According to many here, there is no present progressive.

But according to this random soul here, there is such a thing.

My question is: What on the second website's page can be trusted? Also, can someone give a simple explanation of the meanings of the tenses of esti with anta, inta, and onta if the site is not trustworthy, please?

Hound_of_God:According to many here, there is no present progressive.

But according to this random soul here, there is such a thing.

My question is: What on the second website's page can be trusted? Also, can someone give a simple explanation of the meanings of the tenses of esti with anta, inta, and onta if the site is not trustworthy, please?

Personally, I think the second site is a dangerous attempt at mapping 1:1 Esperanto compound tenses to English tenses... And while doing so, assigning each form a strange name.

Hound_of_God:According to many here, there is no present progressive.

But according to this random soul here, there is such a thing.

My question is: What on the second website's page can be trusted? Also, can someone give a simple explanation of the meanings of the tenses of esti with anta, inta, and onta if the site is not trustworthy, please?

Calling it "present progressive" is connecting it to the English tenses too closely. English uses its equivalent differently than Esperanto does, so thinking of it in those terms may hinder your understand on how to properly use them.

That said, the endings -anta, -inta, and -onta are participle endings. Words ending in them are adjectives. Let's use the verb 'manĝi' as an example. The word 'manĝanta' means 'eating,' and is an adjective. 'La manĝanta viro' is literally 'the eating man' or 'the man who is eating.' 'Manĝinta' is the past-tense form, also an adjective. 'La manĝinta viro' is 'the man who has eaten.' 'Manĝonta' is the future-tense counterpart, and 'la manĝonta viro' is 'the man who is about to eat.' There are passive counterparts, too, using the endings -ata, -ita, and -ota. 'La manĝata viro' is 'the man being eaten,' and so on.

You can use these participles in conjunction with the forms of 'esti' to express verbs with more complicated relations to time. English uses its participles this way to form the progressive tenses, and English relies heavily on these tenses, to the point that these participles are used far more often in these verb phrases than outside of them. Esperanto, however, uses the participles in such verb phrases much more sparingly. The basic rule is that you shouldn't use the participle+esti form when the simple verb form will do. So while "I'm coming" is more natural than "I come" in English, "Mi venas" is more natural than "Mi estas venanta" in Esperanto. The latter form in Esperanto puts more emphasis on the process of coming, in my opinion, and just seems unnecessarily drawn-out.

I hope this helped!

sparksbet:

Hound_of_God:According to many here, there is no present progressive.

But according to this random soul here, there is such a thing.

My question is: What on the second website's page can be trusted? Also, can someone give a simple explanation of the meanings of the tenses of esti with anta, inta, and onta if the site is not trustworthy, please?

Calling it "present progressive" is connecting it to the English tenses too closely. English uses its equivalent differently than Esperanto does, so thinking of it in those terms may hinder your understand on how to properly use them.

That said, the endings -anta, -inta, and -onta are participle endings. Words ending in them are adjectives. Let's use the verb 'manĝi' as an example. The word 'manĝanta' means 'eating,' and is an adjective. 'La manĝanta viro' is literally 'the eating man' or 'the man who is eating.' 'Manĝinta' is the past-tense form, also an adjective. 'La manĝinta viro' is 'the man who has eaten.' 'Manĝonta' is the future-tense counterpart, and 'la manĝonta viro' is 'the man who is about to eat.' There are passive counterparts, too, using the endings -ata, -ita, and -ota. 'La manĝata viro' is 'the man being eaten,' and so on.

You can use these participles in conjunction with the forms of 'esti' to express verbs with more complicated relations to time. English uses its participles this way to form the progressive tenses, and English relies heavily on these tenses, to the point that these participles are used far more often in these verb phrases than outside of them. Esperanto, however, uses the participles in such verb phrases much more sparingly. The basic rule is that you shouldn't use the participle+esti form when the simple verb form will do. So while "I'm coming" is more natural than "I come" in English, "Mi venas" is more natural than "Mi estas venanta" in Esperanto. The latter form in Esperanto puts more emphasis on the process of coming, in my opinion, and just seems unnecessarily drawn-out.

I hope this helped!

Thank you. This helped a lot. Can you please also explain when it would be appropriate to use the esti combinations?

For example, if something like "Kion vi faris matene dum la sesa?" is asked, would it be better to say "Mi estis ellitigxanta" or just simply "Mi ellitigxis"?

Hound_of_God: Can you please also explain when it would be appropriate to use the esti combinations?

For example, if something like "Kion vi faris matene dum la sesa?" is asked, would it be better to say "Mi estis ellitigxanta" or just simply "Mi ellitigxis"?

Sometimes the precision of the participle form is needed. For instance, if you say "Mi trinkis kafon kiam li eniris" do you mean that you were in the process of drinking coffee at the time he came in or that you drank it upon his arrival? In the first case, "Mi estis trinkanta kafon kiam li eniris" makes the meaning much clearer.

Mustelvulpo:"Mi estis trinkanta kafon kiam li eniris" makes the meaning much clearer.

