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- "Tiu ĉi esperantisto ne parol…
"Tiu ĉi esperantisto ne parolas la anglan."
Translation:This Esperanto speaker does not speak English.
16 Comments
"Parolas" has the present tense verb suffix, so "ne parolas" means "does not speak/is not speaking". It does not define cause. You're absolutely correct that context would be needed to further explain the situation!
"Tio ĉi esperantisto ne povas paroli la anglan" means that they cannot speak English, but still does not explain why. (Perhaps they are in a place where English is not spoken, so English would not be useful to them.)
"Tio ĉi esperantisto ne kapablas paroli la anglan" specifies that this Esperanto speaker is not capable of speaking English, which finally gets to the root of the cause.
Or, perhaps, "tio ĉi esperantisto ne volas paroli la anglan," and I'm barking up the wrong tree since they don't want to speak English!
In the end, I think this exercise is deliberately left vague to encourage learners to have a conversation about it