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- "Bonvenon ĉe ni!"
31 Comments
I don't really understand what ĉe means. It seams like it has multiple meaning. Could someone explain?
"ĉe" is a preposition of place, the equivalent of French "chez" - "chez nous" /"ĉe ni" = at our place (at the home of).
It's not the same as "ĉi" (interrogative and relative pronoun, "what"), or "ĉie" (adverb, "everywhere").
I keep wanting to translate it as chez, there really isn't a good English equivalent!
Really good explanation of ĉe here:
https://adventuresinesperanto.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/there-abouts/
Would this directly translate to something like "Welcome close to us!" or "Welcome near to us!"?
The reason is that it is based on the French word "chez," which does the same thing.
Natlangs doin' their thing
"ĉe" has no english equivalent. In french, it is a preposition to speak about "the place we are", for example : Mi estas ĉe mia amiko I'm at my friend's house
Ni estas ĉe ni We are at home
Yeah, the literal translation of this sentence doesn't really make any sense in English at all. It's only when you provide the equivalent English idiom that it is understandable.
1427
Is this like the Italian c'e <-- with the accent on the e because I can't do that on my phone?
No. I don't speak Italian (though I do speak native French, which helps), but I think "c'è" means "there is".
Cxe, on the other hand, means "at someone's place/home" (it's a meaning which comes from French "chez"), but Zamenhof took it a step further and decided it could be used to denote close proximity. He probably thought it could indicate a kind of locative "case", which exists in Russian and Polish, (he spoke Polish natively, and he knew Russian well). The locative has a meaning of greater closeness than "near", so, in English, it mostly corresponds to the preposition "at".
With the disclaimer that I'm not an expert - I think cxe doesn't have to mean at home; cxe ni could, I believe, mean "at our company" depending on context? And it can also be used to specify somewhere that isn't the speaker's home. I could've misunderstood that, though.
(Personally, I rather like it, and wish we had a good equivalent in English.)
- 1407
Good answer.
The primary meaning of ĉe is "at or near". When you are at or near someone, you are in their home. It's normal for things to bother you when learning. Once you've learned it, though, it becomes second nature.
I personally think more languages could use a preposition like "chez" or "cxe." It's so useful.
En la germana oni povas diri: "Willkommen bei uns!" (bei≈ĉe). Mi pensas bona tradukaĵo en la anglan povus simple esti "Welcome!" forlasante "ĉe ni". Where, if not "ĉe ni", could you welcome someone?
Could one also say "Bonvenon al nia hejmo!" To mean essentially the same thing?
No, because that makes no sense in English. Literal translations are only okay if they make sense in the target language of the translation. For example, Russian has no articles or the verb "to be" in the present tense, but that doesn't mean that Я женщина can be translated into English as "I woman" (except in a pedagogical context to say, "this is a literal translation but is not acceptable English").
Yes, I understand. I don't know why I commented that, seven months ago, to this date. Probably because that is what is literally means.
