| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

Lesson 4

Page history last edited by Rex May 6 years, 10 months ago

LESSON FOUR — Ke, Xe, Dexe

 

Briefly, Ceqli ke works exactly like Esperanto "ke." It gives a phrase the status of a noun, so that it can be the subject or object of a verb.

 

zi dwel franzo.

You live in France.

go djan ke zi dwel frazo.

I know that you live in France.

 

But it has a more generalized use, too. Used before a verb alone, it makes it into an infinitive, so to speak, so it can be the object of another verb:

 

go fey ke tomozu.

I can drive.

 

Without the ke, the fey could be interpreted as modifying tomofuq.

 

go fey tomozu.

I ably drive.

 

Of course, in the terse version of Ceqli, the ke is often left out, and context makes the meaning clear. For full preciseness, you'd have:

 

go fey ke tomozu.

for the first meaning, and

go fey sa tomozu.

for the latter.

 

Note:

go fey ke tomozu.

can be regarded as short for

go fey ke go tomozu.

 

which is what you might say to a computer or a Martian, in what is called "precise" Ceqli. This is a common Ceqli phenomenon — having a long, precise way of saying something, and an alternate terse but potentiallly ambiguous version, understandable by context. A good example is the common usage of ciq, from the Mandarin, which means "invite," but which can be translated as "please" in most cases.

 

go tciq ke zi danho.

I invite that you enter. This can be pared down to:

ciq danho.

Please come in.

 

XE

 

xe almost always acts as a suffix, indicating a "sentence modifier."

 

hawtalixe, to tcurjin smerho.

Luckily, the thief died.

 

This differs considerably from

to curjin hawtali sa smerho.

The thief died in a lucky manner.

 

Not so! Not lucky for the thief at all. xe words do not modify words within a sentence, but modify the sentence as a whole, usually expressing the speaker's attitude, but other uses are possible. Note that the difference in English is expressed by word order and pauses:

 

Luckily, the thief died.

The thief died luckily.

 

Other examples:

 

gomenxe, goda bu ten bnana.

Sorry, we have no bananas.

da fu sta heym sperxe do ke swarkomi.

He'll be home, hopefully, at dinnertime.

 

 

xe also is used to form what you might call "evidentials," thus. Paired with the word de, meaning "from," it can express the source of the speaker's knowledge.

 

djanzo, taldexe, pa pogan dasa kamo.

John, it is said, lost his job.

 

tal = talk, de = from

 

to kiqo pa ten karahar, pomnidexe.

The king had a beard, as I remember it.

 

xawdexe, to felin pa kom zisa kala.

The cat ate your fish (I saw it happen).

 

Go on to Lesson 5

 

Return to Lesson 3

 

Return to FrontPage

 

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.