"La instruisto demandas la knabojn pri io."
Translation:The teacher asks the boys about something.
15 Comments
701
I first typed "students" remembered that it was knaboj, not lernantoj, then wrote boy (singular).
I make a raft load of typos on good days.
How would you say "The teacher asks the boys something?" without the "about"? My first guess would be "La instruisto demandas ion al la knaboj." but it seems strange for "la knaboj" to go from being a direct object to being an indirect object without the role or the verb changing.
- 701
«La instruisto demandas ion de la knaboj» is my initial response. I'm suspecting that I made a small oops in there since I usually seem to do so on this program.
I would personally swap the "de" out for "el", but yours is intelligible enough to be understood.
"Al" would be used for the meaning of the sentence of the discussion, but I was just correcting his sentence that he/she thought was right so that it would be grammatically correct.
- 701
I didn't think that it was right, just that was my first swing at the sentence Miacomet asked about. I realized later that it should have been el. I might differ with you about the use of al since that usually indicates a sense of direction also. "Mi demandas ion al oni" would translate as "I ask something to someone." Whereas, with el the translation would "ask something of/from the boys."
You forgot the "pri", and "de" has a completely different meaning. I think your sentence means "the teacher asks to something of the boys".
The accusative doesn't necessarily mean direction towards. In this case, he is more so meant the direct object.
So best I can tell, the answer is that what you said works, but the standard form (per the PIV) is to use pli
- 701
If it is "asks the boys" then the boys most certainly take the infinitive. If it is "asks about/of the boys" then they don't.
You may correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is where we reference La Fundamento de Esperanto, Rule #8; "All prepositions govern the nominative case."
I put "children" instead of "kids"... same difference, not sure why it was marked wrong?
Children is the more formal term anyway
Both "children" and "kids" would be marked incorrect because the sentence uses "knaboj", meaning "boys" (gender-specific).
