The Tricky Prepositions: je, po and the Accusative of Direction

The prepositions survey makes the general case: each Esperanto preposition has one fixed meaning, none governs a case, and about twenty of them are consequently the easiest thing in the language. This article is the depth piece on the corners that bite - je, the preposition with no meaning at all; po, whose arithmetic everyone gets wrong once; the scope question hiding inside anstataŭ and krom; and the -n of direction, which turns any preposition of place into a preposition of arrival. (Da had its own reckoning in quantity; it is not re-tried here.)

je: the wildcard, on purpose

Rule 14 of the Fundamento makes two promises. Every preposition has a definite, constant meaning - and when no meaning fits, you use je, which has none. Most language designers would have quietly stretched an existing preposition and hoped nobody noticed; Zamenhof instead labelled the overflow pipe and made it official. It is the single most honest decision in the grammar, and it exists because prepositions are exactly where a planned language would otherwise start to rot - every natural language jams its leftover relations into some overworked little word (at three o'clock, good at chess, ill at ease), and the jamming is arbitrary. Esperanto's arbitrary bucket at least announces itself.

A century of use has settled je onto a short, learnable list:

je la tria horo - at three o'clock. Clock time is je's biggest job.

pli alta je unu kapo - taller by a head. The measured difference.

mi kredas je Dio - I believe in God. Kredi takes je for belief-in.

li tenis min je la mano - he held me by the hand. Grabbing, holding, pulling by a part.

je via sano! - to your health. The fixed phrases.

Two pieces of discipline keep je respectable. First, it is a last resort, not a comfort blanket: before writing it, check whether pri, per, al or ĉe would say something sharper, because one of them usually would, and seasoned readers clock lazy je the way you would clock someone who answered every question with "it depends". Second, do not invent new je uses; the wildcard is only understood where convention has already filled it in. The same rule 14 offers an escape in the other direction: wherever je would go, a bare accusative is equally correct - la trian horon means exactly je la tria horo, and the time expressions article leans on that swap throughout.

po: distribute the number

Po shares an amount out. It stands immediately before a number, and it says that the number applies to each member of a group, not to the group in total:

Tri infanoj ricevis du pomojn. - Three children received two apples. Two apples in total, and presumably an argument.

Tri infanoj ricevis po du pomojn. - Three children received two apples each. Six apples, no argument.

The rule that prevents every classic mistake: po modifies the number, and nothing else. English each floats around the sentence (they each got two, they got two each) and learners try to float po the same way - onto the recipients (po la infanoj, wrong), onto the verb, anywhere but where it belongs. It is glued to the numeral. If you cannot see a number (or a numberish quantity like po iom, a bit each), po has no business in the sentence. The same logic runs the rate readings: po dek kilometroj en horo is ten kilometres per hour - the po distributing the ten over the hours.

Then the famous dispute, which deserves the honest version. Does the noun after po take -n when the phrase is an object? Zamenhof wrote al ĉiu el la infanoj mi donis po tri pomoj in the Fundamento's own exercises - po as a true preposition, blocking -n like any other. Most modern writers reason instead that po belongs to the numeral rather than governing the noun, so the phrase as a whole is still the object of the verb and marks itself normally: ili ricevis po du pomojn. PMEG, surveying a century of both, declines to condemn either - and so do we, though the house style takes the side the survey article already took: write the -n, because the apples are what got received. What you should not do is treat either form as an error when you meet it. This is one of Esperanto's very few genuinely unsettled points, and pretending otherwise would be marketing.

anstataŭ and krom: whose role?

Anstataŭ (instead of) and krom (except / besides) look like ordinary prepositions and mostly behave like them. The depth question they hide is one of scope: when the sentence has both a subject and an object, which one does the replacement or exception apply to?

Li skribis la leteron anstataŭ mi. - He wrote the letter instead of me: in my place. I was meant to do the writing.

Ŝi invitis lin anstataŭ min. - She invited him instead of me. I am the one who went uninvited.

