I'm trying to understand participles. Do I have the following translations right?

The one being lectured to has been listening for a long time.
La prelegato longe aŭskultas

By listening to lectures, she earns money.
Prelegate, ŝi ensperas monon.

The one to whom is being written.
scribanto

scribano knobo
The boy to whom is being written.

Also, I came across this sentence on one of the excersises.
Tio estas decidota afero.
That is to be decided.

Wouldn't a more proper translation be:
Tio estas decidota.

He is the one who sees the truth
li estas vidanto de vero.

Welcome to the lernu! board! Great that you have started to learn Esperanto!

blahface:I'm trying to understand participles. Do I have the following translations right?

The one being lectured to has been listening for a long time.
La prelegato longe aŭskultas

No, because you don't *prelegi iun. You cannot use a participle in this case, but need to use something like la persono, al kiu oni prelegis

By listening to lectures, she earns money.
Prelegate, ŝi ensperas monon.

Same problem here, but here you could use aŭskultante prelegojn, ŝi enspezas monon

The one to whom is being written.
scribanto

No, that's "somebody writing". Basically you have the same problem here as in the above "prelegi", but here you could use alskribato. The object of "skribi" is the thing being written, not the person being written to, but if you prefix al-, the object is the person written to.

scribano knobo
The boy to whom is being written.

I guess you mean "skribanta knabo", but that means "a writing boy". You mean alskribata knabo.

Also, I came across this sentence on one of the excersises.
Tio estas decidota afero.
That is to be decided.

Wouldn't a more proper translation be:
Tio estas decidota.

Both is possible. The first means "that's a thing to be decided", the second one means "that's to be decided". The meaning stays the same, but indeed your proposal is shorter, so lazy people are going to use it.

He is the one who sees the truth
li estas vidanto de vero.

Correct.

Darkweasel has already said this, but I'm going to state it a little more explicitly, without using grammar terms like subject and object, which not everyone always fully understands.

In these passive forms ones (at/ot/it), you need to make sure that the thing getting that participle ending is being acted upon.

So while a boy is skribanta (writing), a letter is skribata (being written). Because you don't write a boy, you write a letter. You write TO a boy.

I also want to state that participles are not used as often as you might expect. I congratulate you for taking the time and effort to explore this tricky aspect of Esperanto grammar, and to try to understand it fully.

However, you will be glad to know that participles are not very commonly used in the complicated sorts of circumstances that your sample sentences describe.

"Li estas vidanto de la vero" - it's absolutely a perfect sentence, and it means exactly what you think it means. But it would be rare to find this sentence. More commonly, you would find "Li vidas la veron".

Please do continue to experiment and post your thoughts to this forum. It's a great place to get advice and help.

darkweasel:Welcome to the lernu! board! Great that you have started to learn Esperanto!

blahface:I'm trying to understand participles. Do I have the following translations right?

The one being lectured to has been listening for a long time.
La prelegato longe aŭskultas

No, because you don't *prelegi iun. You cannot use a participle in this case, but need to use something like la persono, al kiu oni prelegis

Is there a noun for a person who is the object of a lecturing? I guess aŭskultanto(listener) would be the same thing, but that somehow seems different. I'm trying to contrast the passive and active participles by taking examples of active participles and turning them into passive participles and seeing how that changes the meaning of the sentence. On the written exercise, it demonstrated a noun with an active participle with the word preleganto for someone doing the lecturing. I assumed the passive version would be someone to whom the lecturing is being directed.

The one to whom is being written.
scribanto

No, that's "somebody writing". Basically you have the same problem here as in the above "prelegi", but here you could use alskribato. The object of "skribi" is the thing being written, not the person being written to, but if you prefix al-, the object is the person written to.

[/quote]That was a typo. I meant to write scribano, but I assume that is still wrong?

blahface:
That was a typo. I meant to write scribano, but I assume that is still wrong?

