Correlatives in the Wild: The Table at Work

The correlatives table is the best afternoon's work in the language: five beginnings, nine endings, 45 words, every one decodable on sight. That article builds the grid and this one does not rebuild it. What follows assumes you can already read nenial cold and is about the separate skill nobody warns you about - using the things in a paragraph.

Because reciting a table is not the same as writing prose with it. In real Esperanto the correlatives are not a vocabulary list, they are the joinery: the words that hold one clause against another, pick up what was just said, point forward at what is coming and generally do the work that English spreads across which, that, who, whose, therefore, so, besides and a bagful of commas. Learn the grid, then learn the four or five shapes it makes.

The pairing habit: a ti- word holds the slot, a ki- word fills it

Here is the pattern that generates most of the article. A ti- word stands in the main clause holding a place open, and the matching ki- word opens the subordinate clause that says what goes in it. The two agree in category - place with place, time with time, thing with thing - and the whole thing reads like a socket and a plug.

Three observations, and then we can stop looking at the table.

The endings come from two different places, and you already know this rule. The -j on a ki- word comes from the noun it points back at, outside its clause; the -n comes from the job it does inside. Ĉio, kion li diris - kion is the object of diris, so it takes -n even though ĉio is the subject of estis vera. The subordinate clauses article sets out the relative-clause mechanics in full and this article does not repeat them; what belongs here is the habit of reaching for the pair.

The ti- half is often optional and usually worth keeping. Mi faros, kion vi diros is grammatical. Mi faros tion, kion vi diros is what most writers write, because the tion gives the main clause its object and stops the reader hanging. Drop it in short, obvious sentences; keep it whenever the main clause would otherwise look unfinished.

The direction -n runs right through the table. Tie is there, tien is to there; kie is where, kien is to where. It is the same accusative of direction the tricky prepositions article puts on en la domon, applied to a correlative, and it is the difference between I will stay where you are and I will go where you are going. English has to burn a preposition on this and half the time forgets.

The commonest error in the system: tio against tiu

If this article changes one thing about your Esperanto, let it be this one.

Tiu and kiu are for individuals - things you could count, point at, put a noun after. Tio and kio are for the abstract: a fact, an event, a situation, a whole preceding clause. English says that and which for both and gives you no practice at all, so the error is close to universal among English speakers and it is loud.

Li venis malfrue, kio ĝenis min. - He arrived late, which annoyed me.

The annoying thing was the lateness: an event, not a person, so kio. Write kiu there and you have said that a man annoyed you, which is a different complaint. The same split runs through the pointing side:

Li ne studis. Pro tio li ne sukcesis. - He did not study. Because of that he did not succeed.

Mi vidis tiun viron. - I saw that man.

And that first example opens the door to a family of connectives worth having as a set, because they are how Esperanto joins one sentence to the next. Take a preposition, add tio, and you have the English adverb:

Every one of them is built rather than learned, which is the whole argument for Esperanto in miniature. The one to watch is krom tio, since krom carries its own except-or-besides ambiguity; in this frozen connective it always means besides, and a nearby ankaŭ will settle any doubt.

The -es column: possession without a de-phrase

The -es words are the ones learners meet in the table and then never use, which is a waste, because they are doing real work: they replace a de phrase and they never inflect.

Kies is whose, and it turns up in questions and relative clauses alike:

Kies libro estas tio? - Whose book is that?

Mi trovis ĉapelon, sed mi ne scias, kies ĝi estas. - I found a hat, but I do not know whose it is.

La viro, kies filo venis, estas instruisto. - The man whose son came is a teacher.

La viro, kies libron mi legis, loĝas apud ni. - The man whose book I read lives next to us.

That last pair is the whole grammar of the column in two lines. Kies never changes - no -j, no -n, not ever - because it is a determiner and the endings belong to the noun in front of it. Kies filo is the subject of venis, so filo stays bare; kies libron is the object of legis, so libron takes the -n. You cannot get kies wrong. You can only get the noun after it wrong.

Ties points, and its quiet superpower is disambiguation. English says its or his and leaves you guessing which of two things is meant; ties specifically picks out the one just mentioned, roughly the way careful English says the latter's:

Mi vidis du domojn; ties pordo estis ruĝa. - I saw two houses; that one's door was red. (The second house.)

Li parolis pri sia frato kaj pri ties amiko. - He spoke about his brother and about that man's friend. (The brother's friend, not his own.)

The rest of the column completes the set and behaves identically: ĉies (everyone's), ies (someone's), nenies (nobody's). La decido estas ĉies afero - the decision is everybody's business. Tio estas nenies kulpo - that is nobody's fault. They are rarer than kies and ties, they never inflect either, and each of them saves you a clumsy de ĉiuj or de neniu.

tial, kial and the because trap

Tial and kial sit in the same row of the table and do completely different jobs, and English hides the difference under one word.

