"One says that French is beautiful."

Translation: Oni diras, ke la franca estas bela.

[Plugghest]

"Oni" messes with my Russian... "Vi" and "Ni" mess with my Swedish... gah!

[MauriceReeves]

I feel your pain and share a lingot with you because we suffer together.

[amuzulo]

This was definitely hard for me to get used to when I was learning Swedish!

[iainsona]

And "ni" messes with my Mandarin (ni hao!)

[flootzavut]

Mi ankaŭ.

[erjegenfisk]

... et on a raison.

[Luis_Domingos]

Is the comma a subordinate clause marker (just like in German)? Should you use it every single time or is it expendable?

[MailmanSpy]

Yes, I believe so, and to your second question, it is preferable so as to put more emphasis on the fact that the two parts are a little bit separated.

[Luis_Domingos]

Thanks - I'll use my Dutch and German knowledge and forget my native Portuguese for this, then :)

[timvermeulen]

FYI: In Dutch you wouldn't have a comma like in the given sentence here.

[Luis_Domingos]

Okay, thanks. Information received.

[LexicalLexy]

I put 'Oni diras tion la franca estas bela'.
Why 'ke' and not 'tion'?
Would someone kindly explain, please.

[HelbentForleder]

Could this mean: They say that French is beautiful? or is it strictly: one says?

[MailmanSpy]

If "they" is used with the sane definition.

[Mouxon]

What is the difference between Oni and Unu?

[MailmanSpy]

"Oni" is an undefined normal person whereas "unu" is a quantity.

[Mouxon]

Thank you !

[VenturerWild]

There's also the grammatical answer that "oni" is a pronoun signifying what, in English, is called the "generic you," or the older version in which we said "one," as in "One might say..." and "unu" is simply the word for the cardinal number "one," as in "one, two, three..."

[AdityaTulahalli]

Why does la franca drop the -n ending? I assume it's something to do with the ke, but I don't know. (Is diras the subject of the verb "diras"?

[SeanMero]

It has something to do with ke, yes. For the purposes of determining case, everything after ke will act like a separate sentence, and will ignore everything before ke. If you are considering only "la franca estas bela", there is nothing there that causes anything to be accusative, so nothing in that phrase gets -n. It is true that "ke la franca estas bela" is a direct object for "diras", but it would be awkward to put -n on every word in that phrase, so we do not do that.

[MichaelSch102129]

Is the "la" before "franca" required here?

[MailmanSpy]

It could be interpreted as only an adjective without the omitted "lingvo" if your remove "la". Since we can all agree that "heroic" is an adjective, consider the difference "the" makes between "Heroic saved the nation" and "The heroic saved the nation"

[MaxAkrman]

Is the “ke” necessary?

[AntiProdicus]

I took the English, "One says that French is beautiful," to mean, "One [of them] says that French is beautiful." So, I translated it as, "Unu diras ke la Franca estas bela" - i.e., "Unu [el ili] diras..." This answer was not accepted.

[imtonie]

so the subordinate here is "french is beautiful"? isn't subordinate the dependent clause? and dependents cannot stand alone? i think "french is beautiful" can stand on its own? or am i missing something..

[Scott-Derek]

Subordinate clauses and dependent clauses are different things

If DC, then it is a SC, but the reverse isn't necessarily true.

[mico12345]

A subordinate clause is a dependent clause. Here you include the word "that".
"that French is beautiful" is a subordinate clause.

[Francisco22893]

cxu ne ? Mi estas franca kaj mi interesiĝas pri kiel vi aŭdas ĉi tiun lingvon...

[proedie]

Could I also say «Oni diras, la franca estas bela» without ke?

[flootzavut]

With the disclaimer that my Esperanto isn't fluent, I believe that the ke is necessary in Esperanto, unlike in English.