This might be actually a two-edged sword. It might make the meaning clearer if the person you are talking to speaks English or another language which uses similar participle constructions for expressing the progressive aspect/aktionsart. For others, the expression might just appear clumbersome.

By no means, I would conclude that "Mi trinkis kafon, kiam li eniris" does not possibly mean "I was drinking coffee", but necessarily and exclusively "I drank coffee" (Not sure whether I am managing to express what I have in mind...)

For instance, I would expect a German native speaker --as German has no progressive, except the colloquial periphrastic "am ~ sein"-- to use "mi trinkis" for both meanings without contrasting the aspect/aktionsart, as he would use in German "trank" in both cases.

For example in Zamenhof's translation of Charles Dickens' "The Battle of Life", I cannot find [1] even one Esperanto "progressive" form, although the English original has plenty of them.

Bottom line: Be careful about putting too much information into participle constructions. The listener might not find it there.

----

[1] I.e. either there are none, or I am too dumb to find them...

Hound_of_God:Thank you. This helped a lot. Can you please also explain when it would be appropriate to use the esti combinations?

For example, if something like "Kion vi faris matene dum la sesa?" is asked, would it be better to say "Mi estis ellitigxanta" or just simply "Mi ellitigxis"?

Well, you can use them at your own discretion, but in my opinion it's best to use them only when they add significant meaning to the esperanto phrase - usually when you want to place some emphasis on the process of doing something. The example Mustelvulpo gave is a good example of when such a construction could be useful. If I want to make certain the read knows that he entered while I was drinking coffee, I would say "Mi estis trinkanta kafon, kiam li eniris." (Although I would probably say "Li eniris dum mi trinkis kafon" instead, because it seems simpler and more intuitive to me.)

As for your example, I don't usually see people use the construction you use for "dum la sesa." Do you mean at six 'o'clock? Because I'm used to seeing that written as "je la sesa." I may be wrong, but that's what I'm familiar with. In any case, I would almost always use the simple verb tense in that situation. "Mi ellitigxis" is much simpler and the 'esti' form wouldn't really add any meaning.

nornen:By no means, I would conclude that "Mi trinkis kafon, kiam li eniris" does not possibly mean "I was drinking coffee", but necessarily and exclusively "I drank coffee" (Not sure whether I am managing to express what I have in mind...)

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Could you try and rephrase?

Tl;dr, only use the 'esti' participle constructions when they add meaning, because they're a lot less necessary in Esperanto than they are in English.

sparksbet:

nornen:By no means, I would conclude that "Mi trinkis kafon, kiam li eniris" does not possibly mean "I was drinking coffee", but necessarily and exclusively "I drank coffee" (Not sure whether I am managing to express what I have in mind...)

I'm sorry, but I really don't understand what you're trying to say here. Could you try and rephrase?

I will try as best as I can:
When you say "mi trinkis", do not suppose that the listener will never interpret this as "I was drinking", and always as "I drank". It might be that the listener interprets it as any of these two (in a manner unpredictable by the speaker). The listener might even see no difference at all between "mi drinkis" and "mi estis drinkanta", because his linguistic "brain" doesn't make a difference between both aspects/aktionsarten.

If I failed again at expressing myself, never mind. It was just a very minor point I was trying to make.

...and thanks for your patience. I should really work on improving my English...

nornen:
I will try as best as I can:
When you say "mi trinkis", do not suppose that the listener will never interpret this as "I was drinking", and always as "I drank". It might be that the listener interprets it as any of these two (in a manner unpredictable by the speaker). The listener might even see no difference at all between "mi drinkis" and "mi estis drinkanta", because his linguistic "brain" doesn't make a difference between both aspects/aktionsarten.

If I failed again at expressing myself, never mind. It was just a very minor point I was trying to make.

...and thanks for your patience. I should really work on improving my English...

Oh, alright, that makes sense. I think I understand what you mean. I agree that in many situations, "mi trinkis" could be translated as "I was drinking" in English, because English uses the progressive tenses a LOT, and as such we should be aware if that causes confusion. However, I disagree that the listener may not see a difference between "mi drinkis" and "mi estis drinkanta" - while the difference between the two may not be as readily apparent to some, based on their native language, there is definitely a difference. There's far more of a difference between these two in Esperanto than there is in English, from what I've seen! One's native tongue may affect how easy it is to understand this distinction, but that doesn't make the distinction less valid. These forms are in la Fundamentoj, after all.

sparksbet:These forms are in la Fundamentoj, after all.

I can't find any in the Fundamento (i.e. in 1. La 16-regula gramatiko; 2. la « Universala Vortaro »; 3. la « Ekzercaro »). Almost all active participles are used attributively, and the only compound tenses I managed to find were these:

estis dirinta (past perfect / plus-quam-perfectum)
estos dirinta (future perfect / futurum exactum)
estus dirinta (conditional perfect / subjunctive perfect)
estu dirinta (imperative perfect / jussiv perfect / hortativ perfect)
esti dirinta (infinitive perfect)

All those forms appear to express more likely "perfect" than "progressive".

Where in the Fundamento did you find progressive forms?