I don't know English grammar very well, so I'm struggling with the meaning of a "participle", and I need someone to demystify it for me

Ok, so let's start with a simple verb:

mi skribas == I write
mi skribis == I wrote

Very easy. In some beginner eo material, I often see that "mi skribas" means both "I write" and "I am writing", "mi skribis" means "I wrote" and "I was writing". Ok, so this page has the following:

mi estis skribanta == I was writing

Its no exactly clear what distinguishes this new phrase from "mi skribis". First question:

Are "mi skribis" and "mi estis skribanta" grammatically equivalent?
- if yes, which one is more idiomatic?
- if no, when would you use one or the other?

Ok, so it looks like participles contain some information regarding time separately from the verb tense, so you get lots of constructs.

Mi estas skribanta == I am writing
Mi estis skribanta == I was writing
Mi estos skribanta == I will be writing (?)

Mi estas skribinta == I am ?
Mi estis skribinta == I was ?
Mi estos skribinta == I will have written (?)

Mi estas skribonta == I am going to be writing (?)
Mi estis skribonta == I was going to be writing (?)
Mi estos skribonta == I will ?

I'm pretty sure all of the above are grammatically correct, but I'm not sure what they mean in English. Second question:

Can someone describe the distinction between those 9 items above and when to use them?

Much appreciated in advance
-- Juliet

We actually just had a huge discussion (i.e. argument) about that

The short answer is that you don't use these complex forms as often as you do in English; they are reserved for certain places where using the simple forms would be unclear. Beginners who are English speakers often have a habit of using these complex forms too often.

However, if you are in a situation where you feel you must use them for clarity, here are their meanings. The forms you might end up using are in bold, while the other forms are probably best avoided.

Mi estas skribanta == I am writing
Mi estis skribanta == I was writing
Mi estos skribanta == I will be writing

Mi estas skribinta == I have written
Mi estis skribinta == I had written
Mi estos skribinta == I will have written

Mi estas skribonta == I am about to write
Mi estis skribonta == I was about to write
Mi estos skribonta == I will be about to write

See the thread I linked to for a tedious discussion of when you might want to use the forms--although it might easily make things more confusing!

JulietAwesome:
Are "mi skribis" and "mi estis skribanta" grammatically equivalent?
- if yes, which one is more idiomatic?
- if no, when would you use one or the other?

Before you go through that other thread, I'll try a different approach.

In English, we have two "present tenses". There's the so-called "timeless present" and the "present progressive" (different terms are used, but never mind that).

The timeless present is the simple one, as in "I write." In English, we use this one to talk about things that we sometimes do, but are not necessarily doing right now.

"I write songs."
"I write poetry."
"I write emails to my aunt."

We use the present progressive to talk about what we're doing now.

"I am writing a song."
"I am writing a poem."
"I am writing an email to my aunt."

Got it? Well, in Esperanto (and in many other languages) you can use the simple present tense, MI SKRIBAS, for both. However, when for some reason you need to make it absolutely clear that you are talking about what you're doing now, you may use the compound "progressive" form, MI ESTAS SKRIBANTA.

The thing is, usually you will not need to do this, because the context will make it clear which present tense you mean. Furthermore, you can easily add other words to make your meaning even clearer, without resorting to the compound tense. You can say MI NUN SKRIBAS, for example, or MI OFTE SKRIBAS.

The past and future versions of these participles work much the same way, and you can often avoid compound tenses by using other time-indicator words. That other thread has many opinions about that, so I won't add more.

Note that the participles are often handier when used as regular adjectives, rather than using them with ESTI in a compound tense.

LA SKRIBONTA ONKLO is the uncle who was going to write. LA FALINTA INFANO is the child who has fallen. If you were talking about a group of people singing in a talent competition, you might find it useful to separate the KANTINTOJ, those who have (already) sung, from the KANTONTOJ, those who are yet to sing. Notice that in this case, the participles are converted to nouns by the -O ending. At first, this sort of thing seems odd, because we don't do it this way in English, but once you get a feel for it, it's very handy.

MI KUNPORTIS LA LEGOTAN LIBRON = I brought the book I was going to read, i.e., the to-be-read book.

T0dd,

Your description is super appreciated. The impression I get from others is "avoid participles, use other verb forms to keep things simple" -- which is fine by me

T0dd:Well, in Esperanto (and in many other languages) you can use the simple present tense, MI SKRIBAS, for both. However, when for some reason you need to make it absolutely clear that you are talking about what you're doing now, you may use the compound "progressive" form, MI ESTAS SKRIBANTA.

...

LA SKRIBONTA ONKLO is the uncle who was going to write.

Let's compare these two forms:

mi estas skribanta == I am writing (v)
la skribanta onklo == the writing (adj) uncle, the uncle who is writing

I initially found the first phrase confusing because 'skribanta' is clearly an adjective, but its translation makes it looks like a verb.

