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"Mi unuafoje renkontis lin en Pollando."
Translation:I met him for the first time in Poland.
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Does this mean, "I met him for the {first time in Poland}," meaning that the speaker met someone in Poland for the first time, but may have already met him somewhere else before, or, "I {met him for the first time} in Poland," meaning that the two met for the very first time, and it just happened to be in Poland? I'm pretty sure it can mean either… Apparently even Esperanto has some ambiguity issues. :/
Well, yea. There are other conlangs for that.
Esperanto is easy to learn and an attempt on political neutrality — though one can argue those things to be mainly true within the european/western context. Being agglutinative it is at least more expressive than english.
If you want to be able to express without syntactic ambiguity, you could look at Lojban. It has a grammar based on predicate logic and is perhaps one of the next most spoken conlangs – with some gap – after esperanto. But it's probably also a bit harder to learn too. However, if there was a duolingo course i'd totally go for it.
Oh, I know all about Lojban. I've been a conlanger/conlang-enthusiast for years… I've read up on all of the popular conlangs and become familiar with all their names. In fact, I recently started to learn Ceqli, which is an offshoot of Lojban. :)
It is not ambiguous. The adverb modifies "renkontis" so it is the meeting with him that is occured for the first time in a location whicb happened to be Poland.
I think that your second interpretation is the most reasonable, and the first interpretation would be something like:
Tio estis la unua fojo, ke mi renkontis lin en Pollando.
Can renkonti refer to both meeting a person you never knew before, and meeting up with someone you already know?
I don't know, but my guess would be yes, otherwise the »unuafoje« would be superfluous.
Yes, that's good English. We normally say we met someone "for the first time" when it's the first time we ever met them. They are a new acquaintance. However, we could say, "Last Sunday, I met him the first time for breakfast, then the second time in the evening." We wouldn't use "for" in those instances. If you said you met him the first time in Poland, I'd be expecting you to tell me where you met him next.
I think it's technically correct, but it sounds kinda strange/unusual to me. However, unless I'm wrong about it being technically correct (although I'm fluent, English is not my native language), you could still report it for inclusion, I'd say.
I'm almost certain, though... but yes, it would be good to have feedback from a native.
"I met him the first time in Poland."
As a native speaker, this wording would kind of imply a list, probably relatively short, of meetings between these two people, the first of which occurred in Poland.
"I met him for the first time in Poland."
This sentence would somewhat imply the first interaction of a relationship.
They are both grammatically correct, and both mean just about the same thing, so both usages would be understood by another English speaker.
In order for that phrasing in English to make sense, you would have to write --> I met him FOR the first time in Poland. Hope that makes things clearer!
While I agree that that's the more common/typical phrasing, I still think it's technically alright (if rather marked) without the "for".
As a native English speaker it sounds better with the for. But is understandable without
"Unuafoje" looks like "une fois" in French, i.e. "once". Without thinking, I automatically assumed the sentence meant "I met him in Poland once".
Kiel oni povas diri "once" Esperante? Nur "unue"?
