Esperanto grammar
Encyclopedia
Esperanto
is a constructed
auxiliary language
. A highly regular grammar makes Esperanto much easier to learn than most other languages of the world, though particular features may be more or less advantageous or difficult depending on the language background of the speaker. Parts of speech are immediately obvious, for example: Τhe suffix
-o indicates a noun, -a an adjective, -as a present-tense verb, and so on for other grammatical functions. An extensive system of affixes may be freely combined with roots to generate vocabulary; and the rules of word formation are straightforward, allowing speakers to communicate with a much smaller root vocabulary than in most other languages. It is possible to communicate effectively with a vocabulary built upon 400 to 500 roots, though there are numerous specialized vocabularies for sciences, professions, and other activities.
Reference grammars of the language include the Plena Analiza Gramatiko (Complete Analytical Grammar) by Kálmán Kalocsay
and Gaston Waringhien
, and the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar) by Bertilo Wennergren
.
morphology
, no grammatical gender
, and simple verbal
and nominal inflections. Verbal suffixes indicate four moods, of which the indicative has three tense
s, and are derived for several aspects
, but do not agree with the grammatical person
or number
of their subjects
. Noun
s and adjective
s have two cases, nominative
/oblique
and accusative
/allative
, and two numbers
, singular
and plural
; the adjectival form of personal pronoun
s 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 adverb
s to show 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
.
These concepts are illustrated below.
. The orthography utilizes diacritic
s, which make digraph
s such as English ch and sh unnecessary. (Alternatively, Esperanto may be written with English-like digraphs in h rather than with diacritics, but this is seldom seen outside email.) Overall, the Esperanto alphabet resembles the Czech alphabet
, but with circumflex
es rather than háčeks on the letters ĉ, ŝ; Western-based ĝ, ĵ in place of Czech dž, ž; and ĥ for Czech ch. These letters are unique to Esperanto, though it also has a letter ŭ that is shared with the Belarusian
Łacinka alphabet.
Zamenhof suggested Italian
as a model for Esperanto pronunciation.
, la, which is invariable. It is similar to English the.
La is used:
The article is also used for inalienable possession
of body parts and kin terms, where English would use a possessive adjective
:
The article la, like the demonstrative adjective tiu (this, that), nearly always occurs at the beginning of the noun phrase
, but this is not required by the grammar, and exceptions occur in poetry.
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".
, adjective
, adverb
, and infinitive
verb
, respectively. Many new words can be derived simply by changing these suffixes, just as -ly derives adverbs from adjectives in English: From vidi (to see), we get vida (visual), vide (visually), and vido (sight).
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).
A suffix -j following the noun or adjective suffixes -o or -a makes a word plural. 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 sequence -ojn rhymes with English coin, and -ajn rhymes with fine.)
Adjectives agree with nouns. That is, they are plural if the nouns they modify
are plural, and accusative if the nouns they modify are accusative. Compare bona tago; bonaj tagoj; bonan tagon; bonajn tagojn (good day/days). This requirement allows for free word orders of adjective-noun and noun-adjective, even when two noun phrases are adjacent in subject–object–verb or verb–subject–object clauses:
Agreement clarifies the syntax
in other ways as well. Adjectives take the plural suffix when they modify more than one noun, even if those nouns are all singular:
A predicative adjective does not take the accusative case suffix even when the noun it modifies does:
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.
In addition, most verbs are inherently transitive
or intransitive
. As with the inherent part of speech, this is not apparent from the shape of the verb and must simply be memorized. Transitivity is changed with the suffixes -igi (the transitivizer/causative
) and -iĝi (the intransitivizer/middle voice):
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
.)
Other parts of speech occur as bare roots, without special suffixes. These are the prepositions (al "to"), conjunctions (kaj "and"), interjections (ho "oh"), numerals (du "two"), and pronouns (mi "I"—The final -i found on pronouns is not a suffix, but part of the root). There are also several "grammatical particles" which don't fit neatly into any category, and which must generally precede the words they modify, such as ne (not), ankaŭ (also), nur (only), eĉ (even).
The part-of-speech endings may be iterated. With the -aŭ suffix, this is nearly universal, and the -aŭ is rarely dropped: anstataŭ 'instead of', anstataŭe 'instead', anstantaŭa 'substitute', anstataŭo 'a substitute', anstataŭi 'to replace', etc. (Rarely anstate, anstata, anstato, anstati.) In the case of prepositions and particles, there is nothing to drop: nea 'negative', nei 'to deny'. However, occasionally other endings double up. 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!').
system is similar to that of English, but with the addition of a reflexive pronoun
.
Personal pronouns take the accusative suffix -n like nouns do: min (me), lin (him), ŝin (her). Possessive adjective
s 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 pronoun
s; 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 to back to the subject, usually only in the third and indefinite persons:
The indefinite pronoun is used when making general statements, and is often used where English would have the subject it with a passive verb,
With impersonal verbs such as verbs of weather, however, no pronoun is used:
Zamenhof
created an informal second-person singular pronoun ci (thou
), and capitalized the formal singular pronoun Vi, following usage in most European languages
, but these forms are rarely seen today.
Ĝi is used principally with animals and objects. Zamenhof also prescribed it to be the epicene (gender-neutral) third-person singular pronoun, for use when the gender of an individual is unknown, or to refer to an epicene noun such as persono (person). However, it is generally only used for children:
When speaking of adults or people in general, it is much more common for the demonstrative adjective and pronoun tiu (that one) to be used in such situations. However, this remedy is not always available. For example, the sentence,
the pronoun tiu is understood to refer only to someone other than the person speaking, and so cannot be used in place of li or ŝi.
s form part of the correlative system, and are described in that article. The pronouns are the forms ending in -o (simple pronouns) and -u (adjectival pronouns). Their accusative case is formed in -n, but the genitive case ends in -es, which is the same for singular and plural and does not take accusative marking. Compare the nominative phases lia domo (his house) and ties domo (that one's house, those ones' house) with the plural liaj domoj (his houses) and ties domoj (that one's houses, those ones' houses), and with the accusative genitive lian domon and ties domon.
is fairly free, prepositions must come at the beginning of a noun phrase
. Whereas in languages such as German, prepositions may require a noun to be in various cases (accusative, dative, etc.), in Esperanto all prepositions govern the nominative: por Johano (for John). The only exception is when there are two or more prepositions and one is replaced by the accusative.
Prepositions should be used with a definite meaning. When no one preposition is clearly correct, the indefinite preposition je should be used:
Alternatively, the accusative may be used without a preposition:
Note that although la trian (the third) is in the accusative, de majo (of May) is still a prepositional phrase, and so the noun majo remains in the nominative case.
A frequent use of the accusative is in place of al (to) to indicate the direction or goal of motion (allative construction
). It is especially common when there would otherwise be a double preposition:
The accusative/allative may stand in for other prepositions as well, especially when they have vague meanings that don't add much to the clause. Adverbs, with or without the case suffix, are frequently used in place of prepositional phrases:
Occasionally a new preposition is coined. As a bare root
may indicate a preposition or interjection
, removing the grammatical suffix from another part of speech can be used to derive a preposition or interjection. For example, from fari (to do, to make) we get the preposition far (done by), a more precise substitute for de (of, by, from).
s together form what is called the indicative mood. The other moods are the infinitive
, conditional
, and jussive
. No aspectual
distinctions are required by the grammar, but derivational expressions of Aktionsart
are common.
Verbs do not change form according to their subject
. I am, we are, and he is are simply mi estas, ni estas, and li estas, respectively. Impersonal subjects are not used: pluvas (it is raining); estas muso en la domo (there's a mouse in the house).
The verbal forms may be illustrated with the root esper- (hope):
A verb can be made emphatic with the particle ja (indeed): mi ja esperas (I do hope), mi ja esperis (I did hope).
is used for such expressions as se mi povus, mi irus (if I could, I would go) and se mi estus vi, mi irus (if I were you, I'd go).
The jussive mood
, called the volitive in Esperanto, is used for wishing and requesting, and serves as the imperative
. It covers some of the uses of the subjunctive in European languages:
is not grammatically required in Esperanto. However, aspectual distinctions may be expressed via participles (see below), and the Slavic aspectual system survives in two aktionsart
affixes, perfective
(often inceptive) ek- and imperfective
-adi. Compare,
and,
Various prepositions may also be used as aktionsart prefixes, such as el (out of), used to indicate that an action is performed to completion or at least to a considerable degree, also as in Slavic languages. In,
the verb el-lern-is is past tense (-is), and performed to significant completion (el-).
s, it does not cause either to take the accusative case. Therefore, unlike the situation with other verbs, word order with esti can be semantically important: compare hundoj estas personoj (dogs are people) and personoj estas hundoj (people are dogs).
It is becoming increasingly common to replace esti-plus-adjective with a verb: la ĉielo estas blua or la ĉielo bluas (the sky is blue). This is a stylistic rather than grammatical change in the language, as the more economical verbal forms were always found in poetry.
s are verbal derivatives. In Esperanto, there are half a dozen forms, which retain the vowel of the related verbal tense. In addition to carrying aspect, participles are the principal means of conveying voice, with two paradigms, active
(performing an action) and passive
(receiving an action).