Just to clarify, "mi estas skribanta" is more literally translated as "I am a thing that is presently writing", because its an adjective, is that right? If so, awesome, that's exactly what I needed to make participles "click"

JulietAwesome:
Just to clarify, "mi estas skribanta" is more literally translated as "I am a thing that is presently writing", because its an adjective, is that right? If so, awesome, that's exactly what I needed to make participles "click"

Zackly! Think of the participles as adjectives that are derived from verbs, because that's how they function. So yes, "skribanta" refers to the property of being in the process of writing. "Skribanto" is one who has that property.

And, of course, "esperanto" is one who is hoping.

Once the participles "click" in this way, you start to see their utility and flexibility.

One of the main reasons why we are urged, for stylistic reasons, to avoid compound tenses involving participles, is that there is often a more descriptive way of saying things (less formalistic), which is preferable. Also, native English speakers (and others) are often tempted by their native language habits to use compound tenses when they aren't necessary--especially for trying to render the present progressive or past imperfect. There are times when a compound tense is just what you want, but those times aren't nearly as frequent as your English (or French, etc) reflexes would lead you to expect.

The advice to take away, I think, is not so much to avoid using participles, but to only use them when they are actually needed, and to use simple tenses otherwise (which will be most of the time).

If you follow the English format when translating, you will heavily overuse them. So, whenever you are tempted to use them (because you would use them there in English), ask yourself if the simple tense will work just as well in their place. MOST of the time, the answer will be yes - the simple tense will work just as well. SOMETIMES that will not be true.

Can I just say, because the idea has been trotted out several times that English beginner Esperantists tend to overuse the complex forms, that I have never noticed this to be universally true.

If I had had a shilling for every time that an anglalingvano used a complex form to express the difference between I am smoking and I smoke (obligatory distinction in English) I would still be a poor man.

Whether this is because my generation were all taught French at school (a language in which this distinction is rarely expressed in the present), I wouldn't know.

Perhaps, it is more frequently obvious from context in the present, than it is in the past, as to how a simple form of the verb should be translated back into English.

When it comes to the conditional, however, I freely confess, that I find the tendency to overuse plain '- us' in the literature instead of 'estus - inta' not to my liking.

sudanglo:Can I just say, because the idea has been trotted out several times that English beginner Esperantists tend to overuse the complex forms, that I have never noticed this to be universally true.

I know that this wasn't necessarily directed at me. But I constantly trot out this idea because I correct lessons of beginners at lernu, and I have been doing so for more than five years now. It's an average of five to seven lessons per day, every day, except when I'm on holiday and set my tutoring account to inactive.

I say that because it demonstrates how much "beginning Esperanto" I have read (= a lot). A very common error that I see is overuse of complex forms. It's notable because the Ana Pana course does not even specifically teach the use of participles to build complex verbs, and complex verbs are not used at all in the text of the lesson. The student would have to learn about it from reading the grammar guide, so obviously it seems important enough to these students that they look at the grammar guide, teach it to themselves, and start using it in their answers to the course.

It's not every single beginner. But I would say that at least 30% of beginners make this error. The exact form of the over-use of complex form is also affected by native language. French speakers tend to make this mistake more in the past tense (they want to replicate the many French past tenses) and English speakers tend to do it more in the present tense (they want to distinguish habitual occurrences and continuing present actions - 'I write books' versus 'I am writing a book.')

I rarely see the over-use of complex forms with French speakers in the present tense, though I do definitely see it with English speakers in the past tense, though not in quite the same way as the French.

Perhaps you hear it less in spoken Esperanto because speaking is so much harder than writing, and even if someone wants to use a complex tense, they might not be able to work out how to do it in their head, so they use a simple tense instead. In writing, students have plenty of time to puzzle over how they're going to put together their sentence with an unnecessarily complex verb.

Well, I can't argue with your experience in correcting the lessons Erinja. However it surprises me.

Perhaps people of my generation (long before the Internet) moved to speaking Esperanto at a much earlier stage and just absorbed unconciously from more experienced Esperantists the tendency for Esperanto to eschew complex forms in favour of simple forms.

But when it comes to the incidence of estas inta/anta versus estis inta/anta in the language of non-beginner Esperantists, I'm not sure that this would be due to mother tongue influence.

I suspect that this might arise from the devices available in Esperanto to make the meaning of plain '-is' clear.

The results of some statistical research here would be interesting.

Edit: playing around at Tekstaro suggests that there is a very uneven frequency distribution of the various complex forms.

Estis -inta - quite common,
estis -anta rare
estas -anta rare
estas -inta rare
estis -onta quite common
estus -inta quite common

It occurs to me that there is some parallel between the correlatives and the complex forms of the verb.

The correlative table seems to imply equal status to its constituents, but some of them are used only infreqently.

Similarly, when the complex forms of the verbs are taught, they tend to be presented in tabular form suggesting equal rank, but, again, some of them are rare.