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Question: continuous present passive vs. simple present passive

od eikored85, 11. februar 2009

Sporočila: 6

Jezik: English

eikored85 (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 05:40:46

Hi all,

I have a question about how to distinguish between the continuous present passive and the simple present passive.

For example, how can the sentence "Esperanto estas parolata cxe la klubejo" be interpreted? Can it mean:
a) Esperanto is spoken at the clubhouse (as if this is normal, and is generally true at all times) OR
b) Esperanto is being spoken at the clubhouse (with the slight implication that people at the clubhouse are speaking Esperanto at this moment, but do not necessarily always speak it all the time)

I know that if I rewrite the sentence to mean sentence (a), I could just simply say "Oni parolas esperanton cxe la klubejo" and it would be clear what I meant. I suppose context can also clear things up in most cases. However, could someone please focus on just this construction and explain it to me a little bit?

Thanks!

Miland (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 09:01:21

Esperanto tenses tend to be simpler than English ones. It may be best to focus on the meaning in some other way, e.g.

(a) Esperanto estos parolata en la klubejo ĉi-vespere (for a special event)
(b) Esperanto-parolanta klubo (to indicate the normal state of affairs)

tommjames (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 11:50:35

eikored85:Hi all,
For example, how can the sentence "Esperanto estas parolata cxe la klubejo" be interpreted? Can it mean:
a) Esperanto is spoken at the clubhouse (as if this is normal, and is generally true at all times) OR
b) Esperanto is being spoken at the clubhouse (with the slight implication that people at the clubhouse are speaking Esperanto at this moment, but do not necessarily always speak it all the time)
I'd say it can be interpreted to mean either a) or b), equally well.

In English we tend to indicate the habitual/time-to-time aspect of the present tense by using the simple present. As you've probably noticed this is not so in Esperanto, however in my experience context is almost always sufficient to infer to correct meaning.

In those cases where it isn't, I would do what Miland suggested and include additional time-sense words, such as "ĉinokte" or "nun" etc, if you want to explicitly show the action is happening right now as opposed to just generally.

jchthys (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 14:55:54

One could also use the suffix -ad- to express continuing action, though this is used less often than the English progressive, ĉu ne?

Rogir (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 15:21:39

There are many solutions for this. The best is to simply ignore the difference because other languages will not ever perceive the difference. I think in this case you might use
paroliĝas - is spoken
estas parolata - is being spoken
although actually the translation may be reversed, I don't know.

eikored85 (Prikaži profil) 11. februar 2009 17:32:20

Thanks guys! I was just checking to make sure, since I used the passive construction in a forum post, and wanted to be sure that my writing was at least grammatically correct ridulo.gif

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