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As a child, I would eat sundaes on Sunday.

de Qwertie, 20 august 2015

Contribuții/Mesaje: 10

Limbă: English

Qwertie (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 16:38:38

How is "would" translated in the reminiscence sense of "did something in the past, more than once"? And what about "used to": "I used to hate planes". "Kutimi" doesn't seem quite right, especially for the latter.

Alkanadi (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 16:57:49

Qwertie:How is "would" translated in the reminiscence sense of "did something in the past, more than once"? And what about "used to": "I used to hate planes". "Kutimi" doesn't seem quite right, especially for the latter.
This is my attempt. It don't like the double adverb though

Kiel infano, mi kutime manĝis glaciaĵojn dimanĉe.

Tempodivalse (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 18:07:44

As a child, I would eat sundaes on Sunday.

--> Kiam mi estis knabo, mi mangxis glaciajxojn dimancxe.

Context tells you that the action happened more than once. Don't worry about a 100% literal translation of the English verb tense. Many languages are much less precise with verb tense (Russian, Chinese, Indonesian, to name a few), yet this doesn't affect clarity, thanks to context.

And what about "used to": "I used to hate planes".

Antauxe works -

--> Antauxe mi malamis/malsxatis aeroplanojn.

mbalicki (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 18:50:44

For passive actions (like “liking” or “hating”) I would also go with plain verb. However, for more active ones (like “eating” or “going”) I'd recommend using -ad- suffix; it's more precise and more zamenhofian.

Kiam mi estis infano, mi
  • ŝatis multkolorajn kajtojn.
  • malamis katojn en mia najbarejo.
  • iradis al teatro.
  • manĝadis glaciaĵojn.

Qwertie (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 19:05:09

Okej, dankon, amikoj.

Polaris (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 20:45:07

This is always a problem when you are used to a language that has an imperfect tense. English does not have an imperfect tense, so we add clarifying words to distinguish between a completed past action (i.e. "I went to the mall yesterday" ) and an incomplete past action (i.e. "I went to the mall all the time when I was a kid" ). We may say "used to" or "would" followed by the verb in order to show that we're talking about something that happened on a repetitive or a habitual basis. It used to drive me crazy that Esperanto didn't have that, but like English, one can add clarification when needed.

robbkvasnak (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 21:11:44

The craziest tense in English is the present perfect: It has been raining all day - It has rained all day.
Snow has fallen (has it stopped - presumably but that is not for sure, maybe it is still snowing...)
Now, this is particularly good if you are trying to hoodwink somebody. You can lie by implication but still remain honest.
I contend that English is the best language to sell a used car in. It is a wishy-washy language (Hey, this car stands out from all the rest!) and can mislead (this car has driven 35,000 miles - implying that that is all, but indeed, this car has driven 45,000 miles, just forgot to mention the latest road trip to Alaska and back, hehe).
Yes, and each English-speaking region has its own traditions and customs making it super confusing. "What kind of pop do you have?" (- none of you business, my family is MY family - or - well, raspberry, cherry...).
I just mention this 'cause I teach English and have to look at the crest fallen faces of my students as they file in for the lesson, each with her or his own horror story of misunderstanding or being misunderstood.
Now here's a quaint little story of how American pigheadedness (like - shish! - banning soda on Sundays): Among the many stories about the invention of the sundae, a frequent theme is that the ice cream sundae was a variation of the popular ice cream soda. According to documentation published by the Evanston Public Library (Illinois), the drinking of soda was outlawed on Sundays in Illinois.[1]
"Origin of the Ice Cream Sundae". Evanston Public Library. Retrieved 2010-01-10. Some ingenious confectioners and drug store operators, in "Heavenston," served ice cream with the syrup of your choice without the soda, thereby complying with the law. They did not serve ice cream sodas. They served sodas without soda on Sunday. This soda-less soda was the Sunday soda. It proved palatable and popular and orders for Sundays began to cross the counters on Mondays
I wanna saturdae!!!!!!!! TGIF

Vestitor (Arată profil) 20 august 2015, 21:57:38

robbkvasnak:The craziest tense in English is the present perfect: It has been raining all day - It has rained all day.
Snow has fallen (has it stopped - presumably but that is not for sure, maybe it is still snowing...)
The sentence is neither misleading nor a lie. Snow has fallen, it fell and it might still be snowing (on and off) and that would be further clarified. Most Germanic languages handle it the same way. English is not especially wayward in this.

The rest...fibbing about things to sell a car could be done in any language. It's about careful construction, not special characteristics of English.

sudanglo (Arată profil) 21 august 2015, 10:01:31

One of the joys of English is how much meaning can be expressed in the verb, as befits a people more concerned with pragmatic action than theory.

It is not just a question of having specific verbs (compare walk with amble, shuffle, stride, strut, stroll etc) but also the range of meanings that can be expressed with the use of auxiliaries (have, shall, used to, would etc).

Translating 'would' into Esperanto requires some careful attention. There are different uses.

In Froggie would a wooing go, or the car wouldn't start this morning, the idea of volition is close. Less so than 'in we would eat sundaes on a Sunday', but not entirely absent, and not present at all in 'used to'. [The implication of the latter is that you stopped doing something later, different from 'to be used to'.]

In Esperanto's relatively simple verb system, you will usually require some adverbial qualifier - or even a different verb to capture the nuance.

We would eat sundaes on a Sunday could be Ni regule manĝis, or ni kutimis manĝi, or even ni ŝatis manĝi.

sudanglo (Arată profil) 21 august 2015, 10:52:27

The craziest tense in English is the present perfect
This tense is much simpler in meaning than you might suppose from the frequently misleading explanations in grammar books.

It simple means that the speaker has in mind an unfinished period of time (the period up to the moment of speaking). It does not mean necessarily that the action of the verb is on-going or unfinished, though this can be true.

We have been travelling in Africa (said when one is in England).

Incidentally, the salesman's assertion 'the car has done 35,000 miles' would be false, if in fact the car had done 45,000 miles. The implication of the tense is in the period up to now.

Of course, it is true that any car that has done 45,000 miles must also (logically) have been driven at various times in the past for any distance shorter than this. But this doesn't make the salesman's assertion true. You can still take him to court.

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