Well, the discussion has mostly been around tenses and since i-, u- and us-forms are timeless, I omitted them. But true in principle.

Metsis, Are you MarcDiaz?
What I wanted to say is that Esperanto is not more imprecise than some natural languages that are spoken by millions of people (Chinese is spoken by more than billion people and it is considered a tenseless language), and so Esperanto doesn't need to have such tenses and on the contrary they would make it too hard, I know very well that English tenses are hell for many Russian learners of English.
You are right that Russian has two aspects, so it has 5 forms ot the verbs, but Russian is still not so precise as English, since Russian doesn't distinguish between "I work" and "I am working" or between "I wrote", "I have written" and "I had written" etc.

I can say as an educated native speaker of English that I know English verb forms can be difficult for adult learners of English from other languages. English forms do not always distinguish cleanly between tense and aspect in the way verbs in some other languages do. The system can be complex in some ways. One problem I have noted is that English speakers who are trying to learn other languages as post-adolescents try to map the English system onto the languages they are trying to learn. That is why some anglaparolantoj try to use Esperanto compound verb forms unnecessarily. They have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that not every language does things the same way. A non-native language is not merely one's own native language with unfamiliar words substituted in one for one.

Ruslan3737,

No, I'm not MarcDiaz (I have no idea, who they is). I use only one pseudonym, this one. I had to reread the opening writing by MarcDiaz in order to try to understand, why you came up with such conclusion, but I still don't understand.

There are two inputs in this discussion, that I like to lift up. The first is by Nornen on page 5, where they says, that different languages use different features to encode information into sentences. E-o uses its mix of three tenses, adverbs and prepositions. This mix is sufficient to express things observed from E-o's own point of view. (Personally I would like to see two grammatical cases added (partitive and translative), but let that discussion happen somewhere else than in this thread.) I don't know enough Russian to speak out about its precision or lack thereof.

The second is by Miville on page 6, where they tells, that E-o originally had the Polish/Russian system with a clear-cut separation between tenses and aspects. This separation is nowdays mostly gone and E-o has been evolved into the contemporary system of three tenses and practically very little aspectual usage of verbs(*). This input was an eye-opener to me in a couple of ways. Firstly it helped me to understand why some writers still put -ad and ek- into verbs (take a look on some hard to understand articles in Monato). Secondly it confirms, what I have suspected since the beginning of my E-o "career". Despite all fervent declarations, that E-o does not, cannot change, because we have the netuŝebla Fundamento, it does change and evolve! And that's manna to my ears, because a language, that does not adapt to changes at all, is a dying one.

As Bartlett22183 writes just above English mixes tenses and aspects into a mess, that it hard to grasp for non-native English speakers. This is further amplified by the fact, that "post-adolescents try to map the English system onto the languages they are trying to learn" as Bartlett22183 puts it. Why they do that? I don't know, but perhaps native English-speakers are not sufficiently exposed to other languages and thus are not forced to analyse the bits of their own language.

*: Yes, I know some speakers use expressions like "Mi estis partoprenonto" and even Duolingo teaches those, but I find such expressions very confusing. They can be regarded to have an aspectual dimension.

Metsis wrote, 'As Bartlett22183 writes just above English mixes tenses and aspects into a mess, that it hard to grasp for non-native English speakers. This is further amplified by the fact, that "post-adolescents try to map the English system onto the languages they are trying to learn" as Bartlett22183 puts it. Why they do that? I don't know, but perhaps native English-speakers are not sufficiently exposed to other languages and thus are not forced to analyse the bits of their own language.'

Precisely. Many native English speakers can go their whole lives without being exposed to any other languages in the sense of knowing anything about how they work. So they just don't understand. Much foreign language instruction in the USA, at least, does not start until the students are into or after puberty, when it is well known that language acquisition becomes substantially more difficult. I was 13 before I tried to learn French, and some of my fellow students, who were even somewhat older than I, had trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that 'Je suis allant' was not a perfectly good French equivalent for English 'I am going'. They just couldn't get the idea that French is not English with funny words substituted in one for one.

It can be similar for adult learners of Esperanto who have never previously been exposed to any other non-native languages. They have trouble understanding how one could possibly use a language that does not map things exactly as they are accustomed to.

Mi ankaŭ dubas ke manko de kompleksaj verbformoj pri tensojn, igas eo-n pli malpreciza.
Ekzemple,
La ĉina havas tensojn, sed ne per maniero ke ŝanĝi verbformojn, pro ke vortformoj en la ĉina estas ne ŝanĝeblaj. Sed tio ne signifas ke la ĉina ne havas tensojn kaj estas malpreciza. Kontraŭe, mi pensas ke la ĉina havas pli precizajn kaj delikatajn tensojn ol iuj aliaj lingvoj, per diversaj kaj abundaj participoj kaj komplementoj.

Ekzemple, 吃 signifas "manĝi" kaj ĉiam aspektas tiel ĉar formo ne ŝanĝeblas.
Kaj ni esprimas tensojn per participoj kiel:

正在 吃 progresa tenso, '' estas manĝanta''
吃 完了 ''jam finis manĝi'' aŭ ''manĝis''
准备 吃 ''manĝos'' aŭ "prepare manĝos'' laŭvorte
将要 吃 ''manĝos''
快 吃 完了 ''baldaŭ finos manĝi''
已经 吃 完了 ''jam finis manĝi''
马上要 吃完 了 ''baldaŭ finos manĝi''
马上要 吃 了 ''baldaŭ ekmanĝos''
吃了一会儿了 ''jam ekmanĝis antaŭ iom tempo (kaj estas manĝanta)''
吃完有一会儿了 ''jam finis manĝi antaŭ iom tempo (kaj nun ne estas manĝanta)''
......

Krom participoj, komplementojn aŭ adverbialojn ankaŭ oni uzas pli ofte en la ĉina ol en okcidentlingvoj. Ekzemple, "昨天我没上班'', ''hieraŭ mi ne labori'', kvankam ''labori 上班'' neniam ŝanĝas sian formon, sed per ''hieraŭ'', kompreneble, ni scios ''labori'' estas ''laboris'' anstataŭ ''laboros'' aŭ ''laboras''. Ne povas kaŭzi miskomprenon.

Do Ĉu oni povas diri ke la ĉina ne havas tensojn? Difinite ne. "Hieraŭ'' ''morgaŭ'' ktp kaj tiuj abundaj participoj estas la gravaj signoj kaj markoj de verbaj tensoj en la ĉina. Kaj ili konservas precizecon de la ĉina.

Do eo kiel fleksebla lingvo, ankaŭ povas uzi la saman manieron por konservi precizecon, anstataŭ per kompleksaj verbformoj por indiki tensojn.

sergejm:[...] Estas formoj 'mi estas trinkinta' kun signifo proksimume sama, kiel perfekta tempo, sed ne tute sama kaj ĝi estas tro peza, kaj do estas rare uzata.

INKLUZIVEMA reciklado de ideoj de Marc Diaz kaj komentintoj:
integri en esperanton la manierojn alternativajn, kaj devanci la malfacilon de kunmetitaj tensoj en esperanto. Kiel?:


i have eaten some meat = m'int manĝas viandon
i have eaten some meat = m'it manĝans viandon (M'IT ne signifas VIANDO)

post tiu mirinda solvo, mi miras la signifon de MANĜANS