The Article

The word «la» is Esperanto’s word for “the” (the definite article). There is no word for “a” (the indefinite article) in Esperanto, so «boato» can mean either “boat” or “a boat”, with the intended meaning obvious from the context.

This word never takes any endings, so this is the only form you will ever see, just as “the” is the only form of the definite article in English.

Esperanto uses the definite article just a little more than English does, but not so much as French, although sometimes its use is optional, and depends on the native language of the user, so an English-speaker may say «amo» when talking about the abstract idea of love, but a Frenchman would say «la amo».

There is a class of words called «definiloj» in Esperanto grammars, meaning the definite article and similar words. In English, these correspond to words like “each”, “this”, “that”, and possessive pronouns such as “my”, “his”, etc. It also includes the “correlatives”, described elsewhere. The rule is that there cannot normally be two of these words associated with any one noun, and there are a few exceptions to this rule.

The phrase “my book” is “il libro mio” in Italian, and if Esperanto used words the same way as Italian, it would be «la libro mia» in Esperanto, but the correct form is «mia libro», similar to the way English says it.

Esperanto does combine the definite article with a possessive pronoun when there is no noun involved, to say the equivalent of “mine”, “ours”, and such, so «Lia libro estas pli malnova ol la mia» = “His book is older than mine”.

Where English would say “all the marbles”, Esperanto would say «ĉiuj el la globetoj», the equivalent of “all of the marbles”, or «ĉiuj globetoj», the equivalent of “all marbles”, which in some contexts would mean the same thing.

The phrases «ĉio tio» and «ĉio ĉi tio» (for “all this” and “all that”) are also used, and considered perfectly grammatical.

It is permitted to replace the A of «la» with an apostrophe, giving «l’». This is often done when the previous word ends with a vowel, so the article can be pronounced as part of it, such as «de l’» for «de la», or when the following word begins with a vowel, so it can be pronounced as part of that, such as «l’ angulo» for «la angulo». In either case, the space between words is not omitted.

This feature is useful in poetry and songs, in order to get the accented syllables to scan properly.

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

(Ĝisdatigita 30 oktobro 2002)