Esperanto Prepositions: da, je, po and the Ones English Has No Word For

Most Esperanto prepositions are the easiest thing in the language. Each one has a single fixed meaning that never drifts, and none of them governs a case, so the noun after it just sits there in its plain form: kun la amiko, sen mono, pri la libro, sub la tablo. There is no list of which preposition each verb demands, because the meaning tells you.

That covers about twenty of them. This article is about the handful that do not behave, and about one general rule.

The general rule: no case, except direction

A noun after a preposition never takes -n. The only exception is direction, where -n turns a position into movement towards it - en la domo (in the house) against en la domon (into the house). The accusative article owns that rule; this one just needs you to remember it exists, and to note that al and el already mean towards and out of, so they never take it. Mi iras al la urbo is right. Mi iras al la urbon is not.

You can also stack prepositions when one is not precise enough: de sur la tablo (from off the table), el inter la arboj (out from between the trees). Esperanto lets you, and it is neater than the paraphrase.

da against de

Da is the quantity preposition. It links a word that measures to the stuff being measured:

iom da akvo - some water

peco da pano - a piece of bread

multe da homoj - a lot of people

kiom da tempo - how much time

De handles everything else, and it handles a lot: possession (la libro de mia patro), origin (mi venas de la urbo), and the doer of a passive verb (skribita de mia patrino, which the passive article goes into).

Three things follow from that split, and all three are places learners slip.

No la after da. Da introduces an indefinite mass. Multe da homoj is fine; multe da la homoj is not. When the set is definite, you want el: multaj el la homoj, many of the people. The same goes for parts of a known whole - parto de la libro, not da.

No -n inside a da phrase. The preposition blocks it, as always. Mi trinkis multe da akvo - akvo stays plain even though the drinking lands on it.

A bare numeral needs nothing at all. Tri libroj, not tri da libroj. The numbers article covers the counting side of this.

There is a long-running quarrel about glaso da akvo versus glaso de akvo. The useful version of it: da measures, so glaso da akvo is a glassful of water, a quantity. If you mean the object itself, the glass that water goes in, you want glaso por akvo. I have never seen glaso de akvo do useful work.

je, the official shrug

Rule 14 of the Fundamento says two things. First, that every preposition has a definite and constant meaning. Second, that when you need a preposition and none of the meanings fits, you use je, which has no meaning of its own.

That is an unusually honest piece of language design. Zamenhof could see that prepositions are where invented languages leak, and rather than pretend otherwise he built a drain.

In practice je has settled onto a short list:

The same rule offers an escape hatch: where je would go, you may use a bare accusative instead. La trian horon and je la tria horo are both correct.

My advice is to use je sparingly and with a slightly guilty conscience. Every time you reach for it, check whether pri, per, al or ĉe would have said something sharper. Usually one of them would.

po and its arithmetic

Po distributes. It stands in front of a number, and it means that the number applies to each member of a group rather than to the group as a whole.

Tri infanoj ricevis du librojn. - Three children got two books. Two books, in total.

Tri infanoj ricevis po du librojn. - Three children got two books each. Six books.

That is the whole idea, and it is genuinely useful: English needs a floating each or apiece that can land in several places in the sentence and mean different things.

Two traps. The first is putting po in front of the people: po la infanoj is wrong, because po attaches to the quantity, never to the recipients. The second is the accusative. There is a real dispute here, and I will take a side rather than hedge. Some writers treat po as an ordinary preposition and leave the noun plain (ricevis po du libroj), on the grounds that Esperanto prepositions never take -n. Others treat po as a quantity word attached to the number, so the phrase as a whole is still the object of the verb and marks itself normally (ricevis po du librojn). The second is the majority practice and the one I would write: the books are what got received, and the sentence reads better when it says so.

al, de and the ones that overlap

Al is direction and the indirect object at once, which is one job more than English gives to. Mi donis la libron al mia frato. It also lives inside a lot of verbs where English has nothing: plaĉi al (la libro plaĉas al mi, I like the book, literally the book pleases to me), helpi al, respondi al. And it works as a prefix: alveni, to arrive; aliri, to approach.

De is the opposite problem: it does too much. Possession, origin and passive agent in one word means la amo de la patro can be the father's love or love for the father. Esperantists disambiguate with more precise words when it matters - el for out of, ekde for from a point in time onwards, disde for separation from. Ekde is now thoroughly normal; disde is rarer and still reads as slightly technical. There is also an unofficial far for the passive agent, which is not in the Fundamento and annoys a lot of people; rewrite with oni instead and the problem evaporates.

anstataŭ, krom, malgraŭ

Anstataŭ is instead of, and it is one of the four prepositions that can take an infinitive directly (with por, krom and antaŭ ol): Anstataŭ labori, li dormis.

Malgraŭ is despite, and it takes a noun phrase: Malgraŭ la nokto, ni marŝis. For a clause you need the standard workaround, which is worth learning as a pattern because it works for every preposition: insert tio and hang a ke-clause off it.

Malgraŭ tio, ke li estis laca, li laboris. - Despite the fact that he was tired, he worked.

Pro tio, ke ni ne havis monon, ni restis hejme. - Because we had no money, we stayed at home.

Krom is the awkward one, and it is awkward in the language itself rather than only for learners. It means both except and besides, which are opposites:

Ĉiuj krom li venis. - Everyone except him came.

Krom li, venis ankaŭ ŝi. - Besides him, she came too.

Context usually settles it, and there is a reliable habit that settles it always: if you mean in addition, put ankaŭ in the main clause, as above. If you mean except, a negative or a totality nearby (ĉiuj, neniu, nenio) does the job, and escepte de is available when you want to be unmistakable.

What to take away

• Prepositions have fixed meanings and take no case. Only direction adds -n.
• Da for quantity, de for possession, origin and agent. No la after da.
• Je is the official no-meaning preposition. Use it for clock time and little else.
• Po goes before the number and distributes it: po du librojn, two each.
• For a clause after a preposition, use prep + tio, ke.
• Krom is ambiguous by design. Ankaŭ disambiguates it upwards, a negative downwards.