1. skribi is written with a K, not a C. Otherwise you'd pronounce it stsreebee.
2. I think you meant to write skribato, not skribano (that last word isn't a participle at all and doesn't make much sense).

Basically, to make a sentence passive, you take the original sentence:
mi skribas leteron al la knabo = I'm writing a letter to the boy (mi is the subject, leteron is the object)
You turn the object into the subject and the subject into a "de"-clause. Then you change the verb to its passive form
de mi estas skribata letero al la knabo
Now you can change the word order if you want to make it sound more like English:
letero al la knabo estas skribata de mi

I'm not quite sure if something like alprelegato (= somebody whom is being lectured to) would be understandable. There's nothing stopping you from using this, but such long words aren't always readily understandable, so it's better to express yourself by several words (as in persono, al kiu oni prelegas). I've even started trying to avoid the passive in Esperanto completely...

blahface:
Is there a noun for a person who is the object of a lecturing?

The short answer is no.

The long answer is, that your use of the word "object" here slightly confuses the issue. A grammatical "direct object" of an action is marked by -n in Esperanto. In this case, you can use the passive participle to describe this object.

Mi konstruas domon. [I build a house]
Mi estas konstruanta. [I am building]
La domo estas konstruata. [The house is being built]

A grammatical "INDIRECT object" of an action is not usually grammatically marked in Esperanto, and you wouldn't use the passive participle to describe it.

Li parolas al mi. [He is talking to me]
Li estas parolanta. [He is talking - active participle]

In this case, you can't use a passive form and say "mi estas parolata", because "mi" is an indirect object - we know this because we used the word "al".

If the sentence were something like:
Li parolas Esperanton kun mi. [He speaks Esperanto with me]
...then you COULD say "Esperanto estas parolata" (Esperanto is being spoken)

So in conclusion, use of the passive endings is strongly linked to the -n ending that indicates a direct object.

I'm trying to contrast the passive and active participles by taking examples of active participles and turning them into passive participles and seeing how that changes the meaning of the sentence.

Yes. The way that it works is that the subject of the sentence can get an active participle, and the direct object can get the passive participle.

Mi manĝas glaciaĵon. [I eat ice cream]
Mi estas manĝanto. [I am an eater]
Mi estas manĝanta. [I am eating]
La glaciaĵo estas manĝata. [The ice cream is being eaten]
I wouldn't recommend "La glaciaĵo estas manĝato" [the ice cream is one being eaten] but technically it is not wrong. However, we normally use the ato/anto endings (noun forms) for people, not for things. That's why this variation sounds a little strange.

On the written exercise, it demonstrated a noun with an active participle with the word preleganto for someone doing the lecturing. I assumed the passive version would be someone to whom the lecturing is being directed.

The passive form would be used with the direct object of "prelegi", but prelegi can't take a direct object. So in this case there is no passive form.

That was a typo. I meant to write scribano, but I assume that is still wrong?

If you meant "skribano", that would be a member of a writing. Suffix -an- means a member of a group; so a "teamo" is a team, a "teamano" is a team member. "Islamo" is "Islam", "islamano" means a Muslim (literally, a member of the "Islam" group. Many words for religions and their members work this way.)

Darkweasel and Erinja, thank you for taking the time to explain this to me.

I recall seeing on some other site that occasionally an unt/ut conditional participle is used.. what kind of situation is it used in, and how do you translate what seems to be a subjunctive participle?

Jafiki91:I recall seeing on some other site that occasionally an unt/ut conditional participle is used.. what kind of situation is it used in, and how do you translate what seems to be a subjunctive participle?

These participles are not part of official Esperanto, but they're not really errors.

It's hard to translate this to English, but you shouldn't try to translate every Esperanto word you see into English because Esperanto is much more flexible than English. You could translate these participles as e.g. prezidunto -> "would-be-president". Which of course isn't a very beautiful solution.

It's hardly used anyway.