FWIW, I am not a native English speaker and have no difficulty in understanding that sentence right from the beginning ("but for" = "except for").

With regard to your translation of that phrase into Esperanto, there are two mistakes in it:

1) "ne havus neniom...": the two negative words logically cancel each other, and so: "ne havus neniom" = "havus iom"

Of course, this is not what you intended to say. I guess Italian, like my mothertongue Spanish, must allow for the double negation in such cases. But English and Esperanto don't: they stick to logic and allow only one negative word (as long as you want to have a negative phrase and not a convoluted affirmative one). So you should choose between "havus neniom" or "ne havus iom".

2) "da monon" should be "da mono". Except for (or "but for", to stay in line with the conversation) the cases when you want to express the direction of a (physical or metaphorical) movement, you don't use the accusative after a preposition.

And now it is my turn to ask: what is "a je-ne sais-quoi-non of noncholance"?

Regards,

Daniel

Korsivo:

erinja:
One example:
"But for the small pension John received, he would have no money".
This is "but" in the sense of "except for" or "in the absence of" or "without".

Yes, this "but" at the beginning of the sentence would certainly be more difficult to interpret for a non native.

Here's how I would translate it freely into Italian: "E se non fosse stato per quella poca pensione [che riceveva] John non avrebbe mai avuto un centesimo"

And in Esperanto, with fewer inhibitions a je-ne sais-quoi-non of noncholance:
"John, krom la malgranda pensio recevita, ne havus neniom da monon"

Ĉu tro malbone?

Hi Daniel!

Thank you for explaining. The Italian language does indeed allow the use of the double negation in these cases.

"da monon" was a distraction.

[John, krom la malgranda pensio recevita, havus neniom da mono.]

"...noncholance" That wasn't supposed to mean much, just a joke.

Korsivo:One of the things that I can never get right when I write in English is punctuation...

Actually, the punctuation marks that you are using seem mainly correct to me. Possibly you could use a few more commas, for the same reason that you are already doing: to make the text more readable.

Miland:

Korsivo:One of the things that I can never get right when I write in English is punctuation...

Actually, the punctuation marks that you are using seem mainly correct to me. Possibly you could use a few more commas, for the same reason that you are already doing: to make the text more readable.

I wouldn't worry too much, Korsivo. Okay, I, personally, would use a few (well, probably many) more commas, but I'm just like that. You write some of the best English I've ever read of a non-native.

In Esp'o, I usually use commas to separate relative clauses (... tiel, kiel ...; ... tiom, kiom ...; ktp), before ke (sometimes most of the time) and just to make it easier to read. If it seems like it needs a comma, I put one in, regardless of what some rules might say (as I do with English, I s'pose). (I like brackets, too, had you not noticed.)

Lloyd