"Mi-e dor de ei."

Translation: I miss them.

[nahuatl1939]

i see that i have difficulty in knowing whether "EI" means " THEY" or "SHE"
if there is no verb.

[Laura56120]

'El' always means 'he'
'ea' means 'she'
'Ei' always means ' they'

[LouisSepdekdu]

Except when ei is the dative 3rd person singular feminine. In which case, it means "to her".

[nickbii]

Is the literal translation "I am longing for them"?

[nethereran]

No, dor is a noun, a bit like ”craving” or ”desire”, but it's untranslatable if the list of untranslatable words under one of the lessons is correct.

[nickbii]

I was thinking of literal as in how the grammar works. Since "longing" is a gerund it functions as a noun, and the grammar in "I am longing for them" seems pretty close to "Mi-e dor de ei."

[Schattenparker]

even closer would be:
To me, it is pain from them

dor is related to Latin dolus = trickery, but also to French deuil = grief, and thus also somehow to Latin dolor = pain and English indolent (= "not feeling the kick")
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dolus#Latin

[nethereran]

It's really close, yeah.

[razvan.marin]

I think not.