Esperanto grammar - Definition and Overview

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.

Article

Esperanto has a definite article, la, which is used as in many Romance languages. Esperanto does not use an indefinite article; for instance, homo can mean either person or a person, depending on the context.

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.

Zamenhof also proposed a second-person singular pronoun ci (thou), but it is rarely used.

Verbs

All verbs in Esperanto are regular. Tenses are formed using a for the present, i for the past, and o for the future. There is no need to change the verb form to agree with the subject. For example, "I am", "we are", and "he is" translate as mi estas, ni estas, and li estas respectively. Here is a table of verb forms:

                     Present    Past     Future
Indicative           -as        -is      -os
Active participle    -anta      -inta    -onta       
Passive participle   -ata       -ita     -ota

Infinitive                 -i
Imperative                 -u
Conditional                -us

The imperative mood (called volitivo ["volitive"] in Esperanto) of the verb can also serve as a subjunctive:

Ni iru. Let's go. (Imperative)

Iru. Go. (Imperative)

Mi petas, ke li venu. I ask that he come. (Subjunctive)

Compound forms are formed using the auxiliary verb esti (to be).

• Imperfect: mi estas kaptanta (I am catching)
• Perfect: mi estas kaptinta (I have caught)
• Predicative: mi estas kaptonta (I am going to catch)

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 ŝtelis mian ringon? = Who stole my ring?
• La polico ne kaptis la ŝteliston, kiu ŝtelis 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").

Negatives

A statement is made negative by using ne or one of the negative correlatives above. As in English, but unlike the Romance languages, double negatives are not allowed in Esperanto:

Mi ne faris ion ajn. I didn't do anything.

(*Mi ne faris nenion ajn would be wrong.)

Affixes

Esperanto uses affixes to decrease the number of words that must be learned. Prefixes go before a root, suffixes 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:

  esperantino        hoper, female
  Esperantujo        "Esperantoland" (where ever Esperanto is being spoken)
  esperiga           hopeful (of a situation: inspiring hope)
  esperema           hopeful (of a person: tending to hope)
  senespera          hopeless, despairing

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-":

     dekstren        Towards the right
  maldekstren        Towards the left
     supren          Upwards
  malsupren          Downwards

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.

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

The cardinal numbers defined in Esperanto are as follows.

• unu: one
• du: two
• tri: three
• kvar: four
• kvin: five
• ses: six
• sep: seven
• ok: eight
• naŭ: nine
• dek: ten
• cent: one hundred
• mil: one thousand

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: triliono
• 10²¹: triliardo

Ordinals are formed with the ending -a (the adjectival ending), multiples with -obla, fractionals with -on, and collectives with -ope. Examples:

• sescent sepdek kvin: 675
• tria: third, number three
• duobla: double
• kvarono: one fourth, a quarter
• duope: by twos

The word po is used before numbers to mark distributive numbers, i.e., the idea of distributing a certain number of items to each member of a group. For example, po tri pomoj means "three apples each".

Grammar examples

  esperi             To hope
  esperas            Hopes, is hoping, does hope
  esperis            Hoped, was hoping, did hope
  esperos            Shall or will hope
  esperu             Hope! (volitive)
  esperus            Were to hope, would hope (conditional)

  esperanta(n)       Hoping - nominative (accusative) adjective
  esperantaj(n)      Hoping - nominative (accusative) adjective, plural
  esperanto(n)       Hoper  - nominative (accusative) noun
  esperantoj(n)      Hopers - nominative (accusative) noun

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

External links

A fairly good overview of Esperanto's grammar and word-building system can be gained by viewing "The Sixteen Rules of Esperanto" (http://www.webcom.com/~donh/Esperanto/rules.html), "The Esperanto Correlatives" (http://www.webcom.com/~donh/Esperanto/correlatives.html) and "Word Building With Esperanto Affixes" (http://www.webcom.com/~donh/Esperanto/affixes.html)

Also see Jiri Hana's Master thesis overview of Esperanto:

• "Esperanto Grammar" (http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~hana/esr/grammar/EsrGrammar-Title.html)