"It is your turn."
Translation:Estas via vico.
27 Comments
1529
Yes. In the languages I know how to say "it's your turn," they all use their own word for "turn," not necessarily related to any of the others.
For example, in English we usually use "It's your turn," despite the fact that turning usually has nothing to do with the action.
In Italian, they say "Tocca a te" (literally: "It touches to you").
And in Esperanto, we say "Estas via vico" (literally: "It's your queue/row").
Truth be told, none of these make complete sense, not even to native speakers. However, it's a commonly enough used phrase in most languages, so it becomes easy to recognize once you learn it and use it a few times.
(Does anyone know how to say it in any other language?)
Now that I think about it, in Russian it is the same as Esperanto: "твоя очередь" (tvoya ochered') where ochered' can mean line/queue or turn, as in it's your turn! I completely missed this the first time I saw vico, probably because the translation is given to English and I didn't bother to think about other languages.
Spanish: Te toca (literally: It touches you), es tu turno (literally: It is your turn), tú sigues (literally: You follow).
Actually, the italian "Tocca a te" means "It touches you". The preposition is not translated that way. It's the same as in Catalan: "et toca a tu", which means "it's your turn", literally meaning that the chance, or the oportunity has touched you.
In Polish it's the same word.
Stałem w kolejce (I was standing in a queue.)
Poczekaj na swoją kolejkę. (Wait for your turn.)
(They're the same word but Polish has grammatical cases. That's why the words look. different. The original word is kolejka.)
- 114
In danish we say "Det er din tur" which cab be translated to "It is your ride"
- 37
Polish: twoja kolej! That means '(it's) your turn'. And Polish adjective 'kolejny' means 'another (one)'. Fantastic how Duolingo helps to learn more languages than you previously imagined :)
In Portuguese we say "É a sua vez", which literally means "It's your time", but time in the meaning of "three times, five times". I think it makes sense, at least to me it does
If you use "ĝi" it needs some object in the context, it can refer to. This undefined "it" in English like "It's good weather." "It's summer." "It's your turn." when "it" does not refer to a real object in the context, is simply left out in Esperanto.
Estas bona vetero.
Estas via vico.
Estas somero.
- 1529
why can't i say "ĝi estas via vico"?
Frankly, I think you can. You can leave it off if you want (because it doesn't refer to a tangible thing or spoken idea), or you keep it, as it is technically referring to "via vico."
I think Esperanto is flexible to allow both ways, but not everyone will agree.
- 260
I suppose you could say "Ĝi estas via vico" if you were talking about a particular line/queue that belonged to someone. "Ho, rigardu tiun grandan vicon de stanaj soldatoj! Ĝi estas via vico, ĉu ne?" However, "It is your turn" is only translated "Estas via vico." This slavic form makes sense. It's sort of a short way of saying, "You're the next in line. You can go now."
- 2041
Not arbitrary. It's because "to be/esti" is what's known as a copula. It is a stative verb, not an active verb, and therefore is not a transitive verb. It takes complements, not direct objects.
I hug the dog -- "hug" is a transitive verb, and "the dog" is the recipient of the action. Who got hugged?
I am a person -- "am" is equating/comparing the subject "I" with the predicate "a person". There is no action, there is no recipient of any action.
I'm not sure I can explain it correctly enough, as I'm also studying the language, but it's the same as when you say: Mi estas persono -> you don't use -n here. Basically, the verb estas "equates" the things it links, so they are the same thing - they both describe the subject of the sentence: Mi = persono.
The same goes for the verb fariĝi, and I think there were some others but I can't think of any other examples right now.
Very good discussions, thank you. When I saw the sentence, "It is your turn," I was struck with how abstract that sentence really is. All of you have confirmed that same idea. I find it both pleasing and interesting that Zamenhof chose the slavic path for this very idiomatic phrase. Pleasing because Esperanto incorporates widely from its source languages, and interesting because Russian speakers were among the first recipients of the language. I can imagine that learning Esperanto is going to work like knowing latin roots while studying Romance languages.
- 2041
Esperanto incorporates widely from its source languages
Not that widely. He only used European languages.
Yes, those are it's source languages, and it incorporates widely from them. You are right that it does not incorporate widely from language generally, but that's also not what they said.