Active and passive pairs can be illustrated with the transitive verb haki (to chop). Picture a woodsman approaching a tree with an axe, intending to chop it down. He is hakonta (about to chop) and the tree is hakota (about to be chopped). While swinging the axe, he is hakanta (chopping) and the tree hakata (being chopped). After the tree has fallen, he is hakinta (having chopped) and the tree hakita (chopped).
Adjectival participles agree with nouns in number and case, just as other adjectives do:
s plus esti (to be) as the auxiliary verb. The participle reflects aspect and voice, while the verb carries tense:
These are not used as often as their English equivalents. For "I am going to the store", you would normally use the simple present mi iras in Esperanto.
The tense and mood of esti can be changed in these compound tenses:
Although such periphrastic constructions are familiar to speakers of most European languages, the option of contracting [esti + adjective] into a verb is often seen for adjectival participles:
The most common of these synthetic forms are:
Infinitive and jussive forms are also found. There is a parallel passive paradigm.
A nominal participle indicates one who participates in the action specified by the verbal root. For example, esperinto is a "hoper" (past tense), or one who had been hoping. (In the early years of the language, such forms were assumed to be masculine, but that is no longer the case.)
s are used with subjectless clauses:
This can also be illustrated with the verb prezidi (to preside). Just after the recount of the 2000 United States presidential election:
Note that this example is somewhat artificial, since the customary word for 'president' (of a country) is the tense-neutral word prezidento, which is officially a separate root, not a derivative of the verb prezidi. However, prezidanto is typically used for the presidents of organizations other than sovereign countries, and prezidinto is used for former presidents in such contexts.
The conditional forms are infrequent, but their regular derivation ensures that they can be readily understood, even if rarely needed. No European language has conditional participles; in English, words like prezidunto must be expressed periphrastically, as in the title of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King
.
Likewise, some Esperantists have proposed a tenseless participle, though only for active-participle role. The element -ento is not officially a participle or even a separate morpheme, but it is very common and is sometimes regarded as a suffix. It frequently occurs in words for occupations where one would not wish to specify tense, such as prezidento or studento (student). Since there is often a verb derived from the same Latin root, in these cases prezidi (to preside) and studi (to study), this -ento has occasionally been proposed as a tense-neutral active participle by analogy with the temporal participles -anto, -into, -onto.
However, even if the participial paradigm were to be extended in this way, it would be asymmetric in that there can be no direct passive counterpart to *-ento because the expected -eto already exists as the diminutive suffix. The nearest equivalent is the middle voice suffix -iĝi, which is commonly used as a generic passive. Unlike the active case, where a few new nouns like prezidento were sufficient to avoid making the language overly specific, a need for a neutral passive participle was felt in the verbs. For example, there was heated debate for several decades as to whether "I was born in 19xx" should be mi estis naskita (I had been born) or mi estis naskata (literally 'I was being born'), with the French and Germans generally holding opposite opinions deriving from usage in their native languages. Today, people sidestep the issue with the temporally neutral mi naskiĝis (I was born).
Two negatives within a clause cancel each other out, with the result being a positive sentence.
The word ne comes before the word it negates, with the default position being before the verb:
The latter will frequently be reordered as ne tion mi skribis depending on the flow of information.
Yes/no questions are marked with the conjunction ĉu (whether):
Such questions can be answered jes (yes) or ne (no) in the European fashion of aligning with the polarity of the answer, or ĝuste (correct) or malĝuste (incorrect) in the Japanese fashion of aligning with the polarity of the question:
Note that Esperanto questions may have the same word order as statements.
are kaj (both/and), aŭ (either/or), nek (neither/nor), se (if), ĉu (whether/or), sed (but), anstataŭ (instead of), krom (besides, in addition to), kiel (like, as), ke (that). Like prepositions, they precede the phrase or clause they modify:
However, unlike prepositions, they allow the accusative case, as in the following example from Don Harlow
:
s may be derived from bare affixes or roots: ek! (get going!), from the perfective prefix; um (um, er), from the indefinite/undefined suffix; fek! (shit!), from feki (to defecate).
Esperanto derivational morphology
uses a large number of lexical and grammatical affixes (prefixes and suffix
es). These, along with compounding, decrease the memory load of the language, as they allow for the expansion of a relatively small number of basic roots into a large vocabulary. For example, the Esperanto root vid- (see) regularly corresponds to several dozen English words: see (saw, seen), sight, blind, vision, visual, visible, nonvisual, invisible, unsightly, glance, view, vista, panorama, observant etc., though there are also separate Esperanto roots for a couple of these concepts.
are:
These are grammatically numerals, not nouns, and as such do not take the accusative case suffix. However, unu (and only unu) is sometimes used adjectivally or demonstratively, meaning "a certain", and in such cases it may take the plural affix -j, just as the demonstrative pronoun tiu does:
In such use unu is irregular in that it doesn't take the accusative affix -n in the singular, but does in the plural:
but
Additionally, when counting off, the final u of unu may be dropped, as if it were a part-of-speech suffix:
in most English-speaking countries is different from a billion in most other countries (109 vs. 1012 respectively; that is, a thousand million vs. a million million). The international root biliono is likewise ambiguous in Esperanto, and is deprecated for this reason. An unambiguous system based on adding the Esperanto suffix -iliono to numerals is generally used instead, sometimes supplemented by a second suffix -iliardo:
Note that these forms are grammatically nouns, not numerals, and therefore cannot modify a noun directly: mil homojn (a thousand people [accusative]) but milionon da homoj (a million people [accusative]). An unambiguous international system is also provided by the metric prefixes
, and the nonce numerals meg (miliono) and gig (miliardo) are occasionally derived from them: meg homojn (a million people).
The particle po is used to mark distributive numbers, that is, the idea of distributing a certain number of items to each member of a group. Consequently the logogram
@ is not used (except in email addresses, of course):
Note that particle po forms a phrase with the numeral tri and is not a preposition for the noun phrase tri pomojn, so it does not prevent a grammatical object from taking the accusative case.
Implied comparisons are made with tre (very) and tro (too [much]).
Phrases like "The more people, the smaller the portions" and "All the better!" are translated using ju and des in place of "the":
However, when the entire clause is negated, the ne may be left till last:
The last (numeral after noun) is practically unheard of outside poetry. Demonstratives such as tiu are rather uncommon after a noun as well, used there primarily for emphasis (plumo tiu 'that pen'). Even possessive pronouns strongly favor initial position, though the opposite is well known from Patro nia 'Our Father' in the Paternoster
.
Adjective–noun order is much freer. With simple adjectives, adjective–noun order predominates, especially if the noun is long or complex. However, a long or complex adjective typically comes after the noun, in some cases parallel to structures in English, as in the second example below:
Adjectives also normally occur after correlative nouns. Again, this is one of the situations where adjectives come after nouns in English:
Changing the word order here can change the meaning, at least with the correlative nenio 'nothing':
With multiple words in a phrase, the order is typically demonstrative/pronoun–numeral–(adjective/noun):
However, the article la comes almost exclusively at the front of the noun phrase except, rarely, in poetry:
Because of adjectival agreement, an adjective may be separated from the rest of the noun phrase without confusion. For example, in
the subject and verb, vi havos, interrupt the noun phrase brilan sukceson. However, though occasionally found in poetry, such constructions are generally foreign to the language.
In prepositional phrases, the preposition is required to come at the front of the noun phrase (that is, even before the article la), though it is commonly replaced by turning the noun into an adverb:
The default order is subject–verb–object, though any order may occur, with subject and object distinguished by case, and other constituents distinguished by prepositions:
Context is required to tell whether la hundo ĉasis la katon en la ĝardeno means the dog chase a cat which was in the garden, or there in the garden the dog chased the cat. These may be disambiguated with la hundo ĉasis la katon, kiu estis en la ĝardeno and en la ĝardeno, la hundo ĉasis la katon. Of course, if it chases the cat into the garden, the case would change: la hundo ĉasis la katon en la ĝardenon, en la ĝardenon la hundo ĉasis la katon, etc.
Within copulative clauses, however, there are restrictions. Copula
s are words such as esti 'be', iĝi 'become', resti 'remain', and ŝajni 'seem', for which neither noun phrase takes the accusative case. In such cases only two orders are generally found: noun-copula-predicate and, much less commonly, predicate-copula-noun.
(That is, the copula intervenes between the two noun phrases, unless context or punctuation/intonation disambiguate:
Generally, if a characteristic of the noun is being described, the choice between the two orders is not important:
However, la vento sovaĝa estas is unclear, at least in writing, as it could be interpreted as 'the wild wind is', leaving the reader to ask, 'is what?'.
