noelekim:

Ondo:

Luib:Instead of "Li estis dirinta" you can also say "Li dirintis" whith the same meaning. But it seems to be rare (although I personnally use it as much as possible):

Yes, you can say "Li dirintis" if you don't care whether speakers of normal Esperanto will readily understand you or not. Or maybe you just want to show off with your excellent command of the hidden corners of grammar, because you "personnally use it as much as possible".

These super-compressed forms also have their place. Here is the last sentence of H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds':

And strangest of all is it to hold my wife's hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead.

This is how I translated it:

Kaj plej stranga estas tio, ke mi tenas denove la manon de mia edzino kaj pensas, ke mi kredis ke ŝi, kaj ŝi kredis ke mi, mortintas.

Twelve years' later I still think that "mortintas" has far more impact that "estas mortinta".

The whole translation is part way down this page :
eo.mondediplo.com/article929.html

This presents something that I'm worried about as a budding Esperantist. While the meaning is still here for the most part, I'm not sure if you were also intending for it to sound as it looks in English. I personally hope not, because my personal reading of your translation is sort of literal, like:

"And most strange is that that I'm again holding the hand of my wife and thinking, that I believed that she, and she believed that I, had been dead.

I'm just worried about how I read things versus how it's supposed to be read. Or am I not really wrong?

Taima:

Kaj plej stranga estas tio, ke mi tenas denove la manon de mia edzino kaj pensas, ke mi kredis ke ŝi, kaj ŝi kredis ke mi, mortintas.


... my personal reading of your translation is sort of literal, like:

"And most strange is that that I'm again holding the hand of my wife and thinking, that I believed that she, and she believed that I, had been dead."

I'm just worried about how I read things versus how it's supposed to be read. Or am I not really wrong?

"tio, ke" is a very common connector that neatly sews two parts of a sentence together. You should read "Kaj plej stranga estas tio, ke ..." as: "And what is most strange is that ..."

The other tricky part is in the final words: " ... that I have counted her, and she has counted me, among the dead." I thought that in the twenty-first century we might say : " ... that I believed that she, and she believed that I, was dead". The correct way to say in Esperanto: "I believed that she was dead" is "mi kredis ke ŝi estas mortinta", literally: "I believed that she is dead", meaning: I thought to myself: "she's dead".

Finally, for reasons of style, to get more impact out of the last word by shortening it. I changed "estas mortinta" (is dead) to "mortintas" which is a compressed form of 'mortinta' and 'estas' and means exactly the same.

noelekim:Twelve years' later I still think that "mortintas" has far more impact that "estas mortinta".

When I find a complex verb form in an Esperanto text, the first question that comes to my mind is: "Why is the author trying to tell me? Why did he use this particular form instead of a simple form?"

Why did you chose "mortintas" instead of "estas mortinta"? What is the desired effect?
Why did you chose "mortintas" instead of "mortis"?
What does "mortintas" convey that "mortis" doesn't? Is "mortintas" describing more the result of having died while "mortis" refers to the act of dying?

Luib:

Ondo:

Luib:Instead of "Li estis dirinta" you can also say "Li dirintis" whith the same meaning. But it seems to be rare (although I personnally use it as much as possible):

Yes, you can say "Li dirintis" if you don't care whether speakers of normal Esperanto will readily understand you or not. Or maybe you just want to show off with your excellent command of the hidden corners of grammar, because you "personnally use it as much as possible".

I didn't want to show off really. Actually I had been thinking the -intis forms to be more simple... And seemingly I'm not the only one to feel this way (at least Opalo does too)!
And this despite the fact that I'm not used to such compounds from other languages I'm more or less familiar with (except Latin and old Greek if I can call them "familiar"): German "Er hatte gesagt", French "Il avait dit", English "He had said", Italian "(Lui) aveva detto" (but let's be honest: Latin "(is/ille) dixerat" and old Greek... well, "lelogein" if I'm not mistaken, and I had to look up the endings in a grammar...)

If you want a full chain of thoughts: it is easier to say "... belas" than "... estas bela/e", because you then don't have to think about using an -a or an -e ending; and by the way it makes the language less eurocentric (in any European language I speak you'd use the equivalent of "estas", but not in Chinese as far as I know). So (to me) it just seems logical to do the same everytime when possible.

Anyway that's my thoughts and I'm not criticising anyone for not doing it the same way. I can perfectly well understand the many people who don't like the compound forms as much as I do...

But I would like to know how they would say it in Chinese (with a grammatical explanation if possible: I have virtually no idea of Chinese!)

他很高｡
ta hen gao.
he "very" is-tall.

Chinese has "state-of-being" verbs which would correspond to forms such as "li altas", eventhough we would have to go for "he is tall" in English. Chinese also has a "be"-like word 是 shi but it would be wrong to see it as equivalent for "be", and 他是很高 (ta shi hen gao) is wrong. 是 is rather used to state equality between nouns (he is English would rather be he is an English-person).

