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Lesson Two — Nouns

Here are some Esperanto nouns, and some simple sentences containing them, with their translations into English. Rather than having you look up the words in a word list, I’m putting the translations right under the Esperanto words.

1a	Libro	estas	sur	la tablo.
1a	[A] book	is	on	the table.

1b	Estas	libro	sur	la tablo.
1b	[There] is	[a] book	on	the table.

Since Esperanto doesn’t have a word for “a”, the word libro in sentence 1a can mean either “book” or “a book”. We translate this in the only way that makes sense.

The word estas was translated here as “is”, but is translated as “am” or “are” in other contexts.

Word-order is looser in Esperanto than in English, so we can exchange the subject and verb with no problem. In sentence 1b, the translation shows the usual English way of doing the same thing: by adding the word “there” before the verb.

2	Petro	legas	la libron.
2	Peter	is reading	the book.

In sentence 2, the word libro has had an n added to it. This marks the word as being the direct object of the verb. This, I’ll have to admit, is the hardest thing about learning Esperanto. Once you get over this little hurdle, everything else is easy.

3a	Paŭlo	legis	la libron,	sed	li	ne	komprenas	ĝin.
3a	Paul	has read	the book,	but	he	does not	understand	it.

3b	Paŭlo	legis	la libron,	sed	li	komprenas	ĝin	ne.
3b	Paul	has read	the book,	but	he	understands	it	not.

3c	Paŭlo	legis	la libron,	sed	li	komprenas	ĝin	ne.
3c	Paul	has read	the book,	but	he	²understand	³it.	¹does not

In sentence 3a, the word ne has been translated as “does not”, although the dictionary translation is just “not”. This is because of how English grammar works. So sometimes you will see it translated as “did not”, “is not”, “are not”, “am not”,“was not”, “were not”, “have not”, “has not”, or something else. The alternative would be to translate the verb as “does understand”, and put in little superscripts to tell you in which order to read the words of translation. I won’t do that to you.

Now the word ne can be placed at the end of the sentence, as in 3b, with the same meaning. The sentence can still be translated word-by-word, but the result is not the way we usually speak in English, so I’ve retranslated it in sentence 3c, where some of the words of translation have superscripts in front of them, telling you the order in which to read them, giving the same translation as in 3a.

4a	La hundo	mordis	la infanon.
4a	The dog	bit	the child.

4b	La infanon	mordis	la hundo.
4b	³the child.	²bit	¹The dog

4c	La infanon	mordis	la hundo.
4c	The child	was bitten	[by] the dog.

Sentence 4a is pretty simple.

Sentence 4b is exactly the same, but with the subject and object reversed. This doesn’t change the meaning, as it would in English, because the object is still marked with the n ending.

Sentence 4c shows another way to translate 4b: put the sentence into the passive voice. The point here in both Esperanto and English is to put the receiver of the action first in the sentence, in order to emphasize it.

5	Estas	tri	libroj	sur	la breto.
5	[There] are	three	books	on	the shelf.

In 5, the word libro now has a j at the end, marking the plural. This is the only way of making the plural of a noun in Esperanto, so where English has “criterion” as a singular and “criteria” as its plural, Esperanto has simply kriterio for the singular and kriterioj for the plural.

6	Marta	havas	kvin	librojn.
6	Martha	has	five	books.

Finally, in 6, there is an n added to libroj to mark it as the direct object of the verb. Now you have seen all four of the forms that an Esperanto noun can have.

	Singular	Plural
Nominative — for the subject of the sentence, etc.	libro	libroj
Accusative — for the object of a verb, etc.	libron	librojn

Questions or suggestions? Please write, and I’ll get back to you.