Esperanto Word Endings: -o, -a, -e and -i

The last letter of an Esperanto word tells you what kind of word it is. A noun ends -o, an adjective -a, an adverb -e and a verb in the dictionary -i. Learn four letters and you can parse a sentence before you can translate it.

The four endings on one screen

Each ending at work in a sentence:

English gives you no such help. Record, present and content can each be a noun, a verb or an adjective, and only the sentence around them tells you which. Esperanto settles it in one letter.

The words with no ending

A small, closed set of short words carries none of these endings and is learned as it is: the pronouns, the numbers, la, and little words such as kaj, tre, nun and pro.

• Mi nun estas tre bona. - I am now very good. (nun and tre have no ending; bona does.)
• Mi kaj vi parolas nun. - You and I are talking now.

A few of them happen to end in a vowel (pro, tro, do). That vowel is part of the word, not an ending, and it never changes.

Read a sentence by its endings

Pick out the grammar of this line without knowing a single root:

• La bela lingvo estas tre granda. - The beautiful language is very big.

That is the skeleton of the sentence, recovered from endings alone. What is left to learn is vocabulary, which is the part a dictionary can hand you. (The -as that replaced -i is a tense ending: verb tenses has all five.)

One root, four words

The ending carries the part of speech, so the root never has to change to move between them:

The same root in four sentences:

• Ni volas paroli. - We want to speak.
• Lia parolo estis longa. - His speech was long.
• Ĝi estas parola lingvo. - It is a spoken language.
• Mi diris tion parole. - I said it orally (not in writing).

English needs good and well, two unrelated shapes for one idea. Esperanto needs bon- plus endings you already know: bona, bone, and bono (a good thing) thrown in. Two hundred roots are closer to eight hundred words, and you only learned the two hundred.

-a or -e: the one choice beginners hesitate over

Describing a noun? Use -a. Describing anything else (a verb, an adjective, a whole sentence)? Use -e.

English marks roughly the same split with -ly (a quick speaker, she speaks quickly). Esperanto is simply consistent about it.

The plural adds -j, on the adjective too

Nouns and adjectives take -j for the plural, after the -o or -a:

12

1. 1ruĝa pomo
2. 2tri ruĝaj pomoj

One red apple, three red apples: the -j goes on the adjective as well as the noun.

• La homoj estas bonaj. - The people are good.

The adjective agrees, so the -j appears twice. It feels like extra work for a week, then it is automatic. Say -oj like the oy in boy and -aj like eye: bonaj is roughly BO-nigh.

The object ending -n stacks on in the same way (bonajn homojn); nouns and adjectives covers it.

La never changes

La (the) has no ending to change: not for number, not for anything.

• La homo venis. - The person came.
• La homoj venis. - The people came.

There is no word for a at all: homo alone is a person. More in the article la.

Mistakes English speakers make

What to do next

1. Take five words from your last lesson and say each one's part of speech from its ending.
2. Build the -o, -a and -e of one root you know.
3. Read verb tenses: the five endings that replace -i.

See also

• Nouns and adjectives - the -j and -n that stack on -o and -a.
• Adverbs - the -e ending in full, and estas varme.
• Word building - the affixes that go between the root and the ending.