With two nouns, complications can arise. Sometimes context makes clear; demonstratives and articles, for example, usually occur only in the subject:
However, as noted above, there is a huge difference between saying generically 'dogs are people' and 'people are dogs'. In such cases the first noun is read as the subject, as in English. Similarly,
is the opposite sentiment of
kiu 'which' is restricted to a position after the noun 'cat'. In general, relative clause
s and attributive prepositional phrases follow the noun they modify.
Attributive
prepositional phrases, which are dependent on nouns, include genitives (la libro de Johano 'John's book') as well as la kato en la ĝardeno 'the cat in the garden' in the example above. Their order cannot be reversed: neither *la de Johano libro nor *la en la ĝardeno kato is possible. This behavior is more restrictive than prepositional phrases which are dependent on verbs, and which can be moved around: both ĉasis en la ĝardeno and en la ĝardeno ĉasis are acceptable for 'chased in the garden'.
Relative clauses are similar, in that they are attributive and are subject to the same word-order constraint, except that rather than being linked by a preposition, the two elements are linked by a relative pronoun
such as kiu 'which':
Note that the noun and its adjacent relative pronoun do not agree in case. Rather, their cases depend on their relationships with their respective verbs. However, they do agree in number:
Other word orders are possible, as long as the relative pronoun remains adjacent to the noun it depends on:
Because of this word-order constraint, Esperanto is restricted to an SVO order in relative clauses when the linking noun is the subject of the verb, but to an OVS order when it is the object. Compare
and
(also la fromaĝo, kiun manĝis la rato, kiun mortigis la kato, kiun vidis Johano, estis putra)
In the latter, English requires passive verb constructions, but this is not necessary in Esperanto.
. For example, in
the inference is that the cat fled after the dog started to chase it, not that the dog chased a cat which was already fleeing. For the latter reading, the clause order would be reversed:
This distinction is lost in subordinate clauses such as the relative clauses in the previous section:
In written English, a comma disambiguates the two readings, but both require a comma in Esperanto.
Non-relative subordinate clauses are similarly restricted. They follow the conjunction
ke 'that', as in,
, and semantics
derive predominantly from European national languages. Roots are typically Romance
or Germanic
in origin. The semantics shows a significant Slavic
influence.
It is often claimed that there are elements of the grammar which are not found in these language families. Frequently mentioned is Esperanto's agglutinative morphology
based on invariant morphemes, and the subsequent lack of ablaut (internal inflection of its roots), which Zamenhof himself thought would prove alien to European speakers. Ablaut is an element of all the source languages; an English example is song sing sang sung. However, the majority of words in all European languages inflect without ablaut, as cat, cats and walk, walked do in English. (This is the so-called strong
–weak
dichotomy.) Historically, many European languages have expanded the range of their 'weak' inflections, and Esperanto has merely taken this development closer to its logical conclusion, with the only remaining ablaut being frozen in a few sets of semantically related roots such as pli, plej, plu (more, most, further), tre, tro (very, too much), and in the verbal morphemes -as, -anta, -ata; -is, -inta, -ita; -os, -onta, -ota; and -us. (This system can be extended further, with conditional participles -unta and -uta derived from the conditional mood in -us.)
Other features often cited as being nonstandard for a European language, such as the dedicated suffixes for different parts of speech, or the -o suffix for singular nouns, actually do occur in European languages such as Russian. More pertinent is the accusative plural in -jn, which is derived through leveling
of standard European grammatical structures. The Esperanto nominal–adjectival paradigm as a whole is taken from Greek: Esperanto nominative singular muso (mouse
) vs. Greek mousa (muse
), nominative plural musoj vs. Greek mousai, and accusative singular muson vs. Greek mousan. (Latin
and Lithuanian
had very similar setups, with [j] in the plural and a nasal in the accusative.) However, Esperanto does not have a discrete accusative plural suffix analogous with Greek mous-ās; rather, it compounds the simple accusative and plural suffixes: mus-o-j-n. This morphology does not occur as more than a marginal element in any of Esperanto's source language families, and is formally similar to European but not Indo-European Hungarian
and Turkish
—that is, it is similar in its mechanics, but not in use. None of these proposed "non-European" elements of the original Esperanto proposal were actually taken from non-European or non-Indo-European languages, and any similarities with those languages are accidental.
Perhaps the best candidate for a "non-European" feature is the blurred distinction between roots and affixes. Esperanto derivational affixes may be used as independent root words and inflect for part of speech like other roots. This occurs only sporadically in other languages of the world, Indo-European or not. For example, ismo has an English equivalent in "an ism", but English has no adjectival form ("ismic"?) equivalent to Esperanto isma. For most such affixes, natural languages familiar to Europeans must use a separate root, such as English "member" for Esperanto ano, "quality" for eco, "tendency" for emo, etc.
East Asian languages may have had some influence on the development of Esperanto grammar after its creation. The principally cited candidate is the replacement of predicate adjectives with verbs, such as la ĉielo bluas (the sky is blue) for la ĉielo estas blua and mia filino belu! (may my daughter be beautiful!) for the mia filino estu bela! mentioned above. This is a regularization
of existing grammatical forms and was always found in poetry; if there has been an Asian influence, it has only been in the spread of such forms, not in their origin.
The Pater noster, from the first Esperanto publication
in 1887, illustrates many of the grammatical points presented above, and should be readable to those familiar with it without translation:
The morphologically complex words (see Esperanto word formation) are:
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
is a constructed
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
auxiliary language
International auxiliary language
An international auxiliary language or interlanguage is a language meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language...
. A highly regular grammar makes Esperanto much easier to learn than most other languages of the world, though particular features may be more or less advantageous or difficult depending on the language background of the speaker. Parts of speech are immediately obvious, for example: Τhe suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
-o indicates a noun, -a an adjective, -as a present-tense verb, and so on for other grammatical functions. An extensive system of affixes may be freely combined with roots to generate vocabulary; and the rules of word formation are straightforward, allowing speakers to communicate with a much smaller root vocabulary than in most other languages. It is possible to communicate effectively with a vocabulary built upon 400 to 500 roots, though there are numerous specialized vocabularies for sciences, professions, and other activities.
Reference grammars of the language include the Plena Analiza Gramatiko (Complete Analytical Grammar) by Kálmán Kalocsay
Kálmán Kalocsay
Kálmán Kalocsay , in Hungarian name order Kalocsay Kálmán is one of the foremost figures in the history of Esperanto literature...
and Gaston Waringhien
Gaston Waringhien
Gaston Waringhein was a French linguist, lexicographer, and Esperantist. He wrote poems as well as essays and books on linguistics...
, and the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar) by Bertilo Wennergren
Bertilo Wennergren
Bertilo Wennergren [VEN-er-gren] , born 4 October 1956, is a Swedish Esperantist currently living in Seoul, South Korea...
.
Grammatical summary
Esperanto has an agglutinativeAgglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, no grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, and simple verbal
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
and nominal inflections. Verbal suffixes indicate four moods, of which the indicative has three tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
s, and are derived for several aspects
Aktionsart
The lexical aspect or aktionsart of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. Any event, state, process, or action which a verb expresses—collectively, any eventuality—may also be said to have the same lexical aspect...
, but do not agree with the grammatical person
Grammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
or number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
of their subjects
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
. Noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s and adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s have two cases, nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
/oblique
Oblique case
An oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...
and accusative
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
/allative
Allative case
Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the...
, and two numbers
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
, singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
and plural
Plural
In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...
; the adjectival form of personal pronoun
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
s behaves like a genitive case
Genitive case
In grammar, genitive is the grammatical case that marks a noun as modifying another noun...
. Adjectives generally agree
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
with nouns in case and number. In addition to indicating direct objects, the accusative/allative case is used with nouns, adjectives and adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
s to show 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
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
that reflects information flow
Information flow
In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of referential information by speakers. Information may be new, just introduced into the conversation; given, already active in the speakers' consciousness; or old, no longer active...
and other pragmatic
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics. It studies how the...
concerns, as in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
.
These concepts are illustrated below.
Script and pronunciation
Esperanto uses the Latin alphabetLatin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
. The orthography utilizes diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
s, which make digraph
Digraph (orthography)
A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
s such as English ch and sh unnecessary. (Alternatively, Esperanto may be written with English-like digraphs in h rather than with diacritics, but this is seldom seen outside email.) Overall, the Esperanto alphabet resembles the Czech alphabet
Czech alphabet
The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin script, used when writing Czech. Its basic principles are "one sound, one letter" and the addition of diacritical marks above letters to represent sounds alien to Latin...
, but with circumflex
Circumflex
The circumflex is a diacritic used in the written forms of many languages, and is also commonly used in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin circumflexus —a translation of the Greek περισπωμένη...
es rather than háčeks on the letters ĉ, ŝ; Western-based ĝ, ĵ in place of Czech dž, ž; and ĥ for Czech ch. These letters are unique to Esperanto, though it also has a letter ŭ that is shared with the Belarusian
Belarusian language
The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...
Łacinka alphabet.
Zamenhof suggested Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
as a model for Esperanto pronunciation.
