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The various forms of "for"

by Pharoah, August 6, 2009

Messages: 29

Language: English

Pharoah (User's profile) August 19, 2009, 4:02:18 PM

Nam? I have to admit I always used 'pro' and 'pro ke' but now that I know of this new word I shall use it more when dum me parolas ide ridulo.gif
And here's yet another ambiguity. When do you use pro, and when cxar?

jchthys (User's profile) August 19, 2009, 4:25:59 PM

Pharoah:
Nam? I have to admit I always used 'pro' and 'pro ke' but now that I know of this new word I shall use it more when dum me parolas ide ridulo.gif
And here's yet another ambiguity. When do you use pro, and when cxar?
Pro is a preposition—you use it with nouns (“because of”). Ĉar is a conjunction that you can stick to the beignning of a sentence to indicate continuity (“for, because”).

erinja (User's profile) August 20, 2009, 1:01:11 AM

I consider pro and ĉar to be "opposites", in a strange way. That is, they sort of reverse the order of logic from one another, if that makes sense to you.

Mi ne manĝas ĈAR mi ne malsatas (I am not eating because I am not hungry).

PRO manko de malsato, mi ne manĝas. (Because of lack of hunger, mi ne manĝas)

You could also translate pro as "due to". "due to" and "ĉar" are not the same, I think you'll agree. Pro should normally be followed by a noun. Ĉar is normally followed by a phrase.

You can also use the phrase "pro tio ke" to give roughly the same meaning as "ĉar" (it translates as something like "due to the fact that..."

So it would be correct to say "Mi ne manĝas pro tio ke mi ne malsatas", but this is more complicated than simply using "ĉar" instead of "pro tio ke". I do use "pro tio ke" in some circumstances, however, if I want to be wordy for some reason (roughly for the same reasons that you might say "due to the fact that..." rather than "because" in English).

jchthys (User's profile) August 20, 2009, 3:00:32 AM

I tend to use pro tio, ke at the beginning of a sentence, since ĉar could introduce the main clause rather than the subordinate clause (“for”). Pro tio, ke makes it unambiguous.

Rogir (User's profile) August 20, 2009, 11:54:33 AM

I think that pro tio ke is a bad translation from Spanish.

outs (User's profile) August 20, 2009, 2:41:36 PM

Rogir:I think that pro tio ke is a bad translation from Spanish.
In french we have "parce que" (because), witch is very similar to "pro tio ke, even more than the Spanish "porque".

Miland (User's profile) August 20, 2009, 4:54:32 PM

Pharoah:When do you use pro, and when ĉar?
Ĉar ('Because') is used to introduce an explanation of a cause: 'I visited the dentist because my tooth hurt'. Mi vizitis la dentiston ĉar mia dento doloris.
Pro ('On account of' or 'because of') can be used to point to the cause directly:
'I visited the dentist on account of toothache'. Mi vizitis la dentiston pro dentodoloro.
You could use pro in a more similar way to ĉar by making it point not to the cause itself but to the fact of it expressed by a meaningful set of words, but this would be more convoluted: 'I visited the dentist on account of the fact that my tooth hurt'. Mi vizitis la dentiston pro tio, ke mia dento doloris.

Clearer now?

Zafur (User's profile) September 10, 2009, 3:57:38 AM

Hm... This seems the proper place for this question.
I'm having trouble with translating
"For the good of all of us"

Rogir (User's profile) September 10, 2009, 4:31:16 AM

Por la bono de ni ĉiuj.

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