Home • About • Contact
Login • Page Content • Site Map

Search
GH.com   GH.com dir
Wikipedia   Web

Exploring Esperanto and Esperanto words.

• Intro
• Glossary
• Links

Intro

Esperanto is probably the most famous constructed language. The basic rules and words of Esperanto were proposed by L. L. Zamenhof (b. 1859- d. 1917). The ISO 639 codes for Esperanto are eo and epo.

Here are some of the basics of the language via Lernu.net.

• The Esperanto alphabet is like English except that Esperanto removed 3 letters: W, X, or Y, but added 6 letters: Ĉ Ĝ Ĥ Ĵ Ŝ Ŭ. 
  • Vowels

    Letter	Sound Clarification	EG
    A	like a in father	ami - to love
    E	like e in pet	egala - equal
    I	like i in machine	infano - infant
    O	like o in November	oro - gold
    U	like oo in moose	urbo - city

  • Consonants

    Letter	Sound Clarification	EG	Notes
    B	like English b	bela - beautiful
    C	like English ts	celo - goal
    Ĉ	like ch in church	ĉokolado - chocolate	Ĉ - Ĉ and ĉ - ĉ
    D	like English d	doni - to give
    F	like English f	facila - easy
    G	like g in gay	granda - large
    Ĝ	like g in gem	ĝui - to enjoy	Ĝ - Ĝ and ĝ - ĝ
    H	like English h	horo - hour
    Ĥ	like ch in Scottish loch	ĥoro - choir
    J	like y in young	juna - young
    Ĵ	like s in pleasure	ĵurnalo - daily newspaper	Ĵ - Ĵ and ĵ - ĵ
    K	like English k	kafo - caffee
    L	like English l	lando - country
    M	like English m	maro - sea
    N	like English n	nokto - night
    P	like English p	paco - peace
    R	trilled like Spanish r	rapida - fast
    S	like English s	salti - to jump
    Ŝ	like English sh	ŝipo - ship	Ŝ - Ŝ and ŝ - ŝ
    T	like English t	tago - day
    Ŭ	like English w	aŭto - car
    V	like English v	vivo - life
    Z	like English z	zebro - zebra

• The accent is always on the next to last vowel of a word. EG: vivo - life.
• All nouns end with O. EG: hundo - dog.
• Plural nouns end in OJ. EG: hundoj - dogs.
• The definite article is LA. EG: la hundo - the dog.
• There is no indefinite article. EG: hundo - a dog.
• Personal pronouns. Possessive pronouns end in A. EG: mia - my.

  	First Person	Second Person	Third Person
  Singular	mi - I	vi - you	li - he ŝi - she ĝi - it
  Plural	ni - we		ili - they
  Other	oni - one indefinite pronount		si - himself, herself, itself, themselves reflexive pronoun

• Direct objects end with N. EG: La hundo amas la katon. - The dog loves the cat.
• Adjectives end with A. EG: facila - easily.
• Adverbs end with E or are independent words. EG: facile - easily. EG: nun - now.
• There are 10 prefixes that changes the meaning of the word. EG: malbela - ugly.
• There are 32 suffixes that changes the meaning of the word. EG: hundeto - small dog.
• Verbs
  • Infinitives end in I. EG: skribi - to write.
  • Past tenses (preterites) end in IS. EG: skribis - wrote.
  • Present tenses end in AS. EG: skribas - write/writes.
  • Future tenses end in OS. EG: skribos - will write.
  • Conditional forms/moods end in US. EG: skribus - would write.
  • Command forms (volitive moods) end in U. EG: skribu - write!
• Comparison. Three words are used in comparison: pli - more, pleb - most, and ol - than. EGs:
  • granda - large
  • pli granda - larger
  • plej granda - largest
  • La tablo estas pli granda ol la seĝo. - The table is larger than the chair.
• Possession is expressed with DE, possessive pronouns or certain corrlatives. EG: La hundo de la knabo. - the boy's dog.
• Prepositions are their own words. The direction of a preposition may be indicated by ending the word in N. EG:
  • Hundo saltas sur la tablo. - A dog jumps on the table.
  • Hundo saltas sur la tablon. - A dog jumps onto the table.
• Numbers. Only multiples of tens and hundreds form one word. Ordinals end in A. EG: unua -first
  • 0 - nul
  • 1 - unu
  • 2 - du
  • 3 - tri
  • 4 - kvar
  • 5 - kvin
  • 6 - ses
  • 7 - sep
  • 8 - ok
  • 9 - naŭ
  • 10 - dek
  • 20 - dudek
  • 100 - cent
  • 1000 - mil
  • 2000 - du mil
• Questions all contain correlatives, ĈU (for yes and no questions), ĈI (for closeness, EG: tie ĉi - here), and AJN (for ...ever, EG: kiam ajn - whenever). Correlatives have 5 beginnings and 9 endings, plus. EG: Kio estas tio? - What is that?

  Beginning	Meaning		Ending	Meaning
  ki-	what		-o	thing
  ti-	that		-u	one, or person
  i-	some		-a	kind of, sort of
  ĉi-	every		-el	manner, in ... way
  neni-	no		-e	place
  			-am	time
  			-om	quantity (amount)
  			-al	reason, for ... reason
  			-es	one's, pserson's

• Negation is done by putting NE in front of the negated word. Variants include the NENI correlative.
• There are six types of participles (a word that presents an action as a property or state of something) in Esperanto. In contrast English has two: present participles (EG: writ-ing) and past participles (EGs: writt-en, clos-ed).

  	Active Participles	Passive Participles
  happening now	-ant-	-at-
  already happened	-int-	-it-
  will happen	-ont-	-ot-

Glossary

kaj

and.

jes

yes.

ne

no.

Links

Here are links that lead to off-site pages about Languages.

• Esperantic.org. Esperantic Studies Foundation.
• Esperanto [W]
• Esperanto.net. For Esperanto pages in different languages.
• Interlingua [W].
  • 'a constructed language based on words that are common to the major West-European languages and on a simplified Anglo-Romance grammar. It was first published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association and is sometimes called Interlingua de IALA to distinguish it from the other uses of the word.'
  • The ISO 639 codes for Internlingua are ia and ina.
  • Interlingua is second to Esperanto but I would think that Interlingua would be easier to understand and learn.
• Lernu.net. Learn Esperanto.
  • The Esperanto alphabet. Including phonetic soundings.
• tejo.org. Worldwide Organization of Young Esperantists.
• UEA.org. Universal Esperanto Association.
• USEJ.org. Usona Esperantista Junularo. U.S. Esperanto Youth Group.
• http://www.bydg.pdi.net/~turismo/iso3/enkodigo.html.

2007-10-23 02:41:33Z