Saluton! I started learning Esperanto recently (I found a book from my university library that uses Zamenhof's "Ekzercaro" to teach). I've been trying to come up with my own sentences in order to learn, but I've hit a few snags that I can't find the answer to anywhere.

1. How do you ask "if [x]"? For example, "If I make mistakes, please correct me?" The best I could come up with is "Cxu mi faras erarojn..."

2. Using the same example above, how do you (politely) ask for something? For example, "korektu min" would be "correct me", but how would you say, "please correct me"?

3. I don't know how to say "any-" (e.g. anywhere, anyone, anything, etc.). However, I have seen the correlatives beginning with "i-" used to represent "any-" in addition to "some-". I've seen that "ajn" is sometimes used as well. How does this all fit together?

4. Does "I have started to learn Esperanto" translate to "Mi estas komencinta lerni Esperaton"? The double layer of tenses when using participles is really confusing me (e.g. est(a/i/o/u)s + komenc(a/i/o)nta).

5. Building onto the last sentence, would it be correct to say "... lerni Esperanton, kaj mi esperas, ke mi povos rapide lerni gxin" to mean "... and I hope that I'll be able to learn it quickly"?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Hi Echo.

Congratulations for your being learning Esperanto. You won't regret it.

Now let's go to your questions.

1. "Se mi faras erarojn..."

2. "Bonvolu korekti min" or "Bonvole korektu min".

3. Well, this is something I understand perfectly and use automatically, yet I find it a bit difficult to translate into English (it happens that English is not my mothertongue and that doesn't help in this case). But in general, "ajn" stresses the indetermination, e.g. "iu libro" means "a book" or "any book", but "iu ajn libro" means "just about any book" or something of the sort. I guess I'll better leave this here and invite some native anglophone to come clear things up.

4. Litterally, yes, "I have started to learn Esperanto" is equivalent to "Mi estas komencinta lerni Esperanton" (good for your not forgetting the accusative!). But in general, one does not use compound tenses in Esperanto unless they are really needed. So the meaning of your sentence would be normally conveyed by a phrase like "Mi ĵus eklernis Esperanton" or "Mi antaŭnelonge eklernis Esperanton".

5. Yes! (and you already are!)

Regards,

Daniel

Echo49:Saluton! I started learning Esperanto recently (I found a book from my university library that uses Zamenhof's "Ekzercaro" to teach). I've been trying to come up with my own sentences in order to learn, but I've hit a few snags that I can't find the answer to anywhere.

1. How do you ask "if [x]"? For example, "If I make mistakes, please correct me?" The best I could come up with is "Cxu mi faras erarojn..."

2. Using the same example above, how do you (politely) ask for something? For example, "korektu min" would be "correct me", but how would you say, "please correct me"?

3. I don't know how to say "any-" (e.g. anywhere, anyone, anything, etc.). However, I have seen the correlatives beginning with "i-" used to represent "any-" in addition to "some-". I've seen that "ajn" is sometimes used as well. How does this all fit together?

4. Does "I have started to learn Esperanto" translate to "Mi estas komencinta lerni Esperaton"? The double layer of tenses when using participles is really confusing me (e.g. est(a/i/o/u)s + komenc(a/i/o)nta).

5. Building onto the last sentence, would it be correct to say "... lerni Esperanton, kaj mi esperas, ke mi povos rapide lerni gxin" to mean "... and I hope that I'll be able to learn it quickly"?

Thanks in advance for your help!

1. The "if" word you're looking for is "se". We use it for "if/then" type statements. If I make an error, please correct me. Se mi eraros, bonvolu korekti min. "Ĉu" is used for yes or no questions, and it also has a meaning like "whether". "Mi ne scias ĉu ŝi venos" - I don't know if she will come / I don't know whether she will come.

2. Normally we use bonvolu ("have the good will...") plus the infinitive. "Please go" = "Bonvolu iri". Sometimes you will see "Bonvole iru" (with good will, leave). The bonvole form is a more modern development, the bonvolu version is more traditional. Both are considered correct, but the bonvolu form is more common. Note that "Bonvolu iru" would be wrong, and "Bonvole iri" would also be wrong (at least for the meaning that you're looking for).