Tial means therefore, for that reason. It points backwards at a cause already on the page:

Li ne studis, tial li ne sukcesis. - He did not study, therefore he did not succeed.

Tial ke introduces the cause itself, meaning for the reason that:

Mi restis hejme tial, ke pluvis. - I stayed at home for the reason that it was raining.

That is a heavier construction than the everyday one, and the everyday one is ĉar: mi restis hejme, ĉar pluvis. Use tial, ke when you want the weight - when the reason is the point of the sentence rather than a background fact - and ĉar the rest of the time.

Kial asks. That is all it does: a direct question, or a reported one.

Kial vi venis? - Why did you come?

Ŝi demandis, kial mi ne venis. - She asked why I did not come.

What kial never means is because. English speakers reach for it there because why and because live next door in English, and the result (mi restis hejme, kial pluvis) is nonsense in a way that reads as broken rather than foreign. The questions article covers the ki- words as interrogatives; the point here is the boundary. Question words ask questions. Reason clauses take ĉar, or tial, ke when you are being emphatic.

Where the commas go

Esperanto punctuates subordinate clauses generously, and correlative clauses are subordinate clauses, so:

• A comma before every ki- clause. Including the short ones. Mi ne scias, kion fari. Mi ne scias, kie li estas. English never punctuates those and the omission is the single most visible English fingerprint on a learner's Esperanto.
• Commas at both ends when the clause sits in the middle. Tiu, kiu venis, estas mia amiko. Ĉio, kion li diris, estis vera. The main clause resumes after the second comma, and without it the reader has no idea where the insertion stopped.
• A comma after the clause when it comes first. Kiom ajn li provis, li ne sukcesis. Kiam li venis, ni manĝis.

Esperanto has no restrictive-versus-non-restrictive rule to worry about; it commas both, and if the distinction matters you make it with words. The full convention lives in subordinate clauses, and it is genuinely three lines long.

kiom ajn, tiom pli, and the quantity row in argument

The -om row earns a section of its own because it is where prose gets its intensity, and because ajn attaches most naturally here.

Kiom ajn concedes:

Kiom ajn mi provis, mi ne sukcesis. - However much I tried, I did not succeed.

Kiom ajn da mono li havas, li estas malfeliĉa. - However much money he has, he is unhappy.

Note the da surviving intact in the second one: ajn slots between the correlative and the da, changing nothing about the quantity grammar. The same shape works right along the ki- row - kiel ajn, kie ajn, kiam ajn, kiu ajn - and particle combinations is the article that takes ajn apart properly.

Tiom pli intensifies rather than concedes, and it is the near neighbour worth learning at the same moment so the two do not blur:

Li estas juna, kaj tiom pli forta. - He is young, and all the stronger for it.

Tiom pli bone! - So much the better.

And tiom, kiom is the plain comparison of amount, which is the workhorse: Mi laboris tiom, kiom mi povis - I worked as much as I could. Compare it with tiel, kiel, which compares manner rather than amount (faru tiel, kiel mi diris), and you have the two halves of the comparisons system that the correlative table supplies.

What to take away

• The correlatives' prose job is joinery: a ti- word holds a slot, the matching ki- word opens the clause that fills it. Learn the shapes tiu kiu, tio kio, ĉio kio, tie kie, tien kien, tiam kiam, tiel kiel, tiom kiom.
• The -j on a ki- word comes from its antecedent, the -n from its own clause.
• Tiu and kiu are for individuals; tio and kio for facts, events and whole clauses. Li venis malfrue, kio ĝenis min.
• Preposition plus tio builds the sentence connectives: pro tio, post tio, krom tio, malgraŭ tio, anstataŭ tio.
• The -es column replaces a de phrase and never inflects. Kies filo venis, kies libron mi legis - the endings go on the noun.
• Ties picks out the last thing mentioned, the way careful English says the latter's.
• Tial is therefore, tial ke is for the reason that, ĉar is the everyday because, and kial only ever asks.
• Comma before every ki- clause, at both ends when it is medial, however short it is.
• Kiom ajn concedes, tiom pli intensifies, tiom kiom compares amount and tiel kiel compares manner.

See also

• The correlatives table - the grid this article assumes and does not repeat.
• Particle combinations - ĉi, ajn, ju ... des and mem, the particles that ride on the table.
• Subordinate clauses - relative-clause mechanics in full, plus the three-line comma convention.
• Questions - the ki- words asking rather than joining.
• Comparisons - tiel kiel and tiom kiom as the language's comparison frames.
• Quantity - the da that survives inside kiom ajn da mono.
• Word order and style - what fronting a correlative signals, and the habits of readable Esperanto prose.