The article
Esperanto has a single definite articleDefinite Article
Definite Article is the title of British comedian Eddie Izzard's 1996 performance released on VHS. It was recorded on different nights at the Shaftesbury Theatre...
, la, which is invariable. It is similar to English the.
La is used:
- For identifiable, countable objects:
- Mi trovis botelon kaj deprenis la fermilon.
- "I found a bottle and took off the lid."
- Mi trovis botelon kaj deprenis la fermilon.
- For representative individuals:
- La gepardo estas la plej rapida de la bestoj.
- "The cheetah is the fastest of the animals."
- La abeloj havas felon, sed ili ne taŭgas por karesi.
- "Bees have fur, but they're no good for petting."
- La gepardo estas la plej rapida de la bestoj.
- For adjectives used as nouns, such as ethnic adjectives used as the names of languages:
- la blua
- "the blue one"
- la angla
- "English" (i.e. "the English language")
- la blua
- For possessive pronounPossessive pronounA possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s, when definite:- La mia bluas, la via ruĝas.
- "Mine is blue, yours is red".
- La mia bluas, la via ruĝas.
The article is also used for inalienable possession
Inalienable possession
In linguistics, inalienable possession refers to the linguistic properties of certain nouns or nominal morphemes based on the fact that they are always possessed. The semantic underpinning is that entities like body parts and relatives do not exist apart from a possessor. For example, a hand...
of body parts and kin terms, where English would use a possessive adjective
Possessive adjective
Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something...
:
- Ili tranĉis la manon.
- "They cut their hands." [one hand each]
The article la, like the demonstrative adjective tiu (this, that), nearly always occurs at the beginning of the noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
, but this is not required by the grammar, and exceptions occur in poetry.
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".
Parts of speech
The suffixes -o, -a, -e, and -i indicate that a word is a nounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
, adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
, adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
, and infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
, respectively. Many new words can be derived simply by changing these suffixes, just as -ly derives adverbs from adjectives in English: From vidi (to see), we get vida (visual), vide (visually), and vido (sight).
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).
A suffix -j following the noun or adjective suffixes -o or -a makes a word plural. Without this suffix, a countable noun is understood to be singular. Direct objects take an accusative case
Accusative case
The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case is used in many languages for the objects of prepositions...
suffix -n, which goes after any plural suffix. (The resulting sequence -ojn rhymes with English coin, and -ajn rhymes with fine.)
Adjectives agree with nouns. That is, they are plural if the nouns they modify
Grammatical modifier
In grammar, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure; the removal of the modifier typically doesn't affect the grammaticality of the sentence....
are plural, and accusative if the nouns they modify are accusative. Compare bona tago; bonaj tagoj; bonan tagon; bonajn tagojn (good day/days). This requirement allows for free word orders of 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
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
in other ways as well. Adjectives take the plural suffix when they modify more than one noun, even if those nouns are all 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 it modifies does:
- mi farbis la pordon ruĝan (I painted the red door)
- mi farbis la pordon ruĝa (I painted the door red).
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.
In addition, most verbs are inherently transitive
Transitive verb
In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
or intransitive
Intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....
. As with the inherent part of speech, this is not apparent from the shape of the verb and must simply be memorized. Transitivity is changed with the suffixes -igi (the transitivizer/causative
Causative
In linguistics, a causative is a form that indicates that a subject causes someone or something else to do or be something, or causes a change in state of a non-volitional event....
) and -iĝi (the intransitivizer/middle voice):
- akvo bolas je cent gradoj (water boils at 100 degrees)
- ni boligas la akvon (we boil the water).
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
Special Esperanto adverbs
A limited number of Esperanto adverbs do not end with the regular adverbial ending -e. Many of these function as more than just adverbs, such as hodiaŭ "today" [noun or adverb] and ankoraŭ "yet, still" [conjunction or adverb]...
.)
Other parts of speech occur as bare roots, without special suffixes. These are the prepositions (al "to"), conjunctions (kaj "and"), interjections (ho "oh"), numerals (du "two"), and pronouns (mi "I"—The final -i found on pronouns is not a suffix, but part of the root). There are also several "grammatical particles" which don't fit neatly into any category, and which must generally precede the words they modify, such as ne (not), ankaŭ (also), nur (only), eĉ (even).
The part-of-speech endings may be iterated. With the -aŭ suffix, this is nearly universal, and the -aŭ is rarely dropped: anstataŭ 'instead of', anstataŭe 'instead', anstantaŭa 'substitute', anstataŭo 'a substitute', anstataŭi 'to replace', etc. (Rarely anstate, anstata, anstato, anstati.) In the case of prepositions and particles, there is nothing to drop: nea 'negative', nei 'to deny'. However, occasionally other endings double up. 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!').
Pronouns
There are three types of pronouns in Esperanto: personal (vi "you"), demonstrative (tio "that", iu "someone"), and relative/interrogative (kio "what").Personal pronouns
The Esperanto personal pronounPersonal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...
system is similar to that of English, but with the addition of a reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
.
| singular | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| first person | mi (I) | ni (we) | |
| second person | vi (you) | ||
| third person | masculine | li (he) | ili (they) |
| feminine | ŝi (she) | ||
| epicene | ĝi (it, s/he) | ||
| indefinite | oni (one)* | ||
| reflexive | si (self) | ||
* In colloquial English, generally translated "they" or "you".
Personal pronouns take the accusative suffix -n like nouns do: min (me), lin (him), ŝin (her). Possessive adjective
Possessive adjective
Possessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something...
s are formed with the adjectival suffix -a: mia (my), ĝia (its), nia (our). These agree with their noun like any other adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
: ni salutis liajn amikojn (we greeted his friends). Esperanto does not have separate forms for the possessive pronoun
Possessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s; this sense is generally (though not always) indicated with the definite article: la mia (mine).
The reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...
is used, in non-subject phrases only, to refer to 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 bread" (his own bread)
- li manĝis lian panon "he ate his bread" (someone else's bread).
The indefinite pronoun is used when making general statements, and is often used where English would have the subject it with a passive verb,
- oni diras, ke ... "they say that ..." or "it's said that ..."
With impersonal verbs such as verbs of weather, however, no pronoun is used:
- pluvas "it's raining".
Zamenhof
Zamenhof
Zamenhof is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:* Rozalia Zamenhof, née Sofer , mother of Ludwik* Romana Zamenhof , a Jewish Polish female Esperantist and pharmaceutist...
created an informal second-person singular pronoun ci (thou
Thou
The word thou is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee , and the possessive is thy or thine...
), and capitalized the formal singular pronoun Vi, following usage in most European languages
T-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
, but these forms are rarely seen today.
Ĝi is used principally with animals and objects. Zamenhof also prescribed it to be the epicene (gender-neutral) third-person singular pronoun, for use when the gender of an individual is unknown, or to refer to an epicene noun such as persono (person). However, it is generally only used for 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, it is much more common for the demonstrative adjective and pronoun tiu (that one) to be used in such situations. However, this remedy is not always available. For example, the sentence,
- Iu ĵus diris, ke tiu malsatas "Someone just said that tiu is hungry",
the pronoun tiu is understood to refer only to someone other than the person speaking, and so cannot be used in place of li or ŝi.
Other pronouns
The demonstrative and relative pronounRelative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
s form part of the correlative system, and are described in that article. The pronouns are the forms ending in -o (simple pronouns) and -u (adjectival pronouns). Their accusative case is formed in -n, but the genitive case ends in -es, which is the same for singular and plural and does not take accusative marking. Compare the nominative phases lia domo (his house) and ties domo (that one's house, those ones' house) with the plural liaj domoj (his houses) and ties domoj (that one's houses, those ones' houses), and with the accusative genitive lian domon and ties domon.
Prepositions
Although Esperanto word orderWord order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
is fairly free, prepositions must come at the beginning of a noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
. Whereas in languages such as German, prepositions may require a noun to be in various cases (accusative, dative, etc.), in Esperanto all prepositions govern the nominative: por Johano (for John). The only exception is when there are two or more prepositions and one is replaced by the accusative.
Prepositions should be used with a definite meaning. When no one preposition is clearly correct, the indefinite preposition je should be used:
- ili iros je la tria de majo (they'll go on the third of May: the "on" isn't literally true).
Alternatively, the accusative may be used without a preposition:
- ili iros la trian de majo.
Note that although la trian (the third) is in the accusative, de majo (of May) is still a prepositional phrase, and so the noun majo remains in the nominative case.
A frequent use of the accusative is in place of al (to) to indicate the direction or goal of motion (allative construction
Allative case
Allative case is a type of the locative cases used in several languages. The term allative is generally used for the lative case in the majority of languages which do not make finer distinctions.-Finnish language:In the Finnish language, the allative is the fifth of the locative cases, with the...
). It is especially common when there would otherwise be a double preposition:
- la kato ĉasis la muson en la domo (the cat chased the mouse in [inside of] the house)
- la kato ĉasis la muson en la domon (the cat chased the mouse into the house).
