Hi there, folks…
I have been thinking about an Esperanto micro-lesson of the month, to give me a chance for me to talk about one of my favorite hobbies: Esperanto. So, here is the first lesson! I promise to keep them simple.
Today, I’d like to start with just a simple, but truly versatile word in E-o which doesn’t really have much of an equivalent in English. Behold the power of Jen!
Jen!
“Jen” is pronounced like the English word “yen”. It means something similar to “Behold!” or the French “Voila!” but it is not quite as strong or as biblical as that. Perhaps it is closer to the English “Check this out.” It’s used when you want to indicate something you’re talking about. So “Jen unikornulo!” might translate to “Lookee! A unicorn!” or “Here’s a unicorn!”
However, with the magic of Esperanto suffixes, you can add the noun -O ending to make jeno, to mean, “the following thing that I’m just about to talk about.” You could adjective ending -A on the end of jen to create the word jena. In that sense, it is often used to describe the object that you’re just about to talk about. It will also accept the adverb -E ending, making jene, which would mean, “In the following manner.”
I’ve also seen it repeated in aphorisms or expressions “Jen…A, jen…B.” In this sense, it can mean “Sometimes…A, sometimes…B.”
The Esperanto rock-music group La Porkoj (”The Pigs”, pronounced “la PORKoy”. J sounds like Y.) wrote an accoustic guitar ballad called Jen, with relatively simple lyrics. Someone put those lyrics into images, and made a YouTube video for Jen, which should be simple enough for total noobs. (Just know that “Vi kaj mi” means “You and me”.)
Enjoy your new word, and I’ll be back next month!