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Dum kiam

von oicim, 16. April 2012

Beiträge: 7

Sprache: English

oicim (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 00:40:18

Is there ever an instance to say "dum kiam" (during when)? Or is that erroneous? For some reason it always comes to mind as a word combination.

Evildela (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 01:05:58

oicim:Is there ever an instance to say "dum kiam" (during when)? Or is that erroneous? For some reason it always comes to mind as a word combination.
Never fear, it is perfectly valid Esperanto

oicim (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 01:09:03

When is it inappropriate to use this combination, and how would you classify it?

TatuLe (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 02:10:25

Actually, the "kiam" in "dum kiam" is not necessary. Dum itself can be either a preposition or a subordinating conjunction:

Vi ŝajne faris nenion dum mi multe laboris.
Dum la gardisto forestis, iu ŝtelis la trezoron.

Nenio okazis dum la tuta kunveno.
Dum nokto ĉiuj dormas.
... for example.

Evildela (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 02:17:17

Not necessary, but also not wrong, it depends if you want to emphasise the "when" aspect.

acdibble (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 02:40:36

oicim:Is there ever an instance to say "dum kiam" (during when)? Or is that erroneous? For some reason it always comes to mind as a word combination.
It would be the English language's equivalent to "during which".

sudanglo (Profil anzeigen) 16. April 2012 09:59:18

Kiam mi foje parolis angle, dum la kongreso, oni kriis al mi 'Ne krokodilu!'.

Dum la Mez-epoko, kiam la plejmulto kredis je Dio, estis konsilinde ne konfesi sian ateismon.

You can have dum and kiam in the same sentence. But a good example of when dum kiam would be justified compared to plain dum did not spring to mind.

EDIT: Possibly in some sentences where the contrastive sense of dum would also be a possibility, you could use dum kiam to make it clear that the temporal meaning was intended.

An example would be:

Ni poluris niajn botojn kaj kantis kantojn, dum la malamika armeo pretigis sin por batalo.

This is ambiguous. It could mean that that's what we did at the same time as the opposing forces got themselves ready, OR, it could mean we fooled around whilst (in contrast) the enemy were being sensible soldiers.

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