"La instruisto demandas la knabojn pri io."

Translation: The teacher asks the boys about something.

[FredCapp]

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.

[miacomet]

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.

[FredCapp]

«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.

[MailmanSpy]

I would personally swap the "de" out for "el", but yours is intelligible enough to be understood.

[Criculann]

Why not "al"? "el" is usually used when something's coming from something.

[MailmanSpy]

"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.

[FredCapp]

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."

[DaniloFdo]

I think boys here should not take accusative case or am i mistaken?

[FredCapp]

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."

[Fantomius]

... then the boys most certainly take the infinitive.

The infinitive? I think you mean the accusative.

Ni havas gramatika-malsanegon! :-)

[salivanto]

I always thought it was "numerative" and "denominative."

(No, not really.)

[NunoRafael13]

Yes. It's a preposition substitution accusative and is replacing the preposition "al":
- ŝi demandas al la knaboj
- ŝi demandas la knabojn

[domsalazar0]

I put "children" instead of "kids"... same difference, not sure why it was marked wrong?

Children is the more formal term anyway

[hayashi310]

Both "children" and "kids" would be marked incorrect because the sentence uses "knaboj", meaning "boys" (gender-specific).

[Esperantist22]

Can someone explain the diffrence between "io", "iom" and "iomete"? Seems all the same to me...

[salivanto]

something - answers "what?"
some - answers "how much?"
a little bit - less than iom

[Esperantist22]

Thank you, that really helped :)