# E or Este



## vrajitorul

I'm so confused. I don't understand what e means. Is it a shortened version of este? I was reading about the Romanian Dative and I understood the phrase 'Îmi place mult romanul acesta' but I don't understand 'Mi-e teamă de acest examen'. In the phrase 'E în regulă' it seems to mean is so is it slang or something? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks


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## irinet

Hi, 
Your supposition is right. 'E'  is a short version of 'este'. It's like "  _'s_". The Romanian 'este'  is clipped into 'e'. We could have said "Mi-este teamă"  = I am afraid.


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## vrajitorul

Hi, 
Thanks. OK, well I was right but I'm still a bit confused. It must be a difference between English but why do you need to use este if you're talking about yourself? It makes sense to me to say 'Ei îi este dor de casă' but why in 'Mi-este teamă'?


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## irinet

My post might get you more confused, and you will see why. 

This is somewhat similar to the French-speaking way: "J'ai faim" [I have hunger], when using the verb "avoir" instead of "etre". It's a peculiarity. 

It's like the 1st person (personal)  pronoun, "mi-", which is not the subject of the sentence, is detached by the one who's talking, and,  thus,  it goes with the verb in the 3rd person. 

I don't have a clue why this linguistic phenomenon is happening with all the pronouns, no matter singular/plural + 'este'. 

_But it looks to me that  'este'(=is) plays the role of an invariable verb, not changeable,  because there is no subject to agree with /on_. Without a subject to perform the action [Fear exists, and cannot be performed] , the verb is always in the 3rd person, singular. 
And this is not a singular case in Romanian. 

This topic is debatable because grammarians say that 'teama'  is the subject of the verb to be. 

I should say that 'I fear', so I feel it. Logically, the subject is I.


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## ka_

I've read that there's also the letter *i* that means the same thing. But it seems that it's not used as often as *e* is. 

Aceasta-i o carte. Ea nu-i aici.  

Is it true?


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## vrajitorul

Hey Ka,

I think what you're referring to there is nu îi. I might be wrong but I think that's what's going on there.

Thanks Irinet. That makes sense what you explained. Do you just have to know the verbs that take the e then or is there some kind of rule? Like why do you say 'De ce ţi-e poftă?' but not in 'De cine îţi place?' Also, is mi-e pronounced the same as mie as in 'Mie nu prea mi-e bine'?


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## irinet

ka_ said:


> I've read that there's also the letter *i* that means the same thing. But it seems that it's not used as often as *e* is.
> 
> Aceasta-i o carte. Ea nu-i aici.
> 
> Is it true?



Yes, it is. And it's often used in speech. Well done.
1._That*'s *a house = Aceasta*-i* o casă. _
2. _She*'s* *not* here = Ea *nu-i* aici._

So, you can say the same thing in three different ways in Romanian:

1.Ea nu *este* aici. (standard lg.)
2. Ea nu *e* aici.  (shortening the verb to a middle vowel) 
3. Ea nu-*i* aici. (less effort in speech, vowel closed)
The last one comes from the old, dialectal form of the verb 'to be'  'îi'.

The same shortening happens to the first person singular only:
1.*Eu* nu *sunt* aici. (*I* *am* not here) 
2. Eu nu*-s* aici. (I* ain' t* here.) 
3. *Nu-s* aici. = (I) *ain't * here. 

Mind this third person plural: Ele/ei *nu-s* / _nu sunt_ aici. (They aren't / _are not _here. 
Same forms as for the 1st person sg.! 

_Which is not happening in the second person, nor in the first person plural! _ There are not shortening(s).


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## irinet

There are too many questions, and they are difficult to follow.

1. There is no rule for taking '*e*', except for *it* expresses 3rd person singular, be it personal or impersonal:
a)  *E* o carte pe masă. 
b) Ți-e bine? (Are you OK? Or 'Ok  is to you?' (which is ad litteram ) 
c)  Pisica e (sing.) pe strada. (The cat is in the street). 
d) Ce *e *(ce-*i*) în frigider? (What's in the fridge?) 
e) impersonal sentences -  E primăvară /Nu e primăvară. (It's/it's not spring.) 
f) *E *frig. But, also,  'Mi-e frig'. (*It's* / I'm cold.) Or ad litteram: ' Cold is to me . 

3.Now, for your last question :
'Mi-e' is a two-word construction made up of the shortened, front-clipped personal  pronoun 'îmi' (*Îmi este* /*Mi-e* foame='hunger is *to me*'(ad litteram) I am hungry), which is pronounced [`mie], as a syllable though they are two words. While 'mie' (= to me)   is the same pronoun, not clipped,  and is pronounced [mi`ie].

2.I don't really understand your second question. 
But I presume that it's the same about 'mi-e' (I am,  but 'to you'  is) , 'ți-e '(You are, or to you is... something), and' îmi' (1st person sg.  pronoun) -  'îți' (2nd person, sg.) 
_*I like* you -  (*mie*=) *Îmi place* de tine. _
_*You* like me =(*ție*=) *Îți* place de mine. _

But you can have: 'De ce* îți /ți - *este poftă'  as well. 