3. The i- correlatives are used to mean "any". This was confusing to me when I first learned, because I thought that surely we must distinguish between "something" and "anything". But in fact Esperanto does not distinguish and in time, you'll find that there's no special need to distinguish. "ajn" is used to emphasize the "any"-ness of a correlative. It doesn't translate very exactly but I would translate it into colloquial English as "at all". "Iam" = sometime or anytime; "iam ajn" = "anytime at all". In English, you can certainly understand the difference in emphasis between "anytime" and "anytime at all", and that is exactly the difference between "iam" and "iam ajn". "Ajn" is also used with words that don't seem to make sense in English, but make sense in Esperanto. For example, there's a relatively well-known Esperanto song that says "Mi povus fari ĉion ajn por ŝi" ("I could do everything at all for her"). "Everything" isn't a word that we would normally associate with "at all"; in this case, the song is emphasizing that not only would I do everything for her, but I would *really* do anything at all, every possible thing that you can imagine, for her.

4. "Mi estas komencinta lerni Esperanton" is grammatically correct but hardly anyone would ever say that. Number one - use of complex verb tenses is heavily discouraged in favor of use of simple tenses -is, -as, -os, etc. The context and accompanying words will convey the exact tense just fine without using a complex tense, and the simple forms are considered more elegant and easier to understand. Complex tenses are only used when for some reason we feel the need to be extremely precise about the exact timing of an action. Number two - Esperanto has a prefix ek- which indicates the beginning of an action. So under the principle that elegant and succinct language is preferred, most people would say that sentence as "Mi eklernis Esperanton"

5. Yes, the end of your proposed sentence is correct.

I am assuming you're aware of the basic grammar section here at lernu.

An additional useful resource is the downloadable, PDF-format Free Esperanto Book, in particular chapter 8, the grammatical overview. It is the most detailed English-language guide to Esperanto language that I know of, that is available for download (there are printed books with more detail, however. "Being Colloquial in Esperanto" is an excellent book). I recommend downloading the Free Esperanto Book; you could skip chapters 1-3 if you don't care too much about the background of the language. The rest of the book is information about the language itself, rather than stories about people's experiences with it. It contains a much-expanded version of lernu's Ana Pana course, which also has a ton of grammatical explanations.

The PMEG is an extensive grammar guide that you will find extremely useful as you learn. It is written in Esperanto only, but in most cases the grammar it uses to explain the forms is not too difficult, and it gives lots of examples to show the right and wrong ways to do things.

Finally - I know that you have been teaching yourself with a book from your library. But I recommend doing a course like "Ana Pana" here at lernu. It's corrected by a tutor. Even though it is very likely below your current level, it will be a good review for you, and it's a chance for you to get feedback from a tutor on your use of the language. Ana Renkontas and Kio Okazas are the other two courses that are corrected by a tutor, and I recommend them as well. (Ana Renkontas is mid-level, Kio Okazas is advanced). Lernu has a lot of courses and resources, and I encourage you to browse around the site and see what you find. There's a ton of stuff here that even frequent users aren't always aware of!

erinja:1. The "if" word you're looking for is "se". We use it for "if/then" type statements. If I make an error, please correct me. Se mi eraros, bonvolu korekti min. "Ĉu" is used for yes or no questions, and it also has a meaning like "whether". "Mi ne scias ĉu ŝi venos" - I don't know if she will come / I don't know whether she will come.

Thus "ĉu mi faras erarojn, bonvolu korekti min" would mean sort of "whether or not I make a mistake, correct me (anyway!)"

Thanks for the help, I'll try out the courses.

Just a small comment on topic 4.

English distinguishes between I have started and I started (present perfect and simple past). Esperanto may put both forms under '-is'.

To translate 'mi vidis Susan' into English you have to know the context to decide whether this should be rendered as I saw Susan or I have seen Susan.

To capture the nuance of I have started learning Esperanto, I might be tempted to use the present (-as), so 'mi eklernas Esperanton'. I am learning Esperanto and I am in the 'eka' phase.

The present perfect of English is translated as a simple present for actions that started in the past and are still continuing. So I have lived here for ten years will be 'mi loĝas ĉi tie jam 10 jarojn. If you know French this usage will be familiar to you.

I've come across another thing:

unu > unua (one > first)

unuj > unuaj (some > ???)

I can't think of any way that would make that make sense in English (or Chinese)...

Echo49:I've come across another thing:

unu > unua (one > first)

unuj > unuaj (some > ???)

I can't think of any way that would make that make sense in English (or Chinese)...

There is no word "unuj". There IS an "unuaj", used when the word "first" applies to a plural noun.

The first people through the door...
La unuaj homoj tra la pordo...

Oh yes, there is a word unuj, although it is not very common! It can be translated to English as "certain":

Unuj

Huh. I hadn't come across that one before. Not common, indeed.