"I am eating an apple."
Translation:Mi manĝas pomon.
27 Comments
Anyone else instinctively type "Je mange une pomme" from their beginning French days? I did.
"-anta" is an adjective suffix, so the meaning of "mi estas manĝanta" would be closer to "I am someone who eats." than to "I am eating." Although It can be used to mean the latter, it is not used so much, to my knowledge.
But I could be wrong in assessing what is more common :-)
I am eating an apple =/= I am who is eating an apple. If you have a question about a verb, not about a person, you should use "mangxas", not "estas mangxanta"
Agreed. I wish they would stick with the simple present tense in the beginning.
Simple present tense would be "manĝas" as they use (Unless it changed since you posted that). While the present progressive can be formed the same in esperanto, it's not as common as it is in English.
No. "manĝanta" does not contain anything that means estas. It is just an adjective/participle and can be used only as such, and never as a verb! So it does need a verb (in this case, estas)
You could however combine it with estas and come up with "manĝantas" which then is, grammatically, a verb (but not commonly used).
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Why can't this be "Pomon mi manĝas', I thought esperanto was flexible with sentence structure.
(manĝas, not mangas). Both are "more neutral". Mi manĝas pomon - I eat an apple, Mi estas manĝanta pomon - I am who eats an apple.
Pomo is having the action (eating) done to it. So it's gets -n added to the end to show this.
Is it wrong to think that it must be "Mi estas mangas pomon"? Otherwise, how does it differ from "I eat an apple/s"?
How can you test a group of UNTAUGHT WORD'S? Do you somehow think that is fair or even ok?
Esperanto doesn't really distinguish simple present ("I eat") from present progressive ("I am eating"). I think the lessons are structured to make you think of those things more interchangeably.
If you wanted to precisely translate the present progressive, you could hypothetically say something like "mi estas manĝanta" or "mi manĝantas", but those sound weird and as far as I can tell they aren't really used.
In short, when speaking Esperanto, stick to the simple present.
