"Am I speaking Italian, French, Spanish or German?"
Translation:Ĉu mi parolas la italan, la francan, la hispanan aŭ la germanan?
33 Comments
I know this might be a somewhat useless question since I will still get the answer, but how do I know someone is asking "Am I" and not "Can I" in this sentence
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You would use povas to indicate ability to do something. For example "Am I speaking" = ĉu mi parolas - "Can I speak" = ĉu mi povas paroli (may I speak) or povas mi paroli (Can I speak) or mi povas paroli (I can speak) with a rising inflection. It's been a while since I learned Esperanto, so it is a bit rusty, but something along these lines. Hope that helps.
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i translated "Am I speaking Italian, French, Spanish or German?" as "Ĉu mi parolas italan, francan, hispanan, aŭ germanan" and was marked wrong.
One of the correct answers suggested was "Ĉu mi parolas la italan, francan, hispanan, aŭ germanan"
Sort of confusing
As of July 2015, your original sentence (lacking all four articles) has been accepted.
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Am I the only one who finds "falas" more appropriate for speaking than falling? I took Portuguese first and it got stuck in my head.
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I speak portuguese natively, and I don't think that. “Falar” (pt),“Hablar”(sp) is less popular than “Palavra”(pt), “Palabra” (sp), “Paraule” (ct), “Parlar” (ct), “Parlare” (it), “Parler” (fr). But I think that it would be better if it used “Parlas”, because sounds like the sources, including the portuguese and spanish.
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Why are we using cxu here? Isn't that for yes/no questions? I interpret this question as asking for the language being spoken, not just a yes or no.
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I know in English, there can still be ambiguity of whether you're asking a yes or no question.
I remember on the Everybody Votes Channel on the Wii, one question was, "Do you own a cat or a dog?" Keep in mind, on there, the questions always had two answers. There were never three or four options.
Before I looked at the answers, I was wondering what you would have to pick if you owned neither or both. However, the answers were "Yes" and "No." I was confused at first, but then I realized it made sense. They wanted to see how many pet owners there were, but of those two pets only, not of fish or hamsters or horses or anything else.
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I think "Ĉu" is rather a word to identify a question. So, you may say "Mi parolas la hispanan" as a statement, but you can make it a question only by adding "Ĉu" at the beginning of the sentence ("Ĉu mi parolas la hispanan?")
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Yes. It's possible to drop the repetitions of "aŭ". I'm not sure if it's possible to drop the middle "ĉu" from a "ĉu ... ĉu ... ĉu..." construction.
(All ĉu means "one of x or y or z")
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Well since we're speaking Esperanto, which has roots in all of them, you could say we're speaking all of them.... sort of.
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Why does one need the 'en'? Couldn't one just say Ĉu mi parolas la italan, la francan...etc.? The original sentence does not say 'Am I speaking IN', it just says 'Am I speaking'.
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I believe it's because "parolas" doesn't mean speak as in "speak a language", but speak as in "talk", and you certainly can't "talk a language". The "in" is therefor necessary for grammatical sense.
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talking means "diras" in esperanto. so i think "parolas" means "speaking a laguage" in english.
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I don't know what Fishy Cuber is talking about. There's no "en" in the OP.
But "diras" is more like "say". "Parolas" is speak.
- Mi parolas la anglan. I speak English
- Mi parolas en la angla. I am speaking in English.
- Mi parolis dum tri horoj. I was speaking for three hours.
I am having an issue with using "la italan" vs "la itala" vs just "italan". Can you remove the "la"?
I am having the same issue. Sort of. I keep writing "itala" when it needs "italan," and "italan" when it means, "itala."
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Why translation of "Am I speaking" to "Ĉu mi estas parolanta" wrong? For beginners, it is more rational to ask: "Do I speak" rather than "Am I speaking"
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Hi Nguyen,
I'm no expert by any means, but I had the same issue when I first learned Esperanto and my instructor helped me with it, so let me try to answer this as best as I can. You are using the present participle form of the verb to indicate the progressive tense in English, which is not exactly correct in Esperanto. Parolanta "Speaking" is functioning as an adjective in your sentence. This construction is a slightly more congruent with the English passive potential or subjunctive forms. The closest direct translation for the present progressive tense in English is the simple present in Esperanto which encompasses both forms (i.e. "Ĉu mi parolas" = "Am I speaking" or "Do I speak"). So while your sentence will translate to "Am I speaking", the shade of meaning in Esperanto is different. I ran across this article that may be helpful: http://bulteno.esperanto-usa.org/2011/2/03-instruado.html. I hope that helps. And please if there is someone more versed in the grammatical subtleties of Esperanto please correct me.
Is "Cxu, mi dirigxas en la Italan, la Francan, la Hispanan, aux la Germanan?" incorrect? If so, why? (I tried the above sentence with "diras" first, realized it need to be an intransitive verb, then tried it with "dirigxas" and it still wasn't accepted)
Why was this not counted as a typo?? " Ĉu mi porlas la italan, la francan, la hispanan aŭ la germanan"
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The system for letting typos slip is internal to the Duolingo system (that is, out of the control of the Esperanto course administrators) and also largely a mystery. (By the way, I am an Esperanto teacher but not part of the Duolingo Esperanto team).
My thought is that "porlas" for "parolas" is a fairly significant typo - both from the point of view of a human reader (it sounds like a different word to me) and from a machine reader (one missing letter, two other letters out of order) -- but regardless, if the point is to learn Esperanto, "parolas" (three syllables, accent on the -RO-) is an important word to get right.
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Correct. They do not. The language Esperanto is capitalized to show that it's not esperanto - which just means "one who hopes."