So possibly Chinese esperantists are more likely to go towards predicate adjectives forms, but I haven't actually spoken to any so far so I can't confirm.

I'm also in the "-intis"-team, those forms appeared much easier to me. Just seeing the formal constructions esperanto made it possible, it felt like the right way to do, and I used them naturally, before I got a notice from mi ikurso instructor that it was a show-off. But I also had a background in Ancient Greek that preceded Esperanto (as well as reading lojban grammar for fun), so perhaps I was more prepared to these forms.

Myl:I'm also in the "-intis"-team, those forms appeared much easier to me. Just seeing the formal constructions esperanto made it possible, it felt like the right way to do, and I used them naturally, before I got a notice from mi ikurso instructor that it was a show-off.

It's not that it's showing off, it's that it comes off sounding unnatural because you are being overly precise. Incidentally, it also makes you look like a beginner who is translating the exact grammatical tenses that you might have used in your native language, versus using the tenses that are more common in an Esperanto context. I used to see it in a lot of beginner lessons and it had nothing to do with having studied ancient Greek. It was because I was correcting lessons of English and French speakers, so use of complex tenses seemed natural to these learners, till they learned that Esperanto uses complex tenses at only a small fraction of the frequency of English or French.

Just because you *can* do something grammatically, doesn't mean you always should.

nornen:

noelekim:Twelve years' later I still think that "mortintas" has far more impact that "estas mortinta".

When I find a complex verb form in an Esperanto text, the first question that comes to my mind is: "Why is the author trying to tell me? Why did he use this particular form instead of a simple form?"

Most probably (it was over a decade ago) because the *author* used a more elaborate form: "And strangest of all is it to ... think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead." If Wells had written: "I thought that she, and she thought that I, was dead", I would very likely have translated that as "... ke mi mortis".

erinja:It's not that it's showing off, it's that it comes off sounding unnatural because you are being overly precise. Incidentally, it also makes you look like a beginner who is translating the exact grammatical tenses that you might have used in your native language, versus using the tenses that are more common in an Esperanto context. I used to see it in a lot of beginner lessons and it had nothing to do with having studied ancient Greek. It was because I was correcting lessons of English and French speakers, so use of complex tenses seemed natural to these learners, till they learned that Esperanto uses complex tenses at only a small fraction of the frequency of English or French.

Just because you *can* do something grammatically, doesn't mean you always should.

I was saying (at least trying to) that using "estis dirinta" rather than "dirintis" is a matter of different logical point of view. I think your reply is about using "diris" rather than "estis dirinta" is more common in Esperanto. I don't disagree on this point and I certainly am subject to this problem due to lack of experience. Did I misread the discussion in the first place?

Myl:

Luib:But I would like to know how they would say it in Chinese (with a grammatical explanation if possible: I have virtually no idea of Chinese!)

他很高｡
ta hen gao.
he "very" is-tall.

Chinese has "state-of-being" verbs which would correspond to forms such as "li altas", eventhough we would have to go for "he is tall" in English. Chinese also has a "be"-like word 是 shi but it would be wrong to see it as equivalent for "be", and 他是很高 (ta shi hen gao) is wrong. 是 is rather used to state equality between nouns (he is English would rather be he is an English-person).

So possibly Chinese esperantists are more likely to go towards predicate adjectives forms, but I haven't actually spoken to any so far so I can't confirm.

I'm sorry, my question wasn't well-worded: what I wanted to know, is how you would say "He had said" in Chinese. But thank you anyway, I was also interested to know the exact rule about the use of "be"! (for other reasons not directly related to this thread)

I think I understand how this works, but I want to confirm this. Please correct anything in the following if I make a mistake.

Li rigardas. = He watches.
Li rigardis. = He watched.
Li rigardos. = He will watch.

Li estas rigardanta. = He is watching.
Li estas rigardinta. = He has watched.
Li estas rigardonta. = He is going to watch.

Li estis rigardanta. = He was watching.
Li estis rigardinta. = He had watched.
Li estis rigardonta. = He was going to watch.

Li estas rigardata. = He is being watched.
Li estas rigardita. = He is watched.
Li estas rigardota. = He will be watched.

Li estis rigardata. = He was being watched.
Li estis rigardita. = He had been watched.
Li estis rigardota. = He was going to be watched.

Thanks!

Jonatano:I think I understand how this works, but I want to confirm this. Please correct anything in the following if I make a mistake.

Li estas rigardita. = He is watched.
Li estas rigardota. = He will be watched.

Li estis rigardita. = He had been watched.

Thanks!

"Li estas rigardita." = "He has been watched." or "He is watched." (but not "He is being watched." )
"Li estis rigardita." = "He had been watched." or "He was watched." (but not "He was being watched." )
The -ita form can mean something that happens before something else, but also a punctual action.

"Li estas rigardota." = "He is going to be watched."
"He will be watched" would be "Li estos rigardita."

The othter things seem correct to me.