One Definite Article

 Esperanto's grammar is simple. There is no greater example of this than in the part of speech called the article.

In English, we have three articles - "a", "an", and "the". "The" is a definite article. "A" and "an" are indefinite articles. In other words, if you say "the table", you are referring to a specific table, but if you say "a table", which particular table doesn't matter.

We are lucky enough in English to only have to deal with these three. Spanish, which is supposedly the easiest foreign language for native English speakers to learn, has many more articles. In Spanish, one must not only distinguish between definite and indefinite, but also between gender and number. Esperanto, in contrast, only has one article, "la" which is the definite article.  Esperanto does not use an indefinite article.

Suppose I want to say, "The boys and the girl played a game with the dog." Let's just look at the nouns

1. The boys
2. the girl
3. a game
4. the dog

Translating these to Spanish, we would have

1. Los niños
2. la niña
3. un juego
4. el perro or la perra, depending whether the dog was male or female.

Translating instead to Esperanto, we have

1. La knaboj
2. la knabino
3. ludon
4. la hundo (male) or la hundino (female)

Notice that number and gender do not matter. To translate "the" we simply use la. Looking at #3 we can see that the English indefinite article "a" is not translated. "An", which is the indefinite article used before nouns which begin with a vowel sound, is not translated either. The full sentence in Esperanto: La knaboj kaj la knabino ludis ludon kun la hundo.

Esperanto, with only one article to remember, has an advantage over both English, Spanish, and many other languages.

Personal Pronouns / Personaj Pronomoj

Esperanto's personal pronouns are easy. Before we get to them, let's consider some of them in other languages.

Just how do you say "you" in Spanish? The answer is that it depends on how many people you are addressing and how familiar you are with them. Your choices are tú, usted, vosotros, ustedes, or vos. Vosotros is not used in all Spanish-speaking countries and vos is used even less. This can cause much confusion for non-native speakers.

French makes things a little easier. There are only tu and vous. Even with only two choices, it is easy to make mistakes. Vous can be both plural and singular but formal. Tu is always singular and always informal. Do I use tu with my lover, my pets, my children, my best friend? Again, the answer is "It depends." If you incorrectly use tu you may likely offend someone.

Italian can also be confusing. Italian also has an informal word, tu. The formal word is Lei. Lei can also mean "she".  Supposedly this is easy enough to figure out in context, due to Italian's complex system of verb endings. But do you really want to go to that much trouble?

Esperanto has a simple answer - vi (pronounced "vee"). Vi is used as singular you and plural you. You can confidently use vi with everyone you meet. Address a head of state as vi and you're not going to unintentionally offend anyone.

Esperanto does have another word for you, but ci (pronounced "tsee") is used the same way we use "thou" in English. That is, ci is used when praying or in poetry, but never in conversation.

Here are the personal pronouns in Esperanto:

Mi - I
Vi - You
Li - He
Ŝi - She
Ĝi - It
Oni - "One" or "they" or "people"
Ni - We
Ili - They

Pretty simple. Oni is the odd one out. This is used similarly to the French on. In sentences where "they" is not specific, oni is used.

"Our neighbors are evil. They killed our cat." - We would use ili in this case because "they" refers to the neighbors. In Esperanto: Niaj najbaroj estas malbonaj. Ili mortigis nian katon.

"They say cats have nine lives." - We would use oni here because "they" does not refer to someone specific. In Esperanto: Oni diras ke katoj havas naŭ vivojn.

Let's Count to Ten/ Ni Nombru ĝis Dek

1 - unu
2 - du
3 - tri
4 - kvar
5 - kvin
6 - ses
7 - sep
8 - ok
9 - naŭ
10 - dek

If you've studied other languages, some of these numbers may seem familiar. If not, du, tri and dek should at least sound familiar. Consider the English words duet, dual, tripod, tricycle, and decade, for instance.

Although the title of this post is "Let's Count to Ten", you can actually count to ninety-nine (99) with just these ten numbers. It's just a matter of addition or multiplication.

11 - dekunu
12 - dekdu
13 - dektri
14 - dekkvar
15 - dekkvin
16 - dekses
17 - deksep
18 - dekok
19 - deknaŭ
20 - dudek
21 - dudekunu
22- dudekdu
30 - tridek
99 - naŭdeknaŭ

See the pattern? It doesn't get much simpler than this.

Word Building With Affixes

Learning Esperanto vocabulary is fairly straightforward. This is because Esperanto makes heavy use of affixes. An affix is either a prefix or a suffix which changes the meaning of the root word. Let's look at an example. We will use the word domo, which means "house". Domo is the root word. The affixes are bold red.

la domo - the house
la domego - the mansion
la dometo - the cottage
la domaĉo - the hovel

These can also be applied to verbs. The prefix mal is especially useful because it denotes an opposite.

fermi - to close
malfermi - to open
fermegi - to slam

Fermegi is an especially interesting example of word building. My dictionary says the word for slam is brufermi. But I didn't know that until just now. However, because of the suffix eg, I can still get my point across even if I don't quite know the correct word to use. More importantly, this construction will be easily understood by other Esperanto speakers. There are many of different affixes available in Esperanto which makes expanding your vocabulary quite simple once you know a root word.

What This Blog Is About

Welcome to Esperanto is Easy! This blog is about how easy it is for native speakers of English to learn Esperanto. The plan is that many of the posts here will be micro-lessons in Esperanto. Because it's much easier to learn something new in small doses, most posts will favor focusing on a particular concept.

Not all posts will be Esperanto micro-lessons. Some posts will also point out the problems English speakers have when learning certain other languages and will show how Esperanto solves that problem.