danielcg:

But if we really need to strike out any chance of impresicion, we may resort to another construction:

"La birdo kiu havis pomon kaptis la insekton" (="La birdo havanta pomon kaptis la insekton")

or

"La birdo kaptis la insekton kiu havis pomon" (= "La birdo kaptis la insekton havantan pomon")

Regards,

Or..........you could say "La havinta la pomon birdo kaptis la insekton" and "La birdo kaptis la havintan la pomon insekton."

Mathieux:
But it makes me wonder, how important is the -n, really?
If I said "mi amas vi," doesn't that imply the same meaning as "mi amas vin? I can see that in some languages things are said differently, for example, we say "it's a red ball" but in French we say "it's a ball red" but I know of no language that would said "you love me" which would mean "I love you," it just doesn't make much sense to me.

Notice that you switched between "I" and "me" in your example, without even thinking about it. In English "me" is the accusative of "I". That is, I=mi; me=vin.

Notice also that in French you cannot say "Il voit elle", which would literally mean "He sees she". You have to say "Il la voit", or "He her sees." In German, the word order is like English in the main clause, but not in the subordinate clause.

In English we say "I know that I know nothing". To us, that's the natural way to say it. In German, they say "Ich weiss dass ich nichts weiss," or, "I know that I nothing know." That's natural for them.

What makes the use of -N hard at first, for some, is that it requires us to become aware of things that we previously did without thinking. You say "She loves me" and not "She loves I" but you (probably) don't consciously think about the fact that you need to use the accusative pronoun. You just do it. And after a while, you just do it in Esperanto too.

But the rules are a little different. In English, "me" is also used with prepositions. We say "to me, with me, for me" etc, not "to I, with I, for I" etc. In Esperanto, the -O form is used with prepositions, not -ON.

The case of "into" is a little different, but perfectly logical, if you see it for what it is.

There is a difference between walking in a house, i.e., walking about inside it, and walking into a house. In fact, the word "into" is really two prepositions, "in" and "to", stuck together. We're often casual about this in English, and we say "I walked in the house" as well as "I walked into the house." Esperanto requires you to be more specific.

Technically, you could say "Mi marŝis al en la domo", literally "I walked to in the house", but that's not good Esperanto. In a case such as this, you take advantage of the other job that -N does, which is to replace "al". So you get "Mi marŝis en la domon."

T0dd:

Mathieux:
But it makes me wonder, how important is the -n, really?
If I said "mi amas vi," doesn't that imply the same meaning as "mi amas vin? I can see that in some languages things are said differently, for example, we say "it's a red ball" but in French we say "it's a ball red" but I know of no language that would said "you love me" which would mean "I love you," it just doesn't make much sense to me.

Notice that you switched between "I" and "me" in your example, without even thinking about it. In English "me" is the accusative of "I". That is, I=mi; me=vin.

*me = min.

T0dd:In English "me" is the accusative of "I". That is, I=mi; me=vin.

Not only the accusative, but also the dative - you say "can you give me the book?" = ĉu vi povas doni al mi la libron?

darkweasel:

T0dd:In English "me" is the accusative of "I". That is, I=mi; me=vin.

Not only the accusative, but also the dative - you say "can you give me the book?" = ĉu vi povas doni al mi la libron?

As an aside it may be worth noting that this falls under what is nowadays referred to as the objective case, along with direct objects and objects of prepositions. Terms like "accusative" and "dative" have been largely discarded by modern English grammarians.

Please take into account that "havinta" and "havanta" have different meanings. The former means that the bird (or the insect) no longer has the apple, the latter means that it still has it.

Regards,

Daniel

orthohawk:

danielcg:

But if we really need to strike out any chance of impresicion, we may resort to another construction:

"La birdo kiu havis pomon kaptis la insekton" (="La birdo havanta pomon kaptis la insekton")

or

"La birdo kaptis la insekton kiu havis pomon" (= "La birdo kaptis la insekton havantan pomon")

Regards,

Or..........you could say "La havinta la pomon birdo kaptis la insekton" and "La birdo kaptis la havintan la pomon insekton."

danielcg, this is the English-language forum.

darkweasel:danielcg, this is the English-language forum.

Sorry! It was a lapsus calami. I'll go and translate my text into English.

Regards,

Daniel

danielcg:

darkweasel:danielcg, this is the English-language forum.

Sorry! It was a lapsus calami. I'll go and translate my text into English.

Regards,

Daniel

wow XD I wish I was so fluent in other languages that saying something in another doesn't even slip my mind. Maybe one day.

Thank you everyone for your help, it is interesting to me how much I can speak of the English language (it is my mother tongue) and yet how little I know of it's grammar. I wonder sometimes if knowing all of the terms-- accusative, objective, etc, would help me in learning Esperanto (and Swedish for that matter-- I'm studying that as well)

I guess I still have a LOT of work to do. I do forget sometimes how Esperanto is a full language, not just something that you can learn a few phrases in and speak to people like I would English.

Mathieux:I wish I was so fluent in other languages that saying something in another doesn't even slip my mind. Maybe one day.

I remember a few months ago when I was reading a post and, halfway through, it struck me as odd that the author had suddenly switched to Esperanto.

Then I realized that he hadn't switched. It was ALL Esperanto. I simply hadn't noticed until I was halfway through.

Stick with it, and you'll get to that point too.