even be possibile. I do think that such exercises are useful though. When I was a beginner, I translated John Lenon's song Imagine into Eo just for fun. I'm sure my translation was fairly inelegant, but it was a useful and fun exercise.

T0dd:

Fleath:
I think you'll find that translating bits of songs is far from easy anyway. Songs tend to use language in highly idiomatic ways. On the other hand, one of the most important things in learning any language is to see through the idioms in your own.