"The child asks: "Where is mum?""

Translation: La infano demandas: "Kie estas panjo?"

[XanderLeaDaren]

Doktoro Kiu? :-)

[Blaine_Johnson]

Cxu vi estas mian panjon?

[salivanto]

"cxu vi estas mia panjo?"

[Blaine_Johnson]

Dankon!

[Athenicuber]

why is it not patrino?

[toOliya]

Patrino means 'mother'; panjo is 'mum' (and other less formal synonyms).

[fibonatic]

But don't they mean the same thing?

[Frunzeapparat]

Yes, but panjo is specifically the more informal version.

[Migranto]

In English, we capitalize "Mom" because we're using as the person's name. Is that not true for Esperanto?

[temrix]

“Panjo” is a normal word and not a proper name and thus is not capitalized. (Note that I’ve only capitalized “panjo” in the first sentence because it was the first word.)

[jcarpenter11986]

When is it appropriate to use demandas vs petas?

[toOliya]

'Demandas' is used in the meaning 'to ask a question':

Mi demandas lin kiam li venos - I ask him when he will come

'Petas' is 'to ask to do something':

Mi petis lin veni - I asked him to come

This is why 'demando' is 'a question' and 'peto' is 'a request'.

[bfoshizzle]

Could you say "infanino" or "geinfano", or is "infano" always neutral-gender? On the same train of thought, could you say "geknabo" or "geknaboj" for a child or children, or would it always be "infano" and "infanoj"?

[Majklo_Blic]

According to Wiktionary, infanino is perfectly valid.

I had heard that the affix ge- couldn't be used like this; it's defined as meaning "of both genders". However, there has been some discussion in other threads that it could be used as a gender-neutral term for a person of unspecified (or ambiguous) gender, but it's not an official part of the language that way as of yet.

[PeaceForce]

For what it's worth, a grammatical construction of the English sentence would replace the colon with a comma.

[ray919]

'xx said: "something"' is correct English. It was in fact the preferred style of E. Nesbit, a famous novelist. See, for example:

"The Railway Children"
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1874/1874-h/1874-h.htm

[PeaceForce]

Could you name some style guide(s) as well? In any case, I understand that the guideline is to use a comma for quotes as short as these: http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/quotation_(speech)_marks_colon_or_comma.htm

[ray919]

We can use the style guide that you cited. Here's what it says, after having suggested the comma for short quotes:

"Nowadays, it is acceptable to introduce a quotation with a comma, a colon or nothing. In modern writing, the choice of punctuation depends largely on the desired flow of the text (i.e., how much the writer wants the reader to pause)."