Rapideo - Klaso 1

LA KURSO PER KIU VI RAPIDE LERNOS ESPERANTON (ESPEREBLE)!

by Professor Ikvero

Saluton al ĉiuj! Mi nomiĝas Ikvero kaj mi estos via Esperanto-instruisto!

If you can’t understand anything I’ve just said, don’t worry, you will very soon (and that is not meant to sound as a threat, although if pretending that I’m threatening you with teaching you Esperanto is something that helps your learning, you’re free to take it that way!).

If you are here, I assume you read Iguer’s article and that it worked! So welcome, welcome to the first edition of RapidEO, the course through which you will Kwikly© 2 learn Esperanto¹!

Without further ado, let’s dive right into it!

Let’s begin taking a look at Esperanto grammatical rules. Let’s dive into ALL– OF– THE–… sixteen of them? Yes, that is not a mistake; only sixteen of them. Although that can be debatable, it is, nonetheless, a nice way of illustrating how simple this language is. Before we begin, let’s check out the Esperanto alphabet so that we can know and understand all 28 letters and their sounds. Then, we can get to the first three rules.

Esperanto-Alfabeto

The alphabet of Esperanto has five vowels; they are: Aa, Ee, Ii, Oo and Uu. The 23 consonants are: Bb, Cc, Ĉĉ, Dd, Ff, Gg, Ĝĝ, Hh, Ĥĥ, Jj, Ĵĵ, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Pp, Rr, Ss, Ŝŝ, Tt, Ŭŭ, Vv and Zz.

You have probably noticed that the letters Qq, Ww, Xx and Yy are not included.

And you must be wondering how to pronounce all of these weird letters. Worry not, the phonology of Esperanto is very simple: each letter has one sound and one sound only; each sound is represented by one letter and one letter only. Below you’ll find the letters along with their IPA transcriptions. If you are not familiar with IPA, you can go to the attachments section, by the end of this article, to find the ATTACHMENT I, which has a link to a platform called Lernu!, which is a very big and vastly used platform for Esperanto-learning. There, you’ll find a page with audio tracks for each sound, as well as a word to exemplify!

VOWELS

Letter Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu

IPA /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

CONSONANTS

Letter B b C c Ĉ ĉ D d F f G g Ĝ ĝ H h Ĥ ĥ J j Ĵ ĵ K k

IPA /b/ /ts/ / ʧ/ /d/ /f/ /g/ /ʤ/ /h/ /x/ /j/ /ʒ/ /k/

Letter L l M m N n P p R r S s Ŝ ŝ T t Ŭ ŭ V v Z z

IPA /l/ /m/ /n/ /p/ /r/ /s/ /ʃ/ /t/ /w/ /v/ /z/

Might seem confusing, but trust me, it’s only a matter of getting used to it. Once you get the gist of it, the letters and their sounds will flow naturally.

Now that we know the alphabet and how to pronounce each letter, let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the rules of Esperanto.

One: there is no indefinite article.

Some languages have many articles. Some, like French, have one for masculine singular – le; one for feminine singular – la; and another for both masculine and feminine plural – les; and that’s only for the definite ones! Or my own native language, which has o, os, a, as 3 . Or even German, which has three articles in the nominative, which assume other forms

for each of the other three grammatical cases 4 of the language.

English is simple, it has two articles only: one indefinite (a, which can become an for phonetic reasons) and one definite (the). Esperanto is simpler: it has one single article (la), and it is definite. Indefinite articles? Throw ‘em away, you don’t need all that complication in your life! If you want to talk about something indefinite, just don’t define it, it’s as simple as that.

So we have → la kato meaning the cat; Whereas → kato means a cat or simply cat. Similarly → la hundo means the dog; Whereas → hundo means a dog or simply dog. So if I say to you → Mi havas prob-

lemon, meaning to say that I have aproblem;You may answer → Mi vidas la problemon,meaning I see the problem.

And that’s it for articles.

Two: all nouns, or substantives 5 , end in-o.

Those who come from romance languages –which (mostly) have -o as a marker of masculine– might be frowning, but as you may have already guessed, there are no grammatical genders in Esperanto. So the ending in -o doesn’t have anything to do with gender!

