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DUOLINGO HEADQUARTERS, DAY AFTER THE INFAMOUS "TU OSO BEBE CERVEZA (SPANISH FOR "YOUR BEAR DRINKS BEER")" INCIDENT
"This is the police!"
"What do you want?!"
"The bear"
"Why do you want the bear?"
"Locals reported a bear on a drunken rage, claimed it came from the Duolingo headquarters."
"That's a lie!"
"Then why does that bear have a bottle?"
"Officer I swear, la botelo enhavas nur akvon!"
Does the placement of "nur" in the sentence matter at all? As in, could it have been behind or in front of enhavas?
I think it could be placed before the verb but it might change the intended meaning a bit.
"La botelo nur enhavas akvon" would be "the bottle only CONTAINS water", as in it contains the water but doesn't do anything else to the water (keep it cold? filter it?)
"La botelo enhavas nur akvon" is "the bottle contains only WATER", as in it doesn't contain something else like juice.
I remember a similar lesson with ankaux (also). I assume it's the same here as well.
When I first read this I thought it said "La botelo ehavas ne akvon." Big difference between "nur" (only) and "ne" (no).
It rejected "The bottle has only water". Would or should it have rejected "The bottle has only water in it"?
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Remind yourself to ask the question "what ?" to find the object (accusative) in a sentence . What does the bottle contain ? Water ; so akvon with an n .
If you want to find the subject , ask the question who ? Who contains the water ? the bottle . so no n . Well...the bottle is not a person , I don't know if we can say it like that ... Another example : Adam is reading a book : who is reading the book ? Adam (the subject : Adamo no n )
(I hope my english is ok...:)) )
There are two cases in Esperanto. When you use a noun as a subject, it ends with -o, like: lakto estas bona (milk is good). When it's not a subject, but object, you use -n, like: mi trinkas laktoN (I drink milk). Did it help a bit? :)