The accusative/allative may stand in for other prepositions as well, especially when they have vague meanings that don't add much to the clause. Adverbs, with or without the case suffix, are frequently used in place of prepositional phrases:
- li iris al sia hejmo (he went to his home)
- li iris hejmen (he went home)
Occasionally a new preposition is coined. As a bare root
Root (linguistics)
The root word is the primary lexical unit of a word, and of a word family , which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents....
may indicate a preposition or interjection
Interjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
, removing the grammatical suffix from another part of speech can be used to derive a preposition or interjection. For example, from fari (to do, to make) we get the preposition far (done by), a more precise substitute for de (of, by, from).
Verbs
All verbs are regular. Three tenseGrammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
s together form what is called the indicative mood. The other moods are the infinitive
Infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
, conditional
Conditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
, and jussive
Jussive mood
The jussive is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting . English verbs are not marked for this mood...
. No aspectual
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
distinctions are required by the grammar, but derivational expressions of Aktionsart
Aktionsart
The lexical aspect or aktionsart of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. Any event, state, process, or action which a verb expresses—collectively, any eventuality—may also be said to have the same lexical aspect...
are common.
Verbs do not change form according to their subject
Subject (grammar)
The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
. I am, we are, and he is are simply mi estas, ni estas, and li estas, respectively. Impersonal subjects are not used: pluvas (it is raining); estas muso en la domo (there's a mouse in the house).
The verbal paradigm
The tenses have characteristic vowels. A indicates the present tense, i the past, and o the future.| Indicative | Active participle Participle In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier... |
Passive participle Participle In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier... |
Infinitive Infinitive In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives... |
Jussive Jussive mood The jussive is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting . English verbs are not marked for this mood... |
Conditional Conditional mood In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances... |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Past Past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future... |
-is | -inta | -ita | -i | -u | -us |
| Present Present tense The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb... |
-as | -anta | -ata | |||
| Future Future tense In grammar, a future tense is a verb form that marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future , or to happen subsequent to some other event, whether that is past, present, or future .-Expressions of future tense:The concept of the future,... |
-os | -onta | -ota |
The verbal forms may be illustrated with the root esper- (hope):
- esperi (to hope)
- esperas (hopes, is hoping)
- esperis (hoped, was hoping)
- esperos (shall hope, will hope)
- esperu (hope!; a command)
- esperus (were to hope, would hope)
A verb can be made emphatic with the particle ja (indeed): mi ja esperas (I do hope), mi ja esperis (I did hope).
Mood
The conditional moodConditional mood
In linguistics, the conditional mood is the inflectional form of the verb used in the independent clause of a conditional sentence to refer to a hypothetical state of affairs, or an uncertain event, that is contingent on another set of circumstances...
is used for such expressions as se mi povus, mi irus (if I could, I would go) and se mi estus vi, mi irus (if I were you, I'd go).
The jussive mood
Jussive mood
The jussive is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting . English verbs are not marked for this mood...
, called the volitive in Esperanto, is used for wishing and requesting, and serves as the imperative
Imperative mood
The imperative mood expresses commands or requests as a grammatical mood. These commands or requests urge the audience to act a certain way. It also may signal a prohibition, permission, or any other kind of exhortation.- Morphology :...
. It covers some of the uses of the subjunctive in European languages:
- Iru! (Go!)
- Mi petis, ke li venu. (I asked him to come.)
- Li parolu. (Let him speak.)
- Ni iru. (Let's go.)
- Benu ĉi tiun domaĉon (Bless this mess.)
- Mia filino belu! (May my daughter be beautiful!)
Aspect
Verbal aspectGrammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
is not grammatically required in Esperanto. However, aspectual distinctions may be expressed via participles (see below), and the Slavic aspectual system survives in two aktionsart
Aktionsart
The lexical aspect or aktionsart of a verb is a part of the way in which that verb is structured in relation to time. Any event, state, process, or action which a verb expresses—collectively, any eventuality—may also be said to have the same lexical aspect...
affixes, perfective
Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...
(often inceptive) ek- and imperfective
Imperfective aspect
The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future...
-adi. Compare,
- Tiu ĉi interesis min (This interested me)
and,
- Tiu ĉi ekinteresis min kaj montris al mi, ke ... (This caught my interest and showed me that ...).
Various prepositions may also be used as aktionsart prefixes, such as el (out of), used to indicate that an action is performed to completion or at least to a considerable degree, also as in Slavic languages. In,
- Germanan kaj francan lingvojn mi ellernis en infaneco (I learned French and German in childhood),
the verb el-lern-is is past tense (-is), and performed to significant completion (el-).
The copula
The verb esti (to be) is both the copula and the existential ("there is") verb. As a copula linking two noun phraseNoun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
s, it does not cause either to take the accusative case. Therefore, unlike the situation with other verbs, word order with esti can be semantically important: compare hundoj estas personoj (dogs are people) and personoj estas hundoj (people are dogs).
It is becoming increasingly common to replace esti-plus-adjective with a verb: la ĉielo estas blua or la ĉielo bluas (the sky is blue). This is a stylistic rather than grammatical change in the language, as the more economical verbal forms were always found in poetry.
Participles
ParticipleParticiple
In linguistics, a participle is a word that shares some characteristics of both verbs and adjectives. It can be used in compound verb tenses or voices , or as a modifier...
s are verbal derivatives. In Esperanto, there are half a dozen forms, which retain the vowel of the related verbal tense. In addition to carrying aspect, participles are the principal means of conveying voice, with two paradigms, active
Active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages....
(performing an action) and passive
Passive voice
Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. Passive is used in a clause whose subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb. That is, the subject undergoes an action or has its state changed. A sentence whose theme is marked as grammatical subject is...
(receiving an action).
Adjectival participles
The basic principle of the participles may be illustrated with the verb fali (to fall). Picture Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff. Before gravity kicks in (after all, this is a cartoon), he is falonta (about to fall). As he drops, he is falanta (falling). After he impacts the desert floor, he is falinta (fallen).Active and passive pairs can be illustrated with the transitive verb haki (to chop). Picture a woodsman approaching a tree with an axe, intending to chop it down. He is hakonta (about to chop) and the tree is hakota (about to be chopped). While swinging the axe, he is hakanta (chopping) and the tree hakata (being chopped). After the tree has fallen, he is hakinta (having chopped) and the tree hakita (chopped).
Adjectival participles agree with nouns in number and case, just as other adjectives do:
- ili ŝparis la arbojn hakotajn (they spared the trees that were to be chopped down).
Compound tense
Compound tenses are formed with the adjectival participleAdjectival participle
Adjectival participles are participles which are derived from verbs and which are used like adjectives. They contrast with verbal participles, which are considered to be forms of verbs rather than adjectives. In English for instance, adjectival participles may appear with modifiers typical of...
s plus esti (to be) as the auxiliary verb. The participle reflects aspect and voice, while the verb carries tense:
- Present progressive: mi estas kaptanta (I am catching [something]), mi estas kaptata (I am being caught)
- Present perfect: mi estas kaptinta (I have caught [something]), mi estas kaptita (I have been caught)
- Present prospectiveProspectiveProspective literally means "looking forward". It can also refer to an event that is likely or expected to happen in the future. For example, a prospective student is someone who is considering attending a school — typically a high school student who is seriously considering applying to a...
: mi estas kaptonta (I am going to/about to catch), mi estas kaptota (I am going to be/about to be caught)
These are not used as often as their English equivalents. For "I am going to the store", you would normally use the simple present mi iras in Esperanto.
The tense and mood of esti can be changed in these compound tenses:
- mi estis kaptinta (I had caught)
- mi estus kaptonta (I would be about to catch)
- mi estos kaptanta (I will be catching).
Although such periphrastic constructions are familiar to speakers of most European languages, the option of contracting [esti + adjective] into a verb is often seen for adjectival participles:
- mi estas kaptinta or mi kaptintas (I have caught)
- mi estis kaptinta or mi kaptintis (I had caught)
The most common of these synthetic forms are:
| Simple verb | Progressive | Perfect | Prospective | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Present tense | mi kaptas (I catch) |
mi kaptantas (I am catching) |
mi kaptintas (I have caught) |
mi kaptontas (I am about to catch) |
| Past tense | mi kaptis (I caught) |
mi kaptantis (I was catching) |
mi kaptintis (I had caught) |
mi kaptontis (I was about to catch) |
| Future tense | mi kaptos (I will catch) |
mi kaptantos (I will be catching) |
mi kaptintos (I will have caught) |
mi kaptontos (I will be about to catch) |
| Conditional mood | mi kaptus (I would catch) |
mi kaptantus (I would be catching) |
mi kaptintus (I would have caught) |
mi kaptontus (I would be about to catch) |
Infinitive and jussive forms are also found. There is a parallel passive paradigm.
Nominal participles
Participles may be turned into adverbs or nouns by replacing the adjectival suffix -a with -e or -o. This means that, in Esperanto, some nouns may be inflected for tense.A nominal participle indicates one who participates in the action specified by the verbal root. For example, esperinto is a "hoper" (past tense), or one who had been hoping. (In the early years of the language, such forms were assumed to be masculine, but that is no longer the case.)
