Adjectives

The adjectival ending is -a, e.g.

• bela – beautiful
• granda frato – big brother
• malgranda fratino – little sister

Cases

Esperanto nouns have two cases, nominative and accusative. The accusative is used to show the object of a transitive verb (the person or thing affected by the action of the verb).

• Kiun mi vidas? – Whom do I see?
• Mi vidas amikon – I see a friend.

Do not use the accusative after the verb "to be" or its equivalents.

Adjectives agree with the nouns they qualify: they take the same -j and -n endings.

• Vi estas bona amiko – You're a good friend.
• Vi estas bonaj amikoj – You're good friends.
• Vi havas bonan amikon – You have a good friend.
• Vi havas bonajn amikojn – You have good friends.

Esperanto expresses other case relationships through the use of prepositions. The English possesive is rendered by de:

• La libroj de mia frato. – My brother's books.

Conjugation

Base form: -i

• labori – to work

Present tense: -as

• mi laboras – I work
• vi laboras – You work
• li/ŝi laboras – He/she works
• ni laboras – We work
• ili laboras – They work

Past tense: -is

• mi laboris – I worked.
• vi laboris – You worked.
• li/ŝi laboris – He/she worked.
• ni laboris – We worked.
• ili laboris – They worked.

Future tense: -os

• mi laboros – I will work.
• vi laboros – You will work.
• li/ŝi laboros – He/she will work.
• ni laboros – We will work.
• ili laboros – They will work.

The conjuction ke

is used to introduce a noun clause. Unlike its English equivalent "that"

1. it cannot be omitted, and
2. it is usually preceded by a comma.

Examples:

• Vi vidas ke mi manĝas. – You see that I'm eating.
• Li diras ke li iros. – He says he'll go.

The prefix mal-

changes the meaning of a word to its opposite.

• bona – good
  • malbona – bad
• granda – big, great
  • malgranda – little, small
• bela – beautiful
  • malbela – ugly

The prefix ge-

denotes both sexes together:

• gefratoj – brothers and sisters
• gepatroj – parents

Polite expressions

• bonvolu – please, be so good as to
• dankon – thank you
• saluton – hello, hi

Word order

The usual order of words in the sentence is subject-verb-object, as in English. However, since the accusative ending -n of the object makes it clear which is the subject and which the object, word order can be varied for stylistic or pragmatic purposes, very much more readily in Esperanto than in English.

• Mi legas libron. – I'm reading a book.
• Libron mi legas. – (A book is what I'm reading.)

Kio, Kion

Kio means "what", as subject of the sentence:

• Kio estas tio? – What's that?
• Kio estas sur la tablo? – What is on the table?

Where "what" is the object of the verb, the Esperanto equivalent is Kion:

• Kion vi faras? – What are you doing?
• Kion ŝi diris? – What did she say?