Saluton!

I was wondering about style in Esperanto, and about avoiding certain countructions for various reasons and how that would possibly affect the meaning or tone of what's being said.

One thing I've been thinking of is the following - if I said "saluton al cxiu cxi homo" and "saluton al cxiuj cxi la homoj", is there any major change in meaning going on? In English, "Hello to every person here" sounds weirder than "Hello to all the people here" I guess, but then again, in English, we also have "everybody" which effectively is in the singular.

So is Esperanto picky about this? And is there any forseeable problem with eschewing "cixu" or "cxiuj" in preference of just one of them if that was a chosen style choice of any individual? (other than "Saluton cxiuj", where "cxiu" would sound rather strange I suppose).

Compare the following two sentences:
Por ĉiu horo mi ricevas ses eŭrojn.
Por ĉiuj horoj mi ricevas ses eŭrojn.
In the first example you express that you get 6 euros multiplied by the number of hours. In the second one, you get 6 euros.

As you can see: in ĉiu you talk about individual objects, while in ĉiuj you talk about a group. It's very similar to English usage of "every(one)" and "all"

BTW, there never is la before ĉiu(j).

ceigered:I was wondering..

I suggest that you decide clearly what you want to say in English. That will make it easier to put into Esperanto (and avoid grammatical mistakes as well). For example 'Hello to you all' might be Saluton al vi ĉiuj. 'Hello to every person here' might be Saluton al ĉiu homo ĉi tie, and so on.

Thanks Darkweasel and Miland for your responses!

darkweasel:Compare the following two sentences:
Por ĉiu horo mi ricevas ses eŭrojn.
Por ĉiuj horoj mi ricevas ses eŭrojn.
In the first example you express that you get 6 euros multiplied by the number of hours. In the second one, you get 6 euros.

As you can see: in ĉiu you talk about individual objects, while in ĉiuj you talk about a group. It's very similar to English usage of "every(one)" and "all"

Ok, I see. I must admit that "For every hour/For all hours I receive 6 euros" would have given me the same impression, that it's 6 euro per hour. That must be due to my mind being desensitised to the plural in languages while I'm learning Indonesian (not that my studies in French help either, as you can barely hear the plural at times, unless "les", "des", "ces" or something similar comes to the rescue ).

Is there a way to say "I get 6 euros per hour"? "Mi ricevas ses euxroj po horo"? (I reckon I'll definitely be using that for clarification, I wouldn't want to work many hours for just 6 euro!)

BTW, there never is la before ĉiu(j).

I noticed that when I was writing out the question - I had never thought of that before but when I was writing out examples "cxiu la" sounded weird. Just for clarification, does this extend to "cxiuj la homoj" or just "La cxiuj homoj"?

Miland:I suggest that you decide clearly what you want to say in English. That will make it easier to put into Esperanto (and avoid grammatical mistakes as well). For example 'Hello to you all' might be Saluton al vi ĉiuj. 'Hello to every person here' might be Saluton al ĉiu homo ĉi tie, and so on.

This caused me some worry though as I seem to interpret all those kind of phrases the same way - "Hello (directed to) every individual of a certain class", so I was wondering if in professional circumstances, or circumstances demanding clarity (e.g. like simple English, or whatever that form of English is that abhorrently steals all the irregular verbs and locks them away in some sicilian cellar ).

ceigered:"I get 6 euros per hour"? "Mi ricevas ses euxroj po horo"?

You have "po" in the wrong position. You should say Mi ricevas po ses euroj por horo.

"Po" can be a bit tricky but if you can understand the differences between the following sentences you'll be mostly alright:

Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis po 10 biskvitoj en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en po 10 minutoj

The first one means you ate 10 biscuits in the total duration of 10 minutes (so a biscuit a minute, on average). The second one means you ate 10 biscuits each minute for 10 minutes (so 100 biscuits in total). The third one means you ate 10 biscuits and each biscuit took 10 minutes to eat (so 100 minutes of eating in total).

tommjames:

ceigered:"I get 6 euros per hour"? "Mi ricevas ses euxroj po horo"?

You have "po" in the wrong position. You should say Mi ricevas po ses euroj por horo.

"Po" can be a bit tricky but if you can understand the differences between the following sentences you'll be mostly alright:

Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis po 10 biskvitoj en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en po 10 minutoj

The first one means you ate 10 biscuits in the total duration of 10 minutes (so a biscuit a minute, on average). The second one means you ate 10 biscuits each minute for 10 minutes (so 100 biscuits in total). The third one means you ate 10 biscuits and each biscuit took 10 minutes to eat (so 100 minutes of eating in total).

Cheers Tommjames - so effectively, "po" is reverse from what we do in English with per? So would a car go at "po sesdek kilometroj en horo"? (60 km/h)?

tommjames:

ceigered:"I get 6 euros per hour"? "Mi ricevas ses euxroj po horo"?

You have "po" in the wrong position. You should say Mi ricevas po ses euroj por horo.

"Po" can be a bit tricky but if you can understand the differences between the following sentences you'll be mostly alright:

Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis po 10 biskvitoj en 10 minutoj
Mi manĝis 10 biskvitojn en po 10 minutoj

The first one means you ate 10 biscuits in the total duration of 10 minutes (so a biscuit a minute, on average). The second one means you ate 10 biscuits each minute for 10 minutes (so 100 biscuits in total). The third one means you ate 10 biscuits and each biscuit took 10 minutes to eat (so 100 minutes of eating in total).

Note that you can, but don't have to use the accusative after po. See: Nuanciloj

ceigered: Yes, po sesdek kilometroj en horo is correct. A simpler way to say that is: sesdek kilometroj hore.

darkweasel:ceigered: Yes, po sesdek kilometroj en horo is correct. A simpler way to say that is: sesdek kilometroj hore.

Dankon Darkweasel for the clarification

"Sesdek kilometroj hore" sounds like a much easier way to refer to the speed of something!

ceigered:so effectively, "po" is reverse from what we do in English with per?

Po means "at the rate of" or "apiece" except that "apiece" in this case is placed before the number: Ĉi tiuj poŝtelefonoj kostas po kvindek dolaroj, "These cellphones cost fifty dollars apiece."
There's a nice explanation by Zamenhof himself in Lingvaj Respondoj (section Prepozocioj, subsection Pri la vorto "po"), which you can download here, for instance. The last example confirms your usage!

Miland:

ceigered:so effectively, "po" is reverse from what we do in English with per?

Po means "at the rate of" or "apiece" except that "apiece" in this case is placed before the number: Ĉi tiuj poŝtelefonoj kostas po kvindek dolaroj, "These cellphones cost fifty dollars apiece."
There's a nice explanation by Zamenhof himself in Lingvaj Respondoj (section Prepozocioj, subsection Pri la vorto "po"), which you can download here, for instance. The last example confirms your usage!

Thank you for that Miland, and thank you for the link (very nice collection of e-libroj!).

"at the rate of" is probably easier for my head to get around at the moment though anyway, it's amazing what words you just never pick up when you haven't really got much of a use for producing them.