LESSON FOUR — Ke

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 franzohaym.

You live in France.

go jan ke zi dwel franzohaym.

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 tomofuq.

I can drive.

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

go fey tomofuq.

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 tomofuq.

for the first meaning, and

go fey sa tomofuq.

for the latter.

Note:

go fey ke tomofuq.

can be regarded as short for

go fey ke go tomofuq.

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 ciq ke zi danho.

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

ciq danho

Please come in.