Chapter 2 – Esperanto Basics (Part II)2 min read

This is very much a work in progress. I am unfortunately spending more time researching and writing this than I am learning the language.

1. Nouns (Section I)

   1. Pronouns (Lesson 1)

      Pronouns end in ‘i’, click as do base verbs, find but these can be distinguished from verbs due to their shortness:

      • Singular
        • mi – I
        • vi – you
        • li – he
        • si – she
        • gi – it
      • Plural
        • ni – we
        • ili – they
        • oni – indefinite pronoun – no gender, personhood, or numbers assumed (as all above pronouns)

   2. Gender Specificity in Nouns (Lesson 2)

      There are a group of nouns that have an explicit/implicit gender association such as father or daughter which, of course, would be male and female respectively. All Esperanto base nouns that assume a gender, as such, are either neuter or male (depending on context) in their base form. Patro = father or parent (depending on context). To make these nouns to explicitly be in their female form you add the ‘in’ suffix.

      • boy/girl : knabo/knabino
      • brother/sister: frato/fratino
      • father/mother: patro/patrino
      • grandfather: avo/avino
      • husband/wife: edzo/edzino
      • man/woman viro/virino
      • sir/madame/Mr/Mrs (married/formal?):  sinjoro/sinjorino
      • Mr/Miss (unmarried/familiar?) – fraulo/fraulino
      • son/daughter: filo/filino
      • uncle/aunt: onklo/onklino

      If you wish to explcitly remove gender association use ‘ge’ before a base noun to remove gender (ge patro = parent). If you want to specifically make the word male you can add the ‘vir’ prefix (virpatro = father), although this form is not commonly used. (see Wiktionary List of male gendered nouns)

2. Verbs (Section II)

   1. Verbs from the Previous Chapter

      • to eat – mangi
      • to give – doni
      • to go (to) – veturi
      • to like – sati
      • to love – ami
      • to pick up (an object) – kolekti
      • to play (with something) – ludi
      • to see – vidi
      • to walk – marsi
      • to want – voli

   2. Adding Infinitive Verbs

      Verbs in there base form are called ‘infinitive verbs’ which can be combined with verbs in other tenses for use; an example of such would be the following English sentence ‘I want to walk home.’, in Esperanto it would be ‘Mi volas marsi hejmo.’

   3. New Verbs

      • to bake – baki
      • to decide – decidi
      • to have – havi
      • to hurry – rapidi
      • to learn – lerni
      • to love – ami
      • to teach – instrui
      • to understand – kompreni
      • to work – labori