"La avino aĉetas pantalonon por sia nepo."

Translation: The grandmother buys trousers for her grandson.

[otsogutxi]

Welcome to: How not to get a cool birthday present for your grandson.

[miacomet]

What root does nepo come from? The only possibly related word I can think of is "nepotism" :P. Or maybe Spanish nieto?

[Luis_Domingos]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nepo

[miacomet]

Oh, of course, from Proto-Indo-European h₂népōt. :) Love etymology. Thanks.

[kaybekwa]

In Old French, nepōs became neveu, which was borrowed into English as nephew

[squelettus]

But... it doesn't mean the same thing though? I'm so confused

[PatriciaJH]

As the Wiktionary article says: "From Latin nepos ‎(“grandson, granddaughter, nephew, descendant”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂népōts."

[titouaen]

No, from Latin nepos.

[bryanhumano]

How often is "Sia" used? Should I become familiar with it?

[Luis_Domingos]

"sia" is the possessive you use when the person possessing it is the subject (his/her own). If you used "ŝia" here, the "her" would be a reference to someone else (another woman's grandsons). I hope that helped.

[Kreilyn]

Yes, it works like sin/sitt/sina in Swedish!

[kanguruo]

Yes, it is used a lot. His/her has really 2 meanings in English. Many languages like Russian for example are more precise. Esperanto too doesn't have that ambiguity that English has. A sentence like La patrino amas siajn infanojn is a very common sentence. You can't really avoid "sia".

[BarrelOfBacon]

Russian "его/её" also has at least 2 meanings: accusative case and possessive.

[hW4mUqQG]

However there is also a specific word "свой", which works like "sia" in Esperanto

[Robert252247]

Also, it is only used with 2nd person—he, she, it, they.

[ErinAndW]

Isn't that the 3rd person?

[Robert252247]

Yes, of course. I've gotten too used to seeing it second in declensions so my brain went down the wrong path. Good thing I clarified with specifics. :/ Fixed it. Thanks.

[DavidStyIes]

Odd: "a pair of pants" is accepted, as is "trousers", but not "a pair of trousers". I can't report it this time around as I screwed up with "nepo", translating it as though it were "nevo", so my answer isn't actually correct and can't be added. Maybe next time ;)

[PaCa826187]

I think they can't account for every reasonable translation straight away, which is the reason for the report button and sadly American English takes precedence here as it does on a lot of the web (I'm reminded of the joke about the Catholics being behind a brick wall in heaven with the explanation that, 'They think they're the only ones here').

Although, the Welsh course does seem to favour rest-of-the-world English, which is one plus point about it.

[Vegemighty]

Can one say prafilo?

[Sa967St]

No. The suffix"'pra" means "a very long time ago". You can use it for "great" in " great grandpa" but not for "grand" in "grandson".

[jaeyongim]

Dankon avino

[MartinKutz1]

My translation "buys" for "aĉetas" was considered as wrong, only "is buying" shown as correct.

[Ariaflame]

Then I hope you reported it since this comments area is only for discussion among learners.

Though since the translation above has 'buys' I suspect there was something else wrong with it.

[BGXCB]

lol, I hate that. I sit cursing the computer because I know I've got the word right, only to realise I made a typo, or messed up another word I should have known :)

[rod901137]

I think this exercise is wrong because the translation says 'buys pants',

[Tardusbubulcus]

can't here the "p " at all in this sound track

[Rafiquisto]

La avino acxetas pantalon , The grandmother buys a trouser. j=plural. pantalonojn. unos pantalones.

[P_Azul]

Could we get that comment in longhand?