In short, it can depend on grammatical cases, like the Dative because these pronouns are in the Dative, changes that are not to be found in English.


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## Ben Jamin

vrajitorul said:


> Hi,
> Thanks. OK, well I was right but I'm still a bit confused. It must be a difference between English but why do you need to use este if you're talking about yourself? It makes sense to me to say 'Ei îi este dor de casă' but why in 'Mi-este teamă'?



It sounds as something similar to the dative construction used to express possession in Russian and Finnish, and in some other languages too.
The expression, translated literally is "to me is/by me is", and the apparent object in the sentence "teamă"" is actually the subject, that "is" (verb/predicate) "to somebody".


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## irinet

Yes, something like that. 

"_Teamă/fear is to somebody_". 
And who is that somebody? 
It could be me/mie, you/ție, him/her, etc.

What do our language speakers  do in that case?! 

I would say an inversion and we moved the subject to the end of the sentence.  Instead of saying: '_Teamă este *mie*'_,  we change position to: '*Mie mi*-este _teamă_.' / Îmi este teamă /*Mi*-este teamă (shortened). /*Mi*-e teamă (more shortened).

And, naturally, there are other ways but I should stick to this only. 

[Of course, we raise our questions too,  because as I said, I do not agree with the 'fear'  as in a subject position. I am more in favour of 'to me'. 
In a similar sentence,  like 'Îmi place de tine' /I like you', if we follow the grammarians, I would ask them 'where' s the subject here because I cannot see any'?!]


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## Nazionalista

Hi, it is possessive dative, it derives from latin.
Mihi est... (to me is -> I have...) -> îmi este/ mi-este...


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## irinet

So fine. I was asking about the subject only. At present, nothing justifies this answer.  As the subject has nothing to do with the Dative or the possessive.


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## iezik

irinet said:


> Instead of saying: '_Teamă este *mie*'_,  we change position to: '*Mie mi*-este _teamă_.' / Îmi este teamă /*Mi*-este teamă (shortened). /*Mi*-e teamă (more shortened).
> 
> Of course, we raise our questions too,  because as I said, I do not agree with the 'fear'  as in a subject position. I am more in favour of 'to me'.
> In a similar sentence,  like 'Îmi place de tine' /I like you', if we follow the grammarians, I would ask them 'where' s the subject here because I cannot see any'?!



Hi Irinet, I can describe how I understand the words like _subject_. I haven't read any detailed grammar on Romanian yet (500 or more pages), but the terminology is rather common among the European languages.

_Subject _is a part of sentence that is compatible with nominative case. In Romanian, this is so: If it's a pronoun, it is in the nominative case. If it's a noun, it's in the nominative/accusative case. In the passive construction, the past participle needs to agree with the subject. Some examples are below. I apologize for any errors, I'm better at generic syntax than in Romanian. Feel free to correct me.

(1) Radu has cleaned the car. Radu a curățat mașina.
(2) He has cleaned it. El a curățat-o.
(3) The car is cleaned. Mașina este curățată.

In the basic case, the subject starts the sentences, both in English as in Romanian, as seen in examples 1, 2, and 3. Not all sentences contain the subject, at least in Romanian and other Romance and Slavic languages. In example 4, the English sentence has a subject and the Romanian sentence is without it. There is no need to ask the grammarians where the subject is if it's absent.

(4) It rains. Plouă.

Now let's see the _semantic roles _or _thematic relations _of parts of sentence. Wikipedia lists plenty of thematic relations. Two more sentences (per language) before continuing.

(5) He drinks coffee. El bea cafea.
(6) He likes coffee. Îi place cafeaua.

In (1), Radu is an _actor_, he has decided to do something. In (3), the car/Mașina (subject) is not an actor, the car hasn't decided to be cleaned. The car is _patient_, some action was acted upon it. In (5), he/el is again an actor. In (6), he/îi is _experiencer_, something out of his control has made him like the coffee. The names of semantic roles are not so well established as e.g. the cases of nouns and pronouns, but the idea is clear.

Have you noticed that the experiencer in (6) in subject in English and (indirect) object in Romanian? The assignment of roles to cases depends on the language.

When the actor or experiencer is not the subject, it's occasionally named _logical subject._ (Or generally, actors and experiencers can be called logical objects.) So Irinet, you're mostly interested in logical subjects. To distinguish them from formerly defined subjects, we can call _grammatical subject_ the word compatible with nominative case.
_


irinet said:



			Of course, we raise our questions too,  because as I said, I do not agree with the 'fear'  as in a subject position. I am more in favour of 'to me'.
		
Click to expand...

_
I hope that the terminology is clear now.


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## farscape

Gentle reminder, dear members: let's try to stick to the OP topic, please 

You can always start another thread 

farscape - moderator


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