The plain pronoun reads as a stand-in for the subject; the -n moves the replacement to the object role. This is not the ordinary no-accusative-after-prepositions rule being broken - it is a deliberate disambiguation device, sanctioned by PMEG precisely because anstataŭ mi alone cannot tell you who would have done what. Krom works identically: mi vidis ĉiujn krom lin - I saw everyone except him; he went unseen, so he wears the object's -n. Where no object exists there is nothing to disambiguate, and the plain form is all you need: ĉiuj krom mi dormis.

Krom carries a second ambiguity all of its own, flagged in the survey and worth pinning down properly here: it means both except and besides, which are close to opposites.

Ĉiuj krom li venis. - Everyone except him came. (He did not.)

Krom li, venis ankaŭ ŝi. - Besides him, she came too. (He did, and so did she.)

Context resolves most cases, and two habits resolve all of them. If you mean in addition, put ankaŭ in the main clause - it announces the besides reading before any doubt forms. If you mean except, a negative or a totality word (ĉiuj, neniu) nearby does the same job in the other direction. And when the stakes justify a longer word, the language keeps two unambiguous specialists: escepte de only ever means except, aldone al only ever means besides. Reaching for them is not defeat; it is what they are for.

The accusative of direction: en la domon

Prepositions of place tell you where something is. Add -n to the noun and they tell you where the motion ends up:

Mi estas en la domo. - I am in the house.

Mi kuris en la domon. - I ran into the house.

La kato saltis sur la tablon. - The cat jumped onto the table.

La muso kuris sub la liton. - The mouse darted under the bed (and is now there).

La birdo flugis inter la arbojn. - The bird flew in among the trees.

This is the accusative's second job, seen from the preposition's side. English burns a separate word on each contrast (in/into, on/onto) and then runs out - there is no under-to or between-to - so it leaves the mouse ran under the bed genuinely ambiguous: was it running about under there, or did it dart under? Esperanto marks the difference every time, with one ending: sub la lito is where the running happened, sub la liton is where it finished.

The boundary that keeps the rule tidy: prepositions that already mean direction never take it. Al is towards, el is out of, ĝis is up to - direction is their entire content, so -n would add nothing, and mi iras al la urbon is plainly wrong. The candidates for the direction -n are the position words: en, sur, sub, inter, apud, antaŭ, malantaŭ, ĉe and friends. (Trans takes it too, when the crossing lands you on the far side: salti trans la riveron.) The same -n builds the direction adverbs - hejmen, homeward; kien, whither - and that thread is picked up where it belongs, in the adverbs article's direction section.

What to take away

• Je is the official wildcard: clock times, measured differences, kredi je, holding by a part, the fixed phrases - and nothing new of your own invention. A bare accusative can always stand in for it.
• Po distributes a number across a group and is glued to the numeral: po du pomoj is two apiece. Never po la infanoj.
• The -n after po is a real, unresolved dispute: Zamenhof wrote po tri pomoj, modern majority practice writes po du pomojn, PMEG accepts both. We write the -n; mark nobody wrong.
• After anstataŭ and krom, a plain pronoun stands in for the subject, -n for the object: anstataŭ mi (my job), anstataŭ min (I got dropped).
• Krom means except and besides. Ankaŭ flags besides, a negative or ĉiuj flags except, and escepte de / aldone al are unmistakable.
• Place prepositions plus -n mean arrival: en la domon, sur la tablon, sub la liton. Al, el and ĝis never take it - they are direction already.

See also

• Prepositions - the survey this article deepens: the full system, da versus de, and the tio-ke workaround.
• The accusative - the -n ending itself, whose second job the direction rule is.
• Adverbs - the -en direction adverbs (hejmen, kien) built from the same -n.
• Quantity - da, the other preposition with a whole article to itself.
• Time expressions - je la tria in the wild, and the bare-accusative alternative.
• The -um wildcard - je's exact counterpart among the suffixes: the official piece with no meaning of its own.