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- "En la kafejo estas multe da …
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Digging into the question of is it 'is'/'are' a lot of people, I've learnt about English's "number-transparent quantifiers". 'a lot'/'lots of' seems to stand out as the most plural and non plural of them in the language. So at the very least "There is a lot of people in the cafe." should be marked as 'mostly correct', and not at all 'wrong'.
' In the café there is many people.' From what I can tell, it may be the only English dialect to do this, but here in Australia, we would say 'there is many people.'. Essentially, if you refer to a group by name, rather than pronoun, the verb is conjugated as if it were a single item.
For instance: 'The government is.' rather than 'The government are'.
I could be wrong, but that is my experience with Australian English.
Ditto for NZ. I said "In the cafe there is a lot of people." I wonder if it's cos it's easier to say - "there's a lot of people here."
We do that in American English too, but we use the contracted form (there's) and you'll also hear a lot of "there're" and "there are." And when referring to a colective noun like family or government, we NEVER say "the family are" or "the government" are.
why not, there is a lot of people? why does it have to be, there are a lot of people?
Saluton sammykenne. I am happy to use both interchangeably. The phrase "is a lot" refers to a (one) lot, hence "is". The phrase "are a lot" would appear to acknowledge the "people" part which of course refers to more than one person, hence "are"! (but is the latter fully grammatically correct??). Ĉiuokaze, I would have difficulty accepting "there is many people" because "many" refers to more than one and so using "there are many people" in this context would feel more natural to me (I'm not from Australia like RonBonVonn above but from Scotland). However, the good thing about Esperanto is that, regardless of where you come from, it is just "estas" irrespective of whether the English translation is "is" or "are"! Bondezirojn al vi, estu-lumo
oh I 'm from scotland too! From Ayrshire :D Also thank you so much for the advice! :D
You need "da" before the noun "personoj" because "multe" relates to a quantity and da is used instead of "de" when a quantity is involved.
But you can say "En la kafejo estas multaj personoj", which means the same.
Seems like de is used when conjoined with an attribute and da with quantity. In English we just use 'of' for both.
I wrote "In the cafe there is a lot of people." As the translation. Why did I get it wrong? I thought estas could be "there are" "there is"
Saluton Cris. That's what I and some others would have said. See the conversation which has already taken place above concerning this. In fact if you point your mouse over the words in the model answer at the top of this page, you will see that your words are included in the possible translations! Frustrating - isn't it?
Dankon! So, the "personoj" in the phrase to be translated could be "persons" in English, yet this is marked as wrong. I suppose "people" sounds more natural than "persons" though!
Yes, "personoj" probably translates to both, but I would guess it depends on the context. I don't think any native English speaker would say "persons" in this context. That got me wondering though, when DO we use the word "persons"? Here are a couple of links about it:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/people-or-persons?page=all
Thank you for this - makes it very clear that "people" is more appropriate here.
I think "persons" is found mistly in legal documents as oppesed to common speach.
I put "In the café is lots of people" and got marked wrong, I'm assuming this is just because I phrased it in a very Irish way?
Hello Robstar100, this has been sort of touched on in a previous conversation: I'll repost the pertinent points here: In a previous post, Ronbonvonn writes: " ' In the café there is many people.' From what I can tell, it may be the only English dialect to do this, but here in Australia, we would say 'there is many people.'. Essentially, if you refer to a group by name, rather than pronoun, the verb is conjugated as if it were a single item. For instance: 'The government is.' rather than 'The government are'. I could be wrong, but that is my experience with Australian English."
This is then followed by Sammykenne2: "why not, there is a lot of people? why does it have to be, there are a lot of people?"
Then I put in my tuppence worth by saying: "Saluton sammykenne. I am happy to use both interchangeably. The phrase "is a lot" refers to a (one) lot, hence "is". The phrase "are a lot" would appear to acknowledge the "people" part which of course refers to more than one person, hence "are"! (but is the latter fully grammatically correct??). Ĉiuokaze, I would have difficulty accepting "there is many people" because "many" refers to more than one and so using "there are many people" in this context would feel more natural to me (I'm not from Australia like RonBonVonn above but from Scotland). However, the good thing about Esperanto is that, regardless of where you come from, it is just "estas" irrespective of whether the English translation is "is" or "are"! "
I don't know if any of that helps you, Robstar100.
I would just add that if you use the word "lots", you probably would do better preceding that with the word "are" because "lots" is plural - probably that is the shortest answer! Sorry for being long-winded! Hope your Esperanto studies are going well.
Both are prepositions.
"De" is used ordinarily to express "of"/ "from"/ "by" before the noun. Examples: Li estas la filo de la instruisto. = He is the teacher's son. Iru for de mi! = Go away from me! Tiu libro estis verkita de instruisto. = That book was written by a teacher.
"Da" also means "of" but is used when a quantity is involved. Examples: Donu al mi du tasojn da kafo, mi petas. = Give me two cups of coffee, please. Kiom da jaroj vi havas? = How old are you? (literally: How much of years do you have?).
Note, however, that although "plena" meaning "full" appears to equate with quantity, nevertheless it takes "de" (or "je"), not "da" immediately before the noun. La domo estas plena de (or je) akvo. = The house is full of water.
Hope that helps.
Due to a grammatical quirk of English. "Lot" is singular" and "lots" is plural - so it needs a plural verb -- lots are.
This has already been discussed several weeks ago further up this chain of posts. Please see for more details. The "s" on the end of "lot" indicates a plural and so rather obliges us to use "are" instead of "is".
In fact, in my area (USA, north east) you can say "there's lots of people" but not "there is lots of people".
But yeah. There's often an answer elsewhere in any given thread.
I think that "there's lots ..." is pretty universal. Not strictly grammatically correct but people know what's meant anyway!
Translation should be done as literally as possible and as freely as necessary. If it's more free than necessary, than it's a paraphrase, not a translation. I would consider your translation "more free than necessary". Remember that this course is corrected by a computer.
