Esperanto is the most widely used constructed language intended for international communication; it was designed with highly regular grammatical rules, and is therefore considered easy to learn.
Each part of speech has a characteristic ending: nouns end with ‑o; adjectives with ‑a; present‑tense indicative verbs with ‑as, and so on. An extensive system of prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate vocabulary, so that it is possible to communicate effectively with a vocabulary of 400 to 500 root words. The original vocabulary of Esperanto had around 900 root words, but was quickly expanded.
Grammatical summary Esperanto has an agglutinative morphology, no grammatical gender, and simple verbal and nominal inflections. Verbal suffixes indicate whether a verb is in the infinitive, a participle form (active or passive in three tenses), or one of three moods (indicative, conditional, or volitive; of which the indicative has three tenses), and are derived for several aspects, but do not agree with the grammatical person or number of their subjects. Nouns and adjectives have two cases, nominative/oblique and accusative/allative, and two numbers, singular and plural; the adjectival form of personal pronouns behaves like a genitive case. Adjectives generally agree with nouns in case and number. In addition to indicating direct objects, the accusative/allative case is used with nouns, adjectives and adverbs for showing the destination of a motion, or to replace certain prepositions; the nominative/oblique is used in all other situations. The case system allows for a flexible word order that reflects information flow and other pragmatic concerns, as in Russian, Greek, and Latin.
Script and pronunciation
Esperanto uses a 28-letter Latin alphabet that contains the six additional letters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ, but does not use the letters q, w, x or y. The extra diacritics are the circumflex and the breve. Occasionally, an acute accent (or an apostrophe) is used to indicate irregular stress in a proper name.
Zamenhof suggested Italian as a model for Esperanto pronunciation.
The article Esperanto has a single definite article, la, which is invariable. It is similar to English "the".
La is used:
For individual objects whose existence has been previously mentioned or implied: Mi trovis botelon kaj deprenis la fermilon. "I found a bottle and took off the lid." For entire classes or types: La gepardo estas la plej rapida el la bestoj. "The cheetah is the fastest of the animals." La abeloj havas harojn, sed ili ne taŭgas por karesi. "Bees have fur, but they're no good for petting." For adjectives used as definite nouns, such as ethnic adjectives used as the names of languages: la blua "the blue one" la angla "English" (i.e. "the English language") The adjective may be the adjectival form of a personal pronoun, which functions as a possessive pronoun: La mia bluas, la via ruĝas. "Mine is blue, yours is red".
The article may also be used for inalienable possession of body parts and kin terms, where English would use a possessive adjective: Ili tranĉis la manon. (Or: Ili tranĉis sian manon.) "They cut their hands." (one hand each)
The article la, like the demonstrative adjective tiu (this, that), occurs at the beginning of the noun phrase.
There is no grammatically required indefinite article: homo means either "human being" or "a human being", depending on the context, and similarly the plural homoj means "human beings" or "some human beings". The words iu and unu (or their plurals iuj and unuj) may be used somewhat like indefinite articles, but they're closer in meaning to "some" and "a certain" than to English "a". This use of unu corresponds to English "a" when the "a" indicates a specific individual.Pokrovskij, Sergio (2007). "La artikolo", section 5.1 "Nedifinita sed specifa", in Lingva Kritiko: Studoj kaj notoj pri la Internacia Lingvo. For example, it is used to introduce new participants (Unu viro ekvenis al mi kaj diris ... 'A man came up to me and said ...').
Parts of speech The suffixes ‑o, ‑a, ‑e, and ‑i indicate that a word is a noun, adjective, adverb, and infinitive verb, respectively. Many new words can be derived simply by changing these suffixes. Derivations from the word vidi (to see) are vida (visual), vide (visually), and vido (vision).
Each root word has an inherent part of speech: nominal, adjectival, verbal, or adverbial. These must be memorized explicitly and affect the use of the part-of-speech suffixes. With an adjectival or verbal root, the nominal suffix ‑o indicates an abstraction: parolo (an act of speech, one's word) from the verbal root paroli (to speak); belo (beauty) from the adjectival root bela (beautiful); whereas with a noun, the nominal suffix simply indicates the noun. Nominal or verbal roots may likewise be modified with the adjectival suffix ‑a: reĝa (royal), from the nominal root reĝo (a king); parola (spoken). The various verbal endings mean to be [__] when added to an adjectival root: beli (to be beautiful); and with a nominal root they mean "to act as" the noun, "to use" the noun, etc., depending on the semantics of the root: reĝi (to reign). There are relatively few adverbial roots, so most words ending in -e are derived: bele (beautifully). Often with a nominal or verbal root, the English equivalent is a prepositional phrase: parole (by speech, orally); vide (by sight, visually); reĝe (like a king, royally).
The meanings of part-of-speech affixes depend on the inherent part of speech of the root they are applied to. For example, brosi (to brush) is based on a nominal root (and therefore listed in modern dictionaries under the entry broso), whereas kombi (to comb) is based on a verbal root (and therefore listed under kombi). Change the suffix to -o, and the similar meanings of brosi and kombi diverge: broso is a brush, the name of an instrument, whereas kombo is a combing, the name of an action. That is, changing verbal kombi (to comb) to a noun simply creates the name for the action; for the name of the tool, the suffix -ilo is used, which derives words for instruments from verbal roots: kombilo (a comb). On the other hand, changing the nominal root broso (a brush) to a verb gives the action associated with that noun, brosi (to brush). For the name of the action, the suffix -ado will change a derived verb back to a noun: brosado (a brushing). Similarly, an abstraction of a nominal root (changing it to an adjective and then back to a noun) requires the suffix -eco, as in infaneco (childhood), but an abstraction of an adjectival or verbal root merely requires the nominal -o: belo (beauty). Nevertheless, redundantly affixed forms such as beleco are acceptable and widely used.
