39 Comments
14
Assuming you missed a comma: Yes, you stack "pra-", like you do with "great" in English. Or rather, regardless of English:
Yes, you can add a "pra" prefix to indicate the person is one more generation removed. And you can prefix "pra" again and again to add ever more generations. You don't need a hyphen, though it's allowed. A bit against the normal use of "pra-", it is also used for ever younger generations: "Nepo" - "pranepo" - "prapranepo" - .
This Esperanto construction seems weird to me. I would have expected "estas el Rusio" or "estas de Rusio" or even "venis el Rusio", but why is "venas" used? The great grandmother certainly isn't coming from Russia right now...
- 2009
We say the same thing in English: My great-grandparents come from Russia. It's not the present progressive, that would be the "right now". The simple present is often used as the "historical present" or the "literary present": Hamlet is a Danish prince.
I understand how it works in English, but I would have expected it to be different in Esperanto, especially since the simple present is used for progressive as well.
- 2009
In languages that use the simple present to also indicate the present continuous, context is sufficient to understand which is meant.
Hamlet is a Danish prince because the play is currently being read and performed, it's always present no matter when it was written. Henry the 8th is not a king, he was a king.
"My great grand parents come from Russia" suggests they lived and died there, and their descendants emigrated. "My great grand parents came from Russia" suggests they were the one who emigrated. At least that's how it seems to me.
Respectfully I disagree. My great-grandparents almost certainly came long ago. Clearly the past is called for here.
Maybe not your great-grandmother, definitely not my great-grandmother (no known relatives in/from Russia), but maybe someone else's great-grandmother?
:-)
It's odd to me that el means from/out of/ of in Esperanto- after learning some Spanish it feels like it should mean 'the'.
It's not certain what inspired the word, but it may be from the latin 'ex', meaning from or of.
By the way, I am sure that the prefix pra- comes from Russian and/or other slavic languages as it is just the same here.
It's easy to over-think this. The lesson teaches that this is the way this thought is expressed in Esperanto. It doesn't matter what other languages do or how they express it, this is what you say if you're speaking Esperanto.
- 14
Indeed. Sometimes, the amount of "like English" gets to me, though. I know that it's mostly mistakes in punctuation, and I know that this is Duolingo's en-eo course, but quite a few people probably are here because of the Esperanto, rather than the English. Having fewer comparisons with English would probably speed up learning for everyone.
What's the difference between "mia praavino venas el Rusio" and "mia praavino venas de Rusio" ?
- 2009
"Venas el Rusio" is how you say it in Esperanto. "Venas de Rusio" is wrong.
I always get the tense wrong because great-grandmothers are, obviously, dead. And therefore came from, not comes from, Russia.
- 2009
It's what's sometimes called the historical present. It's also used when discussing literature: Hamlet talks to the ghost of his father (not "talked").
... dead, except in the cases when they're alive.
;-)
My mother's eldest sister¹'s children² all have children³ of their own, and some of them have kids (yes, those kids are 1-(3?) years old, but they do exist).
Those 1-3 year olds' great-grandmother is my aunt, and she is very much alive.
:-)
¹ one of my aunts (born 1935)
² my cousins (they're all slightly older than I am)
³ my cousins' children - the oldest is (30?), the youngest are in their teens
What do you mean by "both" ? One is supposed to have four great-grandmothers. I guess you still have two left.
Í know a baby whose mother is young and the baby has a very young grandmother and great grandmothers from more than one side and even a great great grandmother who is still alive and was so happy to see the baby. So I can't believe that you said that! I wonder how we would say "great great grandmother". Do we say "prapraavino"?
That would be great-great-great-grandmother. Avino = grandmother, praavino = great grandmother, prapraavino = great-great-grandmother, etc.
