"He is poor as a church mouse."
Translation:Li estas malriĉa kiel preĝeja muso.
26 Comments
They're both correct, but if it's easy to pronounce, we usually drop the -o in the first word when making a compound word.
It's an English idiom that is probably used a lot in the rest of Europe, making it a commonly used idiom amongst Esperantists.
Shouldn't this be «Li estas tiel malriĉa kiel preĝeja muso»? Or is leaving out the «tiel» equally as acceptable?
I don't like using 'place of worship' interchangeably with church since it could also be a mosque, temple, etc.
Would it be acceptable to say 'kirka muso'?
Because preĝeja is an adjective, so since it is describing what kind of mouse it is, it needs to be in the adjective form.
Why is it not "li estas KIEL malricxa kiel pregxeja muso"? (and yes I would say the same thing about the English sentence "he is AS poor as a church mouse".)
Does povra exist in Esperanto or am I confusing Ido with Esperanto again ugh
'La Vortaro' < http://pagesperso-orange.fr/la-vortaro/ > does list:
povra (povr·a) = poor
However, I think it's better to use "malriĉa" for this particular sense of "poor".
"Povra" is probably worth knowing as meaning something similar to "kompatinda".
860
La povra princo kies edzino mortis ne estas malriĉa. Tiuj vortoj ne estas sinonimoj.
That would be church's mouse (a mouse belonging to the church) rather than a churchmouse (a mouse who lives in a church).
I used two words, "pregxejo muso" and it was marked right, except the space (one combined word). What is the rule for this? Is there a lesson?
The rule is that you can combine two or more nouns together into a new compound noun, if the new word makes sense and would be understood by others. It's very similar to English. In English we combine church and mouse into churchmouse, and in Esperanto we have:
preĝejo + muso = preĝejomuso (or preĝejmuso)
Another example you'll find in the course - in English we combine rain and bow into rainbow. In Esperanto we have:
ĉielo + arko = ĉielarko (a rainbow, or literally a 'sky arch')
You may notice the -o in ĉielo is dropped when it becomes ĉielarko. In Esperanto, we usually drop the first -o in a compound noun if the word is easy to pronounce without it.
So, if it's two separate words it should be preĝeja muso because preĝeja is an adjective describing the noun muso. But the system thought you were trying to create the compound noun preĝejomuso and just had a typo, so it marked you correct.
Hope that helps :)
