"He chose the economy as the subject of his lecture."
Translation:Li elektis la ekonomion kiel temon de sia prelego.
17 Comments
Dear Team Esperanto:
YOU NEED MORE NOTES TO EXPLAIN HOW TO USE KIA, KIEL, TIA, TIEL, ETC.
Sentences like this make me want to throw my laptop out the window, especially because there's nothing in any of the lesson notes to explain why a correlative is being used like this.
And I still don't understand it, at all.
I did recently receive a reply from another Duolingo user regarding the use of "kiel" and the application of the accusative.
In this example, "ekonomio" takes the accusative in order to show that it's being "chosen." Without the accusative, the sentence would mean that "He" chose the subject in the way that the economy would choose the subject. I don't think I've done a very good job explaining this, but I hope this makes sense.
But regarding this sentence, I think it could have been constructed more simply as,
"Li elektis la ekonomion por la temo de sia prelego."
I wonder about this, too. How did we get from "choosing, like he chose a topic for his lecture" to choosing it as a topic?
What if this would be an answer to the question of how he chose the economy as a topic for his dissertation. With the answer "in the same way he chose it for his lecture: not at all"?
I am wondering much more about "la" before "ekonomio". Anyone wants to explain?
Yeah "Li elektis la ekonomion kiel teamon de sia prelego" is wrong. It's THE subject, so there's only one correct answer here. If the answer was a subject, this answer would be correct. Please read us Team Esperanto and fix this error.
I'm not so sure. Is it not possible in English to leave out the "the"? "He chose the economy as subject of his lecture."? I'm not sure, but I do know it's possible in Dutch ("Hij koos de economie als onderwerp van zijn lezing."), and often I find Esperanto is more akin to Dutch than to English, including in when to use "la" and when to leave it out.
It's not possible in English to leave out the "the". Subject must have an article before it in this sentence. The version without "la" reads as "He chose the economy as a subject of his lecture" to my English-speaking brain. If it's different in Esperanto the course creators really need to explain why.
I see, that's surprising to my Dutch-speaking brain :P like I said, it is possible in that language, and it is quite frequent that Esperanto is more akin to Dutch than to English (like I said above), so I would not be surprised if it were possible in Esperanto... but indeed, it would be good to hear the official word on this.
I would have said "kiel temo de sia prelego" without the -N. temo is not the object, right?
No, you definitely need the -n on temon here, otherwise you're saying that he himself is the subject of his talk.
Here's a different example, where it's possible to add or to omit the -n, which will hopefully make it clear: He welcomed me like a prince. Now, the English sentence is actually ambiguous — it could mean "He welcomed me in the way that a prince would welcome me", or it could mean "He welcomed me as if I were a prince". (OK, the end result would be a grand welcoming, sure, but there are still two ways to interpret the sentence!)
In Esperanto, you can say Li bonvenigis min kiel princo (i.e. as if he were a prince) or Li bonvenigis min kiel princon (i.e. as if I were a prince).
Going back to your sentence though, the "temo" clearly relates to "ekonomio" and not to "li", so it needs the -n to show that.
Hope that helps.
I didn't even imagine that a distinction like this was possible, as neither English or my native language German offer such an option...
multan dankon al vi sinjoro Morlej pro tiu ĉi respondo kaj la taŭgega klarigo!
Auch auf Deutsch sollte man den Unterschied machen:
Er unterrichtete ihn wie der Lehrer. (= wie der Lehrer ihn unterrichten würde)
Er unterrichtete ihn wie den Lehrer. (= wie er den Lehrer unterrichten würde)
Oder: Ich als dein Vater nehme dich als meinen Sohn in mein Testament auf. "Als" einmal mit Nominativ (weil es sich auf "ich" bezieht, das im Nominativ ist) und einmal mit Akkusativ (weil es sich auf "dich" bezieht, das im Akkusativ ist).
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In this sentence you could probably use either because the English version is ambiguous. If he were choosing the subject of a lecture for another person to give, then you would use "lia"; for his own lecture you would use "sia". Since the English sentence does not specify which of these is happening, you should probably report it if it is not accepting "lia".
