Esperanto · Chapter 22 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Who decides what is correct Esperanto?
The Fundamento of 1905 and its untouchability, the Akademio and its ten official word-list additions, the PIV / PMEG / ReVo reference stack, and how the language grew without an authority crisis.
The short version
The constitution with deliberate errors
The Fundamento de Esperanto (1905) is the untouchable constitution of the language - and Zamenhof insisted it stay untouchable even with its mistakes, because a stable foundation matters more than a perfect one. New words join through official additions on top; ten such lists exist, the latest from 2023. The rules never moved. That bargain is why Esperanto still has one community and not forty dialects.
la fundamento devas resti severe netusxebla
Your reference stack, sorted
PIV is the big dictionary, PMEG the grammar commentary everyone actually reads, ReVo the free dictionary with citations, Tekstaro the corpus that settles arguments about real usage. The Fundamento is the constitution, usage is the parliament, PMEG is the well-thumbed commentary. When two disagree, usage wins - the Akademio itself mostly describes rather than decrees.
PMEG diras: ambaux formoj estas bonaj.
That's the gist. The full article goes deeper - more examples, the edge cases, the why - and the practice below scores like a vocabulary session and earns the same XP.
Read the full article · 13 min readPractice
Practise this lesson
35-question session
One question at a time, mixed across the exercises in this lesson. Miss one and it comes back round before the end.
Esperanto · Free printables
Worksheets for this lesson
Worksheets with answer keys built in. Open any one to view, print or save.
Free for members
The printable worksheets, infographics and PDFs are free with an account. Start a free week and download as many as you like.
Start your free weekLesson 14 of 21 in this chapter