"Who are you?"
Translation:Kiu estas vi?
33 Comments
This might help you. They are all derived in a regular manner from prefixes and suffixes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_vocabulary#Table_of_correlatives
Why isn't "vi" not accusative in this case? How on Earth is "you" not the direct object here?
1891
"to be" is the sort of verb known as a copula, or a stative verb, or a linking verb. It's not doing any action. It's just linking the subject with the predicate. Think of "to be" as an equals sign.
- 1187
Ekspliko is a word that I barely encountered in 20 years of speaking Esperanto. Now I'm seeing it everywhere among new speakers. I wonder if it got listed in Google Translate, Tatoeba, or some other online dictionary. It's a rare word - roughly equivalent to "to explicate".
The normal word for "explanation" is klarigo.
Perhaps because there isn't a subject that is doing [verb] to "vi"?
That's how I feel vi works here because there is not something being done to it. Could be wrong, but hope I was helpful.
Because "to be" doesn't take an object; it takes a predicate. Both of the arguments of "estas" (subject and predicate) are in the nominative case.
In English grammar, a "predicate" is a verb with all its modifiers. The English term is "predicate nominative" for the noun complement of the verb "to be" which is, of course, in the nominative case. We often help people understand by showing how we can replace the form of "to be" with an = sign between the two nouns.
When I was at school, "to be" sentences were analysed as "subject + copula + predicate". But it's possible that I am misremembering; that that terminology is outdated; or that there are multiple competing theories of analysing English (sadly all too frequent in English, in my experience).
Thank you for your comment; after reading up on Wikipedia briefly, I see that my use of "predicate" is, at best, a minority usage, and "predicative expression" and "predicat(iv)e adjective"/"predicat(iv)e nominal" would seem to be better.
I have encountered the idea of "copula" when studying Irish, which I grew up calling a linking verb. I had not heard predicate used that way before, but I am from the US and it could be that British use that? I see that you can analyze sentences in the field of logic using predicate in that way. It is interesting that in some languages they explain the situation as having two subjects that complement each other. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/predicate
Edit: I have since posted to Rae.F and found that she was talking about the word copula which is definitely a linguistics term. The second definition of predicate is a linguistics term also.
I wrote "Kiu estas vi" and was correct. Could I also have written "Kiu vi estas"? With Ĉu, I think so, right? "Ĉu la nakto estas varma?"
Yes, "Kiu vi estas?" is fine.
And "Ĉu la nokto estas varma?" is also OK. (I presume that "nakto" was a typo for "nokto"?)
So "kio" means what, and "kiu" means who? So kio can never refer to a person, right?
That's true.
(But "kiu" can also mean "which ...." when referring to something picked out of a set, and then can refer to either people or things. For example, "Kiu libro estas via?" = "Which book is yours?".)
omg both of you are learning a loooot of languages :O did you start some of them on duolingo, like with no knowledge about it before? if yes, how good/fluent are you know in them? :) Just interested :)
I tried "Vi estas kiu" and it worked. Are sentences sometimes flexible in Esperanto.
i used 'ci' as a second person singular pronoun instead of 'vi', which i thought would be accepted. is this pronoun just missing or do i have the wrong end of the stick?!
- 1891
It looks like Duolingo has opted to omit ci from the vocabulary it teaches. Although technically it's valid, it's not really in popular use. It seems to have taken on an undesirable connotation.
How come cxu doesn't start the sentence? Is it used in all questions, or just yes/no ones?
It is used in yes/no questions and in "pick one" questions of the kind Ĉu vi volas kafon aŭ teon? "Do you want coffee or tea?"
It's not used in WH questions with a question word such as "who, how, where, what, why, how many, when". (In Esperanto, those might perhaps be called KI questions.)
