Saluton cxiuj,

I'm having difficulty interpreting different endings to participles, for example (in present tense):

mi faras - I do
mi faranta - I am doing
faranto - One who is doing

However, I've also seen the adverb ending (-e) such as "mi farinte ..." for which I am having trouble translating to English (if there is an English equivalent). Taking this one step further, would the -i or -u endings work and how would they be interpreted?

On the other hand, how would the "mi farata" string be interpreted ?

mi farata - I am being done
farato - One who is being done
... (including the endings -e and maybe -i, -u)

It may be better to use a verb that's regular in English. And I may be interpreting this wrong to begin with. Please help me with this confusion.

Dankoj

There's a lot of questions in your post! I'll attempt to cover all of the ways the -ant- and -at- forms can be used.

"Mi faranta" by itself is unclear. In this case, you need to insert "esti", just like in English, to indicate continuous present.

Mi estas faranta [ion]. I am doing [something].

Normally, you would just say "Mi faras [ion]" instead. The simple tenses are to be preferred in the majority of cases.

-anta can also be used adjectivally, without the auxiliary verb:

La homo faranta tion estis laca. The person doing that was tired. (The person who did that was tired.)

"Farata" can be used adjectivally or in conjunction with a verb.

La eraro estis farata. The error was being done.

La eraro farata de mi estas granda. The error committed by me is large.

"Faranto" = 'something or someone doing', a 'doer'. "Farato" = 'something or someone which is being done.'

Faranto de bonaĵoj. A doer of good deeds.

The adverbial participles -ante and -ate are a little harder to explain. Roughly speaking, they indicate an action being done in addition to the one expressed in the verb. In English, we use "-ing" or "having -ed" for this purpose. Perhaps I can illustrate their use better through examples:

Ridante, mi respondis al lia akuzo. Laughing, I responded to his accusation.

Oscedinte, li enlitiĝis. Having yawned, he went to bed.

-anti and -ati are contracted forms of "esti [verb]-anta" and "esti [verb]-ata", respectively. These are not often seen, but just to be comprehensive:

Faranti = esti faranta. Farati = esti farata.

You can also indicate future or past in the contraction:

Faronti = esti faronta. Fariti = esti farita.

Since the -anti forms are verbs, the final -i can take on any of the normal verb endings.

Farantus = estus faranta. Farantu = estu faranta.

Esperanto verbs can actually get pretty complex when broken down this way. But 99% you won't need to get into non-simple tenses at all.

I hope that answers your questions

Thanks, this clear some things up.

To make your aid less enjoyable (sorry), could you please help me with the following (most of these are poetic):

Men have envied things ~= Viroj havas enviis ajxojn (leaving out "have" subtly means the men no longer envy anymore) or maybe: Viroj enviintas ajxojn

People making merry ~= Homoj farantas gajo (making is a verb, not an adjective, but this then translates to "people ARE making merry"; any way around that?)

To die having made something is good~= Morti havanta faris ion estas bona (three verbs in a row ... ?)

There are worse things than being alone ~= Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol estantas sola (same issue with "people making merry" but instead the verb applies to an adjective, this would translate back to "There are worse things than ARE being alone" which makes no sense in English, unless you were to add "there" before the second "are" which is still unclear) or maybe: Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol solata (which now becomes an adjective, and even confuses me in English grammar)

They went laughing ~= Ili iris ridante. or maybe: Ili iris ridinte (should it agree in tense?)

The rain is falling, ever falling / Falling like time, ever coming ~= La pluvo falantas, iam falanta (adj?) / Falantas (is falling) kiel tempo, iam venanta (adj?) (I suppose this is translated according to preference)

And finally,
He sits alone listening to something ~= Li sidas sola auxskultantas al ion (again, the "IS listening" shows up)

I know this is difficult stuff to translate, and it's some of the stuff that makes English such a beautiful (but horribly difficult) language. Please do the best you can (if you can). I know some things just cannot be translated literally, which is why I'm trying to find the limits here. Thanks.

januscogitatio:Thanks, this clear some things up.

To make your aid less enjoyable (sorry), could you please help me with the following (most of these are poetic):

Men have envied things ~= Viroj havas enviis ajxojn (leaving out "have" subtly means the men no longer envy anymore) or maybe: Viroj enviintas ajxojn

People making merry ~= Homoj farantas gajo (making is a verb, not an adjective, but this then translates to "people ARE making merry"; any way around that?)

To die having made something is good~= Morti havanta faris ion estas bona (three verbs in a row ... ?)

There are worse things than being alone ~= Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol estantas sola (same issue with "people making merry" but instead the verb applies to an adjective, this would translate back to "There are worse things than ARE being alone" which makes no sense in English, unless you were to add "there" before the second "are" which is still unclear) or maybe: Estas pli malbonaj ajxoj ol solata (which now becomes an adjective, and even confuses me in English grammar)

They went laughing ~= Ili iris ridante. or maybe: Ili iris ridinte (should it agree in tense?)

