How can I translate " I miss you" in esperanto?
I don't find the very word.

CE4JLK:How can I translate " I miss you" in esperanto?
I don't find the very word.

A guess follows, I'll let those who knows the language better be the judges.

"Mi sopiras vin"

stefanpeterson:

CE4JLK:How can I translate " I miss you" in esperanto?
I don't find the very word.

A guess follows, I'll let those who knows the language better be the judges.

"Mi sopiras vin"

"sopiri" means "to long for" or "to yearn", so it isn't necessarily the same thing as missing something. Also, although Zamenhof would have said "Mi sopiras [ion]", in modern use, "sopiri" is normally intransitive. Therefore, it would be much more common to say "Mi sopiras al vi" or "Mi sopiras pri vi". Using the "Google method" of finding common usage, I found 75 hits for "mi sopiras vin", 442 hits for "sopiras al vi", and 10 hits for "sopiras pri vi". Most of those (all three search terms) are Bible-related quotes for things that involve yearning/longing in English ("I yearn for you" kind of stuff - usually yearning for/longing for something deity-related, or longing for peace, or all of those kinds of things that you see a lot of in religious texts). A very few of them involve an actual person longing for another person.

Some people say "I miss you" by saying "Mi sentas vian mankon" (literally "I feel your lack"). This manner of speaking is based on Romance languages, which usually express that thought in this manner. Speakers of Romance languages are more likely to use wording like this. This choice scores a measely 2 hits on Google ("sentas vian mankon"). Or else you could say "Vi mankas al mi" (lit. "you lack to me"). I got 2130 hits for "mankas al mi", but you should keep in mind that some of those were for usages like "tempo mankas al mi" (="I lack time"). Also, 61 hits for "vi mankas al mi" (none of them bible-related that I noticed)

I wasn't very happy with this expression when I first encountered it, then later on, I came to like it. I like how it conveys that you feel that there's some sort of hole in your life without whatever you are missing.

Anyway, now that I've bored you with all of those numbers. I think "Vi mankas al mi" is your best bet.

Mi saŭdadas mian amikinon…

That word is a borrowing from Portuguese and Galician, famous for its untranslatability.

Another suggestion: mi sentas la mankon de vi.

jchthys:Mi [url=http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saŭdado]saŭdadas[/url] mian amikinon…

That word is a borrowing from Portuguese and Galician, famous for its untranslatability.

Speaking of the link for Sowdahdgee, I find you need to go to "cite" and use the link given there instead, since ŭ in a link on this forum will be converted back to a ux when clicked on.

Thus:
http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%C5%ADdado rather than http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saŭdado.

On the topic at hand, there's always the around-the-long-way method of saying something like "Mi havas/sentas nostalgion de nia kuntempo", ĉu ne? . Of course such poetic words depend on the target of the phrase and whether you are frank with them or not.

The obvious verb to use here is 'manki'. If you are speaking on the phone with an absent girl friend, then (I concur with Erinja) say 'Vi mankas al mi'.

Of course, 'I missed the train' is something else. That would be 'Mi maltrafis la trajnon'.

When speaking of someone who died, you might use 'bedaŭri'. 'Our much missed president' - nia tre bedaŭrata prezidanto (according to NPIV).

sudanglo:The obvious verb to use here is 'manki'. If you are speaking on the phone with an absent girl friend, then (I concur with Erinja) say 'Vi mankas al mi'.

I agree with Erinja and Sudanglo. This seems to be the way to say it - I've seen it used quite a few times.

Manki is generally used for things that are lacking, rather then people. I would say that senti la mankon, "to feel the lack" of someone, expresses a feeling, less strongly than saying that one is incomplete. The few examples in the tekstaro appear to support this view.

Miland, I got quite excited at first when I came across the searchable corpuses at Tekstaro and CorpusEye, thinking that this deals with the problem of not being able to turn to a native speaker of Esperanto and ask what you should say.

Having made quite a few searches now I feel much less confident about getting a definitive answer.

In this case, I think the combination of the meaning of 'manki' and the usage of cognate verbs in other languages seals the deal.

So, if there are few cases in Tekstaro, I don't think that weighs very heavily. I suspect that the corpuses don't contain much conversational language or texts dealing with la ĉiutaga vivo.