Thank you folks to be considerate of that "war" issue.

How about this?

Grammar Battle #1: Ĉar vs. Pro

Grammar Battle #1: Ĉar vs. Pro

I'm in, but don't forget your OH&S issued bubble wrap

Grammar Dispute?
Grammar Debate?
Grammar Discussion?

Hm... those all start with "D"...

Grammar Legitimate Peace Keeping Operation

ceigered:Grammar Legitimate Peace Keeping Operation

Yes, and put up your helmet. There are some bendy curves around.

Greyshades, you must be a bit discouraged at how your thread turned out. I mean, it "devolved" from a learning thing into another social confab. Too bad. I like your idea of tackling some difficult grammar issues and hope you bring us another one. I see that 55 percent of respondents agree.

I study Esperanto more or less on my own, with the help of text books. I haven't taken any of lernu's courses although I have looked at them. And I have just begun to feel confident enough to post.

I had intended to post only to the Esperanto forums, because I really don't like the way these (In English) threads seem to take off at a tangent, eventually to leave the original subject completely. I suppose the same thing happens in the other languages. But I made my first post about olda/oldulo to the English forum because I wasn't sure I'd be able to fully understand any explanations if they were given in Esperanto. I'm posting this to you because I like your basic idea. There are some very good speakers of Esperanto on lernu and I'd like to be able to tap into their knowledge.

Okay, back to topic. Seems to be that you can use both together.

Stano MARČEK "Esperanto per rekta metodo" paĝo 78:

Pro

Pro kio ŝi ploras? Ŝi ploras, ĉar ŝi estas malfeliĉa. Pro kio vi venis? Pro tio, ĉar mi volis vidi vin. Pro unu arbo li arbaron ne vidas. Pro kio vi ridas? Pro tio, ĉar mi aŭdis bonan anekdoton. Li amas tiun* knabinon pro tio, ke ŝi estas bona kaj bela.

PRO KIO = KIAL | PRO TIO=TIAL

Edit:* tion to tiun

qwertz:Okay, back to topic. Seems to be that you can use both together.

Stano MARČEK "Esperanto per rekta metodo" paĝo 78:

Pro

Pro kio ŝi ploras? Ŝi ploras, ĉar ŝi estas malfeliĉa. Pro kio vi venis? Pro tio, ĉar mi volis vidi vin. Pro unu arbo li arbaron ne vidas. Pro kio vi ridas? Pro tio, ĉar mi aŭdis bonan anekdoton. Li amas tion knabinon pro tio, ke ŝi estas bona kaj bela.

PRO KIO = KIAL | PRO TIO=TIAL

What? Some of these sentences seem very weird.

For example,

"Pro tio, cxar.."? Ok, so they are answering the question "Pro kio?", but surely it's easier to simply answer "Cxar...." (or, it should at least be "Pro tio, ke..."). It seems wrong to follow "Pro tio" with 'cxar'!. Put in English literally it would be: "Because of this, because.... "! Very strange.

"Pro" means "because of" or "due to" in a sentence such as:

"Li amas tiun knabinon pro ŝia beleco"

"Pro kio?" literally means "Because of what", or more simply put, "why?" (kial). Whereas in English we tend to simplify things by using 'why' in just about every situation, other languages use something similar to 'pro kio' in some cases. For example, in Russian they say 'za shto?" or "zachem" (for what, because of what?) Germans would probably say "wofuer" (like in old English "wherefore") or "wieso" (literally "why so")

Pro kio vi acxetis tion? - I suppose here you could interpret this as "for what", or again, simply 'kial?"

This is something that German and Russian speakers probably use much better than English speakers, because they have similar things in their own languages. English speakers are probably tempted to say 'kial' all the time, instead of 'pro kio', and it probably is just fine like that. I'm sure there are small nuances to be found, perhaps it's just a matter of getting a feel for it!

But, I really must say that the combination of 'pro tio, cxar..." sounds really strange to me! I think it's much more normal to see "Pro tio, ke..." Indeed, this is how the last sentence in your examples uses it:

"Li amas tiun knabinon pro tio, ke ŝi estas bona kaj bela". - Notice that I corrected the typo there ('tiun' and not 'tion')!

Translated literally into English, the last sentence would be:

"He loves that girl because of this, that she is good good (kind) and beautiful" This kind of construction is normal in Russian, for example. (iz-za togo, shto...). So here, it has the same meaning as 'cxar':

Li amas tiun knabinon, cxar sxi estas bona kaj bela."

I think the simple grammatical answer is just this:

Pro is followed by a noun
Cxar is followed by a clause