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- "How old are they?"
"How old are they?"
Translation:Kiom ili aĝas?
24 Comments
Well this is the most direct translation from English. That's it. So the correct form of what you propose "Kiom da jaroj ili havas" (or "havas ili") would work in practice, but it's not really a translation of this phrase is it?
I think if someone has the "same question" - they need to explain what is not clear about the answers that were already given. If you could explain what is not clear in tomaszym's answer from 5 years ago, maybe someone could fill in that gap for you.
136
No answers have been given to the question "Would 'Kiom de jarojn havas ilin?' work as well as 'Kiom ili aĝas?'", I think.
The other comments here discuss why there shouldn't be an "estas" somewhere, from what I can see.
tomaszym says both answers are correct in theory, but it isn't clear whether both could be used in practice.
I would agree that the answer isn't all that clear or complete -- but I thought it was indeed an answer to they question.
- Why not "kiom jarojn"?
- Well that may be a direct translation from English, but Esperanto works differently.
That's how I read it.
- 136
In general, would you say that all variations mentioned here "kiom X aĝas", "Kiom jarojn havas X ", "kiu(j) estas X aĝo(j)" are equally okay to use in a conversation?
Certainly not. "Kiom X aĝas" (if X is a name) is grammatically very different from any sentence with "kiom jarojn" in it. To connect "kiom" with "jaroj" you need DA -- as explained in the link I posted 10 hours ago or so.
My own most detailed answer is in this blog post.
https://blogs.transparent.com/esperanto/de-kaj-da-how-do-you-say-a-glass-of-water-in-esperanto/
As solidgitarius said, "ili" is the subject. But beyond that, only transitive verbs take objects. Not all verbs are transitive.
Does *kiom aĝas la hundoj?" Equal "how old are the dogs?" Or am i misunderstanding the words use?
aĝas is the present-tense form of the verb aĝi, which means "to be/have age".
No, because "kiom" is "how much/how many". It would probably be "Kio estas...?"
http://www.esperanto.org/stanford/korelativoj/
- 1722
Thanks. Whilst your answer might be right, the logic behind it does not follow. If "Kiom" is right for second person then why should "Kio" be right for third person? The converse also applies. The link you gave didn't help with this question.
1st, 2nd, 3rd person etc. has nothing to do with it, although if you want to be technical, then all correlatives are 3rd person by definition.
This link explains the correlatives in greater detail:
http://literaturo.org/HARLOW-Don/Esperanto/correlatives.html
"Kio" and "kiom" address different things entirely. "Kio" asks "what/which thing". "Kiom" asks "how much/how many".
- 1722
Thanks again. The person was again a red herring. I forgot what the original sentence was as I was typing - can't see it on the screen as I type - old age and short term memory problems. Sorry.
