Esperanto · Chapter 6 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
Prepositions, and what je is for
Da measures quantity, je is the official joker for when no preposition fits, and po trips up even fluent speakers. The prepositions that do not map one-to-one onto English.
The short version
da measures, de owns
Da follows a word of quantity and links it to the stuff being measured: iom da akvo, peco da pano, multe da homoj. It never takes la after it. De does everything else, meaning possession, origin, and the doer of a passive verb. The test is a single question. Is the first word telling you how much? Then da. Is it telling you whose, or where from? Then de. A bare numeral needs neither, because tri libroj is already complete.
peco da pano
je is a licensed get-out clause
The Fundamento gives every preposition one fixed meaning, then supplies je, which has none, for when the sense you want matches no other. In practice it has settled onto clock time, je la tria horo, a measured difference, je du jaroj pli juna, and a few set phrases. The same rule lets you use a bare accusative instead, so la trian horon means the same thing. No natural language hands you an escape hatch written into the grammar.
je la tria horo
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