Mi amas vin

January 30, 2008 9:49 AM

Esperantists: I want to send a friend a valentine in Esperanto. What should it say? Also, what design should I draw on the card?

So. He's male, I'm female; we're friends, I'm ridiculously in love. In the course of one of our long, rambling, drunken conversations he let slip that he was fluent in Esperanto as a teenager. Instantly I thought "Aha! I am so sending you a valentine in Esperanto!"

Since then I've been looking at the general structure of the language; I speak French, Italian and German so Esperanto seems fairly intuitive to me. However, I know there are better Esperantists on MeFi, and I hope you will help me out.

I'm planning to do this with brush and ink on a blank card from the art-supply store, so just a sentence or two will do. (My default phrase would just be the words "gusta kiel vi estas" with a circonflex over the G; is this correct?) Extra credit if you can suggest an appropriate or cool design to paint on the reverse.

posted by Pallas Athena to writing & language (4 comments total)

The Esperanto symbol is a green star. Maybe you can combine that with a heart somehow.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:30 AM on January 30

Here's a forum posting with some Esperanto valentines. I particularly like

Rozoj ruĝas, violoj bluas
Nian kunecon mi ege ĝuas

("Roses are red, violets are blue / I really like being with you")

I tried refining your preferred one (is it supposed to be "I like you just the way you are"?) but something like that is too subtle for my "la hundo ŝatas manĝi"-level Esperanto. :)
posted by pmdboi at 10:42 AM on January 30

(By the way, the preferred convention if you don't have the ability to make the little "ĉ" accents is to put an "x" after the letter, so "manĝi" becomes "mangxi." This helps out Google searches too.)
posted by pmdboi at 10:45 AM on January 30

How about

La tute neŝanĝata vi
estas kion ŝatas mi

which means, "The entirely unchanged you (i.e., you, as you are) is what I like/appreciate."
posted by tepidmonkey at 2:50 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]