Ch 4 · Lesson 10Esperanto · Chapter 4 · Lesson 10 · Grammar primer
The transitivity traps: boli or boligi?
The water boils (), you boil it (); you begin it (), it begins (). Learn each root's side once. And -iĝ- is not the passive.
The short version
is wrong, and here is why
.
Why?Hide
is intransitive in Esperanto. It is what boiling water does, not something you can do to water, so it cannot take an object at all. To boil water you need the causative: . English hides the problem by using one verb on both sides of the fence, the water boils and I boil the water, which is exactly why English speakers walk into it. Dictionaries mark every verb tr or ntr, so learn each root's side once.
-iĝ- is not the passive
is.
Why?Hide
is says the door closed, and nobody is mentioned. says the door was closed: often just its state, sometimes the result of somebody shutting it. When you only mean that something happened, the -iĝ- verb is usually the shorter and more natural choice.
The transitivity traps
These are the pairs English speakers trip on, because English uses one verb for both:
| English | It happens | You do it |
|---|---|---|
| boil | | |
| stop | | |
| burn | | |
| begin | | |
| end | | |
| open | | |
| wake | | |
| change | | |
| move | | |
The fence does not run the same way for every pair. In the first three rows the plain root takes no object, so the -- verb is the derived one. In the rest the plain root takes an object, so the -- verb is derived. No rule of thumb gets them all: learn each root's side once.
.- The lesson begins..- I begin the lesson.
-iĝ- is not the passive
The two are easy to confuse, and they say different things:
.- The door closed. (it happened; nobody is mentioned).- The door was closed. (its state, or somebody shut it)
Mistakes English speakers make
| Wrong | Right | Why |
|---|---|---|
. | . | |
. | . | nobody opened it: -- |
| | |
Going further: Two suffixes, one fence and the rest of the guide, when you want them. This lesson does not need them.
Practice
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