Adverbial participles
Adverbial participleAdverbial participle
Adverbial participles are built out of a verb , and in most cases they play the role of the sentence element called adverbial in the grammar of some languages...
s are used with subjectless clauses:
- Kaptinte la pilkon, li ekkuris golen (Having caught the ball, he ran for the goal).
Conditional and tenseless participles (unofficial)
Occasionally, the participle paradigm will be extended to include conditional participles, with the vowel u (-unt-, -ut-). If, for example, in our tree-chopping example, the woodsman found that the tree had been spiked and so couldn't be cut down after all, he would be hakunta and the tree hakuta (he, the one "who would chop", and the tree, the one that "would be chopped").This can also be illustrated with the verb prezidi (to preside). Just after the recount of the 2000 United States presidential election:
- then-president Bill ClintonBill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
was still prezidanto (current president) of the United States, - president-elect George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
was declared prezidonto (president-to-be), - the previous president George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
was a prezidinto (former president), and - the contending candidate Al GoreAl GoreAlbert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
was prezidunto (would-be president – that is, if the recount had gone differently).
Note that this example is somewhat artificial, since the customary word for 'president' (of a country) is the tense-neutral word prezidento, which is officially a separate root, not a derivative of the verb prezidi. However, prezidanto is typically used for the presidents of organizations other than sovereign countries, and prezidinto is used for former presidents in such contexts.
The conditional forms are infrequent, but their regular derivation ensures that they can be readily understood, even if rarely needed. No European language has conditional participles; in English, words like prezidunto must be expressed periphrastically, as in the title of Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King
The Man Who Would Be King
For the 1975 film based on this story, see The Man Who Would Be King "The Man Who Would Be King" is a short story by Rudyard Kipling. It is about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan...
.
Likewise, some Esperantists have proposed a tenseless participle, though only for active-participle role. The element -ento is not officially a participle or even a separate morpheme, but it is very common and is sometimes regarded as a suffix. It frequently occurs in words for occupations where one would not wish to specify tense, such as prezidento or studento (student). Since there is often a verb derived from the same Latin root, in these cases prezidi (to preside) and studi (to study), this -ento has occasionally been proposed as a tense-neutral active participle by analogy with the temporal participles -anto, -into, -onto.
However, even if the participial paradigm were to be extended in this way, it would be asymmetric in that there can be no direct passive counterpart to *-ento because the expected -eto already exists as the diminutive suffix. The nearest equivalent is the middle voice suffix -iĝi, which is commonly used as a generic passive. Unlike the active case, where a few new nouns like prezidento were sufficient to avoid making the language overly specific, a need for a neutral passive participle was felt in the verbs. For example, there was heated debate for several decades as to whether "I was born in 19xx" should be mi estis naskita (I had been born) or mi estis naskata (literally 'I was being born'), with the French and Germans generally holding opposite opinions deriving from usage in their native languages. Today, people sidestep the issue with the temporally neutral mi naskiĝis (I was born).
Negatives
A statement is made negative by using ne or one of the negative (neni-) correlatives. Ordinarily, only one negative word is allowed per clause:- Mi ne faris ion ajn. I didn't do anything.
Two negatives within a clause cancel each other out, with the result being a positive sentence.
- Mi ne faris nenion. Mi ja faris ion. It is not the case that I did nothing. I did do something.
The word ne comes before the word it negates, with the default position being before the verb:
- Mi ne skribis tion (I didn't write that)
- Ne mi skribis tion (It wasn't me who wrote that)
- Mi skribis ne tion (It wasn't that that I wrote)
The latter will frequently be reordered as ne tion mi skribis depending on the flow of information.
Questions
"Wh" questions are asked with one of the interrogative/relative (ki-) correlatives. They are commonly placed at the beginning of the sentence, but different word orders are allowed for stress:- Li scias, kion vi faris (He knows what you did.)
- Kion vi faris? (What did you do?)
- Vi faris kion? (You did what?)
Yes/no questions are marked with the conjunction ĉu (whether):
- Mi ne scias, ĉu li venos (I don't know whether he'll come)
- Ĉu li venos? (Will he come?)
Such questions can be answered jes (yes) or ne (no) in the European fashion of aligning with the polarity of the answer, or ĝuste (correct) or malĝuste (incorrect) in the Japanese fashion of aligning with the polarity of the question:
- Ĉu vi ne iris? (Did you not go?)
- — Ne, mi ne iris (No, I didn't go); — Jes, mi iris (Yes, I went)
- — Ĝuste, mi ne iris (Correct, I didn't go); — Malĝuste, mi iris (Incorrect, I did go)
Note that Esperanto questions may have the same word order as statements.
Conjunctions
Basic Esperanto conjunctionsGrammatical conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
are kaj (both/and), aŭ (either/or), nek (neither/nor), se (if), ĉu (whether/or), sed (but), anstataŭ (instead of), krom (besides, in addition to), kiel (like, as), ke (that). Like prepositions, they precede the phrase or clause they modify:
- Mi vidis kaj lin kaj lian amikon (I saw both him and his friend)
- Estis nek hele nek agrable (it was neither clear [sunny] nor pleasant)
- ĉu pro kaprico, ĉu pro natura lingvo-evoluo (whether by whim, or by natural language development)
- Li volus, ke ni iru (he would like us to go)
However, unlike prepositions, they allow the accusative case, as in the following example from Don Harlow
Don Harlow
Donald Harlow was an active Esperantist and former president of Esperanto-USA , and also former editor of ELNA's magazine Esperanto USA. He authored a self-published book on the Esperanto movement, The Esperanto Book, which is...
:
- Li traktis min kiel princon (He treated me like a prince: that is, as he would treat a prince)
- Li traktis min kiel princo (He treated me like a prince: that is, as a prince would treat me)
Interjections
InterjectionInterjection
In grammar, an interjection or exclamation is a word used to express an emotion or sentiment on the part of the speaker . Filled pauses such as uh, er, um are also considered interjections...
s may be derived from bare affixes or roots: ek! (get going!), from the perfective prefix; um (um, er), from the indefinite/undefined suffix; fek! (shit!), from feki (to defecate).
Word formation
- Main article: Esperanto word formation
Esperanto derivational morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
uses a large number of lexical and grammatical affixes (prefixes and suffix
Suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs...
es). These, along with compounding, decrease the memory load of the language, as they allow for the expansion of a relatively small number of basic roots into a large vocabulary. For example, the Esperanto root vid- (see) regularly corresponds to several dozen English words: see (saw, seen), sight, blind, vision, visual, visible, nonvisual, invisible, unsightly, glance, view, vista, panorama, observant etc., though there are also separate Esperanto roots for a couple of these concepts.
Numerals
The cardinal numeralsNumber names
In linguistics, number names are specific words in a natural language that represent numbers.In writing, numerals are symbols also representing numbers...
are:
- nul (zero)
- 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)
These are grammatically numerals, not nouns, and as such do not take the accusative case suffix. However, unu (and only unu) is sometimes used adjectivally or demonstratively, meaning "a certain", and in such cases it may take the plural affix -j, just as the demonstrative pronoun tiu does:
- unuj homoj
- "certain people";
- ili kuris unuj post la aliaj
- "they ran some after others".
In such use unu is irregular in that it doesn't take the accusative affix -n in the singular, but does in the plural:
- ian unu ideon
- "some particular idea",
but
- unuj objektoj venis en unujn manojn, aliaj en aliajn manojn
- "some objects come into certain hands, others into other hands".
Additionally, when counting off, the final u of unu may be dropped, as if it were a part-of-speech suffix:
- Un'! Du! Tri! Kvar!
Higher numbers
At numbers beyond the thousands, the international roots miliono (million) and miliardo (milliard) are used. Beyond this there are two systems: A billionLong and short scales
The long and short scales are two of several different large-number naming systems used throughout the world for integer powers of ten. Many countries, including most in continental Europe, use the long scale whereas most English-speaking countries use the short scale...
in most English-speaking countries is different from a billion in most other countries (109 vs. 1012 respectively; that is, a thousand million vs. a million million). The international root biliono is likewise ambiguous in Esperanto, and is deprecated for this reason. An unambiguous system based on adding the Esperanto suffix -iliono to numerals is generally used instead, sometimes supplemented by a second suffix -iliardo:
- 106: miliono
- 109: miliardo (or mil milionoj)
- 1012: duiliono
- 1015: duiliardo (or mil duilionoj)
- 1018: triiliono
- 1021: triiliardo (or mil triilionoj)
- etc.
Note that these forms are grammatically nouns, not numerals, and therefore cannot modify a noun directly: mil homojn (a thousand people [accusative]) but milionon da homoj (a million people [accusative]). An unambiguous international system is also provided by the metric prefixes
SI prefix
The International System of Units specifies a set of unit prefixes known as SI prefixes or metric prefixes. An SI prefix is a name that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a decadic multiple or fraction of the unit. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to the unit symbol...
