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Esperanto 101

Basic things you should know about Esperanto (should you?):

  1. All nouns end in "o"; (amiko – friend, arbo – tree, birdo – bird, domo – house, hundo – dog, kato – cat, libro – book, strato – street, urbo – city, viro – man)
  2. The plural of a noun is formed by adding a "j"; (domoj -> houses, hundoj -> dogs)
  3. If a noun is the object of a sentence, add an "n"; (La birdo malamas la katon -> The bird hates the cat, La viro amas la hundon -> the man loves the dog)
  4. Adjectives end with an "a"; (longa -> long, seka -> dry ,nova -> new)
  5. Prefixes: mal-* -> the opposite (longa -> long, malonga -> short; amas -> love, malamas -> hate). There are other ones too.
  6. Suffixes: *-eto -> small (knabo -> boy, knabeto -> little boy, domo -> house, dometo -> cottage)
  7. Verb forms: Infinitives end in i. In the present tense, verbs always end in AS, in the past in IS, and in the future in OS. There are no irregular verbs! (esti = to be, mi estas -> I am, vi estas -> you are, mi estis -> I was, vi estis -> you were, mi estos -> I will be, vi estos -> you will be)
  8. Other verb forms: -us -> contidional ( estus -> would be ) , -u -> command form (estu silenta -> be quiet!)
  9. Adjectives become adverbs when you use the E ending instead. (silente -> silently, facile -> easily)
  10. Numbers:


    • nul zero
    • unu one
    • du two
    • tri three
    • kvar four
    • kvin five
    • ses six
    • sep seven
    • ok eight
    • na√Ö¬≠ nine

    The Esperanto word for ‘10' is dek. You can combine dek with other numbers…

    • dek unu (11)
    • dek na√Ö¬≠ (19)

    To create numbers up to ninety, put the number before dek.

    • dudek (20)
    • tridek (30)
    • okdek (80)
    • na√Ö¬≠dek (90)

    Now you can count up to 99…

    • dudek kvar (24)
    • okdek unu (81)
    • na√Ö¬≠dek na√Ö¬≠ (99)



taken from the quick and dirty esperanto guide and lernu.net

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