Language sketch: Esperanto

The artificial language artificial language Esperanto was created by a Polish Doctor Ludovic Zamenhof in 1887. He initially called the language simply la Lingvo Internacia (‘the international language’), but he wrote using the pseudonym Dr Esperanto and Esperanto quickly became the language’s accepted name.

Alphabet

Esperanto uses a Latin alphabet of 28 letters:

• 22 letters from the English alphabet (with no q, w, x and y).
  They are pronounced roughly the same as in English, except <c> (like <ts> in English bits and <j> (like <y> in English yes).
• 6 letters with diacritic marks (table 1). People sometimes replace 5 of these 6 these letters with digraphs involving either -h or -x, and drop the diacritic from the 6^th letter.

Table 1. Letters with diacritics

Vocabulary

The Esperanto vocabulary is drawn mainly from a range of European languages.

The 16 rules of Esperanto

Zamenhof’s 1^st publication on the language included a list of 16 rules, which remain in use to this day. I list them below, unchanged in substance though with some edits for clarity and brevity.

Parts of speech

1. The definite article is la, for all genders, numbers, and cases. There is no indefinite article.

2. Substantives are formed by adding –o to the root. For the plural, the letter –j must be added to the singular. There are two cases: the nominative and the objective (accusative). The root with the added –o is the nominative, the objective adds an –n after the –o.
Other cases are formed by prepositions:

• possessive (genitive) by de (‘of’), eg de la patro (of the father)
• dative by al (‘to’)
• instrumental (ablative) by kun (‘with’)
• or other preposition as the sense demands, eg por la patroj (‘for the fathers’)

3. Adjectives are formed by adding a to the root. The numbers and cases are the same as in substantives.
The comparative degree is formed by prefixing pli (‘more’); The word ‘than’ is rendered by ol, eg pli blanka ol neĝo (‘whiter than snow’).
The superlative is formed by prefixing plej (most).

4. Table 1 shows the cardinal numerals. Their forms do not vary.

Table 1. Cardinal numbers

The tens and hundreds are formed by simple junction of the numerals, eg kvincent tridek tri (‘533 ‘).

Other forms are derived from the cardinal numbers by adding a suffix to the cardinal (table 2).

Table 2. Other numeral forms

The ordinal suffix is the adjectival -a and the adverbial suffix is adverbial -e (see rule 7).

Zamenhof describes the form po used to create distributive numerals as a prefix, though it looks like the preposition po used for the same purpose in Slavonic languages and is written as a separate word.

5. The personal pronouns are: mi (‘I’); vi (‘thou, you’); li (‘he’); ŝi (‘she’); ĝi (‘it’); si (‘self’); ni (‘we’); ili (‘they’); oni, (‘one’, ‘people’, French on).

Possessive pronouns are formed by adding the adjectival suffix -a to the personal pronoun, eg mia (‘my, mine’). Pronouns decline in the same way as substantives, eg mi (‘I’) / min (‘me’) (objective form).

6. Table 3 shows verb forms, which do not vary by number or person.

Table 3. Verb forms

Table 4 shows the participle forms of verbs, both the adjectival forms (ending in -a) and the adverbial forms (in -e).

Table 4. Participles

All forms of the passive are rendered by the verb est (to be) with the present participle passive of the required verb, and using the preposition de (‘by’), eg ŝi estas amata de ĉiuj ‘she is loved by everyone’.

7. Adverbs are formed by adding e to the root.
The degrees of comparison are the same as in adjectives, eg mia frato kantas pli bone ol mi (‘my brother sings better than I [do]’).

8. All prepositions govern the nominative case.

General rules

9. Every word is to be read exactly as written. There are no silent letters.

10. The accent falls on the last syllable but one (penultimate).

11. Compound words are formed by the simple junction of roots (the principal word standing last).
Compound words are written as a single word, but, in elementary works, separated by a small line (‘).
Grammatical terminations are considered independent words (I’m not sure what Zamenhof meant by this statement—perhaps just that the suffixes can be separated by ‘ in elementary works).
The example he gives is vaporŝipo (‘steamboat’), composed of the roots vapor (‘steam’) and ŝip (‘a boat), with the substantival termination –o.

12. If there is one negative in a clause, a second is not admissible.

13. In phrases answering the question ‘where?’ (meaning direction), the words take the termination of the objective case, eg kien vi iras? (‘where are you going?’); domon, (‘home’); Londonon (‘to London’).

14. Every Esperanto preposition has a definite fixed meaning.
If it is not evident which preposition to use, the word je (with no definite meaning) is used. For example
ridi je tio, (‘to laugh at it’);
enuo je la patrujo (‘a longing for one’s fatherland’).
Zamenhof comments: ‘In every language different prepositions, sanctioned by usage, are employed in these dubious cases, in the international language, one word, je, suffices for all.’

When no confusion is to be feared, the objective without a preposition may be used instead of je.

15.  Words derived in ‘the greater number of languages’ from the same source conform to Esperanto spelling but undergo no other change. Derivatives of such words are formed using the rules of Esperanto, eg teatro (‘theatre’), teatra (‘theatrical’), not teatricala).

16. The –a of the article, and final –o of substantives may be sometimes dropped for euphony, and replaced by an apostrophe. eg de l’ mondo for de la mondo.

More about Esperanto

There are at least 5 museums about Esperanto, including one we have visited in Vienna. Museums of language and languages – Language Miscellany

There is an International Esperanto Association at https://uea.org/