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Cia sintenado estos vere fiera, li moke murmuretis en ŝian orelon, kiam ci estos vekinta la tutan loĝantaron.
Thine attitude shall be truly proud, he mockingly whispered into her ear, when thou shalt have awakened the whole population.
Usage notes
Some people believe that this word was used in the past and then became archaic, but this is not true. Actually, this word has never been in common usage; Zamenhof advised against using 'ci' as early as the Dua Libro de l' Lingvo Internacia, published in 1888. Many Esperantists don't even understand it. Some authors have used 'ci' to portray archaic language, for translations, and for stylistic effects. This usage is criticized by other writers.
Ludwig L. Zamenhof, Dua Libro de l' Lingvo Internacia; Ludwig L. Zamenhof, Lingvaj Respondoj; Bertilo Wennergren, Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (PMEG); Bernard Golden, La Gazeto #11, June 15, 1987; Zlatko Tisjlar, Frekvencmorfemaro de Parolata Esperanto.
From Proto-Chadic, ultimately from Proto-Afroasiatic*taʔ-(“to eat, especially something soft, to close lips, especially loosely”). Compare Akkadian𒋫𒀪𒌑(ta-ʔu-u2/ta'u/, “to eat”), Mehritewō(“eat”), Arabicتَأْتَأَ(taʔtaʔa, “to stammer, to stutter, to reduplicate sounds, to mumble or move lips”), and with varying Berber forms Tamahaqⵜⵜ(tǝtt), Tarifitⵜⵜ(tǝtt), Central Atlas Tamazightⵜⵛ(tc), and Kabyleteṭṭ (pharyngeal-coloring found as well in the Arabic variant تَعْتَعَ(taʕtaʕa), and in that sense possible further connections to طَعِمَ(ṭaʕima, “to taste”) and عَضَّ(ʕaḍḍa, “to bite”)).
ci2 in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana
Etymology 2
Uncertain. Rohlfs[1] and Von Wartburg[2] favoured/favored Late Latin ecce hīc. Maiden[3] casts doubt on this etymology, pointing out that Italian ci is an unstressed 'weak' form, while Latin hic otherwise survives in Italian only in stressed forms (reinforced by Latin ecce or eccum) such as ciò, qua, and qui. (It should also be noted that all of the latter trigger syntactic doubling in a following word, thanks to their original final /k/, while ci does not.)[4] Maiden proposes instead an origin in Latin hince, variant of hinc(“hence, from here”), pointing out that in parts of southern Italy there exists a 1PL pronoun 'nci (cf. also 'nce). Treccani,[5] on the other hand, proposes an origin in Latin hīce, a variant of hīc(“here”). In any case, the Italian term is certainly cognate with Neapolitance, Siciliancci and Sassaresezi, all three of which share similar adverbial senses, with the latter two also having pronominal senses.
Third person pronominal forms used as formal terms of address to refer to second person subjects (with the first letter frequently capitalised as a sign of respect, and to distinguish them from third person subjects). Unlike the singular forms, the plural forms are mostly antiquated terms of formal address in the modern language, and second person plural pronouns are almost always used instead.
2
Also used as indefinite pronoun meaning “one”, and to form the passive.
^ Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1969. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti, vol. 3: Sintassi e formazione delle parole. Torino: Einaudi. §899.
Transcriptions of Mandarin into the Latin script often do not distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Mandarin language, using words such as this one without indication of tone.
Musa à bá nakàn yínna, Gàná ci à gí eci yínna ― Musa will cut meat today, and Gana will eat yam today
Usage notes
ci is solely used to join verbs/sentences and not nouns, for which tò is used. Additionally, when ci is used, the subject of each verb must be specified.