Esperanto grammar

Esperanto is an agglutinative language which has no grammatical genders and limited, regular verb conjugation. Nouns and adjectives have two cases, nominative and accusative, and two numbers, singular and plural; and nouns and adjectives must agree in case and number. Verbs do not agree with their subjects. The accusative ending can also be used to show the destination of a motion, or to replace certain prepositions when preferred. The accusative allows flexible word order like Russian, Greek, and Latin.

Most of its root vocabulary is borrowed from languages of the Italic, Germanic, Slavic, and Greek divisions of the Indo-European language family; specifically, French, Latin, English, German, Greek, Polish, and Russian.

Esperanto has a relatively regular grammar, phonetic alphabet (meaning that all words are pronounced as in written and vice versa), and very logical structure (the same words' ending for the same parts of speech, e.g. -o for nouns, -a for adjectives, etc.). All these features make Esperanto easier to learn than most of the world's languages, even for non-Europeans, though particular features may be more or less advantageous to native speakers of particular languages. The alphabet includes new letters that are not found on any national keyboard, which is overcome by use of the h-system, x-system, or Unicode. (See Esperanto orthography.) Other languages, like Chinese, have similar problems.

Word endings

In Esperanto, the endings -o, -a, and -e indicate noun, adjective, and adverb, respectively. When a -j follows the noun or adjective endings (forming a diphthong), it makes the word plural. Direct objects must have the -n ending, which goes after the plural ending, if any.

Adjectives must have plural ending if the noun it describes also has the plural ending. The same goes for the accusative ending. Compare "bona tagojn" (incorrect) with "bonajn tagojn" (correct). Zamenhof later regretted making that requirement. Also to Zamenhof's regret, a limited number of adverbs do not end with -e (See special Esperanto adverbs).

Pronouns

Pronouns may take the accusative -n ending. For example, min means me, lin means him, and ŝin means her. Possessive pronouns are formed with the adjectival -a ending. For example, mia means my, ĝia means its, and nia means our.

Correlatives

The correlatives are used to ask and answer questions about what, how, why, etc. The correlatives in "ki-" have a double function, as questioning and as relative pronouns or conjunctions (just as the words "who", "which", "why" etc. in English).

Often used with the correlatives, the word ajn decreases specificity, and the word ĉi increases proximity.

Enumeration of combinations

• kiu means who or which.
• io means something
• io ajn means anything
• tiu means that
• tiu ĉi means this
• ...

Examples of questioning versus relative pronoun use of "ki-" words:

• Kiu ŝelis mian ringon? = Who stole my ring?
• La polico ne kaptis la ŝeliston, kiu ŝelis mian ringon. = The police haven't caught the thief who stole my ring.

Questioning versus conjunction:

• Kiel vi faris tion? = How did you do that?
• Mi ne scias, kiel fari tion. = I don't know how to do that.

Note that standard Esperanto punctuation puts a comma before the relative word (a correlative in ki- or the conjunction ke, "that").

Affixes

Esperanto uses affixes to decrease the number of words that must be learned. Prefixes go before a root, affixes go after. When a root receives more than one suffix, the order of the suffixes does matter, because suffixes closer to the root have more to do with the root.

Sometimes affixes act as roots. For example, mala means opposite, and eta means small. Also, roots sometimes act as suffixes: vidi - "to see"; povi - "to be able to"; vidpova - "able to see", or "not blind".

Suffixes

Esperanto suffixes are not only used for grammatical inflections, but for expansion of vocabulary from a relatively few basic words:

Prefixes

Prefixes are similarly used for vocabulary expansion. For example, antonyms are very rarely based on separate roots but are formed by use of the negating prefix "mal-":

This reduces the number of root forms to be learned. However, the prefix mal- almost always occurs in an unstressed position (such as the words above), which can lead to many similar-sounding words with opposite meanings. Despite this problem, Esperanto is sometimes presented as a solution to the many airplane crashes which arise due to misunderstandings of English.

ge- is clasically used only with plurals, as in the examples above. The use of ge- in the singular to mean "of unspecified gender", e.g. gepatro = parent or geedzo = spouse, is not yet universally accepted.

Participles

Participles, like tenses use the vowels i, a and o to indicate past, present and future time, respectively. Example: esperinto=former hoper. Passive participles are formed like active participle, except the n is omitted (infixes -it-, -at-, -ot-).

Numbers

Integers

• 1: unu
• 2: du
• 3: tri
• 4: kvar
• 5: kvin
• 6: ses
• 7: sep
• 8: ok
• 9: naŭ
• 10: dek
• 11: dekunu
• 20: dudek
• 100: cent
• 1,000: mil
• 1,000,000: miliono

As in English, there exist multiple systems for writing numbers above 1,000 in Esperanto. (A British "billion" and a US "billion" are different.) Using one system:

• 10⁶: iliono
• 10⁹: iliardo
• 10¹²: duiliono
• 10¹⁵: duiliardo
• 10¹⁸: triiliono
• 10²¹: triilardo

Ordinals

Ordinal numbers are formed by adding the adjective -a ending:

• first: unua
• second: dua
• third: tria
• fourth: kvara
• fifth: kvina

Fractions

• one half (½): duono
• one quarter (¼): kvarono
• three quarters (¾): tri kvaronoj

Multiples

• double: duobla
• triple: triobla
• quadruple: kvarobla
• quintuple: kvinobla

File

• one at a time: unuope
• by twos: duope

Grammar examples

The -ant- suffix in the above examples indicates present active participle.

Comparisons

pli means more, and plej means most. Derived using the mal- prefix, malpli means less, and malplej means least. Phrases like "The more people, the smaller the portions." and "All the better!" are translated using ju and des in place of the: "Ju pli da homoj, des malpli grandaj la porcioj.", and "Des pli bona!".

See also

• Esperanto orthography
• Esperanto pronunciation