The plural in Esperanto is a bit different. It doesn’t use the addition of an “s” like many languages do. The plural in Esperanto is formed by adding a -j at the end of the word.

Yes, a -j. I know it seems crazy; I used to think so, too, when I was learning it. But I came to quite like it, because this way it is very difficult for one to confuse a word in the singular and one in the plural!

The marking of plural comes after the -o that marks that that word is a substantive. So a substantive in the plural will end in -oj. If we go back to the sounds of the letters, we’ll remember that the letter “j” in Esperanto sounds like a semivocalic “i”. So the ending -oj sounds like what each of the syllables of the word “yo-yo” would sound like if read backwards.

Now that we know that all substantives end in -o, let’s get back to the alphabet real quick. The names of the letters are, naturally, substantives. And if every substantive ends in -o, so do the names of the letters! Or at least, the consonants. The vowels are already their own name. So let’s take a look again at the alphabet, now looking at their names (and IPA transcriptions):

CONSONANTS

Bo Co Ĉo Do Fo Go Ĝo Ho Ĥo Jo Ĵo Ko

/bo/ /tso/ /ʧo/ /do/ /fo/ /go/ /ʤo/ /ho/ /xo/ /jo/ /ʒo/ /ko/

Lo Mo No Po Ro So Ŝo To Ŭo Vo Zo

/lo/ /mo/ /no/ /po/ /ro/ /so/ /ʃo/ /to/ /wo/ /vo/ /zo/

Three: all adjectives end in -a.

Once again, not a gender marker, simply a syntactic one. If you spot a word ending in -a in a sentence, rest assured that that is an adjective. Spot the word ending in -o next to the adjective, and you have the substantive being described by said adjective.

Also, adjectives can come by either side of the substantive, although it is more common for you to see them coming before, just like in English. So:

Granda problemo or Problemo granda ☞ A big problem

Bela kato or Kato bela ☞ A pretty cat

Rapida hundo or Hundo rapida ☞ A fast dog

and so forth.

One behavior that adjectives have different in Esperanto than what they do in English, is that they must always agree with the substantive in number. This means that adjectives will gain a plural form when describing a substantive in the plural. The good news is that the form is the same as the substantives: addition of a -j. So:

Grandaj problemoj or Problemoj grandaj ☞ Big problems

Belaj katoj or Katoj belaj ☞ Pretty cats

Rapidaj hundoj or Hundoj rapidaj ☞ Fast dogs

and so forth.

I believe that’s enough information for today!

I hope I managed to spark your interest inthat beautiful and cool (and ridiculouslyeasy) language. See you again in the nextissue with another Esperanto-klaso! Andhere I believe that a friendly reminder isin place that Esperanto is available onDuolingo from English, French, Portugueseand Spanish 6 !

Lastly, if in the meantime you want tocontact me, I’ll be happy to hear fromyou! I am not on many social mediamyself, only on Tumblr, where my usernameis Ikvero. But Iguer happens toalso be my personal assistant and willgladly pass on any messages you havefor me! He is u/iguerr on Reddit and iguer#6744on Discord!

Ĝis la revido!

SOURCES

ATTACHMENT I: Wikipedia page on grammatical cases: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case>.

ATTACHMENT II: Lernu! page on the Esperanto alphabet and its sounds: <https://lernu.net/gramatiko/skribo>.

Footnotes

1: The author is not making any real promises and therefore can’t be held judicially responsible for any frustrations readers might feel in the face of not successfully learning Esperanto with this correspondence course.

2: The author has not consulted with his legal team before mentioning this trademarked brand. The author, quite honestly, doesn’t actually have a legal team. And so the author dearly hopes that including the copyright symbol should be enough to avoid any lawsuits.

3: In order: masc. sing., masc. pl., fem. sing., fem. pl.

4: If you are not familiar with what grammatical cases are, see ATTACHMENT II in SOURCES.

5: Here on after to be referred to as the latter.

6: The author (unfortunately) is not being paid to advertise to Duolingo, Inc., but he sure does hope that one day Duolingo, Inc. will offer him a position.