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- "Bonan vesperon!"
"Bonan vesperon!"
Translation:Good evening!
22 Comments
If you attend a church that has "vespers" you can remember "vesperon" with it. Vespers are church songs sung in the evening, vesperon = evening
it actually comes from latin, which was the main language of the church for a long time: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vesper#Latin
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Because that would make the evening the subject of the sentence, rather than the direct object. The full (implied) sentence being translated here is:
[I wish you] a good evening.
I is the subject. You is the indirect object (the recipient of the direct object). Which leaves a good evening as the direct object.
Esperanto doesn't have an indefinite article, so the 'a' isn't translated. And since what's left is the direct object, it takes the accusative case, which means adding an '-n' to both the adjective and the noun. Hence, Bonan vesperon.
I hope this helps.
Ok, so this is something that I never got to understand. What's the difference between evening and afternoon? Like I understand Morning, Night, and sometimes afternoon like 12-3? Then is evening like 3-6?
Also is vesperon partly based on Greek? Because in Greek Kali-spera (καλησπέρα) means good evening too.
They're cognates. In Mycenaean Greek the word started with a 'w' or 'wh' sound, so: ϝέσπερος, later ἕσπερος, ultimately from PIE wek(ʷ)speros. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/wek(%CA%B7)speros
