Esperanto/Lesson 2

 Previous lesson — Main page — Next lesson After a short review of the most difficult pronunciations, we will learn about adjectives in Esperanto, get to know more verb tenses, and start playing with words (i.e. derive new words). As always, there will be vocabulary to be memorized.

Pronunciation again
Remember how c, ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, j, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ are pronounced? Review the box below if you're not completely sure about any of them anymore. If you'd like to practice them again, please redo the exercise in Lesson 1.

Adjectives
Adjectives are words that usually describe a characteristic of a noun. Examples can be found in the box directly below.

In Esperanto, adjectives are marked by the suffix -a. Examples are in the short vocabulary section below.

Vocabulary
Here are the first adjectives that you should memorize.

Placement
Adjectives can be placed preceding the noun or following the noun. There is no difference in meaning between these. More often do adjectives precede the noun than follow it, which will also be the case during this course.

Agreement
In Esperanto, if a noun takes the plural suffix, so will any adjective that describes it:

granda hundo — belaj katoj — fortaj viroj

Verbs
In the previous lesson we have already seen that Esperanto indicates the present tense on verbs using the suffix -as. Esperanto marks the past tense using -is, the future tense using -os, and the infinitive using -i. The infinitive is the so-called citation form of verbs, which means that only this form will appear in dictionaries.

If an event is in the past, Esperanto always uses the -is suffix. If the event is in the future, Esperanto always uses the -os suffix. Esperanto is fully consistent in when it uses these. English, however, is not (e.g. "My train leaves tomorrow morning"), so you may need to be careful when translating English sentences into Esperanto. The English continuous verb forms (e.g. "I am going to bed") are usually translated using these simple tenses in Esperanto.

So, the verbs learned in the previous lesson can be found in a dictionary as esti (to be), brili (to shine), flugi (to fly), fali (to fall), and sidi (to sit).

Vocabulary
Here are more words to memorize.

Personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are words like "I", "me", "you", "we", "them". We have already encountered a few of them in the previous lesson: mi (I), vi (you), and li (he). Now, we will learn the other most common ones.

There are two more pronouns in Esperanto. We will learn these in a later lesson.

Affixes
An important part of Esperanto is its affixes (prefixes and suffixes). There are a sizable number of them, and many new words can be derived from them. This greatly reduces the number of words one needs to learn. In this lesson the first, and arguarbly most important, affix will be introduced: mal-.

mal-
mal- is a prefix that indicates the opposite of what it is attached to. This is similar to English "un-", e.g. in "unfortunate".

Exercises

 * Go through the adjectives in the two vocabulary tables in this lesson and tack on mal-. What do they mean then? (answers)
 * Now go through the other words presented in this lesson. Are there any that would make sense when mal- is tacked on? What do they mean then? (answers)

Have you memorized the vocabulary of this lesson? Then you can also practice by translating the following sentences:

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