, and the nonce numerals meg (miliono) and gig (miliardo) are occasionally derived from them: meg homojn (a million people).
Compound numbers and derivatives
Numerals are written together as one word when their values are multiplied, and separately when their values are added (dudek 20, dek du 12, dudek du 22). Ordinals are formed with the adjectival suffix -a, quantities with the nominal suffix -o, multiples with -obl-, fractions with -on-, collectives with -op-, and repetitions with the root -foj-.- sescent sepdek kvin (675)
- tria (third [as in first, second, third])
- trie (thirdly)
- dudeko (a score [20])
- duobla (double)
- kvarono (one fourth, a quarter)
- duope (by twos)
- dufoje (twice)
The particle po is used to mark distributive numbers, that is, the idea of distributing a certain number of items to each member of a group. Consequently the logogram
Logogram
A logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
@ is not used (except in email addresses, of course):
- mi donis al ili po tri pomojn or pomojn mi donis al ili po tri (I gave them three apples each).
Note that particle po forms a phrase with the numeral tri and is not a preposition for the noun phrase tri pomojn, so it does not prevent a grammatical object from taking the accusative case.
Comparisons
Comparisons are made with the adverbial correlatives tiel ... kiel (as ... as), the adverbial roots pli (more) and plej (most), the antonym prefix mal-, and the preposition ol (than):- mi skribas tiel bone kiel vi (I write as well as you)
- tiu estas pli bona ol tiu (this one is better than that one)
- tio estas la plej bona (that's the best)
- la mia estas malpli multekosta ol la via (mine is less expensive than yours)
Implied comparisons are made with tre (very) and tro (too [much]).
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 (The more people, the smaller the portions)
- Des pli bone! (All the better!)
Word order
Esperanto has a fairly flexible word order. However, word order does play a role in Esperanto grammar, even if a much lesser role than it does in English. For example, the negative particle ne generally comes before the element being negated; negating the verb has the effect of negating the entire clause (or rather, there is ambiguity between negating the verb alone and negating the clause):- mi ne iris 'I didn't go'
- mi ne iris, mi revenis 'I didn't go, I came back'
- ne mi iris 'it wasn't me who went'
- mi iris ne al la butiko sed hejmen 'I went not to the shop but home'.
However, when the entire clause is negated, the ne may be left till last:
- mi iris ne 'I went not'.
The noun phrase
Within a noun phrase, either the order adjective–noun or noun–adjective may occur, though the former is somewhat more common. Less flexibility occurs with numerals and demonstratives, with numeral–noun and demonstrative–noun being the norm, as in English.- blua ĉielo ~ ĉielo blua 'a blue sky'
- tiu ĉielo ~ ĉielo tiu 'that sky'
- tiu blua ĉielo ~ tiu ĉielo blua ~ blua ĉielo tiu 'that blue sky'
- sep bluaj ĉieloj ~ sep ĉieloj bluaj ~ ĉieloj bluaj sep 'seven blue heavens'
The last (numeral after noun) is practically unheard of outside poetry. Demonstratives such as tiu are rather uncommon after a noun as well, used there primarily for emphasis (plumo tiu 'that pen'). Even possessive pronouns strongly favor initial position, though the opposite is well known from Patro nia 'Our Father' in the Paternoster
Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...
.
Adjective–noun order is much freer. With simple adjectives, adjective–noun order predominates, especially if the noun is long or complex. However, a long or complex adjective typically comes after the noun, in some cases parallel to structures in English, as in the second example below:
- homo malgrandanima kaj ege avara 'a petty and extremely greedy person'
- visaĝo plena de cikatroj 'a face full of scars'
- ideo fantazia sed tamen interesa 'a fantastic but still interesting idea'
Adjectives also normally occur after correlative nouns. Again, this is one of the situations where adjectives come after nouns in English:
- okazis io stranga 'something strange happened'
- ne ĉio brilanta estas diamanto 'not everything shiny is a diamond'
Changing the word order here can change the meaning, at least with the correlative nenio 'nothing':
- li manĝis nenion etan 'he ate nothing little'
- li manĝis etan nenion 'he ate a little nothing'
With multiple words in a phrase, the order is typically demonstrative/pronoun–numeral–(adjective/noun):
- miaj du grandaj amikoj ~ miaj du amikoj grandaj 'my two great friends'.
However, the article la comes almost exclusively at the front of the noun phrase except, rarely, in poetry:
- la ĉielo blua, la blua ĉielo, la blua 'the blue sky'; rarely blua la ĉielo, ĉielo blua la, blua la.
Because of adjectival agreement, an adjective may be separated from the rest of the noun phrase without confusion. For example, in
- Me estas certa, ke brilan vi havos sukceson 'I am certain that you will have a brilliant success',
the subject and verb, vi havos, interrupt the noun phrase brilan sukceson. However, though occasionally found in poetry, such constructions are generally foreign to the language.
In prepositional phrases, the preposition is required to come at the front of the noun phrase (that is, even before the article la), though it is commonly replaced by turning the noun into an adverb:
- al la ĉielo 'to the sky' or ĉielen 'skywards', never *ĉielo al
Constituent order
Constituent order within a clause is generally free, apart from copular clauses.The default order is subject–verb–object, though any order may occur, with subject and object distinguished by case, and other constituents distinguished by prepositions:
- la hundo ĉasis la katon 'the dog chased/hunted the cat'
- la katon ĉasis la hundo
- ĉasis la hundo la katon
- ĉasis la katon la hundo
- la hundo la katon ĉasis
- la katon la hundo ĉasis
Context is required to tell whether la hundo ĉasis la katon en la ĝardeno means the dog chase a cat which was in the garden, or there in the garden the dog chased the cat. These may be disambiguated with la hundo ĉasis la katon, kiu estis en la ĝardeno and en la ĝardeno, la hundo ĉasis la katon. Of course, if it chases the cat into the garden, the case would change: la hundo ĉasis la katon en la ĝardenon, en la ĝardenon la hundo ĉasis la katon, etc.
Within copulative clauses, however, there are restrictions. Copula
Copula
In linguistics, a copula is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate . The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a link or tie that connects two different things.A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case...
s are words such as esti 'be', iĝi 'become', resti 'remain', and ŝajni 'seem', for which neither noun phrase takes the accusative case. In such cases only two orders are generally found: noun-copula-predicate and, much less commonly, predicate-copula-noun.
(That is, the copula intervenes between the two noun phrases, unless context or punctuation/intonation disambiguate:
- Homo, mi estas. Anĝelo, mi estas ne. 'A man/human I am. An angel I am not.')
Generally, if a characteristic of the noun is being described, the choice between the two orders is not important:
- sovaĝa estas la vento 'wild is the wind', la vento estas sovaĝa 'the wind is wild'
However, la vento sovaĝa estas is unclear, at least in writing, as it could be interpreted as 'the wild wind is', leaving the reader to ask, 'is what?'.
With two nouns, complications can arise. Sometimes context makes clear; demonstratives and articles, for example, usually occur only in the subject:
- tiu viro estas bruto ~ bruto estas tiu viro 'that man is a brute'.
However, as noted above, there is a huge difference between saying generically 'dogs are people' and 'people are dogs'. In such cases the first noun is read as the subject, as in English. Similarly,
- glavoj iĝu plugiloj 'let swords become ploughs'
is the opposite sentiment of
- plugiloj iĝu glavoj 'let ploughs become swords'
Attributive phrases and clauses
In the sentence above, la hundo ĉasis la katon, kiu estis en la ĝardeno 'the dog chased the cat, which was in the garden', the relative pronounRelative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
kiu 'which' is restricted to a position after the noun 'cat'. In general, relative clause
Relative clause
A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun phrase, most commonly a noun. For example, the phrase "the man who wasn't there" contains the noun man, which is modified by the relative clause who wasn't there...
s and attributive prepositional phrases follow the noun they modify.
Attributive
Attributive
In grammar, an attributive is a word or phrase within a noun phrase that modifies the head noun. It may be an:* attributive adjective* attributive noun* attributive verbor other part of speech....
prepositional phrases, which are dependent on nouns, include genitives (la libro de Johano 'John's book') as well as la kato en la ĝardeno 'the cat in the garden' in the example above. Their order cannot be reversed: neither *la de Johano libro nor *la en la ĝardeno kato is possible. This behavior is more restrictive than prepositional phrases which are dependent on verbs, and which can be moved around: both ĉasis en la ĝardeno and en la ĝardeno ĉasis are acceptable for 'chased in the garden'.
