Mini: How to chat about places you want to or have visited

Do you travel a lot? Do you want to travel a lot? Which countries have you visited or even lived in? Let’s start with a simple question:

This question is using something called chaining in Mini. After marking the verb with the particle “i”, one can just keep adding verbs without any extra markers. Both “favo” and “safari” are working as verbs in the sentence. Notice a difference if one uses a particle like “a”:

Maybe we are in the middle of a trip and someone asks you this. Notice how this is not using chaining, instead it is just marking “safari” with the particle “a” as an object.

One could answer the question:

Let’s try to be more specific:

In the last two examples we are using “ave” not as a verb but as a tense marker. Mini marks tense by placing a word before the verb:

In the case of the question “tu i ave visita a Espania?” we are using the present perfect simple. Let’s see some more examples:

Now, Mini is all about simplicity, so the following is correct:

Remember, you can omit some words if the context is enough. In this case, the one responding is not adding “ave” to the verb because it is understood that they are talking about places they have visited. So, it is known that “mi visita Meksiko” is in present perfect simple. The one asking, could have also omitted the tense marker and the particles.

Let’s see a conversation:

Grammar

Negation

Just prepend “no” to the thing you want to negate:

Verbs and tense

Verbs don’t specify the tense, this can be understood from context. For example this simple sentence can be in any tense:

Nevertheless, if context is not enough or an explicit tense is needed one uses a multitude of words before the verb to explicitly mark it.

Simple present:

Simple past:

Present perfect simple:

Imperative:

Chaining

Notice that you can just chain verbs after the “i”:

Questions

Simple yes or no questions are formed by adding a “?” or some form of confirmation with either “no?”, “ja?”, “u ke?” at the end:

For open questions one uses “ke” (what) and adds other words to make the other question words:

Mini simplicity

Mini is about simplicity. You can choose to not use tenses, particles or minify words. If just saying “mi favo vere oranje” is enough to understand that you used to really like oranges, then that’s valid Mini.

Exercises

  1. What’s the difference between “mi i favo a safari” and “mi i favo safari”? Are they the same?
  2. How do you say “Greece” in Mini?
  3. Leo i ave visita a Turki?
  4. Leo i odi safari, ke rason?

Translate the sentences:

  1. Mia loves to travel.
  2. Leo does not like to travel.
  3. They have visited Africa.
  4. Have you visited Berlin?
  5. I don’t hate planes.
  6. Bob traveled.
  7. mi-mui i ave visita a Espania an Aegiptos.
  8. Mia i vole savi.
  9. Eat!

Complete the sentences:

  1. mi i favo ____ di safari.
  2. pero tu ____ favo safari.
  3. Bob ____ de viva.
  4. Leo i ____ ____ avion.
  5. ____ rason?
  6. Bob ____ de visita ____ Germania ____ Frans ____ ke rason?

Notes


Published: 251019