jeYay!in relation to/(wildcard)

Yeva was a self-motivated young woman in her 20s. She had traveled to the states from Russia to pursue a career in business communication. Naturally, she had studied English for many long hours while still in Russia. She practiced her accent every day to the point that she could now almost be mistaken for a native speaker.

It was 3 hours until midnight, and tomorrow was a big day for Yeva. It was her first job interview. She had carefully researched the company's history. She had cleaned up and organized her portfolio. All that was left now was to wait.

But Yeva, being a hard-working and diligent person, felt uncomfortable just waiting. So much of her life she'd spent preparing for this moment. She couldn't just sit around. She had to do something.

Exercising would keep her up too late; she needed to be well-rested. That meant that any studying and preparing was out of the question as well...

And that's when she had an idea. She loved listening to language CDs, and she had a few that she hadn't listened to yet. She could put one in her CD player and listen to it in bed. It would be a nice last-minute brush up and would help her fall asleep, too. "Perfect!" she thought to herself.

She looked through the CDs and chose "English Subliminal Prepositions". "Prepositions are always so tricky, even after years of study." she thought. "They are so idiomatic and context-dependent. It never hurts to work on prepositions a little bit more."

The CD began with some upbeat music. A man's voice asked the question "Are you ready to learn your prepositions!?" to which a crowd of children shouted "YAY!!!"

"Oh no," Yeva thought to herself, "it's a children's CD." But she didn't discriminate when it came to where she got her knowledge from, and she was too tired to get up and turn the CD off anyway. In fact, she was so tired that she was already drifting off to sleep...

The man on the CD continued. "We're going to learn all about prepositions like 'to', 'in', 'under', 'above', and 'through'. And we're going to learn them through examples and songs."

"YAY!!!" the children cheered again.

The man continued. "The dog is—" and then, suddenly, the CD player's laser hit a scratch on the CD and skipped for just a second. The man's next word should have been "under", but instead the children cheered "YAY!!!".

"—a tree. The man walked—YAY!!!—the park."

Now, the odds of such strange skipping behavior are extremely low, but it happened that night. And the effects were disastrous, as we'll see. Let's fast forward to Yeva's job interview the next morning...

"'Yeva'. That's a name I haven't heard before. Where were you born, Yeva?" the interviewer asked.

"I was born YAY! Russia!" Yeva responded. She was shocked. Her mind reeled. What had just happened? She knew that sentence didn't sound right, but she didn't know why.

"Uh...you were born in Russia? What brought you to the United States?" This time, the interviewer asked the question a bit more cautiously.

"I've always wanted to live here. I love the country and its principles. And, I've always wanted to go YAY! Vegas!" Yeva clamped her mouth shut with her hands. What was going on? She sounded like an incoherent "valley girl".

There was a long pause from the interviewer who wasn't sure what to make of the situation. "OK...maybe we should get right to the job description. Have you ever worked as a translator before?" The interviewer looked up inquisitively, unsure of what to expect.

"Yes, informally. I translated movies YAY! my family when they didn't have subtitles to look YAY!"

Yeva began to cry. She knew how ridiculous she sounded, but she just couldn't think of any of the proper prepositions to use. What was happening to her?

It was then that she remembered the CD she had put in last night. She had to explain the situation to the interviewer! "Oh no! I know what happened! You see, I put a subliminal learning CD YAY! my CD player!" Yeva was frantic and speaking quickly. She was afraid she wasn't making any sense, but she continued. "It must have had a scratch YAY! it!"

"Oh, it's no use!" Yeva thought to herself, and she ran out of the room.

...

In case the above story didn't make it clear enough, "je" is a sort of wildcard preposition for Esperanto. Most languages don't have a word like "je". Prepositions are abstract words, and their usage is very idiomatic. Because of this, Esperanto provides "je" for beginners and spertuloj alike for those cases when you just don't know what the correct preposition is. Use it wisely, and it can be almost poetic. Use it too frequently, and you might sound like a komencanto.