Kilo Lingo

Esperanto · Chapter 19 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer

Apposition, and the affixes that are also words

La urbo Parizo and the case echo, sinjoro and doktoro before names, ni cxiuj - then the affixes standing alone: ilo, aro, ano, eta, ega, and reading a five-piece word from the right.

The short version

Two nouns for one thing take the same ending

La urbo Parizo, sinjoro Zamenhof, mia amiko Petro: no linking word, and resist the urge to insert de. Because both nouns fill the same slot, the accusative lands on both, so it is mi vidis la urbon Parizon and ĉu vi konas mian amikon Petron? This is the most-dropped -n in learner Esperanto, because English gives you nothing to drop. Two things switch the echo off: a preposition (en la urbo Parizo) and a name with no Esperanto ending (mi vidis sinjoron Smith).

Mi vidis la urbon Parizon.

I saw the city of Paris.

Nothing inside a built word is not a word

Every one of the forty official affixes is a full dictionary entry in its own right: ilo is a tool, aro a group, ano a member, estro a boss, igi to cause, iĝi to become. Affixes can even carry affixes, so estraro is a committee made of two suffixes and an ending with no root in it anywhere. The counter-trap is the false decomposition: eraro is one root and not er-ar-o, and centro is not cent-r-o. When the pieces give a meaning the word does not have, the word is not built.

vortaro, estraro, ilaro

a dictionary, a committee, a toolkit

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Lesson 8 of 22 in this chapter

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