Relative clauses are similar, in that they are attributive and are subject to the same word-order constraint, except that rather than being linked by a preposition, the two elements are linked by a relative pronoun
Relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
such as kiu 'which':
- fuĝis la kato, kiun ĝi ĉasis 'the cat which it chased fled'
- mi vidis la hundon, kiu ĉasis la katon 'I saw the dog which chased the cat'
Note that the noun and its adjacent relative pronoun do not agree in case. Rather, their cases depend on their relationships with their respective verbs. However, they do agree in number:
- fuĝis la katoj, kiujn ĝi ĉasis 'the cats which it chased fled'
Other word orders are possible, as long as the relative pronoun remains adjacent to the noun it depends on:
- fuĝis la kato, kiun ĉasis ĝi 'the cat which it chased fled'
- vidis mi la hundon, kiu la katon ĉasis 'I saw the dog which chased the cat'
Because of this word-order constraint, Esperanto is restricted to an SVO order in relative clauses when the linking noun is the subject of the verb, but to an OVS order when it is the object. Compare
- Jen la kato, kiu manĝis la raton, kiu manĝis la muson, kiu manĝis la fromaĝon, kiu estis en la domo konstruita de Ĝak
- 'Here is the cat which ate the rat which ate the mouse which ate the cheese which was in the house that Jack built'
and
- Putra estis la fromaĝo, kiun manĝis la rato, kiun mortigis la kato, kiun vidis Johano
(also la fromaĝo, kiun manĝis la rato, kiun mortigis la kato, kiun vidis Johano, estis putra)
- 'The cheese, which was eaten by the rat, which was killed by the cat, which John saw, was rotten'.
In the latter, English requires passive verb constructions, but this is not necessary in Esperanto.
Clause order
Coordinate clauses allow flexible word order, but tend to be iconicIconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
. For example, in
- la hundo ĉasis la katon kaj la kato fuĝis 'the dog chased the cat and the cat fled',
the inference is that the cat fled after the dog started to chase it, not that the dog chased a cat which was already fleeing. For the latter reading, the clause order would be reversed:
- la kato fuĝis, kaj la hundo ĉasis ĝin 'the cat fled, and the dog chased it'
This distinction is lost in subordinate clauses such as the relative clauses in the previous section:
- la hundo ĉasis la katon, kiu fuĝis 'the dog chased the cat which fled'
In written English, a comma disambiguates the two readings, but both require a comma in Esperanto.
Non-relative subordinate clauses are similarly restricted. They follow the conjunction
Grammatical conjunction
In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each...
ke 'that', as in,
- Me estas certa, ke vi havos brilan sukceson 'I am certain that you will have a brilliant success'.
Non-(Indo-)European aspects
There is very little about Esperanto that is not European in origin. Although it is billed as a neutral international language, its vocabulary, syntaxSyntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, and semantics
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....
derive predominantly from European national languages. Roots are typically Romance
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
or Germanic
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
in origin. The semantics shows a significant Slavic
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
influence.
It is often claimed that there are elements of the grammar which are not found in these language families. Frequently mentioned is Esperanto's agglutinative morphology
Agglutination
In contemporary linguistics, agglutination usually refers to the kind of morphological derivation in which there is a one-to-one correspondence between affixes and syntactical categories. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative languages...
based on invariant morphemes, and the subsequent lack of ablaut (internal inflection of its roots), which Zamenhof himself thought would prove alien to European speakers. Ablaut is an element of all the source languages; an English example is song sing sang sung. However, the majority of words in all European languages inflect without ablaut, as cat, cats and walk, walked do in English. (This is the so-called strong
Strong inflection
A strong inflection is a system of verb conjugation or noun/adjective declension which can be contrasted with an alternative system in the same language, which is then known as a weak inflection. The term strong was coined with reference to the Germanic verb, but has since been used of other...
–weak
Weak inflection
In grammar, the term weak is used in opposition to the term strong to designate a conjugation or declension when a language has two parallel systems...
dichotomy.) Historically, many European languages have expanded the range of their 'weak' inflections, and Esperanto has merely taken this development closer to its logical conclusion, with the only remaining ablaut being frozen in a few sets of semantically related roots such as pli, plej, plu (more, most, further), tre, tro (very, too much), and in the verbal morphemes -as, -anta, -ata; -is, -inta, -ita; -os, -onta, -ota; and -us. (This system can be extended further, with conditional participles -unta and -uta derived from the conditional mood in -us.)
Other features often cited as being nonstandard for a European language, such as the dedicated suffixes for different parts of speech, or the -o suffix for singular nouns, actually do occur in European languages such as Russian. More pertinent is the accusative plural in -jn, which is derived through leveling
Morphological leveling
In linguistics, morphological leveling is the generalization of an inflection across a paradigm or between words. For example, the extension of the form is to persons such as I is and they is in some dialects of English is leveling, by analogy with a more frequent form, as is the reanalysis of...
of standard European grammatical structures. The Esperanto nominal–adjectival paradigm as a whole is taken from Greek: Esperanto nominative singular muso (mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
) vs. Greek mousa (muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
), nominative plural musoj vs. Greek mousai, and accusative singular muson vs. Greek mousan. (Latin
Latin declension
Latin is an inflected language, and as such has nouns, pronouns, and adjectives that must be declined in order to serve a grammatical function. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and...
and Lithuanian
Lithuanian declension
Declension in the Lithuanian language is quite sophisticated in a way similar to declensions in ancient Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit, Latin or Ancient Greek. It also is one of the most complicated declension systems among modern Indo-European and modern European...
had very similar setups, with [j] in the plural and a nasal in the accusative.) However, Esperanto does not have a discrete accusative plural suffix analogous with Greek mous-ās; rather, it compounds the simple accusative and plural suffixes: mus-o-j-n. This morphology does not occur as more than a marginal element in any of Esperanto's source language families, and is formally similar to European but not Indo-European Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
—that is, it is similar in its mechanics, but not in use. None of these proposed "non-European" elements of the original Esperanto proposal were actually taken from non-European or non-Indo-European languages, and any similarities with those languages are accidental.
Perhaps the best candidate for a "non-European" feature is the blurred distinction between roots and affixes. Esperanto derivational affixes may be used as independent root words and inflect for part of speech like other roots. This occurs only sporadically in other languages of the world, Indo-European or not. For example, ismo has an English equivalent in "an ism", but English has no adjectival form ("ismic"?) equivalent to Esperanto isma. For most such affixes, natural languages familiar to Europeans must use a separate root, such as English "member" for Esperanto ano, "quality" for eco, "tendency" for emo, etc.
East Asian languages may have had some influence on the development of Esperanto grammar after its creation. The principally cited candidate is the replacement of predicate adjectives with verbs, such as la ĉielo bluas (the sky is blue) for la ĉielo estas blua and mia filino belu! (may my daughter be beautiful!) for the mia filino estu bela! mentioned above. This is a regularization
Regularization (linguistics)
In linguistics, regularization is a phenomenon in language acquisition and language development, whereby irregular forms in morphology, syntax, etc., are replaced by regular ones. Examples are "gooses" instead of "geese" in child speech and replacement of the Middle English plural form for "cow",...
of existing grammatical forms and was always found in poetry; if there has been an Asian influence, it has only been in the spread of such forms, not in their origin.
Sample text
The Pater noster, from the first Esperanto publication
Unua Libro
The Unua Libro was the first publication to describe the international language Esperanto . It was first published in Russian on July 26, 1887 in Warsaw, by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. Over the next few years editions were published in Russian, Hebrew, Polish, French, German,...
in 1887, illustrates many of the grammatical points presented above, and should be readable to those familiar with it without translation:
- Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉieloj,
- sanktigata estu Via nomo.
- Venu Via regno,
- fariĝu Via volo,
- kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.
- Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
- Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
- kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj.
- Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
- sed liberigu nin de la malbono.
- (Ĉar Via estas la regno kaj la potenco
- kaj la gloro eterne.)
- Amen.
The morphologically complex words (see Esperanto word formation) are:
| sanktigata | |||
| sankt- | -ig- | -at- | -a |
| holy | causative | passive participle |
adjective |
| "being made holy" | |||
| fariĝu | ||
| far- | -iĝ- | -u |
| do | middle voice |
jussive |
| "be done" | ||
| ĉiutagan | |||
| ĉiu- | tag- | -a | -n |
| every | day | adjective | accusative |
| "daily" | |||
| ŝuldantoj | |||
| ŝuld- | -ant- | -o | -j |
| owe | active participle |
noun | plural |
| "debtors" | |||
| liberigu nin | ||||
| liber- | -ig- | -u | ni | -n |
| free | causative | jussive | we | accusative |
| "free us" | ||||
| la malbono | |||
| la | mal- | bon- | -o |
| generic article |
antonym | good | noun |
| "evil" | |||
External links
A fairly good overview of Esperanto's grammar and word-building system can be gained by viewing:- "The Sixteen Rules of Esperanto"
- "The Esperanto Correlatives"
- "Word Building With Esperanto Affixes"
- "Esperanto Grammar", by Jirka Hana
- The Esperanto Teacher by Helen Fryer (on Project Gutenberg)
- An Elementary Esperanto Primer (by Daniel M. Albro) and Grammar and Dictionary at MIT
- Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko ("A Complete Handbook of Esperanto Grammar"), by Bertilo Wennergren
- Dr. Esperanto's international language introduction and complete grammar, by L. L. Zamenhof (Alternative link)