Cheers Erinja for that clarification and extra bout Yiddish. It's definitely strange to think of "ĉe" having anything to do with being on/in/at a person, so it makes sense now to think of it as being at their house/general presence rather than the more literal but rather useless sense of being directly at their physical location

darkweasel:

orthohawk:

darkweasel:

orthohawk: "cxe" does NOT take a directional -n

sure?

with nouns denoting place? yeah, I'm pretty sure. to indicate direction with place nouns you use "al."

"mi iras cxe miajn geavojn" is correct however... though "al" is fine too.

but is it correct? is there a PMEG or Zamenhofian use to justify it?

erinja:Right. You can't use -n after prepositions that naturally show movement in a direction (like al and el). But you can use -n after prepositions that show location, but not movement. The -n adds movement.

-n after "ĉe" would be one of those situations where something isn't very common but it is still correct.

i stand corrected in regards to -n after cxe. syntax and semantics having a slavic feel to them in Esperanto, I tend to follow Russian usage in general and in Russian, one uses a different preposition in the movement situation..

orthohawk:but is it correct? is there a PMEG or Zamenhofian use to justify it?

It seems interesting that you're looking for a PMEG or Zamenhofian use to justify something - whereas on other topics, you seem to prefer to use the language's base rules, and NOT an argument of custom/tradition, when determining whether to use a form or not.

In your view, shouldn't it be that regardless of whether the ĉe + -n form is used by Zamenhof or PMEG, that it should be allowed, because there is nothing specifically against it?

orthohawk:
i stand corrected in regards to -n after cxe. syntax and semantics having a slavic feel to them in Esperanto, I tend to follow Russian usage in general and in Russian, one uses a different preposition in the movement situation..

Esperanto is no more Russian than English is Chinese.

erinja:

orthohawk:but is it correct? is there a PMEG or Zamenhofian use to justify it?

It seems interesting that you're looking for a PMEG or Zamenhofian use to justify something - whereas on other topics, you seem to prefer to use the language's base rules, and NOT an argument of custom/tradition, when determining whether to use a form or not.

In your view, shouldn't it be that regardless of whether the ĉe + -n form is used by Zamenhof or PMEG, that it should be allowed, because there is nothing specifically against it?

I'm talking speicific usages that are not gnrally done: if there is a Zamenhofian precedent, fine. If not, I think we should be very careful. the "language's base rules" ARE Zamnhofian by definition.

geo63:

orthohawk:
i stand corrected in regards to -n after cxe. syntax and semantics having a slavic feel to them in Esperanto, I tend to follow Russian usage in general and in Russian, one uses a different preposition in the movement situation..

Esperanto is no more Russian than English is Chinese.

No, but E-o tends to follow the slavic languages in regard to syntax and semantics (plena, for example, is a Latin root, but the semantic footprint is slavic). "Ne dirinte" meaning without saying is a slavic turn of phrase.

erinja:In English we use "at" only to mean "at a place". We would never say "at a person".

Actually, on rereading this, this reminds me of "I threw a ball at them", which I remember some discussion about, but don't remember a proper conclusion. I suspect that might utilising ĉe -n or would that look weird, or is it a sense in English that's impossible to translate (pragmatically)?

geo63:Esperanto is no more Russian than English is Chinese.

Well, only from certain points of view (see down the bottom).

Esperanto is very indo-european in structure (word stock, grammar and phrasing), even to the point that you could theoretically create a fabricated history of its evolution from vulgar latin (perhaps a language located between France and Italy that is spoken by many slavic immigrants, and by many language-game-interested romans before that) . If it were completely isolating, then it'd be more neutral in structure, but then again Chinese is completely isolating

There are other arguments about this but ultimately if we had to classify Esperanto as anything, it'd be Indo-european inspired, but reduced to a point where it's more compatible with isolating languages.

But of course it doesn't belong more to Russians than Chinese, the real important part (provided the language is relatively easy, which it seems to be).

ceigered:

erinja:In English we use "at" only to mean "at a place". We would never say "at a person".

Actually, on rereading this, this reminds me of "I threw a ball at them", which I remember some discussion about, but don't remember a proper conclusion. I suspect that might utilising ĉe -n or would that look weird, or is it a sense in English that's impossible to translate (pragmatically)?

I wouldn't use "ĉe" to translate that into Esperanto. I'd say "Mi ĵetis pilkon AL ili", or else (if I didn't intend that they catch it) perhaps "Mi ĵetis pilkon en ilian direkton".

That's a directional "at" ("Look at this"), which I think would be translated as "al" in most cases in Esperanto. I see it in English as distinct from a locational "at" (which is "ĉe" in most Esperanto contexts). Not to speak of a temporal "at", for which we use "je" in Esperanto ("at ten o'clock" = "je la deka")

Thanks for that clarification Erinja. And I like the idea of using en -n, which solves a subquestion I had - "How do you express the idea of throwing something at someone with the intention of hitting them", to which I guess you can say "Mi ĵetis la pilkon en lin", although with the wrong context that'd sound like murder (And I guess no one catches with their head, so "Mi ĵetis la pilkon al lia kapo" makes sense too if you want to make it sound like you're throwing a ball at someones head).