The rain is falling, ever falling / Falling like time, ever coming ~= La pluvo falantas, iam falanta (adj?) / Falantas (is falling) kiel tempo, iam venanta (adj?) (I suppose this is translated according to preference)

And finally,
He sits alone listening to something ~= Li sidas sola auxskultantas al ion (again, the "IS listening" shows up)

I know this is difficult stuff to translate, and it's some of the stuff that makes English such a beautiful (but horribly difficult) language. Please do the best you can (if you can). I know some things just cannot be translated literally, which is why I'm trying to find the limits here. Thanks.

Most of your suggestions are wrong, all by the same reason: Every clause must contain one and not more than one finite verb (verb ending with an "-s" ). Could you please remove those phrases which violate this rule and then repete your question.

Men have envied things ~= Viroj havas enviis ajxojn (leaving out "have" subtly means the men no longer envy anymore)

In English we constantly make a distinction between unfinished time and finished time - Present Perfect versus Simple Past - in this case 'have envied' versus 'envied'.

In other languages this distinction is not religiously marked and it is left to context. In Esperanto X-is may represent both Present Perfect and Simple Past.

To bring out this distinction in your example you would need to say something like Homoj ĉiam enviis, or Enviemo estas trajto de la homa karaktero.

Although in English we are forced to make explicit the distinction, in many cases the meaning would be obvious even if the distinction were not made explicit.

So Ĉu vi vidis mian poŝtelefonon is naturally interpreted as Have you seen my phone from the context rather than Did you see my phone. And Ĉu vi vidis Johanon hieraŭ can only be Did you see John yesterday, never Have you seen John yesterday.

Rugxdoma:
Most of your suggestions are wrong, all by the same reason: Every clause must contain one and not more than one finite verb (verb ending with an "-s" ). Could you please remove those phrases which violate this rule and then repete your question.

Like I said, most of these are poetic and by definition do not fit "normal" English grammar because they attempt to subtly change the rules for a new meaning that cannot be obtained through "correct" English grammar, and also why they may be untranslatable.

sudanglo:
In English we constantly make a distinction between finished time and unfinished time - Present Perfect versus Simple Past - in this case 'have envied' versus 'envied'.

In other languages this distinction is not religiously marked and it is left to context. In Esperanto X-is may represent both Present Perfect and Simple Past.

To bring out this distinction in your example you would need to say something like Homoj ĉiam enviis, or Enviemo estas trajto de la homa karaktero.

Although in English we are forced to make explicit the distinction, in many cases the meaning would be obvious even if the distinction were not made explicit.

So Ĉu vi vidis mian poŝtelefonon is naturally interpreted as Have you seen my phone from the context rather than Did you see my phone. And Ĉu vi vidis Johanon hieraŭ can only be Did you see John yesterday, never Have you seen John yesterday.

Thanks, I know that English is a great way to mess up a language in this sense and this clarifies things. As native English speaker, I just assumed this distinctness of time is across most languages. Thanks for that clarification.

Compared to the verb systems in many languages, the English verb system is actually quite messy and even confusing, although we native speakers get used to it and don't understand why others consider it such a mess. We mix up tense, aspect, and mood in ways which other languages make quite clear.

Long ago, when I first studied French, some of the (adolescent) students who had no previous knowledge of any other (i.e., non-English) languages, simply presumed that "je suis allant" would be perfectly good French, because they thought it matched word for word "I am going." Of course, to a native francophone, "je suis allant" would simply sound bizarre.

Similarly, I once attended a talk by a Russian woman speaking in English. She did not really understand English verbs, so she tried to map the Russian aspectual system onto English forms. Her talk was understandable but sounded rather odd. Again, the messiness of English verbs.

When learning Esperanto (or any other language, for that matter), the best thing is just to forget about English, and above all to avoid trying to map English expressions word for word into the target language. Just forget English and learn how Esperanto does it. You will be ahead.

bartlett22183:When learning Esperanto (or any other language, for that matter), the best thing is just to forget about English, and above all to avoid trying to map English expressions word for word into the target language. Just forget English and learn how Esperanto does it. You will be ahead.

Tre saĝa konsilo. Dankon.

Amike.

In Esperanto, you can't have more than one -s verb in the same clause (except for conjunctive constructs like "li venis, vidis, kaj venkis" ).

Also, "havi" is used strictly in the sense of "to have, to possess". It's never used to form complex tenses. English verbs and participles often don't translate literally into Esperanto, so be careful To express "having [verb]-ed", you should use [verb]-inte instead.

The sentences you presented are quite poetic, and will sound more natural if you don't attempt to render a word-for-word translation (as is the case with most poetry).

They went laughing

This is best translated as "Ridante, ili iris" or "Ili iris ridante". Compare this to "Ili iris ridinte" = "Having laughed, they went." You use -inte to express the "having [verb]-ed" structure.

He sits alone listening to something

In this case, the 'main' verb, which modifies the subject, takes on the -s verb ending. The '-ing' word is the adverbial participle and should be rendered as -ante or -inte. So, we would have:

Li sidas, aŭskultante ion.

Compare to Li sidas, aŭskultinte ion. = He sits, having listened to something.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion on -inte and -ante.

Thanks everyone,
This does help clear some of my language issues up. I suppose my greatest weakness is just not being a native speaker (but then again relatively no one is at this).