Esperanto · Chapter 3 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Making and becoming: -ig- and -igx-
The pair of suffixes English speakers mix up for the longest. Boligi is to boil the kettle, boligxi is what the water does. Get these two straight and hundreds of verbs come free.
The short version
-ig- means cause it, -iĝ- means it happens
Put -ig- on any root and you get a transitive verb meaning make it so. Put -iĝ- on and you get an intransitive one meaning go into that state. Varma gives varmigi, to heat something, and varmiĝi, to get warm. Sidi gives sidigi, to seat someone, and sidiĝi, to sit down. Edzo gives edziĝi, to get married. One circumflex separates make it happen from it happened, so it is worth the keystroke.
Mi varmigis la akvon; la akvo varmiĝis.
Mi bolas la akvon is wrong, and here is why
Boli is intransitive in Esperanto. It is what boiling water does, not something you can do to water, so it cannot take an object at all. To boil water you need the causative: mi boligas la akvon. English hides the problem by using one verb on both sides of the fence, the water boils and I boil the water, which is exactly why English speakers walk into it. Every Esperanto root is fixed as transitive or intransitive for life.
Mi boligas la akvon.
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