"The small woman plays slowly."
Translation:La malgranda virino malrapide ludas.
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It is cool that you just add mal in front of some words to make it their opposite. Easy to remember.
crimethink is double plus ungood, the MiniDespair (Ministry of Esperanto) will unperson you and your comments.
Wonderful, I haven't read a comment that has made me laugh quite like that in a long time. Have a Lingot!!
Exactly what I've been thinking throughout this whole thing. Scaaary... haha
Eh, I'd speak new speak if I could...
"The only vocabulary the gets smaller every year."
Before learning the verb "iri", i thought that the English "to go" was translated to "malveni"
It's a language buy one get one rapide 'MAL'rapide libro libr'EJ'o kafo kaf'EJ'o viro vir'IN'o hundo hund'DI'do katoj kat'ID'oj
Does the order of the words matter? Most if the times I order the sentences as in english or spanish, but this time the suggested answer showed the verb at the end of the sentence.
Esperanto has very flexible word order. You can say "La malgranda virino ludas malrapide" or "La malgranda virino malrapide ludas", or "Malrapide ludas la virino malgranda" or ....
Does this verb "to play" (ludi) also mean to play in the sense of instruments? Because when I hear this sentence I imagine a woman playing an instrument slowly.
Or is "to play" (an instrument) a different verb?
The verb ludas is for both "to play" (an instrument) and "to play" (a game) in Esperanto.
Could one compound "malgranda virino" into "malgrandvirino", or is this sort of compounding exclusively between adjacent nouns?
You don't normally make a compound by adding an adjective to a noun, as there is no reason why the adjective shouldn't have its full form. So it is not correct to stick "malgranda" and "virino" together to form a compound. Having said this, there are some compounds formed of an adjective plus a noun, but then the compound has a specific meaning, e.g. "nov-edzino" = bride, as opposed to "nova edzino" = new wife.
If you think "malgranda virino" is too much of a mouthful, you can use the suffix -et- and say "virineto" which means exactly the same as "malgranda virino". The suffix -et- can become an adjective in its own right "eta", so you could also say "eta virino".
That's exactly how you make an adverb. Adverbs in Esperanto end in -e, adjectives in -a.
"Malrapida" (ending in -a) means "slow", and "malrapide" (ending in -e) means "slowly". But please note than in informal speech English speakers sometimes say "slow" when strictly speaking the word should be "slowly" (like "Put down your gun nice and slow"). This is fine in gangster films, but in Esperanto you can't get away with using an adjective when it should be an adverb.
I put ludas before malrapide and it said i was correct--is adverb placement flexible?
Yes, word order is very flexible. Scroll up - somebody's asked the same question before.
Could someone remind me when words like granda and rapide end in a or e? I've forgotten how it works.
Words ending in -a are adjectives, words ending in -e are adverbs. I know people often get confused particularly about adverbs, and in English it sometimes happens that people use an adjective when strictly speaking there should be an adverb. This could obviously lead to confusion when speaking Esperanto, in which the two categories are very clear and distinct. If you need more information about adjectives and adverbs, try these links: http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/adjectives/what-is-an-adjective.html and http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/adverbs/what-is-an-adverb.html.
curious about why 'malrapida' was not right; is slowly not an adjective in this usage? don't adjectives end in A?
No, it's not an adjective but an adverb, which ends in -e in Esperanto. Adjectives relate to nouns, adverbs relate to verbs. "Slowly" (malrapide) doesn't describe the woman herself, but the way she plays, in other words "malrapide " doesn't relate to the noun "virino", but to the verb "ludas".