Esperanto · Chapter 3 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
Participles: -anta, -inta, -onta
One verb, nine participles, all regular. This is where Esperanto's tense system pays out: leganta, leginta and legonta tell you when, without an auxiliary in sight.
The short version
The participle vowel is the tense vowel
Three active participles, one per tense, running on the vowels you already know from -as, -is and -os. -ant- is doing it now, -int- has done it, -ont- is about to. Each then takes an ordinary part-of-speech ending, so the root leg- gives you leganta, leginta and legonta as adjectives, leganto, leginto and legonto as nouns, and three more as adverbs. Nine words, one root, nothing memorised separately.
leganta, leginta, legonta
A participle swallows a whole relative clause
This is what participles are actually for. Take la knabo, kiu legas la libron, drop kiu and the finite verb, and put the participle in its place: la knabo leganta la libron. The adverb form does the same to a time clause, so kiam mi finis la laboron, mi dormis becomes fininte la laboron, mi dormis. Used sparingly it tightens the prose. Used on every line it reads like a legal notice.
Fininte la laboron, mi dormis.
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