The Esperanto Accusative: What -n Does and Why Word Order Stops Mattering
Everything else in Esperanto is easier than the language you came from. This one thing is not, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.
The rule itself is small: add -n to the direct object of the verb.
Mi vidas la . - I see the person.
La homo vidas . - The person sees me.
gains an -n when it is the thing being seen, and loses it when it is the one doing the seeing. becomes for the same reason.
You already do this, on a handful of words
English marks the object too. It just gave up on almost every word:
| Subject | Object |
|---|---|
| I | me |
| he | him |
| she | her |
| we | us |
| they | them |
You would never say him saw I. That instinct is the accusative, alive and well in English pronouns. What English lost was the marking on nouns: the cat is the cat whether it is doing the seeing or being seen, and English compensates by fixing the word order instead.
Esperanto simply kept the ending, and applies it to every noun, adjective and pronoun without exception.
What it buys you: word order stops mattering
This is the payoff, and it is a real one.
In English, position is the only thing distinguishing these two sentences:
The dog bit the man.
The man bit the dog.
Same words. Different events. English cannot let you move them.
In Esperanto the ending carries it, so every one of these means the dog bit the man:
La hundo mordis la .
La mordis la hundo.
Mordis la hundo la .
has the -n, so is what got bitten, wherever it sits in the line. That freedom is why Esperanto poetry and translation work as well as they do: a writer can front whatever deserves the stress without the grammar collapsing.
Adjectives and plurals agree
Everything describing the object gets marked too. The plural -j goes first, then the -n:
| Form | Meaning |
|---|---|
| the good person (subject) |
| the good person (object) |
| the good people (subject) |
| the good people (object) |
It looks like a lot of -jn. In practice it is one decision made twice, and it means an adjective can be separated from its noun by half a sentence and still be unambiguous.
The -n has four jobs, not one
Marking the direct object is the first job and by far the commonest, the one you meet in nearly every sentence. But it is not the only one. The same ending does three more things, each quick to learn once the object is automatic:
- movement towards a place, when it follows a preposition;
- measure - how much, how far, how long, how old;
- time - a date or moment, when the preposition is dropped.
None of them is a new rule to memorise so much as the same ending pointed at a different job. Here are the other three.
Job two: movement towards
This one is elegant enough to be worth learning early.
After a preposition of place, -n changes position into direction:
Without -n | With -n |
|---|---|
| Mi estas . (in the house) | Mi iras . (into the house) |
| Ĝi estas . (on the table) | Mi metas ĝin . (onto the table) |
| Li staras . (in front of the door) | Li iras . (to in front of the door) |
English has in / into and on / onto, then runs out. There is no under-to or behind-to, so English falls back on phrases like to underneath the table. Esperanto handles every preposition the same way, with the same ending, forever.
Job three: measurement and extent
The -n also marks how much - a quantity, a price, a weight, a distance, a duration or an age. This one surprises people, because nothing is being acted upon. It is not a direct object at all; it is an adverbial of measure, and Esperanto happens to mark it with the same ending.
Ĝi estas du alta. - It is two metres tall.
La libro kostas dek . - The book costs ten euros.
Li restis tri . - He stayed three days.
Mi atendis unu . - I waited one hour.
Nothing here is being seen, taken or hit. tells you the extent of the tallness, the size of the cost, the length of the stay. The test from job one - what is being verbed? - comes back empty, and that emptiness is the signal you are looking at a measure rather than an object. The working question here is different: if the phrase answers by how much, how far, how long or how old, it takes -n.
Job four: time and date
Esperanto normally marks a point in time with a preposition - for a clock time, for a stretch of it. Drop the preposition and -n steps in to do exactly the same work:
Mi venos . - I'll come on Monday.
Ni renkontiĝos la venontan . - We'll meet next week.
Ni vojaĝos la dekkvinan de decembro. - We'll travel on the fifteenth of December.
and mean the same thing; the accusative is simply the preposition-free version, and , and are all correct. The -n form is the crisp, idiomatic one for dates and appointments. Note that the whole time phrase agrees exactly as an object would: , dekkvinan , with the -n on the words that carry the date rather than on , which sits behind .
The mistake everyone makes
Forgetting it. Specifically, forgetting it on the second noun in a longer sentence, after the concentration has gone into the first.
Two things help.
The first is to stop thinking of -n as a grammatical chore and start hearing it as part of the meaning: -n is the receiving end. Whatever the verb lands on wears it.
The second is that the test is mechanical. Ask what is being verbed? Whatever answers that question takes -n. There is no gender to check, no declension class, no irregular list. One question, one ending.
What to take away
The ending does four jobs:
- Object.
-nmarks the direct object: - Movement. After a place preposition,
-nmeans towards: - Measure.
-nmarks extent - quantity, price, distance, duration, age: - Time. With the preposition dropped,
-nmarks a point in time:, on Monday;dekkvinan, on the fifteenth of December.
It is the only part of Esperanto that will feel like grammar homework, and it is one ending with no exceptions in any of its jobs. A fortnight of noticing it and it stops being a decision.