I'm still fairly new with Esperanto, although I upgraded my status from basic to intermediate. I think finishing Duolingo and passing the first skills test here on lernu qualifies for that distinction.

One thing as I am writing more and more in Epseranto--no Esperanto groups in my area where I can actually speak it, sadly--is I've been wondering if it is better to use Estas + adjective or to use the root-based verb form.

Is it better Esperanto or is it more Esperanto-ish to say:

Mi estis kolera.

or

Mi koleris.

I know both are correct. Both would get a green checkmark on Duolingo.

But then in English:

I thirsted.

is just as grammatically correct as

I was thirsty.

My gut feeling is to use the verb form as it seems somehow a bit wordy to stick esti/as/os/is and then the adjective, just as it is my gut feeling to translate: I got angry as

Mi koleris

rather than

Mi igxis kolera.

(though I would tend to say Mi igxis kolerega, rather than mi koleregigxis, just because too many affixes seems to be too much to parse out. I mean if I were to say:

Redisdepartmentalisatonism

you could, after you stumbled over the word arrive at the meaning the advocacy the process of (once again), dissembling departments:

re (again)
dis (dissemble)
department
alisation (the process of) there are probably some other morphemes in there as well
ism (the advocacy for)

Aleksachjo:One thing as I am writing more and more in Epseranto--no Esperanto groups in my area where I can actually speak it, sadly--is I've been wondering if it is better to use Estas + adjective or to use the root-based verb form.

I tend to use the adjective form when talking about a fixed property of something/someone and the verb form when talking about some kind of state or act.

"La domo estas granda." The size is a fixed property of a house.

"La ĉielo bluas." Today the sky is blue, tomorrow it might be gray, at night it is black. So color of the sky not a fixed property but a kind of act, that the sky is kind of "doing".

But that distinction is only a tendency. The more activity in the "state" is the more likely I am to use the verb form.

Is it better Esperanto or is it more Esperanto-ish to say:

Mi estis kolera.

or

Mi koleris.

In that case I'd say they are more or less equivalent. I could try to describe nuances in difference but other speakers might have different interpretations on this.[/quote]My gut feeling is to use the verb form as it seems somehow a bit wordy to stick esti/as/os/is and then the adjective, just as it is my gut feeling to translate: I got angry as

Mi koleris[/quote]No. "Mi koleris." → "I was angry." whereas "I got angry" ← "Mi koleriĝis."

rather than

Mi igxis kolera.

(though I would tend to say Mi igxis kolerega, rather than mi koleregigxis, just because too many affixes seems to be too much to parse out.

What about "Mi ege koleriĝis."?

I mean if I were to say:

Redisdepartmentalisatonism

you could, after you stumbled over the word arrive at the meaning the advocacy the process of (once again), dissembling departments:

re (again)
dis (dissemble)
department
alisation (the process of) there are probably some other morphemes in there as well
ism (the advocacy for)

That's routine. The more Esperanto you hear and speak, the easier it gets to parse suffix structures.

AS Johmue says, the general principal is adjective for qualities, verbs for actions. However there is almost certainly some sort of conventional influence at work, so that with certain ideas the adjective form may be more common, or the verbal form may prevail.

A quick search of the Tekstaro for verbal forms of ruĝ, verd, and blu reveals that this usage is relatively uncommon.

On the other hand with koler the verbal form seems particularly common and I see that the headword form for koler in NPIV is in fact koleri, so this is considered the basic idea from which the meaning of the other parts of speech are derived. (Without looking, I would have guessed kolero as the basic form)

But pravi is possibly more common than esti prava and the dictionary headword listing is the adjectival form (prava).

The dictionary headword form, however, may be in general be a good guide to the usage. But Esperanto allows considerable flexibility in part of speech choice.

I wouldn't fuss to much over esti X-a versus X-I. Your common sense intuition will serve you well.