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past continuous + simple past in Esperanto

af Ganove, 10. nov. 2012

Meddelelser: 5

Sprog: English

Ganove (Vise profilen) 10. nov. 2012 17.29.26

If I want to highlight that something were already happening before something else bagan to happen, is the pattern in Esperanto the same as in English "past continuous + kiam + simple past"?

For example:
We were eating when you entered the dining room.
Ni estis manĝantaj kiam vi envenis la manĝejon.

You were watching television when I heard a strange noise.
Vi estis televidantaj kiam mi aŭdis strangan bruadon.

They were playing chess when their dogs began to bark.
Ili estis ludantaj ŝakon kiam siaj hundoj ekbojis.

Thank you for your help!

tommjames (Vise profilen) 10. nov. 2012 18.01.08

Often it wont be necessary to stress the continuous aspect and you can use use the simple past: Ni spektis televidon, kiam ni aŭdis subitan bruon. The chance of misreading this as "ni komencis spekti" is low. If you hear a sudden noise, you're not going to start watching the TV. You're going to stop watching and check what the noise was.

When there is some chance of it being misread as an inceptive (start of the action) then you can use the progressive participle to clarify, and your example phrases look ok to me. *

You could also simply reword the phrase. Instead of "Ili parolis kiam ŝi eniris la ĉambron" you could say "Ili parolis, kaj tiam ŝi eniris la ĉambron" or something like that.

*Except for one thing: in your last one "siaj" should be "iliaj". "Si" and "sia" cannot be subject, as they refer to the subject.

Sbgodin (Vise profilen) 10. nov. 2012 18.04.07

Hi!

I read your examples, all of them seem fine to me. You used estis + anta kunekun -is, which seems correct to me about this point.

For instance, another one: mi estis manĝanta tiam, kiam vian mesaĝon mi vidis.

Ganove (Vise profilen) 10. nov. 2012 19.02.31

tommjames:Often it wont be necessary to stress the continuous aspect and you can use use the simple past: Ni spektis televidon, kiam ni aŭdis subitan bruon. The chance of misreading this as "ni komencis spekti" is low. If you hear a sudden noise, you're not going to start watching the TV. You're going to stop watching and check what the noise was.

When there is some chance of it being misread as an inceptive (start of the action) then you can use the progressive participle to clarify, and your example phrases look ok to me. *

You could also simply reword the phrase. Instead of "Ili parolis kiam ŝi eniris la ĉambron" you could say "Ili parolis, kaj tiam ŝi eniris la ĉambron" or something like that.
That means Esperanto doesn't focus that much on grammatical correlation between tense and content. Just for emphasis you use grammatical correlation between tense and content otherwise you drop it for reasons of simplification. That makes it really easier to learn Esperanto.

tommjames:*Except for one thing: in your last one "siaj" should be "iliaj". "Si" and "sia" cannot be subject, as they refer to the subject.
Oh, this is new stuff for me thanks for that hint!

sudanglo (Vise profilen) 11. nov. 2012 11.04.27

The point that Tom makes about Esperanto relying on the context, or on our knowledge of the how the world works, to lead to a specific interpretation of the simple past form is I think largely correct.

However, note that 'tiam' is often used when one action follows another, or is the consequence of the preceding action, but the general point about using extra words, or prefixes or suffixes to make explicit the intended temporal relations, is sound.

Ili ekmanĝis kiam ŝi alvenis

Ili ankoraŭ manĝis kiam ŝi alvenis.

Ili ĉesis paroli kiam ŝi envenis.

Dum li manĝis li konstante rigardis la horloĝon.

and so on.

However searching the Tekstaro confirms estis -anta to be in use from the earliest texts to the present day.

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