Topic: How various languages express that it is snowing
In English, we have,
It is snowing.
So what is "it"?
French has
Il neige.
Likewise what is "il"?
Esperanto just has
Neĝas.
The circumflex above the letter g is not a problem, in fact it is helpful, because in Esperanto, a letter g is pronounced hard as in the English word 'gate' and a letter 'ĝ' is pronounced soft as in the English word 'gemstone'.
So no 'it'
I am learning Welsh, and I found that it appears that Welsh does not use a verb for snowing but has something that literally is something like, as far as I can tell as a learner, that is
is casting snow.
Or perhaps
is doing casting snow
Mae'n bwrw eira.
Welsh has a word 'yn' which is said not to translate into English, but which seems to me could be thought of as meaning 'doing', similarly to that in English we can have
I do like parsnips.
We would more often say
I like parsnips.
The Welsh,
Dw i'n hoffi pannas.
is that the yn has become 'n appended to a previous word that ends in a vowel.
It seems to me (though I am just a beginner) to mean
I am doing liking parsnips.
Interestingly, in Welsh the verb comes first.
So in
Dw i'n hoffi pannas.
the word Dw is 'am' and the i is 'I'.
It is quite fascinating.
I am brushing up my Esperanto and learning Welsh on Duolingo.com and although there are paid options, there is free use supported by advertisements, but the advertisements are not intrusive, they are not within lessons, just a small static advertisement within a page between lessons. One a few days ago was for Serif Affinity software.
The translation Mae'n bwrw eira. is listed in Google translate as having been marked as correct by Google translate users.
I find the following interesting.
In English, whatever "It" is, is actually snowing as an activity.
Whereas in Welsh, the implied "It" is casting snow. Sort of in a similar manner to a person is casting seeds to grow.
William