Hi guys, It’s taken me a while but I think I've wrapped my head around Participles (by Dio it hurt)

However there’s still a few things that get me, for instance when I should be using a participle or just tense.

Example:

Mi volis vin
Mi volita vin

I would use the first as I've always seen it used, but what is wrong with the second? In my mind they both translate as "I wanted you".

Also Adverbs and participles, how do you English speakers remember them? I remember participles by remembering these little rules below, but I’m lost when it comes to adverbs >.<

ita = ....en / ....ed
inta = having ....en / having ....ed
ata = being ....en / being ....ed
anta = ....ing
ota = about to be ....
onta = about to ....

Mi volis vin
Mi volita vin

I would use the first as I've always seen it used, but what is wrong with the second? In my mind they both translate as "I wanted you".

If you translated the second phrase literally word-for-word then the result would indeed come out as "I wanted you", but of course you don't want to do that. The difference is in the meaning of the word "wanted". In your first sentence, it's a simple verb in the past tense. In the second, it's a participle adjective that shows a state of having been wanted. You can see the difference in the following 2 English sentences:

He wanted a new car
A new car was wanted (by him)

You can see then that "mi volita vin" doesn't make sense.

The possible problem you have with the first question is that you're looking at the English "wanted" as being one word with one meaning. This isn't true though.

For example, let's look at "eat". "Manĝis" translates to "ate" (e.g. Li manĝis la katon de lian amikon - he ate his friend's cat), but "Manĝita" translates to "eaten" (La kato estis manĝita de la freneza viro - the cat was eaten by the crazy man).

So, in English, if we look at this, we have "wanted", a past tense verb, and "wanted", a past tense passive participle (there's also an active participle with the exact same form just to confuse you ). And while both "wanted"s look identical, the -ed endings in each do different things.

If you already know that then the other problem is that you're looking at Esperanto tenses incorrectly - ita is always passive, passive coming from the same root for "patient" - meaning, whatever is addressed by the passive word is doing bugger all. It's instead having stuff done to it. Inta, however, is active, and addresses the "actor".

That all said and done (you might already know what I just wrote up there as well, in which case I'm wasting a LOT of space here ), if you want to turn Esperanto participles from adjectives into something that can be used as a verb, you can't just go "Mi volita vin".

"Mi volita vin" is not a proper Esperanto sentence because while there is a verb root in there, the verb root has been turned into an adjective by -a. So, now there IS no verb, and it doesn't make sense. You can make "volita" a verb by adding "-as/is/os" to the end instead of "a", or by putting "esti" ahead of it. But now it just means "I am wanted, you". You aren't the wanted person though, and "vin" was made completely redundant, so you need to use the right participle.

So, to put the correct form, we'd have "Mi volintas vin/Mi estas volinta vin" (I've wanted you). The -as on the end of "volint-" is really just a shortened "estas" in a way and so you are better off just making it "mi volis".

2nd question:
1) ite - having had something done to oneself, ..... (Manĝite, la muso estis tre te tedita/la muso teditas multe - Eaten, the mouse was very bored)
2) inte - having done something, ..... (Manĝinte, la kato estis tre feliĉa - Having eaten, the cat was very happy)
3) ate - have something done to oneself, ..... (Manĝate, musoj havas doloregojn - Being eaten, mice experience great pain)
4) ante - doing something, ...... (Mangante, la kato gustumas sian manĝon - Eating, the cat savours its food)
5) ote - going to be having something done to oneself, .... (Manĝote, muso estas ne feliĉa (kompreneble) - Going to be eaten, a mouse is not happy (understandably)
6) onte - going to be doing something, .... (Manĝonte, la kato pretigas tablotukon kaj salon kaj pipron - Going to eat/about to eat, the cat prepares a tablecloth and salt and pepper).

Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, but I’m still a bit lost with the whole passive and active state of wanted. Do you know of any online resources that could explain Participles in greater depth? Oh thanks a lot for the adverb explanation, that helps those looks like going have to remember a lot of input there ^.^

Btw could we use:
La kato manĝitis de la frenezan viron
To also say:
La kato estis manĝita de la freneza viro
For:
the cat was eaten by the crazy man

I know it translates slightly diferently, but it appears to say the same thing.

Evildela:Btw could we use:
La kato manĝitis de la frenezan viron

This is definitely wrong, it could never be "de la frenezan viron". There absolutely cannot be an -n here.

You could say "La kato manĝitis de la freneza viro"

It would be grammatically ok, though some traditionalists wouldn't accept it. And it sounds weird, so it might catch people off-guard. We really don't talk that way. Remember what I said before about using simple tenses?

In modern grammar, most people would say "La kato manĝiĝis de la freneza viro"

Or simply "La katon manĝis la freneza viro". Why be complicated when you could be simple?

This page has a list of all of the Esperanto participle combinations, and their meanings in English:
http://esperanto.davidgsimpson.com/eo-verbforms.ht...

Wikipedia's page on Esperanto grammar has a little more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_grammar#Par...

I have always liked this page's explanations of compound verbs. The site is unfortunately dead now, but we are able to resurrect its content through the magic of archive.org:
Steve and Pattie on compound verbs

Technically "La kato manĝitis de la frenezan viron" is ok but those shorted forms are very rare. The usual form is "estis manĝita" instead of the contracted "manĝitis". I would translate both sentences the same way but the 2nd is the only one I would ever use.

I'm sure you can see that the "eaten" in "the cat was eaten by the crazy man" is different to the one in "the crazy man has eaten the cat". I would translate those two sentences like this:

La kato estis manĝita de la freneza viro (passive)
La freneza viro estas manĝinta la katon (active)

For the active voice you usually wouldn't use the participle though, you'd just say "manĝis la katon".

What about with poetry? Do we find more use of the perfect tenses, as well as other tenses beyond the most simple? (In other words, is poetry and such a time when it becomes elegant to use compound verbs and tenses?)

Starkman

It is almost never considered elegant to use compound tenses, and they aren't found in poetry any more often than they're found in regular speech.

Poetry differs grammatically from everyday speech by:
- use of unusual word order
- use of unexpected compound words
- use of words as unexpected parts of speech; nouns as adjectives or verbs, for example
- shortening of words (nouns can lose their final -o, so folio becomes foli')
- shortening of "la" (la can become l')

Of course Esperanto poems use metaphors and similes, and all sorts of poetic tricks that are used in other languages' poetry. My list only describes how the use of the language itself can differ.