"Mia onklino estas la prezidanto de granda firmao."
Translation:My aunt is the president of a large company.
14 Comments
I don't understand this construction "firmao." How is it different from firmo? I haven't really seen many root stems that end in vowels besides correlatives and prepositions, it seems like something to be avoided to save confusion. Any info?
41
There are planty of roots that end in vowels (heroo, scii, balai, krii, konstrui...). Usually the fact that the accent falls on the next-to-last syllable makes this a lot less confusing than it seems, and a lot of speakers will put a glottal stop between the two vowels.
Sometimes Esperantists disagree on what word to use for a particular concept, and sometimes words change over time; people used to use "firmo" for firm or company, but for whatever reason "firmao" is a lot more commonly used now.
Does not seem to me like auntie should be first suggested translation.
I don't think "My auntie is the president of a large company" should be accepted at all.
You're right, auntie in Esperanto is "Onjo", which is from "Onklino" and "-njo".
Where I am from in the UK we don't use "aunt" at all. We use auntie where a southerner, or American, would use aunt.
Is "My onklino estas la prezidantino de granda firmao" correct?
Prezidanto in Spanish is "presidente". But some people say that "presidenta" [a woman "presidente"] is a correct word, while others say that it's not.
I'm from the second group.
But how is it in Esperanto?
In Esperanto, as long as you follow the rules for word creation, you are free to create. I believe prezidantino is fine, but keep in mind a couple things: 1) the root is prezidi, so this is actually a participle noun for "one who is presiding," not a root for "president." 2) in modern usage constructions like this are presumably not gendered, so indicating a female in this way probably carries connotations depending on your culture and the political atmosphere. If Hillary Clinton gets elected I am not going to call her the "she-president" even though she would be the first. People might infer that I have a problem with it.
That's a long discussion in Spanish. Presidente and Presidenta.
In Spanish:
-ente means "one who [root]s", in this case, the root is "presid-", the verb is "presidir"(=preside), "one who presides", as you said in point 1). Lol, it's very similar
I think "prezidanto" can be both a male president or a female president, and "prezidantino" only a female president. If you want to talk about only male president, there is no oficial word, but you can say "prezidantiĉo" or "virprezidanto"
this is already mentioned in the tips and notes section of an earlier unit. Duolingo will accept prezidantino but they will use the generic prezidanto for all sentences.
