Esperanto Correlatives Table: All 45 Words on One Grid

Esperanto builds all 45 of its question, pointing, some-, every- and no- words from fourteen pieces: five beginnings and nine endings. Learn the pieces and you can build any of them, and decode one you have never seen.

• Kiam vi venos? - When will you come?
• Mi neniam venos. - I will never come.

The grid

Cross a beginning with an ending and every cell is predictable. The grid is split in two to fit a phone.

ki-, ti- and i-

ĉi- and neni-

That is 45 words from fourteen pieces. English keeps fragments of the same grid (where, there, nowhere) but sound change broke the rest: nothing in when tells you never.

Reading a correlative you have never seen

Break it into its two pieces and read them in order:

In sentences:

• Li nenial koleris. - He got angry for no reason.
• Mi trinkis ĉiom. - I drank all of it.
• Petro havas fraton; ties domo estas granda. - Peter has a brother; the brother's house is big.

Ties points at the last-named person (the brother), where lia domo could also mean Peter's.

The ones you will use daily

You do not meet these 45 evenly. These carry most of the weight:

The question column has its own page, question words, and the pointing column is demonstratives.

Which ones change, and how

The ending decides whether a correlative can take -j and -n:

The -u and -a words behave like adjectives, because they are adjectives:

• Mi legas tiajn librojn. - I read books like that.

The -o words never take -j, because an unnamed thing is not counted:

• Mi vidis nenion. - I saw nothing.

The -om column: kiom, tiom, iom and da

On its own, kiom asks how much:

• Kiom ĝi kostas? - How much does it cost?

Put a noun after any -om word and Esperanto inserts da, the preposition for quantities. One kiom da covers both how much and how many:

Iom has drifted into everyday use as a softener meaning a bit:

• Mi estas iom laca. - I am a bit tired.

The quantity article has the full da rule.

The -es column: kies and possession

Esperanto has no apostrophe-s. Ownership goes through de or the -es column, and -es words never take -j or -n:

• Kies libro estas tio? - Whose book is that?
• Mi ne scias, kies ĝi estas. - I do not know whose it is.
• Kies libron vi prenis? - Whose book did you take? (the -n goes on the noun, not on kies)

ĉi: the missing this-series

There is no this-series in the table. The particle ĉi pulls a ti- word towards the speaker:

123

1. 1ĉi tie
2. 2tie
3. 3tie

The cafe by the speaker is ĉi tie, here; the shop across the road and the church on the hill are both plain tie, there.

• Ĉi tiu libro estas mia. - This book is mine.
• Tiu ĉi libro estas mia. - This book is mine. (the older order, common in Zamenhof)

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Cover the grid and build the whole neni- row from the endings alone.
2. Write one sentence each with ĉiam, neniu and tie.
3. Read correlatives in prose for how they pair up: tiam... kiam, tiel... kiel.

See also

• Question words - the ki- column in full, with kiun and kion.
• Demonstratives - tiu, tio and ĉi.
• Personal pronouns - mi, vi, li, ŝi: the pronouns the table does not cover.
• Quantity - da after the -om words.