A limited number of basic adverbs do not end with -e, but with an undefined part-of-speech ending -aŭ. Not all words ending in -aŭ are adverbs, and most of the adverbs that end in -aŭ have other functions, such as hodiaŭ "today" [noun or adverb] or ankoraŭ "yet, still" [conjunction or adverb]. About a dozen other adverbs are bare roots, such as nun "now", tro "too, too much", not counting the adverbs among the correlatives. (See special Esperanto adverbs.)
The part-of-speech endings may double up.Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko Apart from the -aŭ suffix, where adding a second part-of-speech ending is nearly universal, this happens only occasionally. For example, vivu! "viva!" (the volitive of vivi 'to live') has a nominal form vivuo (a cry of 'viva!') and a doubly verbal form vivui (to cry 'viva!').
Nouns and adjectives Nouns end with the suffix -o. To make a word plural, the suffix -j is added to the -o. Without this suffix, a countable noun is understood to be singular. Direct objects take an accusative case suffix -n, which goes after any plural suffix; the resulting pluralized accusative sequence -ojn rhymes with English coin.
Names may be pluralized when there is more than one person of that name being referenced:
la fratoj Felikso kaj Leono Zamenhofoj (the brothers Felix and Leon Zamenhof)Wiesenfeld, Edvardo, ed. (1935: 263) Verkoj de FeZ, Literatura Mondo Budapest.
Adjectives agree with nouns. That is, they are generally plural if the noun that they modify is plural, and accusative if the noun is accusative. Compare bona tago; bonaj tagoj; bonan tagon; bonajn tagojn (good day/days). (The sequence -ajn rhymes with English fine.) This requirement allows for the word orders adjective–noun and noun–adjective, even when two noun phrases are adjacent in subject–object–verb or verb–subject–object clauses:
la knabino feliĉan knabon kisis (the girl kissed a happy boy) la knabino feliĉa knabon kisis (the happy girl kissed a boy).
Agreement clarifies the syntax in other ways as well. Adjectives take the plural suffix when they modify more than one noun, even when those nouns are singular: ruĝaj domo kaj aŭto (a red house and [a red] car) ruĝa domo kaj aŭto (a red house and a car).
A predicative adjective does not take the accusative case suffix even when the noun that it modifies does: mi farbis la pordon ruĝan (I painted the red door) mi farbis la pordon ruĝa (I painted the door red).
Pronouns There are three types of pronouns in Esperanto: personal (vi "you"), demonstrative (tio "that", iu "someone"), and relative/interrogative (kio "what"). According to the fifth rule of the Fundamento de Esperanto:Zamenhof, L.L. (1905). "Grammar". Fundamento de Esperanto.
Personal pronouns
The Esperanto personal pronoun system is similar to that of English, but with the addition of a reflexive pronoun. + Personal pronouns singular plural first person mi (I) ni (we) second person vi (you) thirdperson masculine li (he) ili (they) feminine ŝi (she) neutral ĝi (it) indefinite oni (one, they, you) reflexive si (self)
Personal pronouns take the accusative suffix -n as nouns do: min (me), lin (him), ŝin (her). Possessive adjectives are formed with the adjectival suffix -a: mia (my), ĝia (its), nia (our). These agree with their noun like any other adjective: ni salutis liajn amikojn (we greeted his friends). Esperanto does not have separate forms for the possessive pronouns; this sense is generally (though not always) indicated with the definite article: la mia (mine).
The reflexive pronoun is used in non-subject phrases only to refer back to the subject, usually only in the third and indefinite persons: li lavis sin "he washed (himself)" ili lavis sin "they washed themselves (or each other)" li lavis lin "he washed him (someone else)" li manĝis sian panon "he ate his (own) bread" li manĝis lian panon "he ate his (someone else's) bread"
The indefinite pronoun is used when making general statements, and is often used where English would have a passive verb, oni diras, ke ... "one says that...", "they say that ..." or "it is said that ..." With impersonal verbs, no pronoun is used: pluvas "it is raining". Here the rain is falling by itself, and that idea is conveyed by the verb, so no subject pronoun is needed.
When not referring to humans, ĝi is mostly used with items that have physical bodies, with tiu or tio used otherwise. Zamenhof proposed that ĝi could also be used as an epicene (gender-neutral) third-person singular pronoun, meaning for use when the gender of an individual is unknown or for when the speaker simply doesn't wish to clarify the gender."Respondo 23" (August 1901). La Revuo. However, this proposal is only common when referring to children: La infano ploras, ĉar ĝi volas manĝi "the child is crying, because it wants to eat". When speaking of adults or people in general, in popular usage it is much more common for the demonstrative adjective and pronoun tiu ("that thing or person that is already known to the listener") to be used in such situations. This mirrors languages such as Japanese, but it's not a method that can always be used. For example, in the sentence