Metre: counting Esperanto syllables

Esperanto metre is counted, not argued. Every vowel is a syllable and the stress always falls on the second-last one, so a line either fits its pattern or does not. The craft is in the line endings and in rhymes that reach into the root.

This page builds on poetic Esperanto, which covers the apostrophe itself.

Counting syllables

Count the vowels: a, e, i, o, u. J and ŭ are consonants, so aj, oj, ej and aŭ add nothing:

Zamenhof's La Espero runs ten syllables a line. That is why its first stanza has an apostrophe:

Al la mond' eterne militanta

With mondo the line is eleven syllables; with mond' it is ten. The elision is there to fit, nothing more. De l' espero and de l' homaro in the later stanzas save a syllable the same way.

Strong and weak line endings

Because the stress is on the second-last syllable, every unelided word of two or more syllables ends on a weak beat:

• kanto, dormanto - weak ending (KAN-to, dor-MAN-to)
• fratar', mar' - strong ending (fra-TAR, MAR)

A line can end strong in two ways: on a one-syllable word (mi, nun), or on an elided noun. Grabowski's La Tagiĝo alternates strong and weak endings on purpose:

Agordu la brustojn, ho nia fratar',

Por nova, pli vigla jam kanto!

Ĝi sonu potence de montoj al mar',

Anoncu al ĉiu dormanto:

In the long lines the stress falls on syllables 2, 5, 8 and 11: a-GOR-du la BRUS-tojn, ho NI-a fra-TAR. The last stress lands on the final syllable only because fratar' is elided. La Espero does the opposite: every line ends weak, on words like sento and voko.