Nouns Part I

Every single noun in Esperanto, which is the subject of the sentence ends in -o.

La hundo bojas - The dog barks; The dog is barking
La virino laboris - The woman worked.

Plural subjects add -j.

La hundoj bojas - The dogs bark; The dogs are barking
La virinoj laboris - The women worked.

You should be able to pick out the nouns in this sentence even if you don't know what all the words mean:

La hundoj kaj la kato dormis ekster la domo.

There Are No Irregular Verbs

There are no irregular verbs. Verbs in Esperanto are so simple that you will find it easy to conjugate every verb in the present, past, and future tense after this post. Verbs in the infinitive end in -i. The verb esti means "to be". Let's conjugate this in English first.

I am
thou art
he is
she is
it is
one is
we are
you are
they are

As a native English speaker, I find this simple. But the verb "to be" in English is irregular. It's irregular in the Romance languages as well. Spanish is more complicated than English because Spanish has two verbs which mean "to be" - ser and estar. Not only must one remember how to conjugate each one, one must also know when to use each. Let's just look at ser:

yo soy
tú eres
el es
ella es
usted es
nosotros somos
vosotros sois
ellos son
ellas son
ustedes son

Much more variation than in English and causes non-native speakers of Spanish much difficulty. Now, let's look at Esperanto's esti

mi estas
ci estas(Ci is almost never used, but is listed here for completeness)
li estas
ŝi estas
oni estas
ĝi estas
ni estas
vi estas
ili estas

Esti, like all Esperanto verbs, is regular. To conjugate esti in the present tense, remove the -i at the end and add -as

Let's try it with manĝi - to eat
Removing the -i leaves us with the root manĝ. Add -as and we have manĝas. We won't even bother listing out the pronouns with it because the verb does not change no matter which pronoun we use it with.

What about the other tenses? They're just as easy. For the future, drop the -i and add -os. This would give us estos and manĝos for our examples.

Mi manĝos - I will eat
Vi estos - You will be

For the past, drop the -i and add -is.

Ni manĝis - We ate
Ili estis - They were

It's that simple. Here are some useful verbs to experiment with:

• helpi - to help
• doni - to give
• veni - to come
• lerni - to learn
• stari - to stand
• sidi - to sit
• dormi - to sleep
• legi - to read
• trinki - to drink
• voli - to want
• bezoni - to need
• paroli - to speak

You can also use the infinitive as-is. Mi